Lake levels, mobility and lithic raw material selection and reduction strategies: A Great Lakes case study

Abstract

It has recently been proposed that lowered lake levels after 4250 BP broadened opportunities for mobility and interaction patterns among hunter-gatherer populations in the Saginaw drainage and in Michigan more broadly (; ). Here, data are presented on chipped stone reduction strategies as reflected in two site assemblages in Bay City, Michigan (20BY28, 20BY387) that bridge this key point in time. The earliest Late Archaic components of these sites, occupied during the higher than modern post Nipissing recession ca. 3200 BP, are typified by on-site reduction of local cherts, often utilising a bipolar reduction strategy. Subsequent uses of the area largely shifted to lower elevations. The more recent site components contain both more diverse projectile styles, many of which can be linked with Ontario types, and higher occurrences of non-local raw materials, specifically Onondaga chert apparently arriving at the site as preforms. The last use of these sites occurred during the Late Woodland, also during lower water levels approaching modern, and reflecting the highest use of Onondaga chert. We suggest that these changes resulted from shifting mobility and exchange patterns, facilitated in part by lowered post Nipissing water levels.