CHAPTER 11 - A Technological Analysis of the Early Archaic

Abstract

This chapter presents a technological analysis of the early Archaic. Research into the beginnings of the eastern Archaic lifeway, the early Archaic period, has benefited from theoretical shifts within the discipline of anthropology. The straitjacket of stadial archeology with its static taxomonic boundaries stressed norms and similarities of behavior, avoiding the ranges of variation and anomalies in the record in an effort to find or invent the clean gaps or breaks that segregated the units of descriptive information. Like the North American mid­lands during the Gold Rush, the early portion of the Archaic was passed over for the rewards of finding exotic Paleoindian sites or ignored in some areas because it was thought that a coniferous canopy may have retarded population growth until the middle and late Archaic periods. With the increasing interest in cultural processes, questions concerning the rates of change and shifts in complexity and new integrations of demographic, social, or technological variables became emphasized.