Settling into the country: Comparison of Clovis and Folsom lithic networks in western North America shows increasing redundancy of toolstone use

The Peopling of the Americas was a multi-millennium process involving both the hunter-gatherer colonization of new landscapes as well as the 'settling in' to local environments. This process is typically identified archaeologically by an increase in the number of recognized point types, site frequency, changes in subsistence patterns, and increased geographic patterning in stone tool variation. Here, we add to this list by examining preferential toolstone use by Clovis and Folsom peoples, reasoning that Folsom groups formed stricter habits of toolstone procurement relative to Clovis people as the former pursued their increasingly familiar seasonal rounds. After generating lithic raw material data from 49 Folsom assemblages, we constructed a 'Folsom lithic network' that we compared to a 'Clovis lithic network', which consisted of 38 assemblages. Our results show that the Folsom lithic network is significantly denser than the Clovis lithic network. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that Folsom people started to form regular habits of toolstone procurement relative to Clovis people. More broadly, our comparison of lithic networks further supports the hypothesis that the Clovis-to-Folsom transition represents the process of foragers increasingly adapting to their local resource distribution.