The Palaeoindian-Archaic transition in North America: new evidence from Texas

The transition from Palaeoindian to Archaic societies in North America is open viewed as a linear progression over a brief but time-transgressive period. New evidence from the Wilson-Leonard site in Texas suggests social experimentation by Palaeoindians over a 2500-year period eventually resulted in Archaic societies. The process was neither short nor linear, and the evidence shows that different but contemporaneous lifeways existed in a variety of locales in the south-central US in the Early Holocene. Key-words: North America, Palaeoindian, Archaic, terminal Pleistocene, Early Holocene, cultural transitions
The Wilson-Leonard site in Central Texas (FIGURE 1) provides a record of human occupations spanning ~13,500 years (Collins 1998). Between ~9500 and 8250 cal BC (10,000-9500 BP) hunter-gatherers at this [...]