Organization of bison hunting at the Pleistocene/Holocene transition on the Plains of North America

This paper focuses on the development of large scale bison hunting across the North American Great Plains. Prehistoric hunters were not merely opportunistic. An understanding of topography, environment, bison behavior, and migration patterns was necessary to perform complex, large scale bison kills. In turn, these kills required the existence of social complexity whereby multiple groups of hunters worked in unison toward a successful kill event. On the southern Plains of North America, evidence suggests large scale bison hunting arose as mammoths and other megafauna became extinct 11,000 radiocarbon years ago. We review this evidence in light of new site discoveries.