Not With a Bang, But a Whimper: The End of the Archaic in Northeast Texas

Abstract

The Archaic period in Northeast Texas lasted for thousands of years and, if this length of time can be taken as any indication, it was as an extremely successful adaptation to the Holocene environment of North America. Accepting this view, however, begs the question: "why and how did the Archaic period come to an end?" This paper uses the term "Archaic" to describe a "way of life" (see Story 1990:211), and in this sense, the Archaic period in eastern North America may be seen as a "tradition," characterized by small, band-level societies, marked by an economy based on "hunting, fishing, shell-fishing, and plant-collecting." It has often been described in the past as a period of post-Pleistocene "settling in," with increasingly intensive utilization of "local" resources. The Archaic is generally recognized by the presence of certain cultural attributes, including "large and broad-bladed dart points and ground- and polished-stone tools and ornaments." In this regard, Northeast Texas is no different from much of the rest of eastern North America.