This transition was not abrupt.

It was a gradual shift, driven by both the disappearance of the megafauna and the changing availability of plant and animal resources as the climate warmed.

The populations of the Texas region adapted, and in adapting, they built the knowledge systems and social structures that would characterize the Archaic period for the next several thousand years.

The early Archaic populations represented at Buckeye Knoll — the 8,500-year-old burials that represent some of the earliest well-documented human remains from this period in Texas — were people in the middle of this transition.

They were drawing on aquatic resources that the Guadalupe River corridor offered in abundance.