Center for the Study of the First AmericansDepartment of AnthropologyTexas A&M University4352 TAMUCollege Station, TX 77843-4352www.centerfirstamericans.com

Volume 24, Number 2 ■■■■■ April, 2009

he Center for the Study of the FirstAmericans fosters research and publicinterest in the Peopling of the Americas.T

The Center, an integral part of the Departmentof Anthropology at Texas A&M University,promotes interdisciplinary scholarly dialogueamong physical, geological, biological andsocial scientists. The Mammoth Trumpet,news magazine of the Center, seeks to involveyou in the peopling of the Americas by reportingon developments in all pertinent areas ofknowledge.

Paleo Patagonia

The fauna species in Knight’s masterpiece: A, Toxodon, amassive ungulate; B, Megatherium, the largest ground sloth;C, Glyptodon, the giant armadillo; D, Camelus, an extinct camel.

When mammoth and Bison antiquusdominated the plains of North

America, the creatures shown here inCharles R. Knight’s magnificentpainting, “Pampean Life,” were

roaming the pampas of South America.The world learned of their existence,

and of the Paleoamerican hunters thatpreyed on them, because of the

extraordinary efforts of Americanarchaeologist Junius Bird. Today his collections reside in the

American Museum of Natural History in New York. That’s whereKnight’s painting hangs (on the fourth floor), and where

research associate Tom Amorosi works to catalog the Birdarchives and to plan an expedition to continue Bird’s research.

Dr. Amorosi is our guide in the conclusion of our series on the lifeand accomplishments of Junius Bird that starts on page 15.

AM

ERIC

AN

MU

SEU

M O

F N

ATU

RAL

HIS

TORY

TTTTT

Volume 24, Number 2 Center for the Study of the First Americans Department of Anthropology

April, 2009 Texas A&M University, 4352 TAMU, College Station, TX 77843-4352 ISSN 8755-6898

World Wide Web site http://centerfirstamericans.org and http://anthropology.tamu.edu

4 Decoding the paleoclimaticrecord for the SoutheastSediments collected in sinkholesat the Page-Ladson site reveal ahistory of climatic extremes that’svastly different from what theSouthwest experienced—andevidence of pre-Clovis occupationbesides. Florida State archaeolo-gist Jim Dunbar lets us in on hischeat sheet for finding evidenceof early humans.

9 In this case, a pretty facewith lots behind itGaudily colored stone chips ledpoint collectors to find a Paleo-american base camp in anunlikely place. Today the Hestersite in Mississippi enjoys NHLstatus.

15 Picking up where Bird left offAnthropologist Tom Amorosi isrecruiting a team of scientists toconfirm Junius Bird’s discoveriesof early fauna and humans atthe tip of South America, andperhaps to find what he missed.

HE CLASSIC MODEL that dominatedFirst Americans studies for half acentury—that the first immigrants

Obsidian projectile points from Kamchatka.

R. J

. SP

EAK

MA

N

Following theFollowing theFollowing theFollowing theFollowing theObsidian TObsidian TObsidian TObsidian TObsidian TrailrailrailrailrailFollowing theFollowing theFollowing theFollowing theFollowing theObsidian TObsidian TObsidian TObsidian TObsidian Trailrailrailrailrail

trudged across the Bering Land Bridgeconnecting northeast Asia and Alaska, andwent on to people the Americas—has beenbattered in recent years by the discovery ofMonte Verde and other pre-Clovis occupa-tions in the New World. Nevertheless, re-cent discoveries in Alaska by archaeolo-gists, notably Chuck Holmes (MT 20-1,“Early Americans in Eastern Beringia: Pre-Clovis Traces at Swan Point, Alaska”), areconvincing evidence for some scientiststhat at least one wave of migrants passedthrough on foot. To keep this theory alive,though, demands answers to such ques-

tions as, Where did they come from? Howmany were they? When were they here?Fortunately, the travelers themselves aregiving us many of the answers. They weretoolmakers, and one of the more abundanttoolstones available to them in Beringia(eastern Siberia and Alaska) was obsidian,volcanic glass, a substance that tells a sci-entist with the knowledge and the rightequipment the precise location of thequarry where it was obtained.

The wonders of obsidianJeff Speakman of the Smithsonian Institu-tion, who has traced obsidian artifacts totheir source in North America and Asia,emphasizes the importance of obsidian in

resolving the Beringia question. Ob-sidian is prime toolstone due to itsworkability and the extremely sharpedges produced when it’s knapped.What makes obsidian so valuable toarchaeologists is its unique chemicalsignature that precisely and unam-biguously identifies its source.Speakman explains that “each source

2 Volume 24 ■ Number 2

Mammoth Trumpet, Statement of Our PolicyMany years may pass between the time an important discovery is made and the acceptance of researchresults by the scientific community. To facilitate communication among all parties interested in stayingabreast of breaking news in First Americans studies, the Mammoth Trumpet, a science news magazine,provides a forum for reporting and discussing new and potentially controversial information importantto understanding the peopling of the Americas. We encourage submission of articles to the ManagingEditor and letters to the Editor. Views published in the Mammoth Trumpet are the views ofcontributors, and do not reflect the views of the editor or Center personnel.

–Michael R. Waters, Director

The Mammoth Trumpet (ISSN 8755-6898) is published quarterly by the Center forthe Study of the First Americans, Department of Anthropology, Texas A&M University,College Station, TX 77843-4352. Phone (979) 845-4046; fax (979) 845-4070; e-mailcsfa@tamu.edu. Periodical postage paid at College Station, TX 77843-4352 and atadditional mailing offices.

POSTMASTER: Send address changes to:Mammoth TrumpetDepartment of Anthropology, Texas A&M University4352 TAMUCollege Station, TX 77843-4352

Copyright © 2009 Center for the Study of the First Americans. Permission is herebygiven to any non-profit or educational organization or institution to reproduce withoutcost any materials from the Mammoth Trumpet so long as they are then distributed atno more than actual cost. The Center further requests that notification of reproductionof materials under these conditions be sent to the Center. Address correspondence to theeditor of Mammoth Trumpet, 2122 Scout Road, Lenoir, NC 28645.

Michael R. Waters Director and General Editore-mail: mwaters@tamu.edu

Ted Goebel Associate Director and Editor, Current Research inthe Pleistocenee-mail: goebel@tamu.edu

James M. Chandler Editor, Mammoth Trumpete-mail: wordsmiths@touchnc.net

Laurie Lind Office Manager

C & C Wordsmiths Layout and Design

World Wide Web site http://centerfirstamericans.com

The Center for the Study of the First Americans is a non-profit organization. Sub-scription to the Mammoth Trumpet is by membership in the Center.

[of obsidian] has a unique fingerprint, andif you know what that fingerprintis . . . you can analyze the artifacts and tellexactly where the artifacts came from.”Much can be discerned by identifying thesource of a fragment of obsidian. “Byknowing that information,” Speakmansays, “you are able to track migrations ofpeople, social interactions, trade paths,and long-distance movement.” Without ob-sidian sourcing, such facts are practicallyinvisible in the archaeological record. Con-cerning the particular long-distance migra-tion that archaeologists are eager toconfirm, of peoples crossing the BeringLand Bridge during the Pleistocene, obsid-ian could be the key to answering thisquestion. If Russian obsidian dating to the

nuclear reactor and destroys the obsid-ian sample being tested.

ICP-MS is as sensitive as INAA, yetless invasive to the artifact being tested.The drawbacks with ICP-MS are that it isstill somewhat destructive to artifactsand quantifying data can be an arduoustask. ICP-MS also requires an initial in-vestment of several hundred thousanddollars and a dedicated laboratory andstaff. Nonetheless, such instrumentationis quite common at most major research

institutions and is rapidly replacingINAA as a preferred method for trace-element analysis of rocks and minerals.

XRF, though not as sensitive as INAAor ICP-MS, has the great advantage ofbeing completely nondestructive andhas been used extensively to analyze ob-sidian since the 1960s. But it gets better;XRF has evolved into PXRF, P for por-table, which gives scientists the ability tosource obsidian in situ. This is especiallyhandy for sourcing museum pieces, par-

Jeff Speakman analyzing gold artifacts byPXRF at the Museo Antropológico ReinaTorres de Araúz, Panama City, Panama,July 2007.

H.

F. B

EAU

BIEN

Pleistocene is found in Alaska, this dis-covery will go a long way to proving thetheory correct.

The sourcing process itself hasevolved over the years, and seems to havepeaked at a fortunate time. Of a number ofprocesses used to source obsidian, threestand out as the most reliable methods:instrumental neutron activation analysis(INAA), laser ablation inductivelycoupled plasma-mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS), and X-ray fluorescence spec-trometry (XRF).

The grandfather of the group, whichhas great precision and high accuracy, isINAA; on the down side, it requires a

April ■ 2009 3

ticularly those in othercountries. Not only isthis device handy, itsresults are highly accu-rate. It “is ordinarilywhat I use for sourcingobsidian, even at theSmithsonian,” saysSpeakman, who con-siders the instrumentessential in the searchfor Northeast Asianobsidian in easternBeringia. It yieldssource data while inthe field at Alaskan andRussian sites. What’smore, it harmlesslyanalyzes obsidian articles in Russian museums, thereby elimi-nating the hassle of transporting a truckload of machinesacross borders.

May the source be with you . . .There are 32 known sources of obsidian ineastern Beringia, which includes Alaskaand the parts of neighboring Yukon andthe Northwest Territories not covered byglaciers. These sources are known to theextent that archaeologists are aware oftheir existence; however, only nine ofthem can be located on a map and onlyseven are known to have been utilized byprehistoric peoples. Though the locationsof the other sources have yet to be pin-pointed, their existence is inferred fromtheir “fingerprints,” which were lifted from obsidian artifactsscattered around Alaska and Canada. It’s just like “CSI”; wehaven’t apprehended the culprit, but we know who done it.

It isn’t easy to locate asource of obsidian, particu-larly in Alaska’s frigid vast-ness. Sometimes a locationcan be estimated by consult-ing geologic maps and trian-gulating in on a source usingthe distribution of artifactsmade of the unique obsidianquarried from it, but this in-volves a lot of guess work.Most often, Speakman says,“Geologists are the ones whofind the sources first and thearchaeologists find out later.”

Archaeologists took no-tice of the rediscoveredBatza Tena obsidian source in 1970. This source, whose nametranslated from the Koyukon language means Obsidian Hill, islocated in central Alaska. Today we think of this as remote, but

prehistorically, according to Speak-man, it was probably easily accessible,which would account for its being themost common obsidian used by pre-historic people throughout Alaska.

Like many obsidian sources, Batza Tena spawned a number ofsites, some associated with quarrying activities. Artifacts made

of Batza Tena obsidian were widely dispersed in the late Pleis-tocene and early Holocene, reaching distances of 500 km. Therunner up is Wiki Peak obsidian, at 460 km. Wiki Peak obsid-

ian, although extensively used,wasn’t easy to get. Instead it isfound in what Speakman de-scribes as “fairly isolated pock-ets,” a consequence of thechallenging terrain in this part ofAlaska (compared with BatzaTena, which is conveniently lo-cated on a tributary of the

REU

THER

ET

AL.

200

9

The obsidian fingerprint: All obsidianfrom the same source has identicalproportions of certain trace ele-ments, which makes it possible tomatch obsidian artifacts with theirsource. This bivariate plot of zirco-nium and strontium elementalconcentrations (analyzed by PXRF)shows 2,154 obsidian artifacts andgeologic source samples analyzed bySpeakman and Natalia Slobodina, fall2007.

Natalia Slobodina, University ofWashington, analyzing obsidianartifacts from Alaska using PXRFat the Smithsonian’s MuseumConservation Institute, December2007.

R. J

. SP

EAK

MA

N

Koyukon River). Jeff Rasic, with the National Park Service andthe University of Alaska, another key player in this project,

continued on page 13

Public Symposium April 25, 2009, 9:00 A.M. to 3:30 P.M.

Old Questions, New Science: Reinterpreting Native American Origins

What is the latest archaeological & genetic evidence for the peopling of the Americas? Sessions and speakers include:

Historical view of American Indian origins in relation to 19th c. anthropology and archaeology by Dr. Terry A. Barnhart of Eastern Illinois University

Contemporary archaeological methods and recent discoveries by Dr. Bradley T. Lepper, Curator of Archaeology at the Ohio Historical Society

Molecular genetic studies and recent findings about Native American populationsby Dr. Cecil M. Lewis, Dept. of Anthropology, University of Oklahoma

Current controversies and unanswered questions in American archaeology by Dr. Kenneth L. Feder, Anthropology Dept. at Central Connecticut State University

Johnson Humrickhouse Museum, 300 N. Whitewoman St., Coshocton, OH 43812740-622-8710. Regist: $24 (incl.Proceedings); Late Regist. (after Ap. 21): $28

4 Volume 24 ■ Number 2

HE PAGE-LADSON SITE is special. Lying at the con-fluence of the Wacissa and Aucilla rivers in the FloridaPanhandle, it’s a pioneering venture where over the

bonate-rich rock—Florida’s limestone, for example—comesinto contact with acidic groundwater charged from vegetationon the surface. Relentless dissolution produces voids in therock. Springs, disappearing springs, sinkholes, naturalbridges, and collapsing bridges are all results of thekarstification of the Aucilla River. When a natural bridge col-lapses, the underground river becomes a surface river in the

vicinity of the collapse before dodging back underground.This aberration is called a river siphon (what geologistscall a swallet).

Dunbar explains the unusual circumstances that pro-duced the Page-Ladson site. “Around the 12,000 to

11,000 year mark there was a natural land bridge on thesouth end of the sinkhole,” he says. “If the water wasflowing it would go back underground at that point,

but sometime during the Archaic that land bridgecollapsed. So now rather than being the end of asurface channel of the Aucilla River, this thingkeeps flowing and goes much farther south beforethe river goes back down underground again.” Hecompares the limestone bottom of the Aucilla River

to a moonscape; some sections only 10 or 12 ft deepare pitted with abrupt, deep sinkholes that may be 30 ft

deep. It’s the sediments that collect in these depressionson the river bottom at the Page-Ladson site that Dunbar finds

BARB

ARA

TA

ILLE

FER

Paleoamericans around a sinkhole oasis.

Page-LadsonGets INTIMATE

preservation in the Aucilla-Wacissa area is quite good. Not onlypollen, grapes, seeds, and berries were recovered, but mast-odon digesta and dung as well. Fairly rapid inundation of thearea probably accounts for the excellent site preservation. Thisinundation occurred repeatedly; sediment layering suggeststhe water table rose and fell many times during the six millen-nia represented at Page-Ladson.

The Aucilla River, home to the site, is narrow, deep, andhighly karstified. The river’s subterranean origin takes it asmuch as 120 ft below ground. Karstification occurs when car-

Tlast 20 years scientists have developed, fine-tuned, and put intopractice new methods in underwater archaeology and labora-tory analysis. After solving the problems of dealing with theobvious obstacles in excavating an underwater site, the teamwas astonished to discover extraordinary specimen preserva-tion and a stratigraphic record spanning about 8,000 years thatmade it possible to assemble the first paleoclimatic modelfor the southeastern U.S. Now thatenvironmental information is avail-able, it puts another perspective onSoutheastern paleoarchaeology—the relationship between man andbeast, and their adaptations to themany climatic shifts of the Pleis-tocene age.

Discoveries made at Page-Ladson tell the story of times ofwant and times of plenty, times ofextinction and new beginnings. Afinding pivotal to future paleo-environmental studies is the starkcontrast detected between the cli-matic histories of the Southeast andthe Southwest. In time, the chronol-ogy of the Southeast will be workedinto the big picture, both globallyand in the Americas, and willgreatly enlarge our understandingof the peopling of the Americas.

INTIMATE methodologyINTIMATE (INTegration of Ice-core, MArine and TErrestrialrecords) is a program of the International Union for QuaternaryResearch (INQUA) Paleoclimate Commission that uses a combi-nation of disciplines and such related data as ice cores, marinesediment cores, and on-land excavations to develop age linkagesand thereby construct thesequence of regional cli-mate events. Jim Dunbar,Senior Archaeologist with the State ofFlorida’s Bureau of Archaeological Re-search, Public Lands Archaeology program, chosethe INTIMATE method of analysis at Page-Ladson—cull-ing information from many sources—to help scientistsbetter understand the effects of abrupt climate changeson the ocean and on land environments. A firm believer inthe methodology of consilience (the happy state that’sachieved when two or more independent approaches leadto the same conclusion), Dunbar believes that advancing ahypothesis only after finding confirming evidence from mul-tiple sources fosters the creation of sound theories. Otherwise,he believes, “anything without confirmation is just speculation.”

The site, a laboratory made to orderThere was no shortage of data at Page-Ladson, since site

April ■ 2009 5

eye-opening. “The sediment at the Page-Ladson sinkhole spansthat period of time we are really interested in,” he notes, “whichis from the late glacial maximum and through into the earlyHolocene. There’s pretty much an entire stratigraphic recordfrom about 18,000 RCYBP right up to about 9500 or a little

younger.” That stratigraphic record has made it possible for theteam to create the first climatic model for the southeastern U.S.

The effects of climate on PaleoamericansChanging climate directly affects the availability of the re-sources essential to the life of a hunter-gatherer: potable water,protein, bone for toolstock, and quarries for toolstone. Droughtattracted megafauna to a reliable source of water like the Page-Ladson sinkhole, making bone and protein resources readilyavailable to Paleoamericans encamped nearby. Moreover, thedropping water table exposed low-lying chert outcrops, provid-ing toolmakers withabundant supplies ofstone. Fish, on theother hand, less plenti-ful in a period ofdrought, were lesslikely to be exploited.During wet conditionsthe reverse becametrue. The population ofmegafauna, now able toforage over a largerarea because of plenti-ful water and browse re-sources, dispersed.Toolmakers, deniedlowland outcroppingsnow submerged, foundtheir sources of tool-stone greatly reduced.Fish, now plentiful, became a mainstay of the diet.

Dunbar’s interest is the techno-environmental behavior ofPaleoamericans. “You have a repertoire of tools and the tech-nology that goes with it,” he explains. “Given enough time,people develop their toolkits to maximize the exploitation ofthe environment they live in.” This, he says, may be the reasonthere is no evidence of any sound horticultural or agriculturaleconomy prior to the Holocene. “The last of the Pleistocene

had environmental events, especially colder ones, which wouldkick in over the course of a decade or two. You’d have a warmevent such as the Allerød, with glaciers receding and the like,and then during the beginning of the Younger Dryas you hadthis tremendous ice-rafting out into the North Atlantic.” He

calls these abrupt climaticchanges “knife-switching.”Early Americans, ham-mered by successive coldevents followed by gradual

Contrast between theshoreline at the last glacialmaximum and today.Dunbar’s droll comment:“Location, location,location. Real estate justisn’t like it used to be.”

J. S.

DU

NBA

R PU

BLIC

LA

ND

S A

RCH

AEO

LOG

Y (B

AR)

Excavated butcher-markedmastodon tusk at the Page-Ladsonsite. The tusk had been buriedunder more than 2 m of sediment.

AFT

ER J

. S.

DU

NBA

R PU

BLIC

LA

ND

S A

RCH

AEO

LOG

Y (B

AR)

Alveolus line on tusk

Cutmarks

Close-up of cutmarks onUnit 3 mastodon tusk

warming at intervals of 100–500 years, were denied the oppor-tunity to develop agricultural skills.

A solid grasp of the environment associated with a site is animportant aspect of Paleoamerican archaeology, as importanteven as a good understanding of time. “Environments wereshifting around wildly during the Pleistocene. This site [Page-Ladson] seems to be the first one that has provided the hook tolet us understand the timing of climatic events,” Dunbar ex-plains. For geoarchaeologists today, understanding the condi-tions people had to live in is as important as identifying theanimals they were trying to exploit.

Evidence of a Georgia-to-FloridamigrationOne of the animals Paleoamericans re-lied on was the mastodon. The 7-ft-longtusk of a mature male American mast-odon, Mammut americanum, wasfound at Page-Ladson, along with stoneartifacts and debitage from toolmaking.These materials associated with mast-odons yielded seven dates with an aver-age of 12,425 ± 32 RCYBP (about 14,400CALYBP). Visual inspection of the tuskdetects probably butchering marks, not

unlikely given ivory’s place in the Paleoamerican toolkit. Fur-ther analysis of the remains reveals strontium uptake in the bone(MT 23-2, “Chemical Studies Reveal the Lost World of Pleis-tocene America”) that is consistent with the granite environ-ment of the foothills of Georgia, near present-day Atlanta. Theenvironment where the tusk was found, however, is limestone,not granitic, which suggests that mastodons may have migratedfarther than previously thought. Oddly enough, one of the

6 Volume 24 ■ Number 2

Examples of Paleoamericanpoint types. A, Page-Ladson;

B, Clovis; C, Lake Jackson(possibly reworked tips of

broken Clovis points);D, Simpson; E, waisted Clovis;

F, waisted Suwannee;G, Greenbriar-like Suwannee.

AFT

ER J

. S.

DU

NBA

R PU

BLIC

LA

ND

S A

RCH

AEO

LOG

Y (B

AR)

AFT

ER J

. S.

DU

NBA

R PU

BLIC

LA

ND

SA

RCH

AEO

LOG

Y (B

AR)

Page-Ladson sitechannel cross

section, facing north.

A B C

D E F G

0 5cm

first points ever foundat the site back inthe 1960s, the Page-Ladson point, ap-pears to be made ofFlint River chert,which sources out ofGeorgia. (Unfortu-nately the artifact was found out of context, one of a handful ofpoints recovered by river divers who first discovered the site.)Unlike Paleoamerican sites in the Southwest, Southeastern sitesof Clovis age and younger rarely yield exotic stone. Dunbarthinks it’s possible, although still speculative, that the Page-Ladson point is a likely pre-Clovis candidate. If so, this isstrong evidence that South-eastern Paleoamericans, liketheir mastodon prey, roamedover greater distances thanpreviously thought.

Extinction of PleistocenemegafaunaAlso intriguing is a controver-

A B C0 5

cm0 2

cm

D

AFT

ER J

. S.

DU

NBA

R PU

BLIC

LA

ND

SA

RCH

AEO

LOG

Y (B

AR)

Examples of the Page-Ladson point type

manufactured on thinflakes. A, from theWakulla Lodge site

(WA329); B–C, fromthe Page-Ladson site

(JE591).

Bank oferosion

Bank ofdeposition

Erosionalnotch

Trench F

Test FTest

C

0 15m

Modern water table➛

Clovis, then Pleistocene megafauna inthe Southeast didn’t become extinct at11,000 RCYBP. Their survival beyondthe Younger Dryas onset boundarywould certainly be news. Today, how-ever, that’s only an interesting suppo-sition awaiting the radiometric datingof Suwannee-point sites.

Rounding out the prehistory ofthe Sunshine StateIt’s becoming increasingly clear

how markedly the Southwest and Southeast prehistories dif-fer from each other and how many surprises they hold. Atthe beginning of the Allerød, for instance, the desert South-west was a gentle, moist environment while the Southeastwas very dry. According to Dunbar, that set of circumstances

switched “in seesaw-likefashion” with the onset ofthe Clovis drought about11,700 years ago. Re-search conducted in theAucilla River area pointsto a rise in the watertables around 12,200years ago; by the time ofmid-Allerød, the Aucillawas flowing freely.

In the larger picture,the Eastern U.S. has pro-duced a variety of lan-ceolate Paleoamericanpoints (Clovis, Simpson,Suwannee, Gainey, Red-stone, Cumberland, Dal-ton) that must be re-searched further and theirchronology established.

Who could have guessed there was such a diversity of points inthe Southeast? A diversity so extreme, in fact, that Dunbarsuspects there’s something going on in Eastern prehistory thathasn’t been seen in the West. “There are a lot of possibilitiesabout what that could be,” he says puckishly, “and I’ll just leave

it at that.”The Page-Ladson site has enor-

mously benefited Southeastern geo-archaeology by giving us a fullydatable stratigraphic profile. It’ll takesome time, of course, to work thechronology of the Southeast into theoverall picture. “I think this kind ofresearch needs to continue,” saysDunbar. “And it takes a multi-disciplinary team to get in there anddo these kinds of sites justice.” Cor-ing samples have been taken in the

Aucilla River, and geoarchaeology at other sinkholes in theAucilla is becoming intensive. Dunbar is a scientist who is

duced extinct Pleistocene megafauna remains associated withSuwannee points. If Suwannnee points are in fact younger than

sial possibility involving the extinction of the Pleistocenemegafauna. Although Suwannee points have not been dated inany context, Southeastern archaeologists say they are likelyClovis offspring, much like Folsom. Both the Ryan/Harley siteon the Wacissa River (a tributary of the Aucilla) and the Nordensite on the Santa FeRiver 70 miles east ofPage-Ladson have pro-

April ■ 2009 7

they preferred scrubs and the tender leaves of trees,grape vines and the like. They also liked edible gourds,and their preserved droppings and/or digesta some-times contains seed of these plants. They liked waterand in my imagination at least, they were somewhatakin to pigs in their love for the waterhole. Mastodonsdo not appear to have been herd animals, which is alsounlike mammoths. Studies have shown that mastodonstended to migrate over large territories, whereas mam-moths did not and remained in relatively small territo-ries. Mammoths packed together in matriarchal herdssimilar to the African elephants of today. Waco, Texas,has a site that has yielded a matriarchal herd of mam-moths that were drowned in a flood. One last thingabout mastodons. The body hair of mastodons is al-most identical to its relatives’ hair, the manatee anddugong. Mammoth hair, on the other hand, is similarto that of modern elephants and is unlike that of theirmarine cousins, the manatee and dugong or the mast-odons. Guess you could say mastodons are representa-tive of a more primitive line of Proboscidean.

One other, though, before closing. It is interestingthat a mastodon tooth was found on the beach. Didthis happen after a storm? There is a drowned lake thatnow lies offshore of the southeastern Texas coast that isnoted for having late-Pleistocene-age land mammalfossils. Several decades ago some students at TexasA&M reported that site. Yet another famous Texasbeach site is McFadden Beach (had to check your lastname, it’s close). The McFadden Beach site is a notedClovis site and at least two investigations have beenpublished about it. However, no one has located inplace deposits (the stuff archaeologists dream about) asof yet. It’s the undisturbed, in-place sites where archae-ologists get to do Miami CSI-like investigations into thepast. Such sites are not crime scenes—they are layercakes of time which hold the puzzles of the past.

Hope this helps. The best.–Jim D.

Observant readers will recognize Mildred’s photo as thesample we showed to illustrate geologist Kathryn Hoppe’swork in inferring migratory habits of megafauna by analyz-ing the chemistry of their teeth (MT 23-2).

Piquancy is added to this episode by the fact that Mildredisn’t a Trumpet subscriber. CSFA was one of many hits shegot in her Internet search for information on mastodons. Wehappen to be the only contact that replied to her inquiry.

Mildred and Jim Dunbar subsequently enjoyed a briefcorrespondence: a package of information on Paleoindiansand Pleistocene megafauna from him, a message of grati-tude from her for his thoughtful assistance. We’re glad she isgrateful for his gracious reply to her inquiry. We sure are.

–JMC

The Trumpet’s technical authority, CSFA Director MikeWaters, was out of town. Chandler turned for help to JimDunbar, a fine friend of CSFA and a scientist who over theyears has contributed to Trumpet articles and prestigiousCSFA technical publications.

Within 24 hours Mildred received this message fromDunbar.

Hi Mildred:Jim Chandler, editor of the Mammoth Trumpet,

forwarded your photographs to me to provide somecomment.

Yes, the tooth is mastodon. The only other Proboscid-eans (elephant form) with similar-looking teeth aremembers of the family Gomphotheriidae (gompho-theres). The one in the photographs has the character-istics of the mastodon, which is of the family Mammut-idae. Appears to be the typical Mammut americanum(American mastodon) tooth. Mastodons lived until theend of the late Ice Age and in the Texas and the Ameri-can Southwest are believed to have become extinct byabout 13,000 years ago (hope not to confuse but11,000 radiocarbon years before present = 13,000calendar years before present). Mastodons differedfrom mammoths in that they were browsers, meaning

obviously glad that investigations at Page-Ladson don’t ap-pear to be waning. Because this is the first geoclimatic modelfor the Southeast, the conclusions drawn from its data willhave to be tested and possibly adjusted.

More pages to be turned—and a surprise pendingThis is an exciting time for studying archaeology in theSoutheast. For example, Dunbar is confident that late-Paleo-american sites will inform us about the evolution of the Bolen

Jim Dunbar’s encyclopedic knowledge of proboscideans iseclipsed only by his generosity in sharing it with others. Wehad proof of this in summer 2005 when Mammoth Trumpeteditor Jim Chandler received this e-mail:

Hello,My husband found what we believe to be a fossil of a

mastodon. If you could look over these photos and letus know what you think we have found, we wouldappreciate it. It was found on the beach in southeastTexas. Thank you for your time,

Mildred McFarland

Attached to her message were four photos. Here are two,obviously taken with great reverence for accuracy and clarity.

The AnswThe AnswThe AnswThe AnswThe Answer Maner Maner Maner Maner Man

8 Volume 24 ■ Number 2

ROY

LETT

, BU

REA

U O

F A

RCH

AEO

LOG

ICA

L RE

SEA

RCH

(BA

R)

toolkit. He counsels that “if youwant to study an interesting point intime in the Southeast, then find avery well stratified late-Paleoindiansite because that is where you’regoing to find evidence of Paleo-indians transitioning towards Ar-chaic subsistence because thePleistocene megafauna at first thinsout and then is gone prior to theonset of the early Archaic. Paleo-environmental studies light theway.

“The more we know,” he saysconfidently, “the more we are goingto be able to predict where sites mayoccur.”

“the big cheat sheet into the future ofPaleoamerican archaeology.” It’s ahypothesis so simple it’s brilliant.

Dunbar hints at an upcoming an-nouncement that will let us gaugethe effectiveness of his hypothesis,but he refuses to divulge any furtherinformation on the subject. With a“sorry about that” and a chuckle, heclosed our interview.

Page-Ladson has given the ar-chaeological community a lot ofgristle to chew on: new methods, adetailed stratigraphic record andpaleoclimatic model for the South-east, and new perspectives on thepressures dramatic climate swingsof the Pleistocene imposed onearly Americans and the flora andfauna they depended on. Until wehear the announcement JimDunbar hints is in the works, we’lljust have to keep our ears perkedand try to be patient.

–Dale Graham

How to contact the principal of this article:James S. DunbarSenior ArchaeologistPublic Lands ArchaeologyBureau of Archaeological ResearchB. Calvin Jones Center for ArchaeologyGovernor Martin House1001 de Soto Park DriveTallahassee, FL 32301e-mail: jsdunbar@dos.state.fl.us

Suggested Readings

Dunbar, J. S. 1991 Resource Orientation of Clovis and SuwanneeAge Paleoindian Sites in Florida. Clovis Origins and Adaptations,edited by R. Bonnichsen, and K. L. Turnmire, pp. 185–213. Centerfor the Study of the First Americans, Corvallis, OR.

Dunbar, J. S., and C. A. Hemmings 2004 Florida Paleoindian Pointsand Knives. New Perspectives on the First Americans, edited by R.Bonnichsen et al., pp. 65–72. Center for the Study of the FirstAmericans, Texas A&M University Press, College Station, TX.

Our recommendations If you’d like to learn more about thePage-Ladson site, we recommend First Floridians and LastMastodons: The Page-Ladson Site in the Aucilla River, edited byDavid Webb (below). In this volume there are 21 chapterswritten by Jim Dunbar and other scholars that detail the site’sgeology and dating, climate history, plant and animal remains,and Paleoindian and Archaic archaeological records. We alsorecommend Barbara Purdy’s new book Florida’s People duringthe Last Ice Age (below), a comprehensive and interestingsynthesis of the early human prehistory of Florida.

Dunbar, J. S., and P. K. Vojnovski 2007 Early Floridians and LateMega-Mammals: Some Technological and Dietary Evidence fromFour North Florida Paleoindian Sites. Foragers of the TerminalPleistocene, edited by R. B. Walker and B. N. Driskell. University ofNebraska Press, Lincoln, NE.

Dunbar, J. S., and B. I. Waller 1983 A Distribution of the Clovis/Suwannee Paleo-Indian Sites of Florida—A Geographic Approach.Florida Anthropologist, 36:18–30.

Dunbar, J. S., S. D. Webb, and M. K. Faught 1991 Inundated Prehis-toric Sites in Apalachee Bay, Florida, and the Search for the ClovisShoreline. Paleoshorelines and Prehistory: An Investigation ofMethod, edited by L. L. Johnson and M. Stright, pp. 117–46. CRCPress, Inc., Boca Raton.

Hemmings, C. A., J. S. Dunbar, and S. D. Webb 2004 Florida’s Early-Paleoindian Bone and Ivory Tools. New Perspectives on the FirstAmericans, edited by B. A. Bradley and R. Bonnichsen, pp. 87–92.Center for the Study of the First Americans, Texas A&M UniversityPress, College Station, Texas.

Purdy, B. 2008 Florida’s People during the Last Ice Age. UniversityPress of Florida.

Webb, S. D., editor 2006 First Floridians and Last Mastodons: ThePage-Ladson Site in the Aucilla River. Springer.

Dunbar, October 2003, before themastodon skeleton recovered from

Wakulla Springs in 1930 and now ondisplay in the Florida Museum of

History in Tallahassee.

For Dunbar, a key to understanding Paleoamerican strate-gies for survival is the tendency for hunter-gatherers and faunato congregate near scarce water sources during dry Pleis-tocene climate periods.

A case in point is Kirk serrated-point sites from the earlyArchaic. They aren’t easy to find because the sites are widelydistributed over a wide territory. In fact, they seem to be all overthe place, but because the environment was wet at the time andfreshwater resources were plentiful, there wasn’t a need foranimals to congregate near an oasis. On the other hand, if youwant to find Bolen points, Dunbar advises looking near sourcesof deep water because dry conditions prevailed at the peak of theBolen culture. This is the concept behind what he refers to as

April ■ 2009 9

C

more noted for its prehistoric Woodland andMississippian earthworks.

Three seasons of investigations byBrookes and McGahey confirmed stratifiedcultural deposits up to 4 ft deep, makingHester one of the largest intact Southeast-ern base camp sites containing discrete cul-tural components of the Paleoamerican andArchaic periods. Archaeology at Hester,which lies on the boundary of the Tennes-see and Mississippi River basins, clarifiedprehistoric projectile-point chronology, re-vealed innovations in lithic technology, andenlarged our understanding of early ex-plorers and settlers of the Eutaw Hills.

HESTER

Overview of the Hester site, located inthe background near the tree line, as itlooked in 1974. The borrow pit in theforeground hadn’t degraded the site.

UN

LESS

NO

TED

, A

LL P

HO

TOS:

MIS

SISS

IPPI

DEP

ART

MEN

TO

F A

RCH

IVES

AN

D H

ISTO

RY,

JAC

KSO

N,

MIS

SISS

IPPI

Peeling back layers tells the history of HesterThe Hester site lies on an alluvial floodplain next to a smallcreek, which empties into the Tombigbee River. The EutawHills soil consists of micaceous glauconite sand layers, whichin the area of the Hester site overlie Tuscaloosa chert deposits.These chert deposits, exposed by erosion in the nearby creek,were doubtless a principal reason for repeated occupations.Hunter-gatherers scouting for an ideal location for a base campsought to satisfy three requisites: a reliable source of water, anample supply of food, and stone for making tools. At Hesterthey found all three. Although the Tuscaloosa chert was infe-rior in knapping quality to, say, fine Edwards chert, we’ll see

how resourceful toolmakers found a way towork around the deficiency in local toolstone.

Brookes and McGahey visited the site inDecember of 1973 and immediately excavatedfive 5-by-5-ft test pits to define the depth andextent of the site and hopefully to determinewhich cultures had occupied Hester and theirsequence. Their excavations revealed four dis-tinct soil zones at the Hester site:

1) a surface layer of black sandy humus 1.2 ftdeep;

2) a layer of red-brown sand, extending to 3.4ft below the surface;

3) a layer of yellow sand 3.4–4.4 ft below thesurface;

4) a layer of white sand that overlies the tanTuscaloosa chert deposits. This lowestsand layer is a culturally sterile, naturallyoccurring level.

The surface layer, as expected, was a plowzone. Stratacontaining cultural materials of the middle-Archaic, late-Archaic, Woodland, and Mississippian periods, identified by

This region in the Eutaw Hills had never produced a find ofmajor archaeological significance and was now home to anunglamorous gravel operation. Thanks to their alertness andthe guidance of professionals, collectors Glenn Beachum andAlan Harrison were about to make an important contribution toearly Southeastern prehistory, for the Hester site they discov-ered is today recognized as a nationally significant middle- tolate-Paleoamerican (10,000–11,000 CALYBP) and early-Archaic (9000–10,000 CALYBP) base camp.

From responsible avocationals into thehands of capable professionalsRecent plowing had removed dense forest litterthat normally blanketed the ground, andBeachum and Harrison recognized that thestone flakes—colored bright yellow, orange,pink, and red—that stood out in stark contrastagainst sandy tan soil were lithic debitage. After afew weeks of digging, they recovered nearlytwice as many Paleoamerican and early-Ar-chaic diagnostic lithic artifacts as had previ-ously been found at any site in Mississippi.Fortunately for American archaeology, theysuspected their material came from strati-fied contexts that might contain even more early human arti-facts. Rather than relegating their finds to a coffee can, theytook them to Sam Brookes and Sam McGahey, staff archaeolo-gists with the Mississippi Department of Archives and Historyin Jackson. By a happy coincidence, the scientists had a profes-sional interest in Paleoamerican and Archaic cultures in a state

OLORED BITS OF STONE caught the eye of two amateurprojectile-point collectors in early 1973 as they combedthe ground abutting a creek in northeastern Mississippi.

by Mark R. Barnes

10 Volume 24 ■ Number 2

ceramics and projectile points, had been deflated by cultivationand their contents hopelessly intermixed.

In the reddish brown sand layer investigators found evi-dence of early- and middle-Archaicoccupations (10,000–7000 CALYBP).The early-Archaic artifacts, made al-most exclusively of native Tuscaloosachert, included Lost Lake, Green-brier, Pine Tree, Decatur, Eva, Mor-row Mountain, Beachum, and BigSandy projectile points, along withstone cores, large flakes, prismaticblades, nutting stones, unifacial

Paleoamerican period. Brookes likewise concludes that thepresence of Fort Payne chert material associated with a pre-11,000 CALYBP Paleoamerican occupation at the Hester site is

evidence of initial inhabitants of theEutaw Hills emanating from the eastto explore and eventually colonizethe area of present-day northeastMississippi.

McGahey, on the other hand, ismore cautious about accepting asfact occupation at Hester as early asClovis or Cumberland merely be-cause of the presence of these flutedpoints. In the first place, he notesthat they aren’t in good context;moreover, he suspects that “theymay all have been transported thereby later prehistoric inhabitants.” Per-

haps, in his view, a memberof the Dalton culture orsome other Early Americanappreciated the fine work-manship in a discoveredClovis point. McGahey’sskepticism underscores theneed for further research atHester.

Fixing the boundaries of HesterBrookes and McGahey’s five test pits demonstrated that intactPaleoamerican and early-Archaic deposits extended to an as-tonishing depth of 4 ft. Brookes notes, however, that thehorizontal sequencing of strata “was not readily apparent be-cause only small widely scattered [test] pits were excavated,”rather like a half-opened Christmas Advent calendar. In 1974the scientists dug two more test pits and a trench 150 by 5 ft to

verify the cultural strata sequence and determine the horizon-tal extent of the site.

This 1974 trenching operation discovered, in addition tomore of the same types of Paleoamerican and early-Archaictools as found in the initial test pits, blade cores, piècesesquillées (lithics produced using a bipolar flaking technique),

0

5

cm

A few of the Archaic andPaleoamerican projectile points

recovered at the Hester site in early1973 by Beachum and Harrison.This evidence led McGahey andBrookes to undertake investiga-

tions in 1973, 1974, and 1978.

(Inset) A complete fluted point and bases of two pointsrecovered at the Hester site by Beachum and Harrison in

early 1973. The point on the far left was made from darkgray Fort Payne chert native to north Alabama, probably

deposited by some of the earliest occupants of the site. Theother two points are made from local tan Tuscaloosa chert.

endscrapers, and bifaces. To Brookes and McGahey the rangeof flaked-stone and finished tools indicated that “tools werecompletely finished at the site,” indicative of a base campoccupation.

The upper portion of the yellow sand layer containedmiddle- and late-Paleoamerican (Quad and Dalton) artifacts(11,000–10,000 CALYBP) made of local tan-colored Tuscaloosachert. Two fluted Paleoamerican points were found in 1978toward the lower part of this layer,one Clovis and one Cumberland.They were made not of local tanchert, but of blue-gray Fort Paynechert from the Tennessee River Val-ley of northern Alabama more than100 miles to the east. Al Goodyear,

SMIT

HSO

NIA

N I

NST

ITU

TIO

N.

JAM

ES D

I LO

RETO

, PH

OTO

GRA

PHER

.C

ATA

LOG

NO

S. M

W45

5, 5

2681

6, 5

2682

5, 5

2682

3, 5

2680

3, 8

1892

5

Lithic artifacts of the Daltonculture from the Sloan site in

Arkansas, which was occupied atthe same period as the Hester

site. A, unifacial knife; B, adze;C, endscraper; D–F, projectile

points.

principal investigator of the Topper site in South Carolina (MT21-4, “Clovis at Topper”), finds it significant that both flutedpoints came from “the lower portion of the yellow sand zone”(middle and late Paleoamerican, Quad and Dalton occupa-tions). For Dr. Goodyear, this is strong evidence for the pres-ence of one or more occupations of fluted-point makers of the

0 5cm

A B C D E F

April ■ 2009 11

adzes, drills, knives, choppers, hammerstones, a mano, anvils,abraders and grooved stones, fire-cracked rock, and banner-stones not found in earlier investigations.

In 1978, Brookes expanded excavations on either side of the1974 trench, netting a total excavation of 1,350 ft2. Goodyearnotes that this work conclusively confirmed “a good strati-graphic separation of theEarly Archaic notchedpoints associated withthe dark red-brown sandzone from the Dalton(late-Paleoamerican)material in the yellowsand zone.” What’smore, these excavationsalso identified a previ-ously undetected Quad(middle-Paleoamerican)horizon below the Dal-ton occupation in thelower portion of the yel-low sand zone, pushingback the initial occupa-tion of the site by an-other 1,000 years.

Follow-up investigations by Brookes and McGahey concen-trated on areas of the site to the northwest of the area exploredby the discoverers. This excavation area was given State sitesurvey number 22Mo569 and the name Hester-Standifer, acombination of the landowner’s name and a nearby geographi-cal feature. Eventually the Hester site was expanded to thesoutheast of 22Mo569 to include the area first investigated bythe collectors. This part of the Hester site was given thenumber 22Mo1011 and named the Beachum-Harrison site inrecognition of the original discoverers. The Hester site, whichembraces both sites and bears both State site survey numbers(22Mo569 and 22Mo1011), was listed in the National Registerof Historic Places in June 1975. The Hester Site was designateda National Historic Landmark by the Secretary of the Interiorin January 2001, under a joint Mississippi Department of Ar-chives and History and Southeast Regional office of the Na-tional Park Service effort.

Solving the mystery of the Technicolor stone flakesRemember those brightly colored flakes of stone that originallycaught Beachum and Harrison’s attention? McGahey’s exhaus-tive analysis of lithic material from the Paleoamerican and early-Archaic strata (the red-brown and yellow layers) determinedthat Hester toolmakers developed innovative heat-treating tech-niques to improve their ability to work the local inferiorTuscaloosa chert into useful tools. Heat treating changed thecolor of the tan chert to vivid reds, pinks, and yellows.

McGahey tells us that the earliest examples of heat treating,which apparently date to Clovis times, “often left little obviousindication on bifaces, the most common remaining indicationbeing a reddened distal end, auricle [shoulder], or both. Thisphenomenon appears to be the result of heat treating at lowertemperatures or at an earlier stage of reduction than was the

case with the later technique.” The later, improved technique,apparently begun at the Hester site in the lanceolate (earlyDalton) period and further refined during the later (side-notched Dalton) period, was used almost exclusively in thesucceeding early-Archaic period. Applied to the tan Tuscaloosachert found at Hester, heat treating produces a complete color

change and imparts to the chert “a bright,lustrous appearance after flaking.”

Over the millennia, knappers at Hester ap-plied their enhanced technique of heat treat-ing Tuscaloosa chert so extensively that thepractice may be responsible for the reddishbrown hue of the early-Archaic soil layer.

Tendrils of inquiry extend beyondHester’s bordersOf especial value to archaeologists are arti-facts of the Dalton period found at the Hester

An early-Archaic projectilepoint recovered by Beachumand Harrison from the Hestersite in early 1973.

Byron Inmon, then a graduate student ofthe University of Arkansas, excavating atthe Hester site in 1974 under the auspicesof the Mississippi Department of Archivesand History.

site. Dating Dalton projectile points in the southeastern U.S.has always been problematic. Although research from somesites places Dalton points exclusively in the late-Paleo-american period, evidence from other sites suggests manufac-ture of Dalton points continued into the early Archaic. TheDalton component at the Hester site, according to Brookes, is“the only known occurrence of such an isolated Dalton depositin Mississippi and one of the few known in the Southeast.” Adozen Dalton projectile points were uncovered in excavationsat the Hester site—perfect specimens, since they aren’t mixedwith later cultural materials—along with Dalton-period toolsincluding burins, knives, blades, flakes, end- and sidescrapers,gravers, pitted stones, cores, pièces esquillées, and hammer-stones.

“All categories of artifactsfrom the Dalton zone,” saysBrookes, “would seem quite inplace in a hunting-butcheringstation.” The 1974 trenching

operation uncovered evidence of at least two separate Daltonoccupations at the Hester site. Dalton tools recovered from thetrenching operation of 1974 didn’t show signs of heat treating,were predominately lanceolate in form, and had little sidenotching. They differ markedly from Dalton points recoveredby collectors Beachum and Harrison, which bore evidence ofside notching and heat treating, indicative of a later Daltonoccupation in which toolmakers used heat treating. Thus

12 Volume 24 ■ Number 2

Hester has given us two discrete Dalton hunting and gatheringoccupations, one Paleoamerican and one early Archaic, sepa-rated in time, space, and by lithic technology. This nugget ofinformation will pay off handsomely in dating Dalton artifactsat other early Southeastern sites.

Informing us about adzes . . . and much moreEarly-Archaic occupations at Hester are a continuation andelaboration of the initial Dalton-period base camp occupation.Discoveries of adzes and nutting stones are evidence thatactivities expanded in the early Archaic to include woodwork-ing and processing wild plant foods. McGahey notes that al-though no faunal remains were recovered from theseoccupation levels, remains of hickory nuts, walnuts, hack-berries, acorns, and wild plums were recovered from both late-Paleoamerican and early-Archaic occupation levels.

The Brand site in Arkansas, a Dalton-phase site, has pro-duced adzes similar to those found in the early-Archaic level of

Autauga, Josselyn (Provisional type), Pine Tree, Lost Lake, andBeachum, were found at Hester above the Quad and Daltonyellow sandy layer. These points are similar to types found at theStanfield-Worley Rockshelter and Russell Cave, both in nearbynorthern Alabama, where Dalton and early-Archaic pointsshared the same stratum. Because of the mixed nature of thesecave sites, John W. Griffin in 1974 postulated that Dalton and BigSandy point makers coexisted; moreover, he doubts that BigSandy points will ever be found in a pure context.

Brookes counters Griffin abruptly: “Hester has answeredGriffin’s question: Big Sandy points are found in a zone abovethe Dalton assemblage.”

Brookes also notes differences between Dalton and BigSandy points made evident at Hester: color (Daltons are lightyellow, whereas heat-treated artifacts of later cultures are over-whelmingly reddish) and lithic technology (he is confident thatanalysis of flakes from Hester will find evidence of a differentheat-treating technique). “Not only point form and soil zone,”

Brookes concludes,“but also technologi-cal aspects demand aseparation.”

McGahey offershelpful advice, basedon his analysis ofpoints recoveredfrom Hester, on re-

solving a sticky problem that confronts researchers: differentiat-ing early-Archaic Dalton and Greenbrier projectile points. Bothare similar types quite close in time and usually not distinguish-able, particularly when both types are made from tan Tuscaloosachert. He notes that Greenbrier points from Hester have astraight or slightly concave base, unlike a Dalton point, whosebase is usually definitely concave. Greenbrier points in northMississippi are more likely than not to show evidence of heattreating, which changes the usually tan stone to a shade of red.Finally, McGahey observes that a Greenbrier point is likely tohave been recycled as a wedging tool, the hard duty resulting inmultiple impact flake scars emanating from the distal and proxi-mal ends.

Hester and our changing view of early culturesWe used to think Paleoamericans were big-game hunters thatlived only on the Great Plains and hunted exclusivelymegafauna. Decades of continuing research have altered ourperception of these groups. Now we see they were in fact

0 5cmQuad points, made from local tan

Tuscaloosa chert, excavated from theHester site in 1974. They were foundbelow the stratum containing Dalton

points, which confirms the chrono-logical ordering of Southeastern

Paleoamerican artifacts.

the Hester Site. It’s possible that adzes weren’t found in theDalton component at Hester because of sampling error.Brookes considers it also possible that the adze was intro-duced as a new tool type from Arkansas during the succeedingearly-Archaic period. If he’s right, then the introduction ofadzes into the Hester site during the early Archaic may signifya vector of transmission of new tool forms from the west intothe Eutaw Hills of Mississippi.

The intact cultural stratigraphy of the Hester site has beenof enormous help in identifying projectile points and assigningthem to cultural periods at other Southeast sites. Unlike manyAlabama sites where Big Sandy and Dalton artifacts have beenfound together, at Hester there is, Brookes notes, “a clearseparation between the two types, Dalton points lying beneathBig Sandy points. At the Hester site, therefore, it can bedefinitely stated that the Big Sandy occupation occurred afterthe Dalton occupation.”

Other early-Archaic projectile points besides Big Sandypoints, including Greenbrier, Jude, Plevna, Ecusta, Decatur,

Suggested ReadingsBrookes, S. O. 1979 The Hester Site, An Early Archaic Occupation

in Monroe County, Mississippi, I. A Preliminary Report. MississippiDepartment of Archives and History, Archaeological Report No. 5,Jackson, Mississippi.

Brookes, S. O., and S. O. McGahey 1974 Discovery of an EarlySite in Northeast Mississippi. Mississippi Archaeological Associa-tion Newsletter 9:1–7.

Goodyear, A. C. 1991 The Early Holocene Occupation of theSoutheastern United States: A Geoarchaeological Summary.Manuscript submitted for publication, on file South Carolina Insti-

tute of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of South Caro-lina, Columbia, South Carolina.

Griffin, J. W. 1974 Investigations in Russell Cave. National ParkService, Archeological Research Series 13.

McGahey, S. O. n.d. Paleo Indian and Early Archaic Historic Con-text for Mississippi. Manuscript on file at the Mississippi StateHistoric Preservation Office, Jackson, Mississippi.

——— 1996 Paleoindian and Early Archaic Data from Mississippi.In The Paleoindian and Early Archaic Southeast, edited by David G.Anderson and Kenneth E. Sassaman, pp. 354–84. The University ofAlabama Press, Tuscaloosa.

April ■ 2009 13

This article and previous articles on the Borax Lake site(MT 22-2) and Hardaway site (MT 22-4) grew out of aNational Park Service effort to develop National HistoricLandmark studies for consideration by the Secretary of theInterior while I was employed as a Senior Archeologist withthe National Register Programs Division of the SoutheastRegional Office in Atlanta, Georgia. Albert Goodyear sug-gested the series of articles for the Mammoth Trumpet as amemorial to my colleagues and friends Robson Bonnichsen,who was instrumental in developing the Borax Lake land-

mark study, and Thomas Eubanks, Louisiana State Arche-ologist, whom I had worked with to preserve several sites inhis state. Proceeds from these articles will be donated to theArchaeological Conservancy to help purchase and preservearchaeological sites in their memory. Special thanks to SamBrookes and Sam McGahey for their helpful comments indrafting this article.

–Mark R. Barnes, Ph.D.National Park Service Senior Archeologist (retired)

e-mail: karenmark@mindspring.com

recently visited Wiki Peak. He found artifacts throughout thisarea.

Apart from Alaska, there is an obsidian source in the AleutianIslands on a volcano called Okmok. There are dozens of sourcesin British Columbia, the Yukon Territory, and southeastAlaska; obsidian fromthree of them—HoodooMountain, Suemez Island,and Mount Edziza—wasused extensively by pre-historic people. Obsidianfrom Mount Edziza, for ex-ample, has been found inthe Alaska interior, about1,200 km from its origin.

Post–Cold War coop-erationAfter the fall of the SovietUnion at the end of 1991,researchers from Americaand the former SovietUnion joined forces in anattempt to confirm the Bering Strait theory. It was thought thatwhen scientists from these two continents got together itwould be a simple matter of comparing their respective flutedpoints. However, no Clovis-like material has been discoveredin Siberia. This doesn’t rule out the possibility that early peoplemigrated over the Land Bridge; it simply means scientists aregoing to have to get creative to prove it.

Today obsidian sourcing is practiced by scientists in Siberiain the states of Kamchatka and Chukotka. Kamchatka is a well-documented area, as far as obsidian is concerned. In all, 30sources lie within its borders, but only 16 were used prehistori-

cally. Interestingly, there is a group of sites here known as theUshki Lake sites, which contain components thought to be olderthan 13,000 CALYBP (MT 18-1, “Hunting Pre-Clovis in Siberia:Year 2000 Excavations at Ushki, Kamchatka”).

This obsidian project, spanning continents, is a huge interna-tional effort. Collaborating with American researchers includingSpeakman and Michael Glascock, of the University of Missouri,are Russian scientists Yaroslav Kuzmin, Vladimir Popov, AndreiGrebennikov, Margarita Dikova, and Andrei Ptashinsky. To-

gether they have studied UshkiLake and discovered six sources ofKamchatka obsidian that were uti-lized in the Pleistocene. This infor-mation confirms the significantmobility of these early people. It alsosuggests they may have kept mov-ing, right across the Land Bridge,to become the first Americans.

The state of Chukotka in north-east Russia is a little less forthcom-ing with information. Analysis of

Following the Obsidian Trail

continued from page 3

Distribution of Alaskanarchaeological sites known tohave obsidian obtained fromthe Batza Tena source.

REU

THER

ET

AL.

200

9

obsidian artifacts from the surrounding area documents threesources, but only one has been located, Krasnoye (Red) Lake.Some 150 artifacts have been analyzed from this state, and 90percent of them come from the Krasnoye Lake source.

The big questionYou have to be able to identify East Beringian obsidian so youcan distinguish it from Siberian obsidian. But if the location ofa source is unknown, how can you know whether obsidiancame from Alaska or, say, Siberia? And there are 23 obsidiansources whose locations remain unknown.

cultural innovators that explored and colonized many differentecological zones and exploited many kinds of game and plantfoods. This is the changing “big picture” of the Paleoamericanand early-Archaic periods. The Hester Site, and others like it,gift us with the minutiae of cultural information—how andfrom where areas were colonized and new tool types intro-

duced; what activities were performed at a site and how theseevolved through time; how these people physically modifiedthe environment at this locale.

Preserving national landmarks like the Hester site is criticalto future generations of researchers who will ask questionsabout cultural data we may not even have conceptualized.

14 Volume 24 ■ Number 2

Since the database for Northeast Asian obsidian is very thor-ough, it’s unlikely that unknown obsidian material found inBeringia comes from sources in Northeast Asia. “We’ve ana-lyzed about a thousand artifacts and geologic source samplesfrom Kamchatka,” says Speakman. “We have a very good idea ofwhat the obsidian looks like chemically. So I think that there’slittle likelihood that some of the unknown Alaska groups arefrom Kamchatka.” However, he allows the slim probability thatunknown sources may lie in Chukotka and areas west of therebecause these locations are less well understood.

With all this information, has any Siberian obsidian beenfound in Beringia? The answer is yes. Unfortunately, none of it isdatable to the Pleistocene. John Cook of the Bureau of LandManagement in Alaska docu-mented the first immigrant ob-sidian from Russia in a 1995article in Arctic Anthropology;since then, a handful of otherpieces have surfaced. All ofthese, however, date to the lateHolocene. Nonetheless, Speak-man and his Alaskan collabora-tors, Jeff Rasic and JoshuaReuther (Northern Land Use

number of sites that predate Swan Point in both the continentalU.S. and South America.

But what can it mean?So why hasn’t Russian obsidian from the Pleistocene beenfound in Alaska? The first obvious answer is simply that theBering Land Bridge wasn’t the original access to the NewWorld as we thought. This is a difficult bit of information toswallow for those of us who have been taught it since elemen-tary school. It begs the question, Where else? Dennis Stanfordand Bruce Bradley argue that Clovis was introduced by immi-grants from the Solutrean culture in Europe (MT 17-1, “Immi-grants from the Other Side?”). According to this hypothesis,

boat people made their wayto the New World 15,000 to20,000 years ago by skirt-ing the North Atlantic icesheet. Other researchers,including Loren Davis andRoberta Hall (MT 22-1,“Late-Pleistocene Occupa-tions on the OregonCoast”), and Alan Bryanand Ruth Gruhn (MT 17-2, “The Baja Connection”),envision boat people skirt-ing the Pacific coast andsettling as far south as BajaCalifornia. These theoriesare still overpowered bythe classic model of migra-

tion over the Bering Land Bridge, and they haven’t been seizedupon by the archaeological community at large. But evidencecontinues to mount in support of both of these scenarios.

There’s another alternative to tossing the dominant BeringLand Bridge theory out the window: Perhaps the Clovis culturenever existed in Northeast Asia. “Clovis could be a New Worldmanifestation,” Speakman suggests, “but the actual peoplethemselves are migrants that could have come across the

✷

✷✷

Geologist AndreiGrebennikov (left) and

Speakman examine obsidianat Nachiki, Kamchataka,

summer 2004.

V.

K.

POPO

V

Research, Inc., Fairbanks), remain optimistic that Siberianobsidian will be found in Alaskan archaeological sites that dateto the late Pleistocene or early Holocene.

There are a number of sites dating to the Pleistocene inBeringia. The oldest is the Swan Point site, whose cultural zonehas been dated to about 12,000 RCYBP. Swan Point lies almostdirectly between Batza Tena and Wiki Peak, and all its obsidianartifacts are assumed to be made of material from Alaskansources. The puzzle is further complicated, of course, by the

Suggested ReadingsCook, J. P. 1995 Characterization and Distribution of Obsidian in

Alaska. Arctic Anthropology 32:92–100.

Glascock, M. D., V. K. Popov, Y. V. Kuzmin, R. J. Speakman, A. V.Ptashinsky, and A. V. Grebennikov 2006 Sources of Obsidianon Kamchatka Peninsula (Russian Far East) and Their Use inPrehistory: Initial Results. In Archaeology in Northeast Asia: On thePath to Bering Strait, edited by D. E. Dumond and R. L. Bland, pp.73–88. University of Oregon Anthropological Papers No. 65. Uni-versity of Oregon, Eugene.

Goebel, T., R. J. Speakman, and J. D. Reuther 2008 Results ofGeochemical Analysis of Obsidian Artifacts from the WalkerRoad Site, Alaska. Current Research in the Pleistocene 25:88–90.

Phillips, S. C., and R. J. Speakman in press Initial Source Evalua-tion of Archaeological Obsidian from the Kuril Islands of theRussian Far East by Portable X-ray Fluorescence. Journal of Ar-chaeological Science.

Reuther, J. D., N. Slobodina, J. T. Rasic, J. P. Cook, and R. J.Speakman 2009 Gaining Momentum—The Status of ObsidianSource Studies in Alaska and Their Importance for Developing aBetter Understanding of the Regional Prehistory. In ExplainingLithic Assemblage Variability Across Beringia, edited by T. Goebeland I. Buvit. College Station: Texas A&M Press. (in press).

Shackley, M. S., editor 1998 Archaeological Obsidian Studies:Method and Theory. New York & London: Plenum Press.

Speakman, R. J., C. E. Holmes, and M. D. Glascock2007 Source Determination of Obsidian Artifacts from SwanPoint (XBD-156), Alaska, Current Research in the Pleistocene24:143–45.

Speakman, R. J., M. D. Glascock, V. K. Popov, Y. V. Kuzmin, A. V.Ptashinsky, and A. V. Grebennikov 2005 Geochemistry ofVolcanic Glasses and Sources of Archaeological Obsidian onthe Kamchatka Peninsula (Russian Far East): First Results.Current Research in the Pleistocene 22:11–13.

✷A Center for the Study of the First Americans publication.

continued on page 20

April ■ 2009 15

In the footsteps of

Junius BirdJunius BirdPart III: Reexamining theRecord

UN

LESS

NO

TED

, A

LL P

HO

TOS:

DIV

ISIO

N O

F A

NTH

ROPO

LOG

Y, J

UN

IUS

BIRD

ARC

HIV

ES,

AM

ERIC

AN

MU

SEU

M O

F N

ATU

RAL

HIS

TORY

AGICIANS pull rabbits from hats.Archaeologist Tom Amorosi prefers to have an aceup his sleeve.

and an open mind. Amorosi is organizing an international effortthat will review with fresh eyes and state-of-the-art methodspre-Columbian collections of archaeologist Junius B. Bird thathave been housed in the U.S. and Chile for more than half acentury. Some parts of those collections have been repeatedlyreviewed. Others have never been touched.

Bird’s ground-breaking work of nearly 70 years ago clearly

MDr. Amorosi, Research Associate in the Division of Anthro-

pology at the American Museum of Natural History in NewYork, sometimes slips a special red ace of spades into a carddeck to replace a black one when lecturing students. He fansthe deck on a table, asks if they notice anything unusual, andthen waits until someone spots the bogus red ace. It invariablytakes graduate students longer to find the card than it does hisundergraduates; his more experienced peers take the longestof all to find the card.

The trick, he says, demonstrates that strongly held assump-tions might not always be correct, and that the longer we holdthose assumptions the more vulnerable we become to over-looking certain details or discrepancies.

This lesson is uniquely important to the study of old mu-seum collections—there’s always something new to learn eachtime they are examined, particularly with a fresh perspective

The archetypal young bearded scientist! Junius learned hisseamanship aboard Captain Bob Bartlett’s sloop on thesouthern Labrador coast in 1927.

Equus scotti depicted by Knight, the artist who executed thepainting on our cover. The discovery of extinct horse remainsat Fell’s Cave and Pali Aike was considered firm evidence ofthe association of humans with Pleistocene-age fauna. Birdthought horse remains found in these rockshelters belongedto E. scotti. Although Bird’s horse remains are still under studyby Amorosi, their actual taxonomic affiliation is probablyassignable to an older equine genus, Onohippidium.

AM

ERIC

AN

MU

SEU

M O

F N

ATU

RAL

HIS

TORY

16 Volume 24 ■ Number 2

demonstrated that humans coex-isted with now-extinct mammals atthe southern tip of South Americasome 11,000 radiocarbon yearsago, approximately coincident withthe Clovis culture in NorthAmerica. His work raised ques-tions that continue to stir heateddebate about the timing of humanentry into the New World. Hisstratigraphic work also providedbaseline original research and hu-man occupation sequences thathave guided archaeologicalthought about that region eversince.

Whether there is a red ace hid-den in that body of research re-mains to be seen. But Amorosi andthe team he assembles intend towatch for it.

Amorosi recognizes the value ofmuseum collections like Bird’s.“Sometimes we can get blinded byexpectations of what should be there,” he admits. “Sometimeswe can get some valuable new information out of these collec-tions, or use them as a springboard for future analysis or thetesting of new research questions. And, yes, sometimes we runinto blind alleys. But I think it is worth the effort.”

There’s no shortage of material for researchers to study inthe collection at the American Museum,which could fill two 8-by-10-ft rooms. It spansthe time from the Pleistocene to the 19thcentury. The faunal material for Pali AikeCave alone, Amorosi notes, comprises 10,000remains.

For most of us research on this scalewould be daunting, probably harrowing.Amorosi comes well prepared for the taskafter examining more than half a millionbones for his dissertation project in Iceland.

Assembling the teamThe project today is in its infancy. AsAmorosi describes the current state in re-

cruiting team members, “ We arestill finding out who wants to playin the sand box.”

On board so far are Michael Wa-ters, director of CSFA, and Tho-mas Stafford of Stafford ResearchLaboratories in Boulder, Colorado,who together will refine dates onsome of Bird’s materials; JacoWeinstock of the Ancient DNA andEvolution Group, Centre for An-cient Genetics, Neils Bohr Instituteand Biological Institute, Universityof Copenhagen, Denmark, will helpwith DNA work; Andrew Dugmoreof the Institute of Geography,School of Geosciences, Universityof Edinburgh, Scotland, will datevolcanic ash from some of the sitesin his tephrachronology laboratory;Mario A. Rivera, a former col-league of Bird’s from Chile and nowa visiting professor at Beloit Collegein Wisconsin, will assist with dataanalysis. Paleontologist FranciscoJuan Prevosti of the Depart-amento Cientifico de Paleontologiade Vertebrados at the Museo de LaPlata, La Plata, Argentina, will be

there. So will Luis A. Borrero and G. Lorena L’Heureux ofthe Departamento de Investigaciones Prehistoricas y Arque-ologicas (CONICET), Buenos Aires. Sumru Aricanli, SeniorScientific Assistant at the Division of Anthropology, AMNH,helps organize the researchers and the collections.

Project details, such as research questions to be asked andtasks to be assigned, have yet tobe determined. Money to fi-nance what Amorosi sees as apossible 5-year project—assum-ing his full-time devotion to it—remains elusive. Nevertheless,grant writing is underway, andAmorosi is optimistic that infor-mation gathered so far will le-verage money to expand andcontinue the project.

Inventorying the recordMeanwhile, Amorosi and histeam plow onward. “We haveonly inventoried the [Ameri-can Museum] collections atthis point,” Amorosi says, andthat inventory is far from com-plete. But he sees a storehouseof information locked up inbones from the collections. Henotes, for example, that Wein-

This map by D. F. L. Bradley, whichplots the Birds’ 1936–37 journey inthe Southern Cone, also shows the

sites of Fell’s Cave and Pali Aike.

A major problem in the 1969–70 fieldseason at Fell’s Cave was removing largeand potentially dangerous boulders fromthe cave’s stratigraphy. Ever resourceful,

Bird and his son figured out how toleverage these boulders out of the way of

his excavation team.

April ■ 2009 17

stock and another set of colleagues in Argentina are alreadyinvestigating ancient camelid DNA to see how far back in timethey can trace different camel species in Bird’s collection.

Also bound up in the data is the issue of whether the domesticdog existed in Pleis-tocene South America.Juliet Clutton-Brockexamined the carni-vore remains fromFell’s Cave, identifieddomestic dog, Canisfamiliaris, at the low-est level, and con-cluded that people liv-ing in southern SouthAmerica brought thedomestic dog withthem. “It has been as-sumed,” Amorosi ex-plains, “that domesticdog existed in early SouthAmerican sites. Yet we seeno evidence of Canis famili-aris, only the doglike fox spe-cies Dusicyon. We have ana-lyzed every bone fragmentand were very surprised byit.” He and Argentine paleon-tologist Prevosti published ajoint paper, “A PreliminaryReview of the Canid Remainsfrom Junius Bird’s Excava-tions at Fell’s and Pali AikeCaves, Magallanes, Chile,” inthe 2008 edition of Current Research in the Pleistocene; theirfindings assert that tooth morphology from reanalysis ofsamples earlier studied by Clutton-Brock is more akin to foxthan to domestic dog.

Surprises have a way of popping up in collections. Amorosirecalls when he and a colleague were examining materialsupposedly containing fox andseal remains. Lo, on close ex-amination a mandible turnedout to be from a mountain lion.What was a mountain lion doingthis far south? How old was it?Success in examining collec-tions depends on patience andan open mind. “The whole set ofthis material needs to be exam-ined closely,” he says, “just tosee what we have got.”

The inventory process has al-ready produced one major newdiscovery, a site plan for PaliAike Cave that had previouslyescaped detection (Current Re-search in the Pleistocene 2006,

vol. 23). The discovery came by accident, the result of a flashof insight. While going through stacks of Bird’s paperwork in2005, Aricanli gave Amorosi four sheets of notebook-sizedpaper containing elements of a drawing. They looked familiar

to him, but he couldn’t place it. So he pinned thepapers to his office wall. One day he suddenlysaw them as a whole.

“I still wasn’t sure what it was,” he recalls.

The cave mouth of the Pali Aike site, lyingwithin an old volcanic cone, as it appeared in1936 before Bird began his excavations. Log onto Google Earth to view the Pali Aike lava fieldwhere this site is located.

The view from inside the cave mouth of thePali Aike rockshelter in 1936. Taphonomy iscomplicated by the steep slope—rainwater candisturb sediments and objects in the cave.

▲

▲

Numbers appeared on parts of the draw-ing. Then he remembered seeing num-bers marked on sloth bones from PaliAike Cave material he had earlier inven-toried. When he examined the sloth ma-terial, Amorosi discovered that thenumbers on the bones matched thenumbers on the drawing. Viewed as oneunit, they became a map or site plan.Since the map pieces hadn’t been la-beled, Amorosi remembers “it was like ajigsaw puzzle trying to put it together.”

Prior to finding the map, researchershad little to go on for Pali Aike Caveexcept limited notes Bird had taken in

1936 in the somewhat casual manner common among archae-ologists of his time. The few photographs found with the noteswere of little use. Bird’s record keeping was consistent withpractices of the times. Sometimes his notes contain even moredetail than expected.

Bird thought the sloth remains from Pali Aike Cave camefrom human predation,but subsequent analysisshowed a low incidence ofcarnivore gnawing on thebones and no evidence ofbutchering. Bird alsothought he was dealingwith a semi-articulatedsloth skeleton. Accordingto Amorosi, however,closer examination re-veals “only a jumble of

This shaker mechanism,used to screen material inBird’s 1969–70 season atFell’s Cave, was modeledafter a coal-mining screen.

18 Volume 24 ■ Number 2

(Below) Plan of the Cañadon Leona group burial (BurialNo. 2) from Bird’s 1935 field notes. This group burial,and the other burial (Burial No. 1), date to the middleHolocene. The crania of some of these individuals aregrossly damaged from blunt-force trauma, perhapsindicating intra-band feuding resulting from a scarcityof resources in the Magallanes area at this time.Amorosi and L’Heureux, who are studying theseindividuals, are considering the possibility of usingmiddle-Holocene population dynamics as a model toexplain the patchy nature of Paleoamerican distribu-tions in this same area.

(Above) This illustration from the transcription of Bird’s1930s field notes illuminates his thoughts about the strati-graphic position of the group burial recovered from theCerro Sota rockshelter. This burial, like those at CañadonLeona, dates to the middle Holocene. Amorosi andL’Heureux have discovered the use of partial cremation inburials. Craniometric data analysis concludes that theindividuals in this group burial were related to each other.

skeletonized adult and juvenile fragments that washed into thearea before deposition.” Consequently the resulting analysisclouds earlier assumptions and frustrates attempts to deter-mine how the caves were actually used.

Bird’s excavation project records will be a valuable re-search tool. Although some have undoubtedly been lost overtime, Amorosi plans to make an exhaustive search for any stillextant. Recovering missing notes could be a gold mine,Amorosi admits, “or it could be a wild goose chase.”

Amorosi is itching to re-sift excavated material at Bird’ssites. “I’d love to get into his back-dirt piles with a smallermesh screen,” he says. “His use of half-inch-mesh screenmeans that you lose all the rodent materials, and I am sure agood bit of the climate and environmental data is presentlymissing.” He also wants to ascertain that Bird reached bed-rock at Fell’s Cave, that nothing was left unexamined.

Tools Bird lacked: modern dating methodsAmorosi emphasizes that before any conclusions about hu-

man use of the caves can be reached, “we must first lockthese caves into a proper chronology.” Only three dates arereported from the lowest levels of Fell’s Cave: 11,000 ± 170RCYBP (I-3988) from Layer 21; 10,720 ± 300 RCYBP (W-915)from Layer 19; and 10,080 ± 160 RCYBP (I-5146) from Layer18. These dates, obtained on charcoal from hearths, wereassociated with Fishtail projectile points. The oldest datesfrom the Fell’s Cave are coeval with dates for Clovis sites inNorth America, suggesting that people were living in thesouthern cone and making fish-tail points at the same timeClovis people occupied North America. The oldest date fromPali Aike Cave is only 8639 ± 450 RCYBP (C-485). To test thevalidity of these early dates and establish a more accurate andprecise chronology for these two caves, AMS technology willbe used to date hearth charcoal and bone from both Fell’s andPali Aike Caves.

The first order of business is to nail down the chronology forall caves in the area, then compare the dates with those forother caves in the Southern Cone. Amorosi admits that “this is

0 5ft

April ■ 2009 19

definitely going to be a collaborative effort with the Chileansand Argentines as well.”

Decoding thelifestyle of SouthAmericanPaleoamericansOnce the chronology isresolved, it will be pos-sible to investigate howthe caves were actuallyused. For example, hewants to explorewhether humans usedthe caves year-round orwhether occupation wassporadic, possibly sea-sonal. Bird recovered 15fish-tail projectile pointsand fragments from the lowestlevel of Fell’s Cave, but only thestem fragment of a fish-tail point atPali Aike Cave, which led him toconclude that Fell’s Cave was fre-quently used by humans. At thesame time, Bird recorded few slothbones from Fell’s cave and a con-siderable number from Pali AikeCave. Based on the mixed age ofsloth remains from Pali Aike Cave,it appeared to Bird that its lowerlevel reflected a period when thecave was a denning area for groundsloth, but not at Fell’s Cave.

Amorosi suspects that the situation at the Patagonian caves issimilar to the accommodation Neanderthal people reached withcave bears: Neanderthals occupied caves when no cave bearswere using them, and wisely absented themselves when bearswere present. A similarrelationship makes sensewith the Mylodonground sloth, particu-larly when humans facedan animal weighingabout a ton—bigger thana full-grown bull. “Withan animal that size,” saysAmorosi, “you don’t wantto get near it or itsyoung.” Based on the ar-tifact assemblage he isseeing from the collec-tion, Amorosi is gettingthe message that “peopleare coming in, but notwhen the ground slothsare coming in.”

The terrain surround-

ing the three caves—Fell’s, Pali Aike, and Cerro Sota—issimilar, Amorosi says, and people might have been movingbetween the caves on seasonal rounds. He’s optimistic, hop-

A lone guanaco near Fell’sCave. Today the distributionof South American camelidsis becoming restricted astheir habitat is convertedinto cattle ranges. This photoshows the great vantagepoint the Fell’s Caverockshelter gave hunters forspotting game.

In the 1936–37 excavations at Fell’sCave, Bird took great care in executingin situ recovery of extinct speciesMylodon sp. (ground sloth) andOnohippidium (horse) in the late-Pleistocene level.

Detail of Onohippidium pelves (hip)and canine tooth.

Detail of articulated Onohippidiumvertebrae and the basal portion (rearbottom) of a skull. At the lower rightare several bones of Mylodon sp.

ing that “somewheredown the line we can talkabout seasonality andwhen people were usingthese caves.”

How did they maketheir living?A major goal of this projectis to determine whetherPaleoamericans of lowerSouth America interactedwith their environmentdifferently from their co-evals in North America.

Amorosi concedes that the South American model could end uplooking vastly different from what archaeologists have found inNorth America. Consequently he approaches this task with nopreconceived notions. “The assumption in the north is thatPaleoamericans were big-game hunters,” he explains, and it

might appear reasonable to as-sume they employed the samesubsistence strategy in SouthAmerica. “But at places likeMonte Verde we are not see-ing that,” he tells us. “We areseeing different variations.”Beware of the red ace ofspades! For this project, the

▲

▲

20 Volume 24 ■ Number 2

Bering Strait, or by boat along the North Atlantic ice sheet.” Hisline of thinking opens an entirely new can of worms labeled pre-Clovis, and he shares it with good company. For example, SteveHolen of the Denver Museum of Nature & Science attributesbroken mammoth leg bones at sites in Nebraska and Kansas tohuman intervention—bones dated to 7,000 radiocarbon yearsbefore Clovis (MT 23-1, “Early Mammoth Bone Flaking on theGreat Plains”). Perhaps, Holen proposes, the first colonizersmade the trek across the Land Bridge, just as the classic theorydictates, but thousands of years before the Clovis cultureflourished in North America.

Though none have been found yet, there may be sites thatpredate Clovis in western Beringia. Any such site would be ofenormous interest to North American archaeologists, but find-ing it is proving difficult. The Ushki Lake sites in Kamchatka,

thought to be older than Clovis by a few hundred years, provedto be younger when it was re-dated by Mike Waters and TedGoebel of CSFA.

The question of the Bering Land Bridge migration stillhasn’t been resolved. After all, only a handful of immigratedRussian obsidian artifacts dating to the Holocene have beenfound. There’s still a lot of looking to do, and lots of obsidian tosource. A piece of Pleistocene-aged obsidian from Russiafound in Alaska may be sitting in Speakman’s lab as you readthis, waiting to be sourced.

–Katie Hill

How to contact the principal of this article:Jeff SpeakmanHead of Technical StudiesSmithsonian Museum Conservation Institute4210 Silver Hill RoadSuitland, MD 20746-2863e-mail: SpeakmanJ@si.edu

Following the Obsidian Trail

continued from page 14

minimum complement of tools inany scientist’s kit is caution andan open mind.

A project with a broadagendaToday Amorosi has far morequestions than answers. Whatabout the broad nature ofpaleoclimate data? Was it pos-sible to get there via a midpacificroute of entry? Were these people maritime-adapted, or werethey entirely terrestrial? What was their diet? “What we havehere is a wonderful jigsaw puzzle with lots and lots of piecesmissing,” Amorosi says. “And it’s just fascinating sometimeswhen we can’t get these pieces to link up.”

His colleagues are eager to probe Bird’s collections. Riverahopes that, by revealing new knowledge, they will contribute awealth of information to South American archaeology and en-rich the database for its earliest inhabitants. “There is so muchwe don’t know,” he frankly confesses. “It is very important that

Peggy Bird and their dogaboard the Hesperus, the openboat in which the Birds sailed

down the inner channel ofChile’s rugged coastline.

Amorosi notes that this framedphoto sits on a table in the

Bird Laboratory for SouthAmerican Archaeology and is

much admired by visitingresearchers.

we revisit these collections. We can gain many things fromthem. There are remains in Patagonia that haven’t been ana-lyzed at all . . . and there is also a great deal of the collection backin Chile at the Museum of Natural History in Santiago that hasnot been touched either.”

Rivera reminds us that a considerable amount of Bird’s workhasn’t been published. Findings from this revisitation projectwill assuredly complement what has been published and possi-bly “add immeasurably to what we already know.”

–George Wisner