Holocene Man in North America: The Ecological Setting and Climatic Background

Abstract

Patterns of human occupation and vegetation are delineated on maps of North America for one thousand year intervals through the Holocene. The raw data for this review include radiocarbon-dated pollen cores and archaeological information and treering records. Dynamic changes in the Laurentide Ice limits and major ecotones are observed through the middle Holocene, when both features reach essentially post-glacial stability. Significant changes in the vegetation boundaries continue to the present, but the scale of change is much diminished.

Early Holocene occupation apparently expanded from Alaska south to California, then east, parallel to the southern boundary of the grasslands, to the Mississippi River and northeastward to the east coast. The absence of occpuation in late-Atlantic time is noted through much of the Great Plains and continued until about 4,000 BP. Within the next millennium, evidence of human occupation virtually covered the United States (except for the northwest) and much of coastal Canada.

Environmental conditions and occupation over North America are reviewed within the framework of Holocene climatic episodes.