The dating and routes by which humans colonised South America continue to be debated. Recent research in Uruguay has yielded new Palaeoindian lithic finds from the southern shores of the coastal Merín Lagoon. The author's analysis of a group of Fell points—comparable to other regional examples—shows that this widespread artefact was produced using locally available materials and that they were repeatedly resharpened and repaired until no longer functional. The finds from the Merín Lagoon permit consideration of changing sea levels and their influence on colonisation routes, resource exploitation and archaeological preservation. The Atlantic coastline may have been one possible route of entry for early colonisers of South America.

Early Archaic human skeletal remains found in a burial context in Lapa doSanto in east-central Brazil provide a rare glimpse into the lives ofhunter-gatherer communities in South America, including their rituals fordealing with the dead. These included the reduction of the body by means ofmutilation, defleshing, tooth removal, exposure to fire and possiblycannibalism, followed by the secondary burial of the remains according tostrict rules. In a later period, pits were filled with disarticulated bonesof a single individual without signs of body manipulation, demonstratingthat the region was inhabited by dynamic groups in constant transformationover a period of centuries.

The transition from Palaeoindian to Archaic societies in North America is often viewed as a linear progression over a brief but time-transgressive period. New evidence from the Wilson-Leonard site in Texas suggests social experimentation by Palaeoindians over a 2500-year period eventually resulted in Archaic societies. The process was neither short nor linear, and the evidence shows that different but contemporaneous lifeways existed in a variety of locales in the south-central US in the Early Holocene.

The distribution of projectile points over broad geographic areas yields important insights about Palaeoindian settlement pattern and history. While traditionally viewed as a Great Plains adaptation, the data show that fluted points are far more common in Eastern North America. These artefacts are not evenly spread across the landscape, furthermore, but occur in distinct concentrations. Within some of these areas distinct cultural traditions quickly emerged, something that appears tied to the sudden onset of the Younger Dryas.