Northeastern North America (49,293–28,578 BCE) Upper Pleistocene I — Paleoindian Arrival, Fluted Horizons, and River Terraces

Geographic and Environmental Context

Northeastern North America includes the Atlantic coast from Jacksonville, FL to St. John’s, NL; Greenland; the Canadian Arctic; all Canadian provinces east to the Saskatchewan–Alberta border; and, within the U.S., the Old South, the Appalachian Plateau, Midwest & Great Lakes (including Driftless Area, Midwest Lowlands, Tallgrass Prairie, Big Woods, Drift Prairie, Aspen Parkland).

Anchors: Chesapeake–Delaware–Hudson–Gulf of Maine coasts; St. Lawrence–Quebec–Montreal; Great Lakes & Ohio–Illinois–Mississippi valleys; Appalachian Plateau (Pittsburgh–Knoxville); Hudson Bay rim; Arctic (Baffin, Foxe, Labrador); Greenland (future Norse Eastern/Western Settlements).

• Laurentide ice lobes retreated unevenly; proglacial Lake Iroquois/Algonquin ancestors formed; coastal outwash plains expanded.

Climate & Environmental Shifts

• Cold, dry; abrupt Dansgaard–Oeschger oscillations; productive river–lake ecotones as ice withdrew.

Subsistence & Settlement

• Paleoindian big-game foragers (fluted points) hunted mammoth/mastodon (earlier), caribou, then elk/deer; camps on terraces and kame plains.

Technology & Material Culture

• Clovis–Folsom-like fluted points → regional fluted series; prismatic blades, end-scrapers; bone/antler tools.

Movement & Interaction Corridors

• Champlain–Hudson, St. Lawrence, Ohio–Tennessee, Great Lakes strandlines; Atlantic forelands.

Cultural & Symbolic Expressions

• Red-ochre treatment; curated toolkits; long-distance raw material transport (cherts, obsidian rare).

Environmental Adaptation & Resilience

• High mobility across deglaciating mosaics buffered risk.

Transition
By 28,578 BCE, mobile foragers had mapped post-glacial corridors.