title: Environment-induced changes in selective constraints on social learning during the peopling of the Americas.
abstract: The weaponry technology associated with Clovis and related Early Paleoindians represents the earliest well-defined evidence of humans in Pleistocene North America. We assess the technological diversity of these fluted stone points found at archaeological sites in the western and eastern halves of North America by employing statistical tools used in the quantification of ecological biodiversity. Our results demonstrate that the earliest hunters in the environmentally heterogeneous East used a more diverse set of points than those in the environmentally homogenous West. This and other evidence shows that environmental heterogeneity in the East promoted the relaxation of selective constraints on social learning and increased experimentation with point designs.
authors.affiliation: Department of Anthropology, University of Tulsa, Tulsa, OK, 74104, USA.
authors.forename: Briggs
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Buchanan
authors.affiliation: Institute of Statistics, National Tsing Hua University, Hsin-Chu, 30043, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Anne
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Chao
authors.affiliation: Institute of Statistics, National Tsing Hua University, Hsin-Chu, 30043, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Chun-Huo
authors.initials: CH
authors.lastname: Chiu
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, 06269-3043, USA.|Museum of Natural History, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, 80309 USA.
authors.forename: Robert K
authors.initials: RK
authors.lastname: Colwell
authors.affiliation: Department of History, Texas A&M-San Antonio, San Antonio, TX, USA.|Department of Anthropology, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, 65211, USA.
authors.forename: Michael J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: O'Brien
authors.affiliation: Department of Anthropology, Kent State University, Kent, OH, 44242, USA.
authors.forename: Angelia
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Werner
authors.affiliation: Department of Anthropology, Kent State University, Kent, OH, 44242, USA.|Department of Archaeology, Cleveland Museum of Natural History, Cleveland, OH, 44106, USA.
authors.forename: Metin I
authors.initials: MI
authors.lastname: Eren
mesh_terms: D000569:Americas; D001106:Archaeology / Q000295:instrumentation*; D049690:History, Ancient; D006801:Humans; D010163:Paleontology / Q000295:instrumentation*; D000067570:Social Learning; D013672:Technology / Q000266:history / Q000295:instrumentation*