The Paleoindian and Early Archaic Southeast

18. Paleoindian and Early Archaic Data from Mississippi

18 Paleoindian and Early Archaic Data from Mississippi Samuel O. McGahey Over the past few years, a serious effort has been made to draw together all available early lithic data from Mississippi in order to form the basis for "historical contexts" for the state preservation plan. The contexts are defined by geographical and chronological dimensions. The chronological dimensions are those that are generally accepted by the archaeological community. Since, in the view of the writer, Paleoindian and Early Archaic are a continuum and the end of this continuum is recognized abruptly with the onset of the Middle Archaic, it has been decided to treat them as a unit. This unit is somewhat arbitrarily divided into five subperiods for the study of broad general trends in artifactual if not human distribution. The geographical dimensions are the 10 physiographic regions generally recognized by the natural scientists who study plant and animal communities: the Yazoo Basin, the Loess Hills, the NorthCentral Hills, the Flatwoods, the Pontotoc Ridge, the Black Prairie, the Tombigbee Hills, the Jackson Prairie, the Longleaf Pine Belt, and the Coastal Pine Meadows (figure 18.1). While the ideal is to discuss the contexts as a physiographic region within a given archaeological period, it has not been possible to attain this goal because of a lack of data in certain areas, and the 10 physiographic regions have been consolidated into 4 for the present purposes. Nevertheless, enough data have been accumulated so that certain regional differences are obvious, and this is the primary theme for this paper. The data are presented below in the form of histograms representing the five subperiods (figure 18.2). The subperiods are defined on the basis of projectile point morphology/typology as follows: (1) fluted points, including Clovis, Cumberland, and Redstone; (2) unfluted but supposedly pre-Dalton forms, including Quad, Beaver Lake, Coldwater, Hinds, and Arkabutla; (3) Dalton, including lanceolate and Hardaway-like and San Patrice-like forms, some of which are side-notched; (4) side-notched forms, such as BigSandy I, Cache River, and Greenbrier; (5) comer-notched and certain corner-removed forms, which, like the points of preceding periods, are basally ground, includingJude, Decatur, Pine Tree, Lost Lake, Hardin, Plevna, Stilwell, and unnamed variants and similar forms. Fig- Paleoindian and Early Archaic Data from Mississippi 355 Yazoo Basin North-Central Hills Prairies 22J5587 • in Jasper County Longleaf Pine Belt • 22J0568 22PE665 • • Beaumont gravel pit site 22PE504 ! North I o o miles kilometers 100 150 Coastal Meadows Figure 18.1 Major archaeological sites and physiographic regions in Mississippi. 356 The Paleoindian and Early Archaic Southeast 564 157 EPI MPI LPI EA IEA2 Southern Mississippi EPI MPI LPI EA IEA2 Northeastern Mississippi 300 EPI MPI LPI EA I EA2 North-Central Mississippi 91 Yazoo Basin EPI MPI LPI EA1 EA2 EPI Early Paleoindian Clovis points MPI Middle Paleoindian lanceolates LPI Late Paleoindian Dalton points EA 1 Initial Early Archaic side-notched points EA2 Later Early Archaic corner-notched points Region Figure 18.2 Mississippi Paleoindian and EarlyArchaic projectile points by region and period. Paleoindian and Early Archaic Data from Mississippi 357 ures 18.3 and 18.4 illustrate typical diagnostic specimens from the four regions. The counts in individual columns of the histograms represent numbers of recorded projectile points. Other diagnostics within the state represent all or parts of the Paleoindian/Early Archaic period. For various reasons, they are not included in this scheme. Scottsbluff and Bifurcate tradition points, for instance , are so poorly represented as to be insignificant for statistical purposes and represent traditions that are basically foreign to the state. Unifaces are generally indicative of an early lithic time level but cannot with any degree of certainty be divided into this chronological scheme. The "Dalton adze" may very well not be restricted to the Dalton period in Mississippi, and notched unifaces such as the Waller knife and Edgefield scraper have not been tied down specifically enough to be included as chronological indicators within the scheme of the subperiods presented here (Geiger and Brown 1983; Lauro 1982). Several examples are illustrated in figure 18.5 for those interested in regional comparison, however . The counts represent data accumulated over a period of about 25 years, as private collections were encountered during fieldwork in various parts of the state, or as they were brought in by curious owners. As many Paleoindian/Early Archaic specimens were recorded in as much detail as possible. Since this part...