An Anthropological Conception of the Initial Peopling of the Americas

ABSTRACT

A currently popular model of the initial settlement of the Americas proposes a very rapid occupation of both continents beginning with the initial entry in early postglacial times. Considering the ethnographic record of small-group hunter-gatherer adaptive skill and social networking, I argue that the peopling of the two immense and diverse continents must have been a slow process of local adaptation, and initial entry must have begun before the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). After the LGM, the early populations that already had occupied both continents in low density expanded rapidly in the improved postglacial climatic conditions, with the resulting increase in archaeological sites creating the illusion of late and rapid peopling. Presently known pre-LGM archaeological sites are summarized, and discovery of more sites is to be expected.

KEYWORDS:

• Hunter-gatherer population dynamics
• cultural ecology
• pre-Last Glacial Maximum initial entry

Acknowledgements

This essay began as a brief presentation prepared for a session to honor Michael Collins at the annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology planned for Austin TX in 2020, but it was canceled by the COVID pandemic. Subsequently, more data in support of my arguments have accumulated, so a publication has become warranted. I appreciate the comments made by the reviewers, and I thank Ted Goebel for his assistance in preparing the illustrations.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

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Ruth Gruhn

Ruth Gruhn received her PhD from Harvard University in 1961. After postdoctoral study in environmental archaeology at the University of London UK, in 1963, she was appointed to the academic staff at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, where she is presently Professor Emerita. Her research speciality focuses upon the initial settlement of the Americas. She and her late husband Alan Bryan have excavated early archaeological sites in western Canada, the western United States, Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Brazil.