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North American archaeology has been going through major revisions and paradigm changes over the last two decades. No place has this been more evidence then in theories and long held beliefs concerning the peopling of the Americas: genetic evidence has pushed back the hypothetical initial peopling date; new archaeological sites such as the Gault Site in Texas have questioned the Clovis model; and ideas surrounding culture groups and technological affiliation have been revisited. New evidence from across the Plains and Rocky Mountain region has contributed to this overhauling of North American archaeological theories and our understanding of the peopling of the Americas. Work by Brian N. Andrews, Jason M. Labelle, and John D. Srebach (2008) has shed new light on the Folsom lithic technology and prehistoric Native American subsistence and migration patterns during the late Pleistocene/early Holocene transition.
Folsom is an archaeological complex of sites and isolated finds associated with prehistoric Native American hunter-gatherer groups inhabiting the Great Plains, Rocky Mountains, and Southwest regions of North America. First defined at the Folsom type site in New Mexico and further refined at the Lindenmeier site, the complex contains a number of temporally diagnostic lithic artifacts (projectile points, channel flakes, ultrathin bifaces). Spanning 800 radiocarbon years, from approximately 10,900 to 10,100 radiocarbon years before present, documenting the longevity and regional success of the Folsom technological complex is clearly documented.
It is generally well accepted that Folsom adaptation was characterized by small groups of cyclically mobile, specialized bison hunters moving from kill to kill, often covering large areas of land in relatively short periods, with the efficiently designed Folsom toolkit seen as a key technological adaptation of this cyclical lifestyle.
Read more about Prehistoric Native Americans and Folsom Technology: New Evidence from the Plains here.
