ABSTRACT
THE PASSING OF THE PALEOINDIAN PERIOD WAS followed by a long period of Archaic adaptations, 9000-3500 BCE. These unfolded according to the special circumstances of each of the continent’s many local and regional environments, which were all in flux because of changing climatic conditions. But underlying these details were some common themes and a move toward plant domestication that was similar to other contemporaneous cases elsewhere in the world. The forests of North America changed their compositions and shifted their locations because of both natural and human forces. Human populations became generally more dense, less mobile, and more diverse, as expressed in a myriad of projectile point types. Social and political boundaries appeared where none had existed previously. Two major centers of crop domestication emerged in areas where people were lucky enough to find appropriate plants, the Eastern Woodlands and Mesoamerica.
