PalaeoIndian Way Of Life Essay Research Paper

Palaeo-Indian Way Of Life Essay, Research Paper

During much of the last 90,000 years, Ontario has been covered in thick ice sheets of the Wisconsinan glaciation. By 12,000 years ago, the ice sheets began to retreat and a series of large pro-glacial lakes formed between the land to the south, and the edge of the ice. As people followed the retreating ice, they were attracted to the rich environment along the lakes shores. Many of the earliest Palaeo-Indian sites in Ontario have been found along the margins of Lake Algonquin and Lake Iroquois. After 10,000 years ago, the ice in the Great Lakes basin continued to melt back, exposing the whole of the Lake Huron basin. A large lobe of ice still occupied parts of the Lake Superior basin until about 9,000 years ago, splitting it into two parts. The first known human occupation in the upper Great Lakes occurred while ice still lay in the Lake Superior basin.

Most Early Palaeo-Indian sites have been found on, or close to relic shorelines of glacial lakes. There seems little doubt that the shores of glacial lakes Algonquin and Iroquois provided an attractive environment for Early Palaeo-Indian settlement. People may have been attracted to the land close to the lakeshore for a number of reasons. Cold winds blowing off the lake may have prevented a closed forest from growing in the area. This would have provided hunters with good visibility along the lakeshore and attractive grazing for herbivorous mammals. The more open, breezy environment may also have been more insect free than the surrounding country – a benefit to humans and animals alike. Fishing and wildfowling would also have been possible subsistence activities. Lastly, although there is no direct evidence to support this notion, Palaeo-Indian people may have used the lake for travel. Winter lake travel would certainly have been possible, and it is conceivable that boats of some kind were also in use during the summer.

Not all Early Palaeo-Indian sites were located along the lakeshore. Some have been found well away from glacial lake shores. In these instances, it seems that the local environment was what attracted the people. Sites were situated on well drained higher land overlooking areas of poorly drained land former lakebed, or swamp). This variety in environmental conditions may have been attractive to game, and this may have been what attracted the people.

The Plainville Complex is a term that has been applied to a group of Early Palaeo-Indian sites in the southern Rice Lake region, near Peterborough, Ontario (Dellar,1976). These sites are not situated on or near specific glacial Great Lakes shoreline features, rather they appear to be oriented towards an interior stream valley parallel to the Rice Lake basin. The interior valley would have been ideal for caribou and it may have been the presence of these animals which attracted the people to the area. Rice Lake is known to have been an important deer hunting area in the recent historic past. Recent discoveries of caribou bones in Rice Lake marshes have firmly demonstrated that caribou were present in the area during the Archaic period. On the basis of this evidence, it is likely that they were also present during the Palaeo-Indian period.

The Early Palaeo-Indian population in southern Ontario was probably never very high. Archaeologists have suggested that perhaps fewer than 200 people lived in the whole region (Watson, 1990). The majority of sites were probably temporary camps from which hunting parties would range, where tools would be made or reworked and where skins and clothing would be made. The archaeological sites which resulted from these activities tend to be small and distinguished only by a restricted spread of flakes.

Most Early Palaeo-Indian sites are known by spreads of chert debris. Few hearth or pit features, no evidence of structures, and few bone remains have been recovered. Early Palaeo-Indian artifacts collected or excavated from sites in Ontario are mainly made of Collingwood chert. They include fluted points, end scrapers, gravers and preforms. Three main types of Fluted Point have been recognized in Ontario from the Early Palaeo-Indian Period: Gainey, Barnes and Crowfield. Gainey Points are the oldest known Palaeo-Indian fluted point type in Ontario. They are the largest point form from this period Gainey Points have been found to be made of Collingwood chert, however southern cherts such as Onondaga, Upper Mercer and Flint Ridge tend to be more common. Barnes points are an early Palaeo-Indian point type thought to be slightly later in date than Gainey Points. These are usually well made points with parallel flaking and carefully executed flutes. Most Barnes points in Ontario are made of Collingwood or Onondaga Chert. Crowfield Points are often made of Onondaga Chert. Examples in Collingwood chert are less common. Although fluted points are by far the most recognizable tool produced by Early Palaeo-Indian people, they manufactured a wide variety of other stone tools including scrapers, gravers and burins.

Tools with working from a single edge are called unifaces. Common unifacial tools on Early Palaeo-Indian sites include end scrapers, side scrapers and a variety of flake tools. Some examples have small projections or notches at the edge of the working face, suggesting that they were multi-purpose tools. Early Palaeo-Indian people also made a vari