PREHISTORIC HUNTERS AND GATHERERS: KENTUCKY'S FIRST PIONEERS

PREHISTORIC HUNTERS AND GATHERERS: KENTUCKY'S FIRST PIONEERS

By Leon Lane Eric J. Schlarb

and A. Gwynn Henderson

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Kentucky Archaeological Survey (jointly administered by

the Kentucky Heritage Council and the University of Kentucky Department of Anthropology)

Education Series Number Three Lexington, Kentucky 1998

Copyright 1998 Kentucky Heritage Council

Although this booklet draws on Paleoindian research that archaeologists have carried out in Kentucky for over thiry years, it focuses particularly on the results of doctoral research carried out recently in the mountainous portions of Cumberland and Clinton counties. This research was sponsored in part by the National Science Foundation. The goal of this research was to find out when humans first began to live in the Appalachians and why Kentucky's first inhabitants avoided them. Traditional explanations reference aspects of the region's paleo-environment and modern cultural factors. Yet, results of this research have shown that the process of early colonization and the routes by which the earliest peoples arrived in the Appalachians were just as

important.

The authors would like to extend their sincerest thanks to Dale Cross, Beldon Allen, Preston Riddle, Doc Young, Clint Carter, Terry Percy, Don Cross, Doris Cary and to other southeastern/south-central Kentucky citizens. These individuals permitted

access to their property and shared knowledge of their sites and property. The research upon which this booklet is based would not have been possible without their

gracious assistance.

We also would like to thank Tom D. Dillehay of the University of Kentucky, Dennis Stanford of the Smithsonian Institution, C. Vance Haynes of the University of Arizona, David G. Anderson of the National Park Service, Kenneth B. Tankersley of Kent State

University, and the many other professional archaeologists who provided support and advice during the project. The numerous professionals, students, and volunteers who served as field and laboratory workers from 1995 through 1998 deserve special mention for having worked so hard to collect and process the artifacts on which the

research and this booklet are based.

The preparation of this booklet would not have been possible without the assistance of Ed Winkle, Barbara Gortman, Jennifer Harr, and David Pollack. Thanks also go to Kathy Lane, Leslie Mudd, Thomas N. Sanders, Kary L. Stacklebeck, and Stephanie

Tharp for their editorial comments.

Jimmy A. Railey's line drawings of early hunter-gatherer lifeways and spear points were taken from the Kentucky Heritage Council's Kentucky Before Boone poster. The picture on page 5, prepared by William M. Melvin, is used with the permission of the

Kentucky Historical Society. The picture on page 11, also by William M. Melvin, is taken from the Kentucky Archaeological Survey's booklet, Mute Stones Speak.

This publication was funded by grants from the Kentucky Heritage Council and the University of Kentucky.

Cover Illustration: Early Paleoindian colonizers arrive in western Kentucky.

Who Were the First Americans?

History books of the early 1900s taught that Christopher Columbus discovered America in 1492. Later, students learned that a Viking named Leif Ericson was the first person to set foot in North America around A.D. 1000.

But during the 1930s, archaeologists working on the southern plains of New Mexico and Colorado began to challenge both ideas. They found spear points with the bones of extinct mammals at prehistoric kill sites (places where people had killed large numbers of animals). This proved that prehistoric people had lived in the region and hunted these animals near the end of the last Ice Age over 12,000 years ago.

Today, thanks to the research archaeologists have carried out at sites all over North America, we can identify the first Americans. They were

hunting-and-gathering peoples who moved eastward into North America from Asia. They arrived thousands of years before European explorers ever dreamed of a "New World."

* * * * *

What was North America like back then and how did these people get here? During the last Ice Age, glaciers covered large sections of land, including almost all of what is now Canada and much of the northern United States. At their greatest extent, these glaciers reached as far south as Boone County in northern Kentucky.

Much of the world's water was frozen in these huge glaciers and in the polar ice caps. This made sea level about 300 feet lower than that of today. Because sea level was lower, large areas

of dry land existed then where only water is present now. Scientists call the area that once linked Siberia and Alaska the Bering Land Bridge, or Beringia.

Archaeologists think the first people, who they call Early Paleoindians, came to North America sometime before 13,000 years ago. Some groups may have arrived on

General routes by which the first Americans colonized North America.

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foot by following migratory Years Ago

animals across Beringia. Oth- 8,000

ers could have come by boat as

they hunted sea mammals along

Beringia's coast. Either way, the

Early Paleoindians did not know that they were the first humans to set foot in a new land.

Early Archaic Peoples

Once on the North Ameri-

can continent, some of these

early colonists likely followed the

Pacific Coast southward. Others 10,000

traveled inland, following the

rivers southward and eastward. These inland travelers settled 10,500

Late Pale oindians

beyond the glaciers' edge in the warmer climates of the southern 10,800

Middle Paleoindians

portions of North America.

In the west, Early Paleoindi-

Early Paleoindians

ans found a place much wetter

and greener than today's arid landscape. East of the Mississippi River, they found mainly a spruce and northern pine parkland. This was a patchwork

11,500 +

Timeline showing Paleoindian and Early Archaic occupations. of Kentucky.

landscape of evergreen tree stands and earth began to warm-up. The melting

grasslands, similar to parts of Canada glaciers began their northward retreat.

today. Along the Gulf Coast, temperate Major and sometimes rapid environ-

(warmer-climate) oak and hickory for- mental changes took place. These

ests grew, similar to those of Kentucky changes were part of a complex process:

today. Large Ice-Age megafauna (now they did not occur all at once nor did

extinct animals such as mammoths, they take place uniformly. Human

mastodons, and giant bison, bear, and colonization and settlement of eastern

ground sloth) lived in North America North America, including Kentucky,

at this time. So, too, did other cold took place during this period of great

climate mammals, like caribou, elk, environmental change.

horses, antelope, and deer. These ani-

The spruce and pine parklands

mals lived in small, widely scattered moved northward. The Gulf Coast for-

groups, or in large migratory herds that ests of oak and hickory moved north-

moved long distances between feeding ward, too, replacing the parklands. For

grounds.

over a thousand years, the landscape

Beginning about 12,000 years was a mixture of Canadian-like spruce

ago, the Ice Age came to a close as the and pine parklands and today's oak and

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hickory forests.

in their "New World."

Some Early Paleoindian groups

chose to follow the Ice Age animals of

* * * * *

the parklands. Other groups chose to

remain in the south.

Our way of thinking about the

Archaeologists think that early first Americans has come a long way

hunter-gatherers colonized North from Christopher Columbus, the "dis-

America by leap-frogging into new coverer" of America. Today we have

areas from their home bases, leaving a better understanding about who the

unoccupied areas in-between. They earliest Americans were and when they

think that these early colonists traveled arrived.

along major river ways instead of mov-

But archaeologists are still making

ing across the landscape uniformly. discoveries about this period in prehis-

Between 10,800 and 10,500 years tory, adding fascinating details to what

ago, Middle Paleoindian people com- we already know. This booklet presents

pleted the colonization of North Amer- some of these details. It discusses how

ica.

early peoples colonized and settled

By 10,000 years ago, the climate eastern North America, and in particu-

and environment of eastern North lar, Kentucky. It draws on the results

America had become similar to that of current research carried out in the

of today. The glaciers had completed mountainous portions of southeastern

their northward retreat to the Arctic and south-central Kentucky (along the

Circle. Ice Age megafauna disappeared upper reaches of the Cumberland River

forever, due to environmental changes in Cumberland and Clinton counties).

and hunting by humans.

Oak and hickory forests covered

more and more of the land. Plants and

animals were generally abundant in

these temperate forests. With the new

plants came new, and smaller, game

animals that still live in these forests to-

day. Deer, bear, elk, turkey and raccoon

did not migrate over long distances like

the earlier megafauna. Instead, they

ranged across smaller territories.

From 10,500 to 10,000 years ago,

the Late Paleoindians began to settle

the unoccupied areas of North Amer-

ica. Their descendants, whom archae-

ologists call the Early Archaic peoples,

completed the process by 8,000 years

ago. It had taken over 4,000 years, but

humans were now completely at home

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