The Plano cultures is a name given by

archaeologist Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscap ...

s to a group of disparate

hunter-gatherer A traditional hunter-gatherer or forager is a human living an ancestrally derived lifestyle in which most or all food is obtained by foraging, that is, by gathering food from local sources, especially edible wild plants but also insects, fungi, ...

communities that occupied the

Great Plains The Great Plains (french: Grandes Plaines), sometimes simply "the Plains", is a broad expanse of flatland in North America. It is located west of the Mississippi River and east of the Rocky Mountains, much of it covered in prairie, steppe, an ...

area of

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...

during the Paleo-Indian or Archaic period.

Distinguishing characteristics

The Plano cultures are characterised by a range of unfluted

projectile point In North American archaeological terminology, a projectile point is an object that was hafted to a weapon that was capable of being thrown or projected, such as a javelin, dart, or arrow. They are thus different from weapons presumed to have be ...

tools collectively called

Plano point In archaeology, Plano point is flaked stone projectile points and tools created by the various Plano cultures of the North American Great Plains between 9000 BC and 6000 BC for hunting, and possibly to kill other humans. They are bifacially work ...

s and like the Folsom people generally hunted ''

Bison antiquus ''Bison antiquus'', the antique bison or ancient bison, is an extinct species of bison that lived in Late Pleistocene North America until around 10,000 years ago. It was one of the most common large herbivores on the North American continent dur ...

'', but made even greater use of techniques to force stampedes off of a cliff or into a constructed corral. Their diets also included

pronghorn The pronghorn (, ) (''Antilocapra americana'') is a species of artiodactyl (even-toed, hoofed) mammal indigenous to interior western and central North America. Though not an antelope, it is known colloquially in North America as the American a ...

elk The elk (''Cervus canadensis''), also known as the wapiti, is one of the largest species within the deer family, Cervidae, and one of the largest terrestrial mammals in its native range of North America and Central and East Asia. The common ...

deer Deer or true deer are hoofed ruminant mammals forming the family Cervidae. The two main groups of deer are the Cervinae, including the muntjac, the elk (wapiti), the red deer, and the fallow deer; and the Capreolinae, including the reindeer ...

raccoon The raccoon ( or , ''Procyon lotor''), sometimes called the common raccoon to distinguish it from other species, is a mammal native to North America. It is the largest of the procyonid family, having a body length of , and a body weight of ...

, and

coyote The coyote (''Canis latrans'') is a species of canis, canine native to North America. It is smaller than its close relative, the wolf, and slightly smaller than the closely related eastern wolf and red wolf. It fills much of the same ecologica ...

. To better manage their food supply, they preserved meat in berries and animal fat and stored it in containers made of hides.

History

The Plano cultures existed in the North American Arctic during the Paleo-Indian or Archaic period between

9000 BCE The 9th millennium BC spanned the years 9000 BC to 8001 BC (11 to 10 thousand years ago). In chronological terms, it is the first full millennium of the current Holocene epoch that is generally reckoned to have begun by 9700 BC (11.7 thousand ...

and 6000 BCE. The Plano cultures originated in the plains, but extended far beyond, from the Atlantic coast to modern-day British Columbia and as far north as the Northwest Territories. "Early Plano culture occurs south of the

North Saskatchewan River The North Saskatchewan River is a glacier-fed river that flows from the Canadian Rockies continental divide east to central Saskatchewan, where it joins with the South Saskatchewan River to make up the Saskatchewan River. Its water flows eventual ...

in Saskatchewan and in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains north to the

Peace River The Peace River (french: links=no, rivière de la Paix) is a river in Canada that originates in the Rocky Mountains of northern British Columbia and flows to the northeast through northern Alberta. The Peace River joins the Athabasca River in th ...

Valley of Alberta and adjacent British Columbia. At this time, most of Manitoba was still covered by

Glacial Lake Agassiz Lake Agassiz was a large glacial lake in central North America. Fed by glacial meltwater at the end of the last glacial period, its area was larger than all of the modern Great Lakes combined. First postulated in 1823 by William H. Keating, i ...

and associated glacial ice." Bison herds were attracted to the grasslands and parklands in the western region. Around 9,000 B.P. as retreating glaciers created newly released lake regions, the expansion of plant and animal communities expanded north and east, and the barren ground caribou in the tundra,

boreal woodland caribou The boreal woodland caribou (''Rangifer tarandus caribou''; but subject to a recent taxonomic revision. See Reindeer: taxonomy), also known as woodland caribou, boreal forest caribou and forest-dwelling caribou, is a North American subspecies of ...

in the boreal forests and plains, and mountain caribou replaced

bison Bison are large bovines in the genus ''Bison'' (Greek: "wild ox" (bison)) within the tribe Bovini. Two extant and numerous extinct species are recognised. Of the two surviving species, the American bison, ''B. bison'', found only in North Ame ...

as the major prey animal. In the Great Plains, the following are Plano cultures from 10,000 to 7,000 years ago, distinguished by long,

lanceolate The following is a list of terms which are used to describe leaf morphology in the description and taxonomy of plants. Leaves may be simple (a single leaf blade or lamina) or compound (with several leaflets). The edge of the leaf may be regular o ...

projectile points:Cassells, E. Steve. (1997). ''The Archeology of Colorado'', Revised Edition. Boulder, Colorado: Johnson Books. p. 79. . * Agate Basin complex, named for the

Agate Basin Site The Agate Basin Site is a Paleoindian archeological site in Niobrara County, Wyoming. The location was discovered by William H. Spencer of Spencer, Wyoming in 1916, who found well-preserved stone blades and points in Moss Agate Arroyo. In 1941 Sp ...

.Cassells, E. Steve. (1997). ''The Archeology of Colorado'', Revised Edition. Boulder, Colorado: Johnson Books. p. 81. . *

Cody complex The Cody complex is a Paleo-Indian culture group first identified at a bison antiquus kill site near Cody, Wyoming in 1951. Points possessing characteristics of Cody Complex flaking have been found all across North America from Canada to as fa ...

, named for the Horner site near

Cody, Wyoming Cody is a city in Northwest Wyoming and the seat of government of Park County, Wyoming, United States. It is named after Colonel William Frederick " Buffalo Bill" Cody for his part in the founding of Cody in 1896. The population was 10,066 at ...

, includes the Olsen-Chubbuck Bison Kill Site and the

Jurgens Site The Jurgens Site is a Paleo-Indian site located near Greeley in Weld County, Colorado. While the site was used primarily to hunt and butcher '' bison antiquus'', there is evidence that the Paleo-Indians also gathered plants and seeds for food ...

.Cassells, E. Steve. (1997). ''The Archaeology of Colorado'', Revised Edition. Boulder, Colorado: Johnson Books. pp. 81-86. . *

Hell Gap complex Hell Gap complex is a Plano culture from 10,060 to 9,600 before present. It is named after the Hell Gap archaeological site, in Goshen County, Wyoming. Other Hell Gap complex sites In addition to the Hell Gap archaeological site, other Wyoming ...

, such as the Hell Gap, Wyoming site for which it was named and the

Jones-Miller Bison Kill Site The Jones-Miller Bison Kill Site, located in northeast Colorado, was a Paleo-Indian site where Bison antiquus were killed using a game drive system and butchered. Hell Gap complex bones and tools artifacts at the site are carbon dated from abou ...

. * Foothills / Mountain complex

Citations

References

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Plano Cultures Archaeological cultures of North America Archaic period in North America Indigenous culture of the Great Plains Native American history of Colorado Paleo-Indian period Pre-Columbian cultures Prehistoric cultures in Colorado Archaeology of the United States 7th millennium BC 8th millennium BC