Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Initial Landscape Peopling

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Little is known of the adaptive strategies used by modern humans who initially populated early unfamiliar landscapes, or how much variation existed in these strategies – processes that can be revealed through archaeology. This doctoral dissertation project will investigate the strategies used by the first people to settle such a region. It was covered in glacial ice, meaning the early sites here are likely not far removed from the first expansion of people into the area, making it an ideal region in which to study adaptations to an unknown land. The results of this study will help illuminate the adaptive processes used by pioneering groups in the Americas and will have relevance to other peopling processes in human history. This project will contribute as well by using previously excavated archaeological collections: many archaeological sites are excavated but then never thoroughly analyzed, leading to a loss of research potential and money spent excavating and housing site collections, especially as available museum storage space declines. The use of museum collections is especially important in this case, as they may include rare examples of a fundamental process of human history. To investigate the adaptive strategies of the early populations in this region, research will focus on six sites found across the study area. These sites are part of a group of unique, large basecamp sites with complex spatial patterning that occur throughout the region. While these base camps must have been occupied soon after the region was populated, their exact relationship to the broader peopling process is still unclear. Stone tool raw material source representation and procurement patterns, as inferred from macroscopic source analyses and geochemical source analyses, will provide information on landscape familiarity and mobility patterns. Stone tool technological analyses, including tool and projectile point morphology, tool diversity, and tool use diversity, will be used to infer mobility patterns, site activities, and technological strategies meant to mitigate risk, with the assumption that risk minimization strategies will be more pronounced at sites in which people were less familiar with the surrounding landscape. By examining patterns and variation among these six sites, the researchers will be able to investigate the adaptive strategies of populations in a new landscape.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.