The development of trade in pre-Columbian native Americans in the Chesapeake Bay area

Running Head : NATIVE AMERICANS FROM THE PALEO-INDIAN PERIOD UP TO THE WOODLAND PERIOD

Native Americans from the Paleo-Indian Period up to the Woodland Period

[Author]

[University] Native Americans from the Paleo-Indian Period up to the Woodland Period

Archaeologists who worked for the historical establishment of the Chesapeake Bay area commonly divided the primitive time epoch into three partitions namely the Paleoindian which took place in 12000 BC until 9500 BC ago , the Archaic in 9500 BC up to 1000 BC and the Woodland from1000 BC to AD 1650 (Bense , 1994

p The Paleoindian Period

The Paleoindian period was an era where radical climatic changed occurred which made the transition from the Pleistocene age to Holocene age (the last ice age . The former abundant boreal foliage was substituted by the northward spreading out of deciduous jungle and animals wandered to new varieties or were impelled to annihilation . The first settlers inhabiting the Chesapeake Bay area during this period were basically mobile groups of undersized bands (Powell , 2005 . Base camps were situated close to protrusions of premium lithic or stone reserves and minor transitory hunting bands next to pastime attractive regions . Settlement was leaning towards the great rivers . During this period , the Chesapeake Bay did not really exist yet though most archeologists regarded the area as the Chesapeake Bay even before its existence (Bowen , 1999 . This region would have been typically dry land next to the familial Susquehanna River that ran into the Atlantic Ocean Relics for this period that are discovered by some archaeologists are confined to stone equipments and producing waste such as debitage and flakes . Analytic fluted projectile ends were drawn from high quality chalcedony , jasper , and chert as well as local quartz

The current view of the Paleoindian period envisions that bands of Hunter-gatheres entered the North American Continent around 13 ,000 B .C by means of a land bridge that connected the eastern expanses of Siberia with the western most parts of Alaska (Powell , 2005 . This land brigde was formed during the Late Pleistocene by continent-sized glaciers that dominated the ice age . These glaciers drew water from the oceans and significantly lowered sea levels . Some estimate that the sea level dropped by as much as 120 meters . These very same glaciers prevents the immigrants from migrating further into the North American continent for another 1000 years

Some of the best archeological evidence for these Paleoindian bads are the long fluted-chipped stone projectiles , which are believed to be spear points . These early points known as Clovis , after the New Mexico archeological site where the points were first , discovered , were associated with the Late Pleistocene fauna and hence are believed to be from the same time-period . With the warming of global temperatures at the end of the ice age , the glaciers that prevented migration into the deeper parts of North America melted . As a result , within a few hundred years after 10 ,000 B .C . these early Paleoindians appear to have occupied much of the North American continent and the...