The paleoindian and archaic of Central and South America

YACOBACCIO, H.

The Cambridge World Prehistory

Cambridge University Press

Lugar: Cambridge; Año: 2014; p. 933 - 944

The term ?Paleoindian? refers to the short period of NorthAmerican prehistory when people?s subsistence, at the endof the Pleistocene, was based on the hunting of megafaunalike mammoths and mastodons. ?Archaic? refers to generalisedhunter-gatherers whose subsistence depended onmodern fauna and a wide range of plants. This classificationdoes not apply to Central and South American contexts.The full variability of Pleistocene and Holocene huntergatherersocieties is not embraced by these concepts. It isbetter to refer to the process of population of Central andSouth America using the term ?dispersal? in order to denotethe spreading out of individuals or groups which filled upthe available vacant habitat, and the term ?colonisation?for the major extension of a population habitat or rangethat includes an established occupation of areas previouslyunoccupied or occupied.There is no clear pattern for inferring a north-south routeof dispersal and colonisation from Central America into SouthAmerica. On the contrary, the fi rst colonisers seem to havefollowed many routes, and for that reason the processes ofdispersal and colonisation of the different regions were notnecessarily connected. This can be seen in the uneven distributionof some characteristic markers of early human dispersalsuch as, for example, the distribution of Fish-tail projectilepoints throughout the continent. Although most of the datesare in the range of 12,000 to 9000 cal BCE a north-south clineis not observed. Moreover, the analysis of the few early humanskeletal remains has shown two important issues: fi rst, by8000 cal BCE different regional populations already existed; andsecond, more than one stock migrated into the continent. Thisdoes not mean that the process of colonisation of every regionwas isolated, but the study of this process, on a continentalscale, remains to be done.