Theses and Dissertations

ORCID

https://orcid.org/0009-0002-1692-5000

Advisor

Miller, D. Shane

Committee Member

Lambert, Shawn P.

Committee Member

Boudreaux, Edmond A., III

Date of Degree

8-13-2024

Original embargo terms

Visible MSU Only 2 Years

Document Type

Graduate Thesis - Campus Access Only

Major

Applied Anthropology

Degree Name

Master of Arts (M.A.)

College

College of Arts and Sciences

Department

Department of Anthropology and Middle Eastern Cultures

Abstract

In this study, I use 1,163 Paleoindian bifaces from Mississippi to study human behavioral changes in response to the Younger Dryas climate event (12,900 – 11,700 cal yr BP). I use the “organization of technology” as a theoretical approach and a modified version of the marginal value theorem to track changes in Paleoindian lithic technology through time and compare those changes to regional paleoenvironmental data. I find a decrease in absolute point size, increase in rates of resharpening, and expansion of settlement organization and raw material preferences throughout the Younger Dryas. I argue that the organization of hunter gatherer technology abruptly and significantly changed in the shift from fluted to unfluted points during the middle Younger Dryas, and that those changes were coeval with rapid boreal-to-hardwood forest restructuring and fluctuating hunting returns. I conclude that the technological shifts that began during the middle Younger Dryas continued and intensified into the terminal Younger Dryas.

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