MODULE THREE

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Archaic Ancestors
The Transition to Farming
Southwestern Pottery
Study Terms

ARCHAIC ANCESTORS

Chapter 3, "Archaic Ancestors" (pp. 42-58), The Archaeology of Ancient Arizona.

With the extinction of the big game, the inhabitants of the Southwest turned to smaller game and plants, but continued to depend on the seasonal availability of wild food resources. The climate became warmer and the distribution of food resources and water was more patchy at the end of the Pleistocene. This resulted in more competition over foraging territories, with boundary maintainence signalled by projectile point styles. It was not until toward the end of the Archaic Period that domesticated plants, such as corn from Mexico, would be introduced to usher in the farming that would revolutionize their way of life.

Archaic refers to both a time period (8000 to 2000 B.P.) and an adaptation. Although the Archaic is divided into early, middle, and late periods, there is very little evidence for many people throughout the Southwest until the late period. The early and middle periods seem to have been a time of scattered, small groups of highly mobile hunters and gatherers. Large parts of the Southwest were probably not inhabited. The big game hunters, who left the Southwest proper to pursue the great American bison along the western margin of the Plains, are seen in the remains of the Folsom and later Plano Cultures.

The environment of the Southwest was undergoing important changes during the Archaic Period. There was less precipitation, and greater climatic seasonality or contrasts within the year. Environmental contrasts between the southern deserts and the Colorado Plateau increased. The period from 7500 and 4500 B.P. was a time of higher temperatures called the “Altithermal,” but there are debates about whether the overall regime was hot and moist or hot and dry. The end of the Altithermal was a period of slightly cooler, more moist conditions.

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