Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology (509 page)

The study of past populations in terms of their size, distribution, birth rates, death rates, life expectancy, and age and sex distributions.

 
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The study of human communities in their environment and especially the effects that people had on the physical environment and vice versa.

 
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A school of archaeological thought developed in the 1960s by Eric
HIGGS
and his colleagues based in Cambridge which focused on the long-term determinants of human behaviour resulting from the relationships between people and their environment: ‘the study of man’s roles in the prehistoric ecosystems of which he was a member', as Higgs and his colleague Michael Jarman themselves put it.

 
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An ancient or past environment.

 
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A general term relating to the earliest inhabitants of the Americas, pre-
ARCHAIC
hunter-gatherer communities, in the period before
c.
8000 bc. The Palaeo-Indian Stage covers a series of regional or chronologically specific traditions and cultures including the
CLOVIS CULTURE
, the
FOLSOM TRADITION
, the
EASTERN FLUTED POINT TRADITION
, and the
SAN DIEGUITO COMPLEX
which are mainly defined by their clipped stone industries. The Palaeo-Indian Stage is broadly contemporary with the Dyukhtai Culture and Sumnagin Culture of Siberia with which it may have had some relations prior to the disappearance of the
BERING LAND BRIDGE
at
c.
10000 bc.

 
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Literally, the Old Stone Age, spanning the three and a half million years of human evolution from the advanced hominids to the end of the last Pleistocene glaciation around 11000 years ago. Generally sub-divided into the LOWER, MIDDLE, and UPPER
PALAEOLITHIC
phases.

 
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