Facing the Forest: Climate Change and Human Adaptation Across the Pleistocene–Holocene Transition in Northern New England and Eastern Canada

Abstract

ABSTRACT In northern New England and southern Quebec, the end of the Younger Dryas (∼11,700 calendar years ago) was marked by rapid warming and the transition from a landscape of open spruce forests, parklands and tundra to closed canopy forest more akin to modern boreal forest. Human livelihoods transform over this same interval although the details of this transition are poorly resolved. It is clear, however, that social systems that had persisted for nearly 1000 years shift dramatically evidenced by changes in mobility, settlement practices, and stone tool manufacturing techniques. This period is also marked by a nearly 1500-year-long “hiatus” in archaeological radiocarbon dates. While limited, current evidence suggests the appearance of “Late Paleoindian” points in the region following this radiocarbon-date hiatus represents the resettlement of a largely depopulated area.