Early Paleoindian occupation of the Americas
In North America, Folsom is the most widespread and technologically distinct Paleoindian population following Clovis. Found throughout the Rocky Mountain and Great Plains region of North America, Folsom technology is world renowned for a unique style of projectile point.
Similar to Clovis, Folsom projectile points are fluted, but with flake scar channels that extend almost the entire length of the point (Figure 19. ι). Removing such long flutes is notoriously difficult and channel flakes are considered diagnostic artifacts of the period. Associated artifacts include extremely thin bifaces, an array of unifacially retouched flake tools, morphologically distinct spurred endscrapers, and delicate tools for engraving dated from approximately 12,800 to 11,900 ybp.[633] In regions beyond the grassland-dominated region of Folsom sites, a variety of regional Paleoindian point forms appear. Folsom and contemporaneous peoples are interpreted to have led highly nomadic lives, continuing the general high mobility hunting-based foraging lifestyle of Clovis in post-Pleistocene America.The Early Paleoindian archaeological record of the Americas documents a hunting and gathering way of life in an environment with no modern parallels. Clovis, and perhaps earlier populations, migrated into the unfamiliar landscapes of a continent rapidly undergoing environmental change as the Pleistocene came to a close. As new sites are discovered and the chronology refined, the route of entry, dispersal pattern, and growth rate of the colonizing groups will become clearer. No single site, artifact, or radiocarbon date can explain the cultural and demographic process of colonization, and the pre-Clovis archaeological record currently consists of a wide variety of far- flung site locations, disparate artifact assemblages, and dates that lack clear indications of when and how the migration process proceeded.[634] Clovis remains the most consistent and widespread cultural phenomenon identified in the Americas. Clovis is likely older than current dates reveal and may be derived from a population with a wholly distinct technological culture; it remains, however, the prototypical founding population of the American archaeological record.