Bering Strait and Population Spread— Giddings 101 



peoples of America, plus the assumption that diffusion of 

 both ideas and genes among the sparse population would be 

 equally as free from America to Asia as in the opposite 

 direction. 



The Relative Sequence of Archaeology 



The facts of recent and earlier archaeological finds in the 

 American Arctic may now be speculatively woven into the 

 background of population spread. 



The Denbigh Flint Complex represents a site of peoples who 

 have been long established on American soil. Here are com- 

 bined the microlithic burins, lamelles, diagonal flaking, and the 

 like, that are a cultural heritage combined of Paleolithic and 

 Mesolithic traits. The Paleolithic forms are already losing 

 ground to new developments in the circumpolar drift. Along 

 with these are channeled points more recently developed as an 

 American by-product of the blade-and-core technique (a Folsom 

 channel is the scar left after removal of essentially a parallel- 

 sided blade), and other American developments such as the 

 Folsom "graver." 



As time goes by, more of the Paleolithic and Mesolithic ele- 

 ments are dropped, and Neolithic substitutes (such as ground 

 stone tools) are added. Similarly, backward and peripheral 

 areas, such as a few inland groups and the Dorset people of the 

 eastern seaboard, retain old elements as though for them time 

 had stood still. Diffusion proceeds along certain mainstreams, 

 however, so that the advance guard of population spread to the 

 south may accept more new ideas from behind them than does 

 the adjusted, peripheral group somewhere to the rear. 



It is clear that certain sea-hunting elements of culture that 

 are useful in Bering Strait will have been dropped by the popu- 

 lations who spread far inland, and that dwellers on mid-conti- 

 nental plains will have either minimized or modified the tech- 

 niques that may still be used far to the north. 



The futility of attempting to arrange the archaeological sites 

 of the Arctic into stratified sequences thus becomes apparent. 

 We must deal in three dimensions, including areal spread and 



