Neolithization was a complex, protracted process of domestication, sedentarization, and technology change that occurred in various combinations in various times and places around the world. Understanding the causal relationships among those and other important human behaviors remains an analytical challenge. This study examines Neolithization through the lens of lithic artifact variation in the Lake Titicaca Basin, Peru. Drawing on previous lithics research, we outline a synthetic model linking changing diet, mobility, and projectile technology to predicted trends in lithic assemblages. The expectations are then compared to two large, well-dated lithic assemblages from the Titicaca Basin—one from the Middle/Late Archaic forager site of Soro Mik’aya Patjxa (8.0–6.5 cal. ka) and the other from the Terminal Archaic horticultural site of Jiskairumoko (5.2–3.4 cal. ka). We find that the strongest signal in lithic technology change is related to the introduction of archery technology. Signals for subsistence change and declining mobility are relatively weak. The results suggest an early but unconfirmed adoption of archery technology in the Terminal Archaic Period with major transitions in mobility and diet likely to have occurred subsequently in the Terminal Archaic or Formative periods. The findings are consistent with a behavioral model in which changes in projectile technology played a prominent role in the evolution of resource intensification and residential sedentism as well as resource privatization and sexual division of labor in the high Andes.
The role of plant foods during the fluted-point period (FPP) of North America is contested. Central to this debate is whether the scarcity of FPP macrobotanical materials stems from poor preservation of archaeological features and the macrobotanical remains they might contain or from the limited use of plants during the FPP. Employing summed probability distributions of radiocarbon date frequencies in northeastern North America, we find that FPP hearths are as common as expected, given the small number of well-dated FPP sites in the region. A second comparison shows that northeastern FPP hearths contain macrobotanical remains at a higher frequency than hearths from a region with better preservation and where small seeds formed a part of the diet. The macrobotanical materials so far recovered from FPP hearths in the Northeast show that plant foods contributed to diets during the FPP but that the plant diet breadth was relatively narrow, consistent with a specialized caribou hunting lifeway.
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