The “Transitional Period”: a short terminological debate around the Pleistocene-Holocene Transition in North American prehistory

Abstract

America’s cultural historical schemes, the archaeological conceptual constructions that were built upon them and the current theoretical debates in the “New World”’s prehistory are probably not among the mound sound topics for the European reader and students. This paper is a sample of such theorizations we use to involve into in this part of the world and it also stands as an invitation - mainly meant for my immediate colleagues to debate around the Pleistocene-Holocene transition, as seen from the North American archaeology as a whole, including Mexico (where the paper’s author has been working for a long time). It is still a preliminary view, more like an invitation to debate and a vague proposal. The passage between the two geological eras is usually presented as a boundary or threshold, meaning a sudden transition happening at a determined point in time, which is not congruent with the way archaeology understands the cultural and historical processes. The way Earth scientists and palaeoenvironmentalists use to approach the issue is not entirely consistent with the manner prehistorians envisage the archaeological phases corresponding to that time period. In North America, the first human cultures are labeled either as Paleoindian or Paleoamerican, but the time-jurisdiction of the terms invade the transition between Eras; the later cultures, those of Holocene age, are normally referred to as Archaic. The chronological models derived from this particular terminology do not reflect objectively the cultural transitions from the Pleistocene to the Holocene, as seen in the archaeological record. A formal Transitional period is proposed instead, for consideration and debate.