Hunter-Gatherer Social Behavior during the North American Pleistocene

Ohio University, Athens OH

Investigators

Abstract

Dr. Joseph Gingerich of the Smithsonian Institution will explore social interaction among hunter-gatherer populations in the Americas. While archaeologists have been able to find campsites that date to more than 13,000 years ago in the United States, we know very little about how the first people who inhabited North America lived. Shawnee-Minisink in Pennsylvania is one the oldest and best preserved archaeological sites in North America. This site allows us to examine early American social interaction and ways of life, which are rarely available at other sites of the same age. Data on the spatial distribution of artifacts from this site will be used to develop theoretical and methodological models to help better interpret other hunter-gatherer sites throughout the world. Information from this work, which places the site into a broader thematic context, will be used to nominate the site as a National Historic Landmark. The site currently listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The project also has pedagogical focus in training students and providing undergraduates with research experiences through the Smithsonian?s internship program. These goals will be achieved through a detailed spatial analysis and refit study of 18,000 mapped artifacts. Ethnographic research has demonstrated the utility of using spatial data to examine hunter-gatherer behavior and social interactions. This research will examine: 1) site structure and organization through the spatial clustering of artifacts, 2) the function of specific work areas through artifact use-wear and the study of manufacturing debris from stone tool production, 3) intra-site social interaction by linking individual spatial units through the refitting of artifacts and reduction debris, and 4) extra-site social interaction based on the distribution of exotic raw materials, links between work areas, and the spacing artifact clusters. This study is significant because few first American sites have been the focus of a detailed intra-site spatial study. As ethnographers have observed few highly mobile hunter-gatherer groups using stone tools and living on sparsely populated landscapes at middle latitudes, this project provides an opportunity to examine a prehistoric hunter-gatherer site at a large spatial scale and test relationships between the archaeological and ethnoarchaeological records. Lithic refitting patterns, isolated work areas, and overall spatial patterning will provide new insights into the way human behavior manifests itself through discarded artifacts. In this respect, this research provides a valuable dataset from which future comparative studies of social organization can be drawn to examine past human behavior. Archaeological spatial data compiled and analyzed during this project will be accessible online through the Smithsonian Institution.