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My last post described use of the Ideal Free Distribution (IFD) to analyze Late Pleistocene, early Holocene settlement of Prince of Wales Island (PWI), southeast Alaska.  PWI is important because by timing and location evidence there bears on the Kelp Highway hypothesis for human migration into the Americas. The PWI data proved to be consistent with a second phase, early Holocene pattern of IFD settlement, but no archaeological evidence pointed to the predicted earlier phase of occupation.   Schmuck and colleagues (2022) might have cited the inconsistency to discredit the IFD.  Instead they used the model to buttress inferences that there is missing data, sites yet to be discovered.  That kind of confidence in a simple model only partially confirmed begs justification.  Another Alaska study is among those providing it.

The Arctic Small Tool tradition (ASTt) population migrated from Siberia into Alaska ~5,000 BP, eventually becoming the first people to colonize the high arctic to Greenland, as well as the first to make routine use of arctic coastal habitats in Alaska.  Tremayne and Winterhalder (2017) investigate how well the IFD helps to fill in the often disputed details of ASTt migration and settlement.  We rank 10 ecozones — Beaufort Sea to Gulf Coast — by a standardized suitabilty index measuring large (> 30 kg) animal population densities (map); determine the earliest probable ASTt occupation in each ecozone by Bayesian methods and 775 radio carbon dates; and, we estimate population size over time by inventories of site counts.

Seven of the 10 ecozones establish a clear trend line in which the highest suitability habitats are earliest, and the lowest suitability the latest, to be settled.  The three outliers already were occupied when ASTt migrants likely reached them, explaining why they uniformly are occupied late relative to model predictions.  The vertical/horizontal confidence intervals evidence two important points: the model fitting analysis drew upon large radiocarbon and suitability data sets and, despite use of data with known uncertainties, patterns clearly are evident.  The IFD accurately represents adaptive processes underlying the sequence and timing of a thousand years of ASTt settlement; it likewise demonstrates the ecological acumen of ancestral Native Americans.

Schmuck, Nicholas, Jamie L. Clark, Risa J. Carlson, and James F. Baichtal. 2022. “A Human Behavioral Ecology of the Colonization of Unfamiliar Landscapes.” Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory. doi: 10.1007/s10816-022-09554-w.

Tremayne, Andrew H., and Bruce Winterhalder. 2017. “Large Mammal Biomass Predicts the Changing Distribution of Hunter-Gatherer Settlements in Mid-Late Holocene Alaska.” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 45:81–97. doi: 10.1016/j.jaa.2016.11.006.

Descendants of the Pacific Northwest kelp highway migrants, those who did not turn into and settle in the interior, appear quickly — in archaeological time — to have reached the other end of the Americas 100 degrees of latitude to the south.  Patagonia.  Here evolutionary developments after occupation (~12,500 BP) turn puzzling.  Tierra del Fuego populations diversified into distinct socio-linguistic groups to an amazing degree.  At the same time, their tool inventory became depauperate, assessed by a controlled comparison to their now distant but environmentally matching cousins in the Aleutian Islands of Alaska.

Southern migration along the Pacific Coast and the Kelp Highway was demanding of adaptive skill; so too was what came next.  The presumed off-ramps took a left turn into river drainages.  Aquatic habitats were familiar, the transition marine to freshwater leaving useful skills that had been long practiced.  Some of these rivers, the Columbia and the Klamath for example, reach far into the Columbia Plateau and northern Great Basin, interior environments novel to the new arrivals.  How did they adapt?  Here archaeologists build from the excellent preservation of dry caves on the margins of vast wetlands in the western high altitude basins.

Paleoindians in North America typically are portrayed as big game hunters.  Bone endures; faunal analysis is a common archaeological practice.  Although less evident and less commonly studied, carbonized seeds also endure.

A new study (citation below) by ethnobotanists of 767 charred seeds recovered from firepits in Connley Cave 5, central Oregon, dated between ~12,500 cal BP and 10,200 cal BP, documents the use of 21 plant taxa. Of these, 18 are known from the subsistence practices of recent Indigenous societies in the region.  Amaranths, cattail, grasses and mustards, likely were “important and perhaps even staple plant foods” (p. 19).  Numerous fish vertebrae, the occasional egg shell, and the eye end of a beautiful bone sewing needle (p. 13, Fig. 7) also were recovered.

Seeds have the reputation in foraging studies of being low return rate foods; high gathering and processing costs can compromise their net kilocalorie value.  Nonetheless, they are low risk, they can be stored, and — in a point emphasized by McDonough and colleagues — they are rich in micro- (vitamins, minerals) and macro- (carbohydrates, fats) nutrients.  The Pleistocene-Holocene Transition (PHT) date of the Connley evidence suggests the Kelp Highway immigrants adapted to the interior landscape by carefully observing and then routinely gathering from its flora.

McDonough, Katelyn N., Jamie L. Kennedy, Richard L. Rosencrance, Justin A. Holcomb, Dennis L. Jenkins, and Kathryn Puseman. 2022. Expanding Paleoindian Diet Breadth: Paleoethnobotany of Connley Cave 5, Oregon, USA.  American Antiquity. doi: 10.1017/aaq.2021.141.

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It’s an incredible ethnohistory and ethnography of the Yamana of Tierra del Fuego, 1578 to 2000, and their encounters with whalers, explores and missionaries.  The Yamana or Fuegians were hunter-gatherers who who plied the tempestuous cold marine coastal waters of the Cape Horn archipelago in small, open watercraft.

The link to the Kelp highway hypothesis and the Pacific NW?  I previously highlighted Jennifer Raff’s new book on the peopling of the Americas.  Much of the compelling defense of that hypothesis has been the work of U of Oregon archaeologist Jon Erlandson and colleagues (2007, 2015; citations below).  I was convinced but unable to suppress a lingering doubt: the waters of the North Pacific coastline notoriously are difficult even for modern vessels.  Was such a prolonged migration of families in small open craft through those conditions even remotely possible?

Chapman’s accounts of the Yamana, in an equally difficult environment with similar or perhaps even simpler vessels changed my mind.  It is easy to under appreciate our forebearers; and a welcome feeling to discover how wrong we can be.  The journey certainly was arduous and dangerous, but the Yamana show us that with skill it was possible.