Children of Clovis: An Introduction to Dalton Paleo-Lumberjacks of the Ozarks and Mississippi River

This video was predominantly inspired by a somewhat recent Bayesian model of dated Dalton sites by David Thulman. It covers the origins of the technological tradition, the role of changing Holocene environments, and the spread of the culture from its Ozark and Mississippi River Heartland.

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Sources:
Thulman, David K. 2019 The Age of the Dalton Culture: a Bayesian Analysis
of the Radiocarbon Data, Southeastern Archaeology, 38:3, 171-192

Abstract:
Since a radiocarbon chronology of the Dalton culture in the Southeast was first proposed, several new sites have been dated. I propose a new chronology based on radiocarbon dates from sites in the Dalton Heartland and its eastern periphery using Bayesian statistical models in OxCal and an
analysis of the associated diagnostic projectile points. The analyses indicate that the Dalton culture probably evolved from the Clovis or Gainey phenomena about 12,680 cal BP (ca. 10,700 BP) and lasted at least until ca. 10,400 cal BP (ca. 9,200 BP), if not several centuries later. I propose early and late Dalton phases that follow changes in how Dalton points were made and resharpened. It appears that the people living to the east of the Heartland followed a different trajectory of projectile point evolution. There, notched points appear about 11,500 cal BP, while in the Heartland, true notched points do not appear in large numbers until the Graham Cave
point over 2,000 years later. The chronologies demonstrate that early, coeval, region-wide cultural changes may not have been the norm. They also raise interesting questions about how people in the Heartland and its eastern periphery interacted.

Yerkes, Richard W., and Brad H. Koldehoff 2018: New tools, new human niches: The significance of the Dalton adze and the origin of heavy-duty woodworking in the Middle Mississippi Valley of North America

Abstract:
Innovations in tool technology during the early Holocene in the North American midcontinent are related to construction of a new human niche focusing on woodlands, water travel, and improved aquatic and terrestrial
resources. Production and use of early Holocene Dalton adzes and other tools from sites and caches exemplify these adaptations. Subsistence remains are not abundant, but microwear and technological analyses of flaked stone tools can be used to infer production of dugout canoes and document trends that reflect new sustainable and resilient lifeways and complex social networks. The functions of tools from Dalton sites and tool caches in Illinois and Arkansas are contrasted with typical Clovis tools. Technological and microwear analyses reveals that the Dalton adze was made and used for heavy-duty woodworking—felling trees and likely for manufacturing dugout canoes. Dalton toolkits are highly formalized, consisting of adzes, scrapers, awls, and points used both as projectiles and knives. Large distinctive Sloan points were exchanged within emerging Dalton social networks. Dalton toolkits, often considered late PaleoIndian, are part of an Early Archaic horizon. New tools helped Dalton groups to create new niches as they settled into new woodland and riverine landscapes and laid the foundation for later Archaic and Woodland socio-economic systems.

Koldehoff, Brad and John A Walthall 2009 Dalton and the Early Holocene Midcontinent: Setting the Stage, in Archaic Societies: Diversity and Complexity across the Midcontinent, ed. Thomas E. Emerson, Dale L. McElrath, and Andrew C. Fortier