Pre-Columbian Archaeology of North America

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Pre-Columbian Archaeology of North America

• Week 4
• The Peopling of the New WorldNew
  Interpretations

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Challenges to the Clovis-first theory

• Calico Mountains (California)
• Old Crow (Yukon, Canada)
• Meadowcroft Cave (Pennsylvania)

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Calico Mountains - Background

• Located in the Mojave Desert of California
• Excavated by Louis Leakey and Mary Simpson in the
  late 1950s through 1983
• Site located in alluvial fan
• Fan dated using the uranium-thorium dating
  (U234?Th230) method to 193-260 kya
• Extensive amounts of lithic materials recovered
• 800 purported stone tools
• 60,000 flakes
• Charcoal recovered
• At least one stone circle also found
• Reported to be a hearth

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Alluvial Fan
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Calico Mountains - Problems

• Lithic materials appear to be the result of
  natural percussion (rocks rolling down the slope
  of the alluvial fan and banging into each other)
• Flakes show that the angle between the bulb of
  percussion and the striking platform is more than
  90, a sign that the percussion is the result of
  natural processes.
• Human knapping produces an angle of less than 90
• Tools are mostly classified as choppers (Early
  Paleolithic technology)
• Charcoal and stone circles appear to be the
  result of a combination of natural forest fires
  burning tree stumps on the slope and stones
  rolling down the fan.
• Stones will naturally form circles around these
  stumps (either before or after they have burned)
• Generally rejected as a site showing evidence for
  early human occupation of the Americas

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Flakes and Cores
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Old Crow Site

• Site along Old Crow River in northern Yukon
  territory
• Excavated by W. N. Irving of the University of
  Toronto in the mid to late 1980s
• Artifacts are primarily bone
• More than 10,000
• Primarily horse and mammoth
• Bone-tool industry
• Radiocarbon dating on bone and charcoal
• c. 20,000 27,000 BP
• Dates claimed as early as 100,000 BP
• Criticisms
• Are bone tools actually the product of human
  manufacture
• Taphonomic modification by natural processes
  along the river bank
• Rolling, splintering, impacts resulting from
  collisions with rocks in river bed
• High energy stream
• Problems with radiocarbon (C-14) dating
• Contaminated samples
• Materials probably late Pleistocene (c. 10-12,000
  BP)
• Rejected as providing clear evidence of early
  entry

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Old Crow Site profile
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Bone tool industry

• Excavated at nearby site of Bluefish Cave
• Also claimed as early site
• This artifact from stratum dated to 25,000 BP
• Good evidence for late Pleistocene arrival
• Dates c. 13,000 BP
• Validity of early evidence question

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Old Crow River
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Old Crow River Basin
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Meadowcroft Rockshelter

• Excavated in the 1970s
• James Adovasio
• Extremely careful and meticulous excavations
• Rockshelter located in SW Pennsylvania
• Long-term occupation documented in 11 strata
  covering at least 700 12,000 BP
• Lowest strata
• Radiocarbon dated to 19,600 B.P. /- 2400
• In association with clear human artifacts
• Unlike other sites, no clear stratigraphic
  problems

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A View of Meadowcroft Rockshelter
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Meadowcroft Excavations

• Lowest levels in the area known as the Hole

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Meadowcroft Tools
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Meadowcroft Problems

• Rockshelter occurs in area naturally rich in coal
  deposits and with a high water table
• Coal particles may have seeped into the site
  contaminating radiocarbon samples
• This explanation was championed by C. Vance
  Haynes, leading American Paleo-Indian specialist
• Unresolved

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Problems with Clovis

• If Clovis represents industry produced by first
  humans in the Americas AND
• If humans arrived in the Americas across
  Beringia, THEN
• Analogous industries should exist in this period
  (pre-12,000 BP) in Siberia
• Large blades, bifacial retouch, etc.
• No such industries exist in Siberia
• This period in Siberia and east Asia is dominated
  by micro-blade industries
• Existence of ice-free corridor between glaciers
  challenged
• Challenge comes from geology
• Conditions between 21,000 and 12,000 BP would
  probably not have allowed for travel
• Cold, semi-arid steppe with scant precipitation
  and only 10-25 percent of the land bearing sparse
  grass and sagebrush, a rock-desert tundra where
  mammals and birds were rare because of the
  extremely low biomass

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Ice-Free Corridor
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Monte Verde

• Located in southern Chile
• Excavated between 1979 and late 1990s
• Tom Dillehay
• Water-logged site
• Excellent preservation of normally perishable
  items
• Wood
• Footprints
• Plant fibers
• Bone
• Relatively little lithic technology
• Not unusual for region
• Radiocarbon dating 13,000 BP
• Also claims of artifacts dating to c. 30,000 BP

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Monte Verde location
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Monte Verde Description

• Hundreds of artifacts. In addition to several
  kinds of stone tools, a wide variety of wooden
  artifacts were found including digging sticks,
  spears, and a mortar. Artifacts made from stone
  were also recovered including spherical stones
  with an encircling groove. These may have been
  used as bola stones, a South American throwing
  weapon with 3 leather thongs weighted at each
  end. The bola is thrown in a spinning fashion and
  the stone weights wrap the thongs around the
  prey. Also artifacts such as a gouge made from
  mastodon ivory.
• Wooden house foundations. The timber and earthen
  foundations of at least 12 structures were
  preserved at the site. The foundations, made of
  logs and planks held in place with stakes of a
  different type of wood, supported rooms 3 to 4
  meters long on each side. At intervals along the
  foundation timbers upright posts were placed to
  support a sapling framework, which was covered by
  animal skins. Small pieces of what may be animal
  hide were preserved next to the timber
  foundation.
• Food plants. Plants were extremely important in
  the diet of the Monte Verde people. Some 42
  edible species of plants have been identified at
  the site, including wild potatoes, bamboos,
  mushrooms, juncus seeds, berries from various
  plants, nuts, and fruits. Also, because many of
  these plants are from species that ripen
  throughout the year, it's likely that the site
  was occupied year-round. Further evidence of the
  important of plants in the diet of the Monte
  Verde people is the large numbers of grinding
  stones found there.
• Exotics. A wide variety of items not locally
  available were imported by the Monte Verde
  people plants, beach-rolled pebbles, quartz, and
  bitumen (an adhesive tar).
• Medicine plants. The remains of some 22 species
  of plants were recovered from the site analysis
  revealed them to be non-food types but identical
  to plants used today by local native peoples in
  curing.
• Meat. Animals bones were well preserved. Most
  came from mastodons. One of the bones still had a
  piece of meat attached to it.
• Human footprint. Preserved in the sandy mud, only
  about five inches long, it was probably made by a
  child.

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Monte Verde artifacts (1)

• Tent stakes
• Bits of animal skin attached

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Monte Verde artifacts (2)
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Monte Verde artifacts (3)

• Footprint
• 15 cm long
• Childs

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Monte Verde artifacts (4)
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Monte Verde Reconstruction
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Monte Verde Conclusions

• Solid evidence for human occupation of southern
  South America at the time first humans arriving
  in the Americas according to the Clovis Theory
• Monte Verde was not occupied by big-game hunters
  but rather broad-spectrum hunter/gatherers with a
  decided marine focus
• Dillehay cautious about earliest dates.
• Challenges to Monte Verde (C. V. Haynes and
  others)
• Lack of lithic technology
• Poor excavation techniques, lack of stratigraphy
  etc.
• Rebutted by visits to site (à la the Folsom and
  Clovis sites)

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Coastal Entry Model

• Monte Verde (and other evidence) led to a
  reevaluation of the traditional Clovis/Beringia
  Theories
• Coastal entry proposed
• First proposed by Knut Fladmark (U. of British
  Columbia) in the 1970s
• Using boats
• Technology was known
• Settlement of Australia c. 50,000 BP (Lake Mungo)
• Moved along coastline of Asia and the Americas
  (the Pacific Rim)
• Sites would have mostly been lost as ocean levels
  rose at end of Pleistocene
• Increasing numbers of human remains that are
  clearly pre-Clovis

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Coastal entry map
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Pre-Clovis Human Remains

• Kennewick Man
• Arlington Springs Woman
• Spirit Cave Man
• Luiza
• Peñon Woman
• Buhl Woman

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Kennewick Man

• Discovered in Columbia River at Kennewick,
  Washington
• Nearly complete skeleton
• Male
• 40-55 years of age
• 170-175 cm tall
• Flattened skull (cradleboard)
• Radiocarbon dates 8410 /- 60 B.P.
• Not similar to modern Native American populations
• The skull is dolichocranic (cranial index 73.8)
  rather than brachycranic, the face narrow and
  prognathous rather than broad and flat.
• Modern aboriginal populations in North America
  tend to have shorter, broad heads and broad, flat
  faces
• Cheek bones recede slightly and lack an inferior
  zygomatic projection the lower rim of the orbit
  is even with the upper.
• Other features are a long, broad nose that
  projects markedly from the face and high, round
  orbits.  The mandible is v-shaped,with a
  pronounced, deep chin.   Many of these
  characteristics are definitive of modern-day
  caucasoid peoples, while others, such as the
  orbits are typical of neither race.  Dental
  characteristics fit Turner's (1983) Sundadont 
  pattern, indicating possible relationship to
  south Asian peoples. 
• Initial media reports called him Caucasian but
  further analysis shows a close relationship to
  other east/south Asian peoples such as the Ainu

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Kennewick Man skull
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Arlington Springs Woman

• Santa Rosa Island (Channel Islands) off the coast
  of California
• Original excavations in 1959/60
• Two femurs and partial humerus recovered
• Female estimated to have been between 150-157 cm
  tall
• Recently new radiocarbon dates ran on bones
• 13,000 BP (first estimates were only 10,000 BP)
• DNA testing
• Restriction analysis of one of the samples
  initially indicated that the mitochondrial DNA of
  Arlington Springs Woman belonged to Haplogroup B
  (one of the five predominant clades of
  mitochondrial DNA lineages found among Native
  Americans).

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Arlington Springs
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Spirit Cave Man

• Partially mummified remains of a man found in
  central Nevada in 1940
• The hunter survived to his mid-40s.
• But he had broken his right hand and suffered
  chronic back pain from arthritis, herniated disks
  and a fracture in his spine. A blow to the left
  temple dented and cracked his skull, which had
  just begun to heal when he died, perhaps from
  that injury or the advanced abscesses in his
  upper and lower jaws.
• He was buried lying on his right side, arm flexed
  so his hand rested beneath the chin, in a shallow
  grave dug in a desert cave.
• The cave's climate preserved patches of skin and
  reddish-brown shoulder-length hair on the skull,
  making him North America's oldest mummy. Dried
  intestines contained fish bones from a final
  meal.
• Also preserved were his rabbit fur robe, two
  shrouds of woven tule reeds, and well-worn
  moccasins of three kinds of animal hide, sewn
  with hemp and sinew, and patched on the soles.
• Recently new radiocarbon dates the skeleton to
  13,300 to 13,100 BP

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Spirit Cave Reconstruction
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Luiza

• Fossilized skull and a third of a skeleton found
  in Lapa Vermelha, Minas Gerais state in Brazil in
  the mid-1970s
• New radiocarbon dates to 11,500 BP
• Skull shares features with Australiasian
  populations (modern Aborigines)

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Peñon Woman III

• The skull and the almost-complete skeleton of
  Peñon woman was actually unearthed in 1959 and
  was thought to be no older than about 5,000
  years. It formed part of a collection of 27 early
  humans in the National Museum of Anthropology in
  Mexico City that had not been accurately dated
  using the most modern techniques.
• Re-dated in 2002 to 12,700-13,000 BP
• Long, narrow skull, short narrow face

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Skull and reconstruction ofPeñon Woman III
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Buhl Woman

• Complete skeleton recovered from gravel quarry in
  1989 in Buhl, Idaho
• Radiocarbon dating shows minimum date of 10,600 BP

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Other Pre-Clovis Sites

• Cactus Hill (Virginia)
• 16,000 20,000 BP
• Pentangular points
• Possibly pre-Clovis
• Faunal remains
• Turtle, White-tail deer
• Many sites in western North America

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Conclusion

• It appears likely that human beings arrived in
  the Americas in more than one wave. Possibly two
  or more from Asia
• 1st prior to LGM (c. 18,000) using a coastal
  route (marine exploitation)
• May or may not have contributed to later
  Amerindian populations
• 2nd towards end of the Pleistocene (big-game
  hunters/Clovis)
• Some have proposed arrivals from Australia (based
  on Luiza) or even Europe
• Connection with Solutrean technology based on
  similarities in technology
• Very controversial
• Creates a new picture

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Solutrean-Clovis Comparison

• This link is apparent in the early stages of
  Clovis point manufacture which were accomplished
  by removing large, flat percussion flakes from a
  biface. These flakes left scars that extended
  past the middle of the face of the biface and
  created a platelike biface which is different
  than a biface with a medial ridge. Occasionally,
  these flakes would travel all the way across the
  biface and remove a portion of the edge on the
  far side. In France these flakes that run all the
  way across the biface are known as outre passé
  flakes. Flake scars 1 and 2 in the image are
  examples of outre passé flakes scars.
• The outrepassé flake is generally associated with
  the Solutrean tradition (17,500 to 19,500 BP) of
  the Upper Paleolithic. The later Solutrean
  (18,000 BP) is even more famous for its
  exquisitely thin bifaces (artifact on the left in
  the image) that were created with the same soft
  hammer percussion technique that the Clovis
  people used.
• Dennis Stanford (Smithsonian Institution) is the
  leading proponent of this theory

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Clovis-Solutrean
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Clovis/Pre-Clovis bibliography

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  the radiocarbon limit in Australian archaeology
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North America

• Calico (CA)
• Old Crow (YU)
• Meadowcroft (PA)
• Kennewick (WA)
• Santa Rosa Island (CA)
• Spirit Cave (NV)
• Peñon Woman (Mexico)
• Buhl (ID)

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South America

• Monte Verde (Chile)
• Lapa Vermelha (Brazil)

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finis