The Bison in the Room

2/22/2016

What if the Clovis adaptation in the Eastern Woodlands had nothing substantive whatsoever to do with mammoths and mastodons?

What if all of those dioramas and illustrations of Paleoindian peoples swarming a mastodon mired in the muck are complete baloney?

What if one of our most popular baseline notions about Clovis in the east is totally wrong?

The thought isn't an original one, of course, but one that I've been thinking about since listening to a presentation by Christopher Moore (SCIAA colleague) at the Archaeological Society of South Carolina (ASSC) meeting on Saturday. Moore is the senior author of a recent American Antiquity paper (which is unfortunately behind a paywall) that presents protein residue analysis of 142 hafted bifaces (i.e., stone projectile points/knives) from the Savannah River area of South Carolina and Georgia. Protein residue analysis uses chemical tests to identify trace residues left on stone tools through contact with the blood of various groups of animals.

Here is a summary figure from the published paper:

The results that Moore et al. present are striking for two main reasons. First, there is positive evidence for the exploitation of bison in the region during the Paleoindian through Middle Archaic periods. Second, there are no indications that any of the Paleoindian tools they examined were involved with processing proboscideans (i.e., mammoths and mastodons).

As explained in the American Antiquity paper, the positive evidence for bison populations in the region in the Late Pleistocene is consistent with several other data points (including previous protein residue studies and radiocarbon-dated remains such as the Wacissa bison). The new residue data also support the continued presence of bison in the region into the mid-Holocene. That's pretty interesting to me, as it suggests that the exploitation of a large game animal that is more-or-less invisible in the faunal records (both archaeological and natural) may have been important to the food economies of the Archaic peoples I'm keenly interested in understanding.

And what about the absence of hits for proboscidean? That's pretty interesting as well. Near the end of his ASSC presentation, Moore informally posed a great "what if" question (and I'm paraphrasing here): what if the evidence for human involvement with mammoths/mastodons in eastern North America actually pertains to pre-Clovis rather than Clovis peoples?

For me, pondering that question was one of those nice "wait a @#!%*$# second . . ." moments that happens every so often in science. What if we have not just exaggerated the embrace between Clovis and megafauna in the east, but allowed our romantic notions (and the very clear evidence of Clovis-age megafaunal predation in the west) to blind us to the real pattern that's present?

Impossible, you say? Let's ask a series of questions. I'll give you the answers based on what I know off the top of my head and what I have time to assemble on Monday morning of a busy week. Please correct me if I'm wrong on something or help me add things I've left out -- I'm not making any claim that this listing of evidence is exhaustive. Note: when I say "eastern North America" I mean east of the Mississippi River.

Question: Are there any direct associations between Clovis stone tools and mammoth/mastodon remains in eastern North America?

Answer: No. As far as I know, Kimmswick (Missouri) is the farthest east Clovis-associated megafaunal kill site.

Question: Are there any human-butchered mastodon/mammoth remains in eastern North America that have been dated to the Clovis period (i.e., 11,050-10,800 radiocarbon years before present [RCYBP]; ~13,250-12,800 Calendar years before present; ~11,300-10,850 BC)?

Answer: Not that I know of off the top of my head. The eastern cases of purported mastodon/mammoth butchery of which I am aware pre-date the known age range of Clovis. Here are some examples:

Hebior mammoth (Wisconsin): ~12,500 RCYBP;
Burning Tree mastodon (Ohio): ~11,500 RCYBP (Fisher et al. 1994);
Aucilla River mastodon tusk (Florida): ~12,200 RCYBP;

Question: Is there any direct evidence that mammoths/mastodons survived into Clovis times in eastern North America?

Answer: Yes. There are directly-dated mammoth and mastodon remains that demonstrate that proboscideans survived into and beyond Clovis times. The period 10,500-10,000 RCYBP (i.e., post Clovis) is probably a reasonable extinction window for mastodons in the east. Here, for example, is a report of a mastodon from northern Indiana dated to about 10,000 RCYBP.

Question: Is there any direct evidence that Clovis peoples used parts of mammoths/mastodons obtained from recently deceased animals?

Answer: Yes, apparently. There are ivory and bone tools from Florida that are attributed to Clovis. Here is a quote from a paper by Bruce Bradley:

"While most of the known specimens were recovered from stratigraphically mixed deposits, recent archaeological excavations have found them in late Pleistocene deposits directly associated with extinct fauna, including mammoth and mastodon. Flaked stone projectile points and other tools are also associated with these artifacts. Projectile point types commonly include Clovis fluted and Suwanee."

I don't have the time to delve into the literature right now and investigate the nature of the associations between the ivory tools and the Paleoindian points, or to see if any of the ivory tools have been directly dated.

So there you go.

It seems pretty clear that Clovis peoples existed on the landscape (or were at least present in eastern North America at the same time) as proboscideans. They apparently used parts of those animals to fashion tools. But the case for active Clovis-age predation of mammoths and mastodons continues to be based on circumstantial evidence. As more and more purported proboscidean butchery sites of pre-Clovis age are reported from the Eastern Woodlands, it seems less likely that the east-west contrast in megafaunal kill sites is solely the result of a preservation bias: it's not the elephants that are missing, but the direct evidence that Clovis peoples hunted them.

If we take mammoths and mastodons out of the Clovis picture, there's a lot of explaining to do. What was the point of all that beautiful technology? I was one of several junior co-authors on a paper (Speth et al. 2013) that attempted a political re-imagining of Early Paleoindian fluted point technologies. While I'm not convinced by all the arguments in that paper, I think it was a useful exercise. There are other alternatives to the dominant "Clovis meat machine" model that can be constructed.

And what if bison was an important game animal in some portions of the Eastern Woodlands into the Middle Archaic? What if bone preservation issues really are part of the problem for our interpretations of the Early and Middle Holocene and we've been unable to see (and therefore to factor into our models) a large herbivore that may have been a huge part of the subsistence economies of early hunting-gathering societies in the region? That deserves a very hard look.

I've used all the time I can spare to write about this today. I'm hoping some of you find this question interesting and point out things I'm not aware of. I'll be returning to this as I have time - it's a pretty cool set of questions to think about.

Moore, C., Brooks, M., Kimball, L., Newman, M., & Kooyman, B. (2016). Early Hunter-Gatherer Tool Use and Animal Exploitation: Protein and Microwear Evidence from the Central Savannah River Valley American Antiquity, 81 (1), 132-147 DOI: 10.7183/0002-7316.81.1.132

60 Comments

2/22/2016 09:07:28 am

The frequency with which they hunted proboscideans might also be far lower to explain the statistics. More of an opportunistic hunt then daily routine.
What would be a fair average? 1 proboscidean per 10/50/100 buffalo's hunted?

At least i learned a new word today :)

Eric

2/22/2016 09:07:39 am

It's a question of being a smart hunter-I haven't seen any heavy hunting of elephants, rhinos, Cape buffalo, hippos, etc in Africa or Asia, either in the archaeological record or in historic times prior to firearms. Why bother hunting a large, dangerous mammal that could potentially kill or seriously injure you and your hunting party when elk or deer are available? Even the Plains tribes that never relied on the last megafauna in America, the bison, until they adopted horses and firearms, putting them into position to hunt them with less danger and more killing power.

As for the points, how many are indicative of having actually killed the animal rather than simply used to butcher it? In the winter, coming across a carrion site to be exploited is like finding a supermarket freezer for meat and bone. (Granted, the chances for a successful and non lethal to humans hunt were exponentially better in winter snow)

Steve Timmermans

2/22/2016 05:02:27 pm

The last megafauna in America actually still exists. It is called the California Condor.

You make a valid argument about presumed usage of what many of us call 'points'. At the Parkhill fluted point site in southern Ontario, there are dozens of broken bases (few tips) at certain discrete specialized-use loci. This suggests discard of broken 'points' and rehafting (reloading?). But what broke the 'points'? Was it via their use as projectiles and/or jabbing instruments, with tips embedded in pierced prey (presumed, but not confirmed, to be caribou)? Or, could it simply have been busted knife blades from processing certain prey, certain of which would not even require any piercing/shooting to capture/kill. And I'm referring specifically to molting, flightless, bountiful, colonial nesting waterfowl. Specifically snow geese and/or tundra swans. Interestingly, tundra swans still, to this day, use that general region as a major migration stopover/staging area en route to more northerly breeding areas -- northerly breeding areas that were under at least a kilometer of glacial ice when the Parkhill site was occupied. Maybe Parkhill/Barnes points were simply specialized knives for skinning/fleshing/filleting breast and leg meat from these easy and predictable avian prey.

...in such an instance, need we even assume mammalian prey? Too many folks (especially men) assume mammalian-dominated prey forage items, and that has put unnecessary 'blinders' on all-too-many archaeologists who ponder subsistence strategies.

Kevin Smith

2/22/2016 05:37:48 pm

Steve, one good turn deserves favor regarding the Hiscock site, and here I'll just simply applaud your note that the last megafaunal scavenger, the California Condor, just barely still exists...and was also present in the Pleistocene deposits at Hiscock. Big dead mammals apparently supported big flying scavengers, which now only survive in near-coastal locations where, perhaps, big dead marine mammals still wash up. Cheers.

Stuart Fiedel

2/23/2016 09:26:21 am

Have you read my "Quacks in the Ice" chapter in "Foragers of the Terminal Pleistocene in North America" (2007)? Or the more recent article by Erlandson and Moss on waterfowl use in the Paleoarchaic in the Great Basin?

Which raises the question--why would there be residue of turkey, but not ducks and geese, on tools deposited next to a pond? Just another one of those weird counterintuitive CIEP results...

Steve Timmermans

2/26/2016 03:50:55 am

Stuart - Yes, I most certainly have read your chapter in that volume. I read a draft of that paper before it was even published and I told Rene at that time back in 2006 I think, I submitted my comments to Rene at that time, as I figured that the draft paper was sent to me as part of a formal or informal peer-review of sorts, given that I am a migratory birds and wetlands ecologist by profession, and have been cross-disciplining my expertise in this with my avocational research in early post glacial archaeology and anthropology . Of course, book volumes don't endure the peer-review that many journals do, however I was surprised that the paper went on to be published more-or-less as I'd read it in its draft form.

No personal offense (as I quite like some of your other work you've published over the years), but while it was nice to see some acknowledgement about the importance of migratory birds in a chapter to be included in that volume, there were some quite serious flaws in aspects of that draft manuscript that I'd reviewed, and I would gladly convey these here if you or anyone would like.

Regarding your question about blood residue, my basic reply to that is I suspect that N= on this is likely inadequate to provide any meaningful representation. Also, which tool types specifically were examined and tested for blood residues? That matters a lot, as it pertains to the subject of subsistence of these prey.

Steve Timmermans

2/26/2016 04:03:37 am

....read this version of my recent post above, instead of that somewhat incoherent version. These little blog comment windows can be a bit irritating.

Stuart - Yes, I most certainly have read your chapter in that volume. I read a draft of that paper before it was even published, back in 2006 I think. I submitted my comments to Rene at that time, as I figured that the draft paper was sent to me as part of a formal or informal peer-review of sorts, given that I am a migratory birds and wetlands ecologist by profession, and have been cross-disciplining my expertise in this with my avocational research in early post glacial archaeology and anthropology. Of course, book volumes don't endure the peer-review that many journals do, however I was surprised that the paper went on to be published more-or-less as I'd read it in its draft form.

No personal offense (as I quite like some of your other work you've published over the years), but while it was nice to see some acknowledgement about the importance of migratory birds in a chapter to be included in that volume, there were some quite serious flaws in aspects of that draft manuscript that I'd reviewed, and I would gladly convey these here if you or anyone would like.

Regarding your question about blood residue, my basic reply to that is I suspect that N= on this is likely inadequate to provide any meaningful representation. Also, which tool types specifically were examined and tested for blood residues? That matters a lot, as it pertains to the subject of subsistence of these prey.

Bob Jase

2/22/2016 09:08:12 am

Too early to conclude imo. Considering how much meat came with even one mammoth or mastodon they probably wouldn't have been hunted all that often so the potential number of tools that could have blood residue on them would be small by default. i mean, I seriously doubt that the lack of blood residue from turkeys after the Early Archaic means that turey hunting in N. America ended 9k years ago until Europeans arrived in the 16th century nor do I believe that paleoindians lived solely on wolves for almost 4k years.

Stuart Fiedel

2/22/2016 09:39:57 am

CIEP analysis is BS. No interpretations should be based on such data until multiple double-blind tests produce replicable results. Numerous experiments have shown that proteins disappear from lithics within months under most depositional conditions. Ask yourself (and Chris) how proteins survived for millennia, even within supposed microcracks, on the surfaces of heavily weathered artifacts.

Clovis folks hunted proboscideans (mammoth and gomphotheres [Fin del Mundo in Sonora]) with extraordinary frequency in the West. It would be very strange if they didn't also hunt proboscideans in the East. If we depended solely on extant kill sites we would have to conclude (absurdly) that no deer, or elk, or black bear, were hunted during the Holocene.

Andy White

2/22/2016 10:27:36 am

I agree that it would be very strange if there was such a strong east-west contrast, but I'm also suspicious of the lack of strong direct evidence for Clovis-age mammoth/mastodon predation in the Eastern Woodlands. Like I said in the post, it's not that we have a lack of apparently human-altered proboscidean remains, it's that we have a lack of good direct evidence for Clovis-age involvement with them. I find that to be worth thinking about. Are all the pre-Clovis dates wrong? Were the Clovis peoples so amazingly tidy with their mastodon kills that they never left a point in the carcass? Or were Clovis peoples in the east doing something different than those in the west?

Stuart Fiedel

2/22/2016 11:25:53 am

Mike Gramly has been telling me about all manner of worked ivory and bone in what seems to be a butchery site/workshop in Orange County, NY (Bowser Road mastodon). Three precise 14C dates are all ca. 11,000 rcbp. No Clovis tools, however.

Andy Hemmings' dissertation documents lots of Clovis-associated mastodon ivory/bone artifacts from Florida (one is directly dated to 11,050 rcbp).

How many plausible pre-Clovis-age kill/butchery sites do you think there are? By my reckoning: Manis, Hebior, Schaefer, Coats-Hines, Page-Ladson. Fisher's meat-cache ideas are intriguing but not proven.

Steve Timmermans

2/22/2016 04:36:49 pm

A few important matters to consider. Were late Pleistocene people tidy with their mastodon kills.....? Well, let's admit that there's been far too little wet site archaeology done in the more humid eastern North America. Instances when it has been done has produced some degrees of compelling evidence suggesting that there might be an association. The Hiscock Site (Byron Bog) is one of the only or few I know where adequate effort has been put into looking where -- and let's be realistic -- we have any real hope of finding some evidence of associations. The anoxic conditions afforded by such relatively non-disturbed Pleistocene aged wetland sediments are are best, perhaps only, chances of exploring and examining such evidence that might exist. Let's also ask the question of where most paleo-indian sites occur in many areas of at the northeast? Often adjacent to wetland type biomes, whether kettle ponds, natural fen springs, swamps, and marshes. What's the reason for this? Well, first there's the termal buffering/insulative effects of the biologically active soils/sediments associated with these biomes (i.e., cooler in summer, warmer in winter). Second, such biomes are rich in biodiversity, hence high frequency of use by a varied array of prey & forage species, whether mammalian, reptilian/amphibian, avian, fish, invertebrate/insect, or plant. Third, predictable source of water for both all the forage/prey species above, and foraging/hunting peoples. George Nicholas and Dena Dincauze have known this for many years, and yet the vast majority of the archaeological research community has ignored this at much cost in terms of lost time, opportunity, and literally lost sites (i.e., where development has destroyed such wetlands).

Kevin Smith

2/22/2016 05:35:01 pm

Stuart, good to have the elephant in the room identified through your critical voice here about CIEP analyses. They seemed to be the rage in the early 1990s and then faded largely from sight by the late 90s with many of those who'd invested in them trying not to be remembered for that and rarely writing up their work. A lot of money was spent in Buffalo by Gramly and Laub on such work, with the result seemingly inevitably to be that every tool tested had been used to butcher an entire zoo. Accepting that such analyses will only provide information–assuming the method has any analytical validity–on the last things butchered (in the last resharpening phase of the tool's use-life), the greater concern is whether advances in method have resolved what seemed to be relatively insurmountable problems of non-replicable results, contamination, and equifinality issues. Current literature, anyone?

Stuart Fiedel

2/23/2016 08:43:35 am

See this on the difficulty of extracting proteins from ceramics:
https://www.academia.edu/1015790/An_Optimized_Approach_for_Protein_Residue_Extraction_and_Identification_from_Ceramics_After_Cooking
and this on residue survival:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222146121_Remains_of_the_day-preservation_of_organic_micro-residues_on_stone_tools

Kevin Smith

2/22/2016 10:14:33 am

You may want to factor the Hiscock site, in western New York, into your thoughts. Clearly many mastodons' skeletal remains in the basin of this kettle depression and there are also Clovis/Gainey points there, as well, along with less formal tools. There is also a smallish and discrete lithic scatter (unexcavated) on the ridge above the site that produced the edge of a fluted biface and an end/side scraper, all suggesting "archaeological contemporaneity"/association between an occupation or processing locality on "dry land" and processing of bones or fleshed animals in the basin below. What those associations are, however, is a matter for discussion. Richard Laub (Buffalo Museum of Science, emeritus) did, I believe, do blood residue analysis of those tools in the 1990s, when that approach was new and more in vogue. There are also Dan Fisher's mastodons in Michigan that he feels were butchered and deposited in bogs for storage and on which are potential butchering marks and the occasional utilized flake. Hiscock might be the best case, though, for an association in the glaciated northeast...nonetheless leaving open the nature of that association (scavenging vs hunting, for example).

Andy White

2/22/2016 10:18:14 am

Thanks for the comment. I'll take a look at Hiscock when I get a chance. I also need to look at Fisher's stuff again - my memory is that the dated ones were of pre-Clovis age, but I could be wrong about that. I know he thought the recently excavated mammoth in Michigan was pre-Clovis (I haven't seen a direct date reported for that yet).

Steve Timmermans

2/22/2016 04:43:34 pm

Just read your entry here, Kevin, just after I posted mine in response to the above. Sorry for any repetition.

...anyway -- what Kevin says above!

Scott Jones

2/22/2016 10:58:34 am

There is also the Coates-Hines site in Williamson County, TN just south of Nashville. Tools in association with a few mastodon individuals dated to ca. 13,000 BP.

Derek Anderson

2/22/2016 12:21:12 pm

From the abstract of Jesse Tune's dissertation, re: Coats-Hines: "I conclude that based on analyses of geochronology, site formation processes, and the lithic assemblage, the site likely predates human occupation of North America, the faunal assemblage is naturally produced, and the artifact assemblage has been redeposited from other nearby sites."

Aaron

2/22/2016 06:59:18 pm

The "good" date from the 2010 testing at Coats-Hines came back at 12,050+/-60 RCYBP, so pre-Clovis. Unfortunately none of the stone tools are diagnostic of Clovis (& certainly not of Cumberland, as some have claimed...). There are three or four other early Archaic through Woodland sites on the terraces surrounding the drainage. So far as I know the butchering marks have not been examined directly by anyone other than Breitburg.

Derek Anderson

2/22/2016 11:58:17 am

I haven't read the American Antiquity version yet (this post just reminded me - thanks!) and this may ultimately not really matter . . . but I pointed out when Chris presented this paper at the First Floridians conference in the fall that depending on how specific the CIEP analysis claims to get (taking Stuart's comments above into consideration) that musk oxen residue may provide a positive hit for bovidae as well. Technically, they are more closely related to sheep/goat than to cattle and bison, but the SAA abstract says "bovidae" rather than "bovinae", so Bootherium should at least be considered here as well. There are a lot of Pleistocene skeletal remains from the southern Great Lakes region and Mississippi River drainage, as well as at least one specimen from South Carolina (Horry County) housed at the Smithsonian.

Scott Jones

2/22/2016 12:46:12 pm

I haven't seen Jesse's diss, but did he look at the butcher marks on the mastodon bones? Also, where are sites that contributed the artifacts? Did he document those?

Derek Anderson

2/22/2016 01:03:18 pm

I don't have answers to any of those questions . . . just relaying the information.

Eric Butler

2/22/2016 04:50:18 pm

I find this protein residue analysis interesting in part because of what else it's missing besides proboscideans. If we posit that the upper size limit that humans hunted was bison we're still missing equids and camelids (both phylogenetically separate enough from bovids and cervids to avoid confusion with them). In fact, the groups we have all persist into the modern era.

Interestingly, the two top predators in the east (aside from humans) are both represented pretty well (felids and canids). This suggests either defensive uses of these weapons or hunting for fur or ceremonial purposes. The ursid specimens might be the same, although bears are much better eating than cats.

The idea that humans didn't hunt eastern proboscideans would also destroy the overkill hypothesis in terms of the disappearance of said proboscideans.

However, if humans avoided proboscidean prey why? Here's me spitballing from the perspective of a predation ecologist who tries to keeps humans out of the scope of his research (and someone who mostly stays with extant species).

1) Rarity. Perhaps proboscideans weren't as common and so the sophisticated hunting techniques required to bring them down weren't generally developed in the east. The fossils don't seem to back this, but I haven't looked carefully.

2) Group size. Lions hunting elephants (and Cape buffalo) and wolves hunting bison seem to have a minimum group size below which the hunt will not be successful, and generally will not be attempted. Spotted hyenas appear to gather groups of clan members for a hunt with specific prey in mind - many more hyenas are gathered to hunt zebra than gazelle. If humans lived in larger groups in the west they might have been able to hunt proboscideans without significant risk while their eastern counterparts might not have had the numbers to want to attempt that.

3) Group size, for the proboscideans. Modern proboscideans engage in group defense. Perhaps the west had smaller groups or a higher percentage of lone individuals who could be picked off.

4) Prey availability. Perhaps easier prey was simply more available in the east. If you've got plenty of deer (which aren't likely to turn and crush you) why target an enormous, angry mammoth?

5) Terrain. Some sorts of habitats are easier to hunt in. If I had to hunt an elephant with an atlatl and some friends I'd want an open habitat where I could throw at very long range and not a closed-in habitat where the elephant could get close.

Derek Anderson

2/22/2016 08:05:38 pm

I don't know if it's the case in other areas of the Southeast, but at least in Mississippi, rarity was not an issue for proboscideans. Mastodons are so common here that fossils aren't recorded unless they are museum quality . . . There are so many tooth and tusk fragments in the creeks around here that you can fill your pockets with them in a couple hours of walking around!

Andy White

2/23/2016 07:23:28 am

My birthday is coming up - hint hint.

Eric Butler

2/23/2016 03:38:19 pm

That was my general impression. However, if we rule out all these ideas (and we might be able to) that makes the hypothesis that eastern peoples didn't hunt proboscideans less likely.

However, I think Andy is hinting that he wants to go mammoth-hunting for his birthday so maybe you guys can check out some of these ideas firsthand then.

Greg Little

2/22/2016 04:55:39 pm

This is a great window into archaeology for those of us who aren't archaeologists. Thanks so much. It does provide insight into the inner workings and processes of the thinking and theoretical discussion that goes on.

Thomas Schroeder

2/23/2016 01:15:16 pm

Agreed.

Steve Timmermans

2/22/2016 05:25:15 pm

One question and associated comment worthy of me posting on its own here.

Why do folks so often feel impelled to almost exclusively assume and focus on mammalian (especially large) forage base for early post glacial cultures?

It really has become quite counter-productive, almost pathetically narrow-minded, to matters pertaining to understanding these cultures' subsistence strategies and associated lifeways.

Kevin Smith

2/22/2016 07:09:20 pm

Proboscideans cater to macho. And to the earliest documented associations of fluted points with extinct species, demonstrating their age...which did kind of establish a path-dependency focus on such things. But, ultimately, they're more macho than accepting Paleoindians probably hunted a lot more squirrels and gathered plants...

Steve Timmermans

2/23/2016 05:04:42 am

Yes, agreed Kevin. There's the macho thing, but perhaps even more importantly there's been the glaring lack of interdisciplinary approaches in North America's early post glacial archaeological research history. A lot of it boils down to simply a major dearth in knowledge of and use of the complete ecological & biodiversity realities that did occur at those times, into theoretical subsistence and lifeways models.

If people simply took a more balanced and inclusive ecological approach to reconstructing these models, much of the nonsensical macho BS would not continue to persist.

As I mentioned here already, Dena Dincauze and George Nicholas are of a select few folks who did/do know these things, but most people just didn't want to listen to them or believe them.

That needs to change, and I see this as a major opportunity for the younger cohort of aspiring archaeological/anthropological researchers in this regard --- if only some of their 'old school/old dog' supervisors would refrain from exerting the outdated 'macho' big-game mammalian dogma over these vulnerable grad. students.

Kevin Smith

2/23/2016 07:07:45 am

Steve, some other issues to consider are taphonomic and disciplinary bias. On the former issue, proboscidean bones simply preserve better over 13,000 years than squirrels or other small mammals, as we all know. On the latter issue, paleontologists and archaeologists frequently have very different agendas and extremely different search and recovery strategies. I worked briefly with Dan Fisher while I was at Michigan and beside Laub for a decade at the Buffalo Museum of Science. Both are extremely good in their own areas, but neither are archaeologists. Dan can tell you things about an individual mammoth or mastodon's life that an archaeologist wouldn't dream about, but his approach to excavating a site has often had to be to get in and pull out the bones in a few days or a couple weeks – land-owner permission issues and the probability of the sites being looted for ivory or fossils drives much of this, and he knows both what information he can get and what will be lost, yet has to balance. The approach is going to result in good recovery of proboscidean bones and the accidental recovery of other materials that we, as archaeologists or paleo-ecologists, would consider essential: debitage, small lithic tool fragments, non-proboscidean faunal remains, worked non-proboscidean bone or organic tool fragments. Dick, on the other hand, dedicated more than 20 years to excavating the deposits within a single kettle depression and recovered portions of something like 13 mastodons...and, in the process, nearly as many stone tools, in situ, (including fluted points, scrapers, large debitage, a stone bead, and a possible textile fragment), along with a vast array of information on the small fauna and meso-fauna present at that location in the Late Pleistocene, the Early Holocene, and the Late Holocene (there's a mid-Holocene hiatus/erosion episode), macro and micro-botanical specimens, and sediments. However, he is not an archaeologist and some of his interpretations of possible bone tools from the site are not accepted universally, while his perspectives on the stone tools from within the bog are not broadly informed by extensive reading in the archaeological literature. More to the point, his intense focus on what was in the base of the swamp led him to believe that's where the Paleoindians were camped. I asked him, while I worked there, what he and his crew had found by surveying the fields around the site and quickly discovered that he had never considered the "dry" areas nearby to be relevant. I organized a survey of the property for him and then resurveyed it annually for 6 years. In the process, I located a small Paleoindian site on the ridge <20 meters from the basin, an early Archaic (bifurcate) scatter on the other margin of the basin near an early 19th century building site, and a Late Archaic site on the third side of the kettle. Expanding the survey to a 90% coverage of a 2.5 square kilometer zone incorporating Hiscock and the margins of a post-glacial lake and several smaller wetlands resulted in the identification of one other Paleo site and 2-3 additional Paleo isolated finds, and 50-60 other components including Early Archaic Kirk-complex and Bifurcate sites, Middle Archaic Neville/Stanley components, etc. As Nicholas and Dincauze suggested, virtually all of these sites were on the margins of wetlands, not the edges of the streams connecting them; while the Late Archaic sites were more on stream edges and Woodland sites were, overall, scarce – local collections suggest other parts of the region became focal areas in those periods. Without Dick's tenacity and ability to build a loyal corps of volunteers who camped out for 2-3 weeks every year to help him excavate Hiscock, we'd never have seen such data; but on his own there would have been no information on what the scattered tools within the site related to. Unfortunately, as we were moving towards synthesis, that museum, like so many in the late 90s/early 2000s decided that access to the Internet meant that curators and scientists were expensive luxuries that could be replaced by Wikipedia searches and over the course of 24 hrs we went from 6 curatorial departments and 11 curators to 1.5 curators in two departments (me, still full time and Dick, on half-time pay). I moved on within the year and Dick stayed on, volunteering, until the museum closed down his project. The data is under a collections manager's care now, but whether the site will ever be really understood in context is unlikely. My point here is that the kinds of data we all need requires individual dedication for decades to work in uncomfortable and problematic contexts, interdisciplinary collaboration, and steady, dedicated funding over nearly a lifetime by agencies without expectations for annual high-profile discoveries. Without that, however, we're unlikely to see the kinds of high-resolution data needed to contextualize Pleistocene/Holocene archaeology in the East...even

Andy White

2/23/2016 07:31:34 am

Wow - thanks for the comment. Very informative.

Steve Timmermans

2/23/2016 05:02:28 pm

Kevin - Thanks for sharing your thoughts. It is a very sad situation that happened with the Buffalo Museum of Science. The work that you folks did there leading up to the Hiscock site investigations was leading edge and a great example of wet site archaeology. Sorry to hear about what happened. Jack Holland's lithic work through the museum was also impeccable and extremely beneficial.

Your mention of bifurcate and Stanley-Neville reminds me that we ought to migrate some discussion of these under-discussed early archaic cultures over the PI and Early Archaic Archaeology of the Lower Great Lakes Facebook page.

Chris Widga

2/22/2016 07:39:39 pm

Geez Andy. A post on both proboscideans and bison? I really WANT to weigh in...but there is no way I can do it in a comment. You'll have to take my word that we're working on it. In the end, it's complicated, like so many questions that are really worth pursuing.... https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282946700_MAMMOTHS_AND_MASTODONS_IN_NORTH_AMERICA_NEW_DATA_ON_THE_CHRONOLOGY_AND_PALEOECOLOGY_OF_EXTINCTION_IN_THE_MIDCONTINENT

Andy White

2/23/2016 07:41:54 am

Thanks Chris - nice poster. If I'm reading it right, you've got mastodons "lost from the region by 12,850 cal BP (~10,980 14C BP)," but your mastodon population line on the chart (red) extends beyond that. How does that "lost from the region" statement relate to the red line and potentially late survivals like the one from Indiana I linked to above (Woodman and Athfield)?

http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/usgsstaffpub/625/

Chris Widga

2/23/2016 10:18:00 am

Hmm...first reply didn't "take".
12,850 (+/-) cal BP is the terminal age for mastodons (Boaz, WI) in the region. This is one way of telling when an animal went extinct, but it is unlikely that you've actually dated the last occurrence (Signor-Lipps effect). Rather, we can model an error on that terminal age based on the frequency of dates leading up to it (ie if there are lots of dates leading up to a terminal age, it is likely the subsequent absence of a species is "real" rather than just sampling error). Feranec and Kozlowski use a similar approach in an in press QR paper on NY megafauna. The late boundary for our mastodon dataset actually suggests that extinction occurred sometime between 12.8 and 12.5 ka (95% prob). This is a new dataset of >100 well-dated localities, drawn from a regional population of >600 localities vouchered in midwestern museums (sometimes you just need to go out and collect the damned data). Our modeling suggests that we are probably reaching the maximum chronological resolution of the extinction event here in the Midwest. The best way to think about extinction is a process with appropriate chronological errors on either end. It is not an event.
With our dataset we’re able to firmly order events in time, although this still doesn’t answer all of the questions we would like it to. For instance…despite a 200% percent increase in documented proboscidean assemblages, we haven’t added any additional human/proboscidean associations to the conversation. So if you think that the natural:cultural ratio of proboscidean sites on a landscape is an important metric (as I do) then overkill is even less supported than it was when we began this project 5 years ago. But I’m also hesitant to point the finger firmly at climate change since the switch to the YD in the Midwest was neither abrupt or extreme. We have great pollen records…we know that it was a gradual cooling over ~300 years, but still wet, and never as extreme as the LGM. We’re kicking around some alternative ecological scenarios, (no, not bolide or disease) to add to the discussion. Hopefully the study will encourage productive conversations, not more name-calling.
The red line is a weighted probability plot. There are many reasons why this should not be confused with “population” size. But it is good to note that “peak mastodons” also occur during the time period where they are at their widest distribution, and are found in multi-animal natural death sites. So this is a pattern consistent with a large or expanding population, not a population that is retreating to refugia.
We re-dated Overmyer and it is no longer an outlier (we haven’t been the only group to do so). This underscores the importance of quality control in terminal dates. We NEED to date multiple fractions, even use multiple labs—especially if a site is thought to be chronologically “special”.
We’re finishing up the paper this month. Hope to have it submitted soon.
*Late Glacial bison in the eastern US are few and far between. I can think of a few animals from Florida, some poorly dated material from Georgia. If we go where the bones are…Big Bone Lick, KY has Pleistocene bison, but it is unclear whether they are as late as they need to be to overlap with Paleoindians (new dates on the strat sequence run ~20-11,000 rcybp). Saltville, VA might have also have a few…but Bootherium seems to be the “big” bovid around in those deposits, not bison. We need more direct dates.

Phil Hodge

2/23/2016 06:43:58 am

This won't add much to the conversation, but Andy's post and the discussion thread reminds me of a story Quentin Bass (USFS archaeologist and student of Joffre Coe at UNC) once told me about a public presentation Coe gave. One of the questions afterwards was something like "what did Paleoindians eat?" Coe apparently responded, "Everything they could get their hands on..they probably killed or scavenged one mammoth or mastodon their entire lives and talked about it til the day they died."

Andy White

2/23/2016 07:43:04 am

I brought up that quote in a discussion about Moore's paper over the lunch the other day, but didn't know the source of it.

Stuart Fiedel

2/23/2016 08:36:29 am

I think the same line has been attributed to "Scotty" MacNeish.

There is a new article from J of Archa. Sci. Reports posted on academia.edu by Garrison et al. They report submerged material retrieved by divers from Gray's Reef in the Georgia Bight. A bison metapodial was 14C dated to 6090+-60 rcbp.

Phillip Hodge

2/23/2016 08:38:40 am

I don't know that that's the official source for it. It's the kind of answer that I bet Coe gave over and over again at different times and places. Also wondered if he ever put it in writing?

Phillip Hodge

2/23/2016 08:41:27 am

Revised...that Coe and/or MacNeish gave over and over again, or put in writing. Thanks for the clarification, Stuart.

Stuart Fiedel

2/23/2016 09:00:02 am

I just did a Google search on this. MacNeish said in 1964 that he heard this line from "a colleague"; maybe it was Coe....

Steve Timmermans

2/23/2016 11:48:21 am

Dr. D. Brian Deller and I have good reason to believe that Hi-Lo cultures used many of the Hi-Lo 'points' as tools to harvest and/or process wetland plant material, namely native Phragmites (reeds), cattail, bulrush.

Makes sense, given the form, assymetry, thickness, and degree of resharpening that occurs on a high proportion of Hi-Lo 'points. I'll post some pics of an example showing phytolithic sheen on such a point from one of southwestern Ontario's Hi-Lo complex sites.

...oh, but these men and women frequented these wetland associated sites to hunt and kill mastodons, right? Well, those who know me well will know that I'm actually not skeptical at all that early post glacial cultures did hunt and kill and/or scavange proboscidians. I happen to be one of the biggest proponents that they did. And I believe that modern people today underestimate the capacity of these highly adapted early post glacial cultures to hunt and kill these animals with some level of ease if and when they wanted. The 'if and when they wanted' is key I think. Frankly, I don't think that they would've necessarily needed or wanted to do so with great frequency, when they also had probably far more predictable and abundant forage base.

Optimal Foraging Theory - Bettinger - very worthwhile reference text describing common-sense adaptive strategies that likely fared heavily into decisions regarding foraging and subsistence strategies. Many folks also neglect the significance of r-selected vs. K-selected prey species in regard to their predictability and relative risk adversity to early post glacial hunting and foraging cultures.

...did I say birds, plants, amphibians, insects/invertebrates, small mammals? Well, I guess I just did... : )

Steve Timmermans

2/23/2016 11:55:25 am

Nuts. I neglected to include importance of nuts and numerous other seeds/fruit. Some of these likely were not available at the higher periglacial latitudes that reflected more Taiga/Boreal biomes, but species like Juglans nigra (black walnut) and many, many other nut/seed/fruit bearing species certainly were available at the more southerly latitudes that would've looked quite like current-day temperate latitudes where these are in great abundance.

I'll post some quoted text about the nutritional and energetic value of black walnut nuts as compared to the English walnut. No comparison; black walnut blows English walnut out of the water in terms of nutritional and energetic value. That's just one example.

Thomas Loebel

2/23/2016 05:29:53 pm

Have been working on a paper regarding Folsom in IL/WI and assessing what may have been driving the distributional patterns that we are seeing. Regarding Bison, nearly three decades ago Munson (1991, 262-266) argued that the Folsom presence in the region coincided with the appearance of prairie vegetation and bison (Bison sp.), the focal prey of Folsom hunters on the High Plains. He placed the date of appearance of both between 13,400-12,700 cal yr BP, the tail end of which overlaps with the beginning of the Folsom period on the Plains (12,800-11,600 cal yr BP) (Holliday 2000, 227). In light of recent research, this assessment requires major revision. The transition to and establishment of various open, prairie-like environments occurred during the early and middle Holocene (Styles and McMillan 2009, 42-43), and thus postdates the Folsom occupation by upwards of several thousand years. The same holds true with bison, which are now very well dated (Hill et al. 2014, 217). Fifteen direct assays from seven sites place the taxon here from 9000 cal yr BP to 4500 cal yr BP; the earliest records are from Anderson Peat Mine in northwest Illinois, where two assays fall between 9020 cal yr BP and 8730 cal yr BP. In other words, the appearance of bison postdates the Folsom occupation by at least 2,500 years. Likewise, while wapiti (Cervus canadensis) and white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) are regular occurrences in regional Holocene archaeofaunas (Styles and McMillan 2009), especially deer, there are no direct dates on specimens from the Paleoindian period to our knowledge.

Tracy Brown link

2/24/2016 02:14:05 pm

Andy and Gentlemen. Thank you so very much for this highly interesting and well rounded discussion. Speaking as an archaeological blogger, we need to see many more lengthy and well-rounded discussions like this in the archaeological blogosphere, where the prevailing prime directive up to now has been to read blog posts but "be careful" and "say nothing" in the comments section under a primary blog post.

Quite frankly, I had never even heard of CIEP analysis, perhaps not surprising because I left American archaeology for a different career in the 1980s. However, I have to tell you. When I first read Andy's primary post above and he mentioned CIEP, my first reaction was: "They're doing what???!!! You gotta be kidding!!!" Well, DNA may be camping out for 50,000+ years inside a warm and cozy Neanderthal molar, but I have a real intuitive problem with the notion that protein residue on environmentally exposed lithic artifacts hangs out over a cold beer for 10,000+ years in any sort of consistent way that channels into archaeological reliability. Until someone can demonstrate otherwise in a definitive way, my money is with the archaeologists who think CIEP is AFU.

This may be totally off the wall. Yep, looks like it to me---maybe. But I will bring it up anyway because no one suggested it in the above discussion. From reading the above comments, I gather that we have questionable to nonexistent evidence of proboscidean hunting east of the Mississippi River in Clovis times. However, we find lots of proboscidean skeletal material in nonarchaeological contexts during Clovis times. Has anyone here considered the possibility that proboscideans might have been sacred animals to the Clovis peoples in the East---in much the same manner that cattle are sacred and nonslayable animals in India today? All too often, as part of our "paleomacho," we seem to forget that the Paleoindian peoples had an ideological system (religion) that was no doubt just as culturally vibrant as their technological and social systems. So yes, Clovis bands in the West had Clovis points and were killing proboscideans for food, but that does not necessarily mean that it was the same situation East of the Mississippi River. For example, Honda Civics are zooming around all over India today and they are also zooming around all over the United States. We share that technology. However, both nations have different religious beliefs. One nation does not eat cattle because they are sacred, but the other eats beef like Ruth's Chris Steak House is closing down forever. Considering that Clovis peoples in the East probably did have a wide selection of other, less dangerous foods available to them, perhaps proboscideans were sacred animals in eastern Clovis ideology and killing them was taboo (except under the most difficult cultural circumstances---like impending starvation)---and to bring Marvin Harris into this---maybe this ideology concerning proboscideans was culturally adaptive to the extent that the proboscideans were viewed as "walking food storage pits" that needed to be preserved infinitum by ideological sanction against some unexpected future day when the ghost of starvation or some other cultural difficulty might present itself to assorted Clovis bands. It may also be possible that the Clovis peoples, who were far more intimately in touch with their natural environment than we are, sensed that these large proboscideans were disappearing from their environment more and more for some mysterious natural reason that all of us archaeologists have yet to figure out with any certainty---and this factored into the ideological sacredness of these large, trunked mammals here in the East Now tell me and be honest. Who among you does not love a good elephant? Humans today have a strange and almost mystical attachment to elephants, and why would we think that some ancient men, women, and children would see ancient elephants from that same perspective.

Well, anyway, just in summary, the two main points I wanted to make are: (1) I would not trust CIEL analysis any farther than I can spit and (2) I think in dealing with PaleoIndian cultural phenomena, we all too often leave out consideration of how the ideological realm could have systemically impacted the technological and social realms in PaleoIndian cultures.

Bob Jase

2/24/2016 06:50:38 pm

Um, I've never understood why so many people find elephants mystical - to me they're just huge smelly animals.

O/w I think you brought up some interesting thoughts.

Richard Michael Gramly link

2/25/2016 02:34:42 pm

While Clovis predation of proboscideans may be difficult to prove, actual interaction on other levels is not. Clovis groups were making use of mastodon carcasses in the East. The evidence is robust and obvious. The ivory, bone, brains, sinew (?), and toothsome meats were articles of importance -- witness the Bowser Road mastodon, Orange Co., NY.

Steve Timmermans

2/27/2016 05:08:40 pm

Very good points Mike. I was thinking the same thing regarding the paleo ivory foreshafts, etc.

Mike Gramly link

2/28/2016 05:52:17 am

One of the finer analyses of Clovis-age tools made of proboscidean bone/tusk ivory from a single site is John Tomenchuk's essay in the 2003 Smith Symposium volume edited by Richard Laub. the Hiscock site yielded some intriguing pieces including what many regard as the finest Palaeo that has come to hand in North America, namely, the "hoe" made from the forward secton of a split tusk. Several of the other finds from Hiscock are similar to pieces that we unearthed at Bowser Road, which is dated at ca. 12,927 calendar years BP. The Bowser Road carcass was ransacked and quarried. There is no evidence of predation. It may have been a natural death as the bull was 55-60 years old; his last set of grinders were very worn.

Stuart Fiedel

2/28/2016 10:03:37 am

Steve,

I'd like to read your comments and respond, but it's obviously inappropriate to monopolize Andy's blog for a 2-way communication. Send me an e-mail, please. For those who are interested, I've uploaded my article (and the whole book--it's freely available online) at my academia.edu page. The Moss and Erlandson article (J of World Prehistory 2013) also can be found on academia.edu. And you might also appreciate this apparently unpublished 2006 paper I found online that links waterfowl to megafaunal extinction: http://www.oswego.edu/~srp/extinct.pdf

Andy White

2/28/2016 10:47:29 am

No need to worry about "monopolizing" the blog. I'm learning a lot from the comments and conversation and so are a lot of others. Comment space is free.

Mike Morgan

2/29/2016 07:21:55 pm

I am one of the "others" of whom you are speaking.

I've had a life long interest in early peoples and cultures, particularly those of North, Central, and South America. I had dreams of studying to be an archaeologist but 50+ years ago as I was preparing to enter college. I also had visions of future marriage and family life with my girlfriend of 3 years. Thinking I only had two options in archaeology - teaching, which I didn't think I could do, or field work, which if in a remote location, might put a strain on family life, so I altered my course, choosing to accept being placed in an honors program for mathematics and chemistry, fields I thought would offer more stability for family life. Big mistake. She dumped me less than 2 years later, I dropped out of college - and life for a while. Oh well, ifs and buts.

Although I was drawn to your blog initially by your efforts to counter the misinformation and misguided proposals dispensed by the pseudo/fringe element, I found your archaeology blogs just as enjoyable. As a layman, I am thoroughly enjoying this blog post with the commentary by, and conversations among, all the academics and professionals just as you are Andy, and certainly hope they accept your offer to continue posting here and on any of your future blogs.

This is my favorite of all your blogs ... so far!

Mike Morgan

2/29/2016 07:36:54 pm

I meant to also say that I feel like I am attending a symposium right here in my home.

Richard Michael Gramly link

7/27/2016 10:26:19 am

I thought that some of the readers and authors of this string of interesting dialogue may like to know that the Bowser Road Mastodon in Orange Co., NY (under study, monograph in 2016/2017) has yielded a series of split mastodon rib atlatls -- many of which show Vee-notching or channeling at the distal end. Their lengths are fairly consistent (22-25 inches). Two atlatls have been abraded on their centerline to accept a weight, and one zoomorphic weight of mastodon ivory, whose edge matches the sizes of the abraded patches, has been identified. The atlatls were repeatedly fractured into regular-sized pieces; the fracture is greenstick.
Most important, the Hiscock site assemblage also has fragments of split-rib atlatls. Further, it has at least one Wenatchee-style bone rod and other intriguing objects -- all unrecognized up to this time.Clearly, the entire huge assemblage must undergo scrutiny. Scores, possibly hundreds, of fragments of artifacts stand to be identified among the thousands of catalogued pieces.
Finally, may I suggest that readers familiarize themselves with the Gravettian 'culture," which stretches from France to the Don and beyond?? Note the little sketchy mammoth sculptures in marl, sandstone, ivory, etc. The atlatl weight from Bowser Road falls into their class although, of course, it lacks the thoracic hump of a mammoth.
Given the right type of site and good preservation, there is much that stands to be learned about Clovis culture, behavior, and
social systems. While proboscideans were killed and butchered, it was likely only seldom and was done primarily to satisfy social, rather than strictly dietary, needs.
R.M.Gramly

Steve Timmermans

7/28/2016 11:31:35 am

Greetings Mike - Do you have any current literature (draft or otherwise) available for the Bowser Road mastodon site? I would be quite interested in reading whatever is currently available. Sounds like a very exciting discovery. regards, Steve

Steve Timmermans

7/28/2016 11:38:44 am

Hi Mike - Who is/was involved in conducting the field excavation and research for the Bowser road mastodon site?

Richard Michael Gramly

8/16/2016 04:21:01 pm

Steve,
During 2014 when the nature of the Bowser Road site was still unknown, I directed the excavations. At first, most regarded it as a purely palaeontological site. In the second year, after the archaeological significance of the site was established, Dennis Vesper served as dig director, and he made all arrangements for our
fieldwork.
Naturally, the write-up and study of the assemblage are in my hands.
In March, 2016 I gave a paper about Bowser Road at the Geological Society of American annual meeting, which was staged in Albany, NY. That paper in somewhat modified form was recently published within an issue of the OHIO ARCHAEOLOGIST. Further, another version appeared in the most recent number of THE ATLATL. Both publications have a fairly wide distribution. This fall I will summarize matters for my non-avocational breathren in a session at the ESAF annual meeting. Additionally, I have given 10-12 lectures to professional and amateur audiences about the site -- all since the initial year of fieldwork. My primary business these days, however, is getting out the monograph, and my co-authors and I are fairly well advanced in that considerable task. Funding for the work has been promised -- a good thing, as the print-job will not be cheap! So many objects need to be described and illustrated.
The skeleton minus the pieces that I am currently describing is already at the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard, where it will reside together with the several hundred stone, bone and tusk artifacts and all my documentation, etc.
The implications of the discovery are profound. It stands to advance Clovis studies my an order of magnitude.
Sincerely,
Mike Gramly

The Bison in the Room

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