A major focus of archaeological field investigations over the past four decades in eastern North America has been the excavation of rockshelters. Many of the Southern highland rockshelters investigated during this period yielded evidence of initial occupations by Dalton horizon (10,500 to 10,000 B.P.) hunter-gatherers. Data concerning the Dalton components from a sample of 45 of these shelters are reviewed and discussed in order to identify variability in site functions and to address the question, Why were Dalton peoples the first North American hunter-gatherers to systematically inhabit rockshelters? Factors such as shifts in hunting patterns and mobility strategies appear to have been central to this development in early Holocene landscape utilization.

Evidence presented here indicates that the regional mortuary record for Holocene hunter-gatherers emerges in the immediate post-glacial period. Data concerning mortuary practices are reviewed from twenty Early Holocene (10,500-8,000 B.P.) archaeological sites located throughout the North American midcontinent. Two types of funerary treatment appear pervasive, primary inhumation in a flexed posture and cremation of individuals. Such cremations were frequently followed by reburial at spatially separate locations. Grave goods largely consist of ornaments, weapon components, and toolkits. The initial Holocene sites described in this article provide the earliest evidence in North America for the appearance of formal cemeteries. Application of ethnographically-derived models suggests that such cemeteries were special-place ritual nodes which may have defined home territories and reinforced group cohesion across multiple generations. Mortuary studies have been a viable and consistent area of research in Americanist archaeology for over a quarter of a century (Brown, 1971; Buikstra, 1981; Carr, 1995). It has been recently noted that "If mortuary studies are to live up to their early promise, they must be reintegrated into the general study of cultures in the past. Funerary activities must be perceived as significant and dynamic elements in the social life of communities that influenced and were in turn acted upon by the political, economic, and environmental realities of the society"

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