No abstract

Stone tools characteristic of the Clovis culture have been found in direct association with bones of the American mastodon at Kimmswick, Missouri. The vertebrate fauna from Clovis components suggests a deciduous woodland and meadow habitat. Such an environmental reconstruction provides a new perspective for Clovis adaptations and the ecological tolerances of Mammut americanum.

Excavations conducted since Chomko's initial discovery in 1974 of Cucurbita pepo seeds have clarified their stratigraphic and radiometric context as well as delineated an earlier archaeological unit, the Squash and Gourd Zone, where a second cucurbit, Lagenaria siceraria, was found. The two units are Late Archaic with dates (weighted averages of radiocarbon assays) of 4257 ± 39 and 3928 ± 41 radiocarbon years B.P., respectively, and are beneath stratigraphically superior Late Archaic and Woodland units also containing cucurbits. A comparison of the early Cucurbita pepo with others from later contexts demonstrates an increasing size with time and morphology similar between the early seeds and the historic cultivar "Mandan." Nutritional value of the cucurbits, both cultigens, may have been comparable to that of other wild plant foods consumed. In any event, the cucurbits are artifacts of regional exchange mechanisms operating some 4000 years ago; the most plausible mechanism being down-the-line exchange.

The transition from Palaeoindian to Archaic societies in North America is often viewed as a linear progression over a brief but time-transgressive period. New evidence from the Wilson-Leonard site in Texas suggests social experimentation by Palaeoindians over a 2500-year period eventually resulted in Archaic societies. The process was neither short nor linear, and the evidence shows that different but contemporaneous lifeways existed in a variety of locales in the south-central US in the Early Holocene.