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362 21. Arrows, Atlatls, and Cultural-Historical Conundrums e. james dixon T he chapters in this volume present technological analyses, replicative experimentation, environmental interpretations, and new discoveries resulting from scientific excavation. Collectively, they develop new insights about Beringia’s past, the colossal forces that have shaped Beringia, and the ecological contexts for interpreting human settlement, subsistence, and behavior. Initial colonization, early human adaptations, and cultural contacts are among the many themes that naturally emerge from the fact that Beringia was the only terrestrial connection between Eurasia and the Americas. The twenty preceding chapters address several essential questions: What is the meaning and significance of the presence or absence of microblade technology in lithic assemblages? What can lithic assemblages tell us about the origin and distribution of bow-and-arrow technology versus the use of atlatls and darts? Can these insights be applied to understanding past cultural relationships in Beringia? What typological constructs are most useful in understanding assemblage variability? What classification schemes are the most important for understanding past lifeways and developing meaningful cultural-historical constructs? How can assemblage variability best be applied to elucidate Beringia’s relationship to both Asia and North America? The human history of this vast region reflects complex push-pull forces on an enormous scale. Sea level rise reduced the landmass of Beringia; melting glaciers and ice sheets created new habitat, “pulling” terrestrial biotic communities and people landward. Extinction of Pleistocene fauna reduced large land mammal resources at the same time the opening of Bering Strait led to the exchange of Pacific water with the cooler Arctic Ocean, resulting in increased maritime productivity. These geological and biological forces contributed to the complexity of Beringia as a culturally dynamic interface between Eurasia and North America. In varying degrees, all the work in this volume acknowledges these geological and environmental variables and constraints and their importance in the interpretation of human adaptations, migrations, and contacts. Initial Colonization The Bering Land Bridge is a cornerstone in explaining the initial colonization of the Americas. It is the basis for a variety of models advanced to explain the initial human colonization, settlement, and adaptations in North America. The advance and retreat of enormous continental glaciers, sea level fluctuations, and the major and complex responses of biotic communities to these events influence Beringian archaeology. Since Jenness’s 1933 classic The American Aborigines, Their Origins and Antiquity, scientific research has supported the concept that humans colonized the Americas from Asia via the Bering Land Bridge. The relevance of the concept of the Bering Land Bridge to American discoveries was immediately apparent at early Paleoindian sites, such as Folsom, Dent, and Blackwater Draw. It linked the Pleistocene hunters of Eurasia to those of North America and made sense to most archaeologists. Discoveries of fluted and Paleoindian-like projectile points in eastern Beringia beginning in the late 1940s strengthened this perspective and contributed to the Clovis-first paradigm that dominated archaeological thinking for the next fifty years. These concepts were contextualized in a larger worldview by Müller-Beck (1967), who suggested that eastern Beringia was first colonized by people who primarily made and used bifacial stone tools that he termed Arrows, Atlatls, and Cultural-Historical Conundrums 363 economically based primarily on large-mammal predation . The coastal migration hypothesis postulates that the earliest colonization of the Americas employed the use of watercraft, with people traveling southward from Beringia along the western coast of North America. It is reasonable to speculate that, as research progresses , older reliably dated sites will be found. The earliest known sites in eastern Beringia, including Dry Creek, Walker Road, Broken Mammoth, and Swan Point, contain obsidian from the Wrangell Mountains, Batza Téna, and at least one unidentified source south of the Brooks Range (Hamilton and Goebel 1999; see also Goebel, this volume; Reuther et al., this volume). Although this could be interpreted as evidence of direct procurement, given the great distances between these sources it is more likely evidence that widespread trade networks had already developed in interior Alaska by circa 13,400 cal BP. Models of increased population over time inferentially improve visibility of sites in the archaeological record over time (Toth 1991). Very early evidence suggesting well-developed trade networks in obsidian makes it probable that even earlier sites exist. These perspectives, along with a number of equivocal early discoveries, such as artifacts recovered from the Fairbanks muck deposits, imply that older sites remain to be found in eastern Beringia. Microblades The genius of microblade technology is...

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