NEW WORLD PREHISTORY — WILLEY 557 



advance. Still other artifact assemblages that suggest an unspecial- 

 ized food-gathering economy are not satisfactorily dated [11]. 



PLEISTOCENE BIG-GAME HUNTING 



Sometime during the last Wisconsin interglacial era, or possibly 

 even earlier, inhabitants of the North American continent entered 

 upon a way of life that was based upon the pursuit and killing of 

 the great ice-age mammals, such as the mammoth, the mastodon, the 

 camel, and later the buffalo. The origins of this life pattern are 

 unknown. There are no visible antecedents in the possible earlier 

 food-gathering cultures of the Americas. There is, it is true, a gen- 

 eral correspondence between this New World specialized hunting of 

 Pleistocene famia and what was going on in the Old World in the 

 approximately coeval upper Paleolithic stage ; yet even this possibility 

 of a connection with the Old World does not provide a reasonable 

 source for the big-game-hunting complexes of the New World, with 

 their distmctive and highly specialized equipment. Apparently the 

 forms which are most indicative of the American big-game-hunting 

 teclinology are New World inventions. 



The technical equipment associated with big-game hunters in the 

 Americas includes lanceolate projectile points shaped by pressure- 

 flaking. These are frequently distinguished by a channel fluting on 

 both faces of the blade. A variety of skin-scraping tools accom- 

 panies the points as they are found in camp sites, "kills," and butcher- 

 ing stations [7, pp. 23-90]. The best documented of these discoveries 

 come from the North American high plains in eastern New Mexico, 

 Colorado, and Texas, and there are others from southern Arizona 

 southward into Mexico. Some finds, such as those of the lower layer 

 of Sandia Cave, N. Mex., may date back to before 15,000 B.C. [7, pp. 

 85-91; 12]. The Sandia complex is characterized by a lanceolate 

 single-shouldered projectile point. Other discoveries, such as Clovis 

 and Folsom, appear to be later, ranging perhaps, from 15,000 to 7000 

 B.C. The projectile points of both the Clovis (pi. 1) and Folsom 

 complexes are of the fluted form [7, pp. 23-84]. There are also a 

 variety of lanceolate, unfluted points that appear to mark a horizon 

 subsequent to the Folsom. These include the Angostura, Scottsbluff, 

 Plainview, and Eden types (see fig. 2) [7, pp. 107, 118, 138]. 



The spread of big-game hunting in the Americas took place during, 

 and in the first or second millennium after, the final Wisconsin sub- 

 stage, the Mankato-Valders. The total span of time of this dissemi- 

 nation appears to have been from about 9000 to 5000 B.C. Finds of 

 fluted projectile points throughout the eastern woodlands of North 

 America indicate the former prevalence of the pattern there [13]. 

 The Iztapan and Lerma remains in central and northeastern Mexico 



