ABSTRACT
What might our predictions about the probable “cultural pre-adaptations” of a highlatitude, northeast Asian or Beringian source population for the first peopling of the Americas suggest about exploratory route finding during the dispersal phase? Our predictions are similar to those of Kelly and Todd’s (1988) model, although derived for different reasons. In their model of the initial dispersal phase, limited local knowledge favours an economy with an animal focus, and in which periodic shortages of game are dealt with by range relocation. There would be high residential and logistic mobility and high range mobility. The archaeological signatures would include low regional variation, a locational strategy involving short-term, redundant use of “known places” even when these are not optimally located, and a technology focused on portable artefacts with a generalized function, a long life of use and made from highquality raw materials. To this we would add that such a strategy is very consistent with the probable pre-adaptations of a high-latitude source population. Additionally, we would note that the typically large male contribution to subsistence effort in such ethnographically documented societies could contribute to the potentially rapid reproductive rates that Surovell’s analysis (2000) suggests were sustainable, given high residential mobility.
