A Comparative Overview of Early Man Sites

Many early sites throughout North America bear similarities regarding their lack of worked bifaces. Conversely, unifacially flaked tools at sites ranging from Blackwater Draw in New Mexico to Debert in Nova Scotia to Harney Flats in Florida are pervasive. It seems evident that unifaces were the hallmark of the Paleoindian period and represent stylistic homogeneity. Paleoindian peoples also shared a preference for using high-quality silicates from which they fashioned their tools. Tools of these stone types are often in sites great distances from their geologic source. Also, the idea that Paleoindians subsisted primarily by hunting now extinct megafauna is an overly simplistic view of how they utilized and adapted to their environments. Last, the Harney Flats report revisits the structural patterning at several eastern Paleoindian sites, such as Debert (Nova Scotia), Holcombe Beach (Michigan), Thunderbird (Virginia) and Vail (Maine) as a matter of comparison.