Center for the Study of the First AmericansDepartment of Anthropology, Texas A&M University4352 TAMUCollege Station, TX 77843-4352http://centerfirstamericans.org

Volume 21, Number 3 ■■■■■ June, 2006

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.

Remarkably well preserved after 3,500 years,these bottle gourds were found with a stonesinker and fishnet at Huaca Prieta in Peru.Peruvian fishermen today, using gourds as floatswith nets up to 30 m long, wade into the surfand drag their catch to shore. The bottle gourd,which is used to make all manner of implementsand musical instruments, appears in other NewWorld archaeological sites as much as 9,100years old, even earlier in Asia. Because of itswidespread distribution dating to early prehis-tory, scientists conclude that people appear tohave experimented with agriculture muchearlier than we suspected. They do not agree,however, on exactly how the bottle gourd,which originated in Africa, made the trip acrossthe Pacific. Our story on this enduring partner-ship of man and plant starts on page 4.

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With man, from Africa to the New World

Volume 21, Number 3 Center for the Study of the First Americans Department of Anthropology

June, 2006 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 A simple fruit that we makeinto myriad gadgetsThe bottle gourd may have beendomesticated as long ago as thedog. Scientists are tracing thehistory of man’s inseparableunion with this valuable plant.

9 A new look at Folsom?Maybe we shouldn’t think ofthem chiefly as a Plains culture.Mark Stiger has discovered astone house at 8,600 ft—andcites many other Folsom sites inthe Colorado Rockies.

13 Tracking early Americans tothe end of the worldClovis-era hunters found game,shelter—everything they neededin the grasslands of Patagonia.

16 Horses, tooClovis hunters probably hastenedthe extinction of mammoths andother megafauna. They mayhave done the same for anotherfood source: horses in Alberta.

3 TAMU anthropology professorhonored by SAA

by Magdalena León

The zone of La Virgin de Sarapiquí in thenorthern part of Heredia Province, CostaRica, has previously yielded clear ar-chaeological sites from at least 4,000years before the present, including sev-eral early-Ceramic sites. Now with thediscovery of the Birlen fishtail point, thealluvial terraces of the lower SarapiquíRiver, like those near Turrialba and thearea around the Arenal Volcano,have a demonstrated Paleoamer-ican presence, as shown by skill-fully flaked bifacial flutedpoints, knives, and other diag-nostic Paleoamerican toolssuch as keeled scrapers.

The archaeological wealthof SarapiquíThe Birlen site (H-12Bl) in2005 yielded chipping debris of

A New FlutedFishtail Point Findfrom Costa Rica

silicified slate and a nearly complete ex-ample of a fluted fishtail Paleoamericanspear point. The site, located on an allu-vial terrace in the lower drainage of theSarapiquí River, lies in the corner of anextensive pineapple plantation. In addi-tion to the fishtail point described herefor the first time, the general area of thesite has also produced a beautiful Archaicpoint and ceramics from all the recordedperiods to date in this part of Costa Rica.

The lower reaches of the SarapiquíRiver were as attractive to the earliestpre-Columbian people as they are totoday’s inhabitants. The region enjoysan agreeable subtropical climate, rea-sonably fertile soils on its alluvial ter-races, and the navigable river itself, animportant route for communication

Photograph of both sides of theBirlen fishtail point showing

(a) primary thinning flake scars,(b) channel flake scars, and

(c) pressure flake scars. FERN

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2 Volume 21 ■ Number 3

The Birlen site, where thenew fishtail point was

found (center right,where the pineapple fieldmeets underbrush at the

edge of the river).

and trade. Known archaeological sitesspan the period from 10,000 B.C. toaround A.D. 1200. Extensive cemeteriesof stone box tombs beautifully made fromriver cobbles complement the many smallvillage habitation sites from all ceramicperiods.

The Birlen fluted fishtail pointThis point from La Virgen de Sarapiquíis made of cream-colored silicified slate,with an oxidized stain produced by itsconditions of deposition 120 cm deep inthe subsoil. The point measures 67.56mm by 41.51 mm, with a maximumthickness of 5.52 mm. The makers ofthe point employed classic skillfulPaleoamerican chipping techniques,combining carefully controlled percus-sion and pressure flaking. Several thin-ning flakes extend almost from side toside, and the center section of the pointis very thin. Careful pressure retouch-ing along the edges and point producedstrong, sharp edges. The point has twoancient fractures apparently caused byuse, one at the tip and another on oneside of the peduncle.

Taking stock of Central AmericanlithicsNo Paleoamerican site in Central Amer-ica has been radiocarbon-dated, nor haveany Paleoamerican chipped-stone arti-facts been found directly associated withPleistocene megafauna, although sepa-rate finds of mastodons (Cuvieroniushyodon), giant sloths and armadillos, na-tive American horses, and even mam-moths have been reported. The most ex-tensive lithic assemblage confidentlyassigned to Paleoamericantimes, recovered from theGuardiria site near Turri-alba, consists of hundredsof simple backed knives;bifacial knives; keeled,side (hide), and spoon-

shaped scrapers; burins; drills; and morethan a dozen whole and fragmented flutedpoints and performs.

Clovis-type fluted points have beenfound in Belize (Ladyville), Guatemala(Los Tapiales), Costa Rica (two fromTurrialba, another from the Arenal zone,and a fourth from an unknown part ofGuanacaste province), and Panama (LaMula, Lake Alajuela).

Fishtail fluted points, more characteris-tic of South America, have only rarelybeen found north of Costa Rica. TheBirlen fishtail point may in fact be thenorthernmost fishtail yet found, pendingsecure identification of other candidatesfrom Belize and southern Mexico. At vari-ous sites in South America, fishtail pointshave been found directly associated withextinct Pleistocene megafauna includingmastodon, giant ground sloth, and Ameri-can horse.

More Clovis fluted points than fish-tails have been found in CentralAmerica. In Costa Rica the four Clovis

★ Birlen site H-125B1 (fishtail point)● archaeological sites known from the

Sarapiquí River watershed

Distribution of archaeological sites in thelower watershed of the Sarapiquí River.

points found to date outnumber the two(now three) fishtails, even if we excludethe several finished Clovis basal frag-ments and numerous Clovis preformsfrom Turrialba. With fluted fishtailpoints the proportions change; Turrialbahas produced two, and now the Birlenpoint is the third found in Costa Rica. InPanama, on the other hand, only twoClovis-type fluted points are known,compared with six fishtails, all from theLake Madden–Alajuela region.

Costa Rica and Panama, then, form the“zone of transition” or area of overlap be-tween two clearly different and firmly es-tablished Paleoamerican fluted-pointtraditions. The fishtail points known fromCosta Rica and Panama closely resemblethose from as far south as Fell´s Cave inPatagonia, while the Costa Rica–PanamaClovis points more closely resemble theso-called “Eastern Clovis” points of NorthAmerica. It remains to be seen whetherthese different fluted-point traditions rep-resent different ethnic groups of hunter-gatherer bands or whether there is achronological difference (which isn’t ap-parent in the radiocarbon dates availabletoday).

The Birlen fishtail point opens a newavenue of research into Paleoamericanlifeways in Costa Rica, which are usu-ally considered to have been smallbands engaged almost constantly inhunting and gathering. The Guardiria-Turrialba site in Costa Rica has beenregarded until now as the only knownPaleoamerican quarry and workshop

0 2km

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Vaughn BryantHonored by SAA

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 © 2006 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

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

Ted Goebel Editor, Current Research in the Pleistocene

Laurie Lind Office Manager

C & C Wordsmiths Layout and Design

World Wide Web site http://centerfirstamericans.org

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.

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Vaughn M. Bryant, professor of anthro-pology and director of the Texas A&MPalynology Laboratory and the Paleo-ethnobotany Laboratory, will receive the2007 Fryxell Award for InterdisciplinaryResearch from the Society for AmericanArchaeology. Nominees are evaluated onthe breadth and depth of their researchand its impact on American archaeology,the nominee’s role in increasing aware-ness of interdisciplinary studies in archae-ology, and the nominee’s public and

since he joined the TAMU faculty in 1971.In 1974 he received one of only six Distin-guished Achievement Awards for Teach-ing presented, and in 1990 he received theonly Distinguished Achievement Award

for Administration presented by TAMU.In 1999 the American Association ofStratigraphic Palynologists honored himwith their Distinguished Service Award—only 12 such awards had ever been pre-sented during the 30-year history of thatsociety. In 2005 he became the eleventhAASP member to be honored with a life-time Honorary Membership. He has alsoearned worldwide recognition for his ar-ticles, or articles about his research, inmany popular U.S. and internationalmagazines including Scientific American,

professional service to the community.The award cycles through zoological sci-ences, botanical sciences, earth sciences,physical sciences, and general interdisci-plinary studies. Each separate area is con-sidered once every five years. Bryant’saward will honor his lifetime of accom-plishments in the field of archaeologicalbotany, including work in such diverseareas as reconstructing past environ-ments, analyzing pollen from underwa-ter shipwrecks, searching for the originsof agriculture, reconstructing prehis-toric diets, and inferring cultural uses ofplants from plant fragments and pollenrecovered in the soils of archaeologicalsites.

This prize is the latest in an impressiveseries of awards Bryant has received

continued on page 8

4 Volume 21 ■ Number 3

OMESTICATED PLANTS may have played a larger rolethan we suspected in helping the First Americansadjust to their New World surroundings—spotlight-

esting nuance to the domestication of plants and animals,” fortheir study suggests the paradigm of an abrupt transition tosedentary farmer from the more precarious life of a nomadichunter-gatherer—a change considered a major turning pointin human history—may be a “conceptual simplification” of a farmore complex, subtle, and gradual process.

Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy ofSciences, the study drew upon a multi-disciplinary team of an-thropologists and biologists in addition to Smith, a scientist with

the Archaeobiology Program of the Smithsonian: David L.Erickson, principal author of the supporting research paper,with the Laboratories of Analytical Biology of the Smithsonian;Andrew C. Clarke, with the Allan Wilson Centre for MolecularEcology and Evolution and the Institute of MolecularBioSciences of Massey University in New Zealand; and anthro-pologists Daniel H. Sandweiss, University of Maine–Orono, andNoreen Tuross, Harvard University.

From Africa to the New World—which route?Expanding genetic and archaeological research has steadilyadvanced the understanding of human transition to agricul-ture, which authorities tend to agree began some 10,000 to5,000 years ago with the domestication of plants in at leasteight regions of the world, Smith notes. But “understandingdomestication of New World species” in the Americas, headded, has been complicated by the so-called “Africanenigma,” the bottle gourd that became the focus of this study.

Tracking theWell-traveled

bottlegourd

ding the possibility they had very early discovered the secrets ofbetter living through horticulture.

Arguably, new research pointing to an Asian origin forancient bottle gourd remains found in New World archaeo-logical sites helps refine the image of these rugged Paleo-american hunters. Instead of existing precariously in theirnew home—living off little but wildplants and animals until they discov-ered agriculture, as hunter-gatherersare frequently depicted—these late-Pleistocene migrants appear to havebrought with them sophisticatedplant knowledge and the skills to useit.

“These people did not come empty-handed,” says Bruce D. Smith, whocoauthored a 2005 paper outlining re-search that uses genetics and archae-ology to solve a century-old scientificpuzzle: Explaining how a plant speciesnative to Africa, the bottle gourd(Lagenaria siceraia), appears in an-cient archaeological sites in Florida,Kentucky, Mexico, and Peru.

Raw material for making handygadgetsEarly people seem to have broughtthis domesticated plant with them, Dr.Smith notes, a plant that was not a foodsource but one with significant “utili-tarian value.” Thick-rind domesticbottle gourds are a hard-shelled spe-cies prized for centuries as lightweightcontainers of all sorts. With a hole inthe top, a hollowed-out bottle gourdbecomes a canteen, Smith suggests;just cut off the bottom to make a bowl or a container you canuse to process, cook, or eat food. Manipulated in various ways,gourds also become fishing floats or musical instruments.Some cultures still use them in place of pottery, which, recentresearch notes, appeared in East Asia some 14,000 years ago.It’s reasonable to assume that the durable bottle gourd wouldhave been an extremely practical part of a Paleoamerican toolkit, Smith says, far easier to have carried than pottery forcooking, drinking, and eating. A gourd is as versatile as a SwissArmy knife or other multipurpose tool, with the additionalbenefit of being a constantly renewable resource when theseeds are planted.

Their findings, Smith says of his team’s efforts, add a newdimension to our understanding of the First Americans andtheir relationship with plants, while illuminating the pivotalrole that one plant may have played in settling the Americas.By focusing “on their [Paleoamerican] attention to, and skill in,management of the environment,” he notes, it adds an “inter-

June ■ 2006 5

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A, bottle gourd plant with blossom. B, desiccated African water bottle. C, a 1,000-year-oldbottle gourd seed from Cold Oak rockshelter in Kentucky. Its morphology is typical of theAsian subspecies Lagenaria siceraria ssp. asiatica. Seed length is 14.3 mm. D, this drum is oneof many different musical instruments made from the bottle gourd over the ages. E, gourdwater bottle (bule para agua) of Mayo Indians, Navojoa District, Sonora. F, some of themyriad kinds of utensils made from bottle gourds for thousands of years.

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Indigenous to Africa, the gourdreached East Asia roughly 9,000to 8,000 years ago (ultimatelyexhibiting sufficient differencesto create a subspecies, L. sice-raria ssp. asiatica). The gourdwas broadly distributed in theAmericas by 8,000 years ago.Researchers unable to explainits presence in early archaeologi-cal sites looked to its African ori-gin as the starting point for itsjourney to the Americas. A vari-ety of theories on how it got herewere offered. Among them:■ The African plants, without

known progenitors in theAmericas, floated across theAtlantic and were picked upby people here. Floating testshave proved bottle gourdscan last in sea water for nearlya year without losing seed vi-ability, ample time, say someresearchers, to have drifted tothe New World.

■ After making their way toAsia from Europe, the gourdsdrifted, or were carried byboat, out of Asia over openPacific Ocean waters towardOceania and through Poly-nesia to South America.Bottle gourds were, in fact,found in a Peruvian pre-Columbian burial in the1840s; their age, unfortu-nately, cannot be ascertainedtoday.Early researchers still

weren’t certain they were deal-ing with a domestic gourd popu-lation, Smith reports, sincenobody had documented a wildpopulation to compare withrinds found in archaeologicalsites. Researchers have wrestledwith this problem for a long time.James B. Richardson III, profes-sor of anthropology at the Uni-versity of Pittsburgh and curatorof the Section of Anthropology atthe Carnegie Museum of Natu-ral History in Pittsburgh, Penn-sylvania, addressed it threedecades ago in a paper citing thenecessity for a “detailed genetic,

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taxonomic and ethnobotanicalstudy” to settle questions re-lated to the origins of the bottlegourd.

Dr. Richardson’s wish fi-nally came true with the recentdiscovery of a wild populationin southern Africa, whichopened the door to modern sci-entific scrutiny and madeErickson et al.’s study possible.

Smith notes that few gourdsamples exist from archaeologi-cal contexts older than 4000CALYBP in the Americas. Histeam collected 17 studysamples for detailed study fromEl Coyote Cave, Mexico;Cloudsplitter and Mammothcaves, Kentucky; Windover,Florida; Guilá Naquitz andCoxcatlan caves, Mexico; An-con and Quebrada Jaguay,Peru. The oldest specimens,from Guilá Naquitz Cave, wereradiocarbon-dated at 10,000 years old. The youngest, fromCoxcatlan Cave, dated to 200 CALYBP; a second sample from thesame cave dated to 7200 CALYBP.

The research team also launched a search for modernbottle gourd samples that accurately reflect African lineages,Smith recalls. Worried that seed catalogues or roadsidestands might offer unreliable samples, they sampled museumethnological specimens—such as those collected from Masaitribesmen in the 1930s—and scoured rural areas “to collectfrom indigenous groups.” Fi-nally they amassed a diag-nostic assemblage of bottlegourds and seeds of assuredpedigree. When they com-pared key genetic markersfrom the DNA of the ancientgourds with their moderncounterparts in Africa andAsia to determine NewWorld gourd origin, they gota pleasant surprise.

“We observed that all ofthe archaeological rind frag-ments predating the arrival of

Cave yielded no amplifiableDNA, another sample from thesame cave dated at 9,100 yearsold did contain usable DNA—revealing its Asian origin. A200-year-old Coxcatlan Cavesample, the youngest of thesamples, turned out to be fromthe African reference group,likely deposited during theEuropean contact period. Thestudy notes that, “on the basisof DNA analysis,” it appearsthat African gourds replacedthe very early Asian gourdspecies throughout the West-ern Hemisphere after Europe-ans introduced them into theNew World.

Borne by water or carriedby human migrants?While satisfied with an Asianorigin for the ancient bottlegourds, and emphasizing thatDNA analysis was critical tosolving the puzzle, Smith cau-tions that scientists still lack

proof about how the gourds got to the New World. For thetime being his team accepts human transport as a plausibleexplanation.

“This study just says they [bottle gourds] were here 10,000years ago and that they could have been brought here byhumans coming on foot or by boat,” Smith explains. Since theAsian gourd fragments were in a dated archaeological context,“it is another good, solid piece of evidence suggesting that theFirst Americans entered the New World through Asia, and that

they brought bottle gourdswith them.” However, itdoesn’t quash the possibil-ity that the gourds floatedsouth on North Pacific cur-rents into the New World.While conceding that somearchaeologists may chal-lenge the suggestion thatancient humans broughtthe gourds to the NewWorld, Smith says, studyfindings are not at oddswith theories portrayinghumans coming into theNew World along possibleroutes that include over-land by foot through the

ice-free Beringian corridor, by foot along the North PacificCoast, or by boat along the northwest Pacific Coast. Althoughthe study’s researchers favor a near-coastal route of entry by

Mammoth Cave2700 B.P.

Cloudsplitter2700 B.P.

Windover8100 B.P.

El Coyote Cave1000 B.P.

Coxcatlan Cave7200 B.P., 200 B.P.

Guilá Naquitz7200 B.P., 200 B.P.

Ancon900 B.P.

Guebrada Jaguay8400 B.P.

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New World finds of earlybottle gourds.

Erickson in his lab.

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Europeans from which DNA could be amplified were identicalto the modern Asian reference group,” the joint paper states.Although a 10,000-year-old rind fragment from Guilá Naquitz

June ■ 2006 7

boat, Smith is quick to point out that they presently have nosolid evidence to support it—particularly since no Paleo-american sites containing bottle gourds have been docu-mented along the North America Pacific Coast.

Smith isn’t sure why evidence hasn’t been found. “I hope it’sjust a simple question of people not looking for it [the bottlegourd],” he says. “It may be an issue of preservation—plants ofthat time period don’t have very good preservation.”

While their study puts do-mestic bottle gourds fromAsia into central Mexico by10,000 years ago, it also ad-dresses the need to findolder ones in Asia to demon-strate they were available toancient New World settlers.Archaeologists have pulledbottle gourd fragments from9,000-year-old sites in Chinaand Japan, Smith notes.Therefore it’s quite reason-able to look for evidence ofearlier domestication inAsia. “I really think that inthe next 20 years archaeolo-gists will find domesticatedbottle gourds in China and date them to 12,000 to 13,000 yearsago,” Smith says. Those earlier dates also would be consistentwith the initial domestication in Eurasia of dogs, whose re-mains have shown up in ancient New World archaeologicalcontexts.

Richardson at the Siches siteon the coast of Peru, 1995.

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The researchers state in their paper, “We suggest that thebottle gourd and the dog, two ‘utility’ species, were domesti-cated long before any food crops or livestock species, and thatboth were brought to the Americas by Paleoamerican popula-tions as they colonized the New World.” Therefore archaeolo-gists should seek both when sifting site debris.

Despite its preference for human transport as the probablemeans by which the gourd was introduced to the Americas

from the north, the studydoesn’t entirely rule out atrans-Pacific route out ofAsia—where bottle gourdsare thought by some re-searchers to have bobbedtheir way across the south-ern Pacific and Polynesia,eventually drifting, or beingcarried by people, into suchplaces as Peru. Some scien-tists (Wyatt, 2004, amongthe most recent) forcefullyargue the idea that ancient

HE PAIJÁN CULTURE, whose lithic industry manufac-tured exotic projectile points, is a poorly understoodPaleoamerican tradition. Contemporaneous with the

of the Paiján site occupants.The structure and employmentof flaking areas are presentedin plan maps, and stages of bi-facial production are inferredfrom archaeological remains.Refitting studies and lithic tech-nology experiments based onsite patterning provide insightsinto tool production decisionsand spatial patterning of work-shop activities. Steps used increating a Paiján point are illus-trated through lithic replicationexperiments. In addition toproviding a detailed history ofstone tool flaking activities, theinvestigators combine raw ma-terial acquisition patterns withregional survey data to infermobility models for the Paijánpeople. This amply illustrated

volume will excite prehistoric archaeologists, lithic technologists,and knowledgeable readers.

–Copy from the rear coverISBN 1-58544-365-4 $30.00

Projectile Point Technology and Economy:A Case Study from Paiján, North Coastal Peru

Claude Chauchat and Jacques Pelegrin,principal authors,

Tfamous Folsom culture in North America, it is known fromopen-air sites and one rockshelter spread over 1000 kmof the Peruvian coastal desert.

Claude Chauchat and his research team present a de-tailed archaeological case study of the Cupisnique regionat the Pampa de los Fósiles locality on the north coast ofPeru. This volume uses the chaîne opératoire approach, origi-nally developed in France for studying flaked-stone toolassemblages. Stone tool assemblages are characterizedas a succession of technical actions beginning at the mo-ment of raw material acquisition and continuing throughmanufacture, utilization, and final abandonment of tools.The chaîne opératoire approach, applied to the study of a surfacelithic workshop area at the site of Pampa de los Fósiles 14, Unit1, documents raw material use at flaking loci and describes cores,flakes, flake tools, limaces, bifaces, and lithic reduction practices

long-distance boat travel through the Pacific Ocean was pos-sible on grounds that:

■ The archaeological record shows that sites in SouthAmerica are consistently older than those in North

8 Volume 21 ■ Number 3

America, indicating the Americas could have been initiallysettled from across the south Pacific.

■ Boat travel certainly was required to settle Australia, dem-onstrating that boats and open-ocean navigation skills ex-isted 50,000 years ago and could have been used to reachthe Americas.

■ Early boat travel to Peru from Oceania was possible byisland hopping when sea levels were lower and numerousnow-submerged islands were exposed during the last gla-cial maximum some 20,000 years ago.

Despite continued support for a south Pacific migrationtheory over the years (MT 16-2, “The First Americans: WereThey Australians?”), Smith labels it a definite long shot be-cause there is no direct proof to support it. Just because it’spossible, he argues, doesn’t prove it happened. “I would arguethat 10,000 years ago the types of watercraft available wouldnot have been able to make it across the Pacific, even islandhopping,” he says. It still makes more sense, he adds, forpeople—their plants and animals—to have come straight tothe New World from the north with boats floating close to land.

Smith makes another argument against the theory that thebottle gourd was carried across the South Pacific in openwatercraft by 10,000 years ago. If that’s the case, he contends,where is the evidence it existed in Australia and Southeast Asiaprior to 4000 yr B.P.? “It could also have been brought bycolonists from outer space,” he observes wryly, “which is aboutas probable as a south [P]acific voyage.”

In fact, solid evidence remains elusive for all the suggestedroutes into the New World, Smith concedes. However, two10,000-year-old archaeological sites on the Oregon coast newlyfound by Davis et al. push the late-entry time envelope, stirringsupport for a possible coastal entry route. Ancient Pacificcoastal sites, however, stubbornly fail to produce proof thattheir occupants arrived by boat from Asia. Finding that proofwon’t be easy, agree researchers Smith and Richardson, par-ticularly because it would probably lie deep under offshorewaters now covering ancient shorelines. “Maybe it won’t hap-pen in my lifetime,” says Richardson, “but in the next 100 yearswe will find fancy techniques to get at those sites.” Subsequentfinds could drastically alter the swirling currents of archaeo-logical debate over New World entry.

Richardson says he’s also excited by the implications of thestudy suggesting humans brought the gourds to America. Atthe very least, the study may restructure archaeological in-

quiry toward a wider range of possibilities regarding the horti-cultural capabilities of the First Americans. Conceivably,“these early migrants very consciously and carefully broughtthings from their homeland that would aid them in their newlife in the unknown,” he says. “That’s pretty exciting to me. Idon’t think we have been giving them as much credit as theydeserve.”

–George Wisner

Suggested ReadingsDavis, L. G., M. L. Punke, R. L. Hall, M. Fillmore, and S. C. Willis

2002–2004 “A Late Pleistocene Occupation on the SouthernCoast of Oregon.” Journal of Field Archaeology, 29 (1–2):7–16.

Erickson, D. L., B. D. Smith, A. C. Clarke, D. H. Sandweiss, andN. Tuross 2005 “An Asian Origin for a 10,000-year-old Domesti-cated Plant in the Americas.” Proceedings of the National Acad-emy of Sciences, PNAS Web site www.pnas.org

Hall, R., L. G. Davis, S. Willis, and M. Fillmore 2005 “RadiocarbonSoil and Artifact Chronologies for an Early Southern OregonCoastal Site.” Radiocarbon, 47 (3):384–394.

Pearson, R. 2005 “The Social Context of Early Pottery in theLingman Region of South China.” Antiquity, 79 (306):819–828.

Richardson, J. B. III 1972 “The Pre-Columbian Distribution of theBottle Gourd (Lagenaria siceraria): A Re-evaluation.” EconomicBotany, 26 (1):265–271.

Wyatt, S. 2004 “Ancient Transpacific Voyaging to the New Worldvia Pleistocene South Pacific Islands.” Geoarchaeology: An Interna-tional Journal, 19 (6):511–528.

How to contact the principals of this article:Bruce D. SmithArchaeobiology ProgramSmithsonian InstitutionP.O. Box 37012NMNH Room 303, MRC 112Washington, D.C. 20013-7012SmithB@si.edu

James B. Richardson IIICurator, Section of AnthropologyEdward O’Neil Research CenterCarnegie Museum of Natural History5800 Baum BoulevardPittsburgh, PA 15206-3706e-mail: richardsonj@CarnegieMNH.org

People, Reader’s Digest, National Geographic, National Geo-graphic World, Der Spiegel, Colours, and The World and I. TVaudiences have seen him on a number of programs including theBBC, Today Show, To Tell the Truth, 1-2-3 Contact, CBS EveningNews, and Fox-Network News.

Bryant has written and edited articles and texts about pollen,plant remains, and anthropology that are highly regarded intheir fields. Mammoth Trumpet readers will remember the enor-mously entertaining reminiscences of his early years in palynol-ogy (MT 18-2, “Pollen and the First Americans,” and MT 18-3,“The Elusive Pollen Grain”).

On hearing he will receive the Fryxell Award, Bryant re-marked, “I was quite surprised to find I had won this! I guess itonly took 40 years of work to qualify for consideration!”

Vaughn Bryant Honored by SAA

continued from page 3

June ■ 2006 9

FolsomMountain Top

on a

EMAINS OF AN ANCIENT HOUSE high in Colorado’ssouthern Rocky Mountains are offering a freshglimpse into the lives of Folsom-age hunters who

gests the house originally would have been built teepee-like ofupright willow or aspen poles placed around the depression.Rocks found around the basin’s edge, some as heavy as 100pounds, suggest wall-like placement around the poles to an-chor the structure’s base. Smaller slabs of rock and traces ofplant material nearby apparently provided “shingling” up the

sides; leftover holes were plastered with mud. Small bitsof mud used as mortar were found in and around the

structure. Some of it, burnished red like oven-bakedbricks, suggests the structure was burned and col-lapsed, cracking rock and firing the mud plaster or“daub.” Inside the house ring, researchers found asmall grouping of rocks surrounding a dark stain,possibly a hearth. They also detected a second, exte-rior hearth nearby. Numerous clusters of debitage,

The Folsom-age inhabitants of the house atop TenderfootMountain enjoyed this breathtaking view of the Rockies.

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The Folsom-age inhabitants of the house atop TenderfootMountain enjoyed this breathtaking view of the Rockies.

Rlived in the twilight of the Ice Age some 12,000 years ago. Thefind suggests these people—conventionally seen as perpetualnomads of the Great Plains—were more settled than previ-ously thought.

A house built by unlikely masonsNow little more than a pile of rocks around a shallowdepression, the house sits at 8,600 ft atop a wind-swept mesa known as Tenderfoot Mountain nearGunnison. Once, though, a family could overwin-ter comfortably there, gazing out daily at a pan-oramic vista across the Gunnison River Plainsome 900 ft below, according to Mark Stiger. Dr.Stiger is professor of Anthropology, director ofthe CT Hurst Museum at nearby Western StateCollege, and principal investigator at the aptlynamed Mountaineer site. The college owns thesite and has used it since 2001 for archaeologicalfield schools. Project research funding comesfrom the Colorado State Historic Fund, City ofGunnison, and the National Geographic Society.

Built around a shallow circular depression—perhaps nomore than 40 or 50 cm deep and about 5 m in diameter—thehouse feature along a bulge on the west-central side of themesa is the centerpiece of the Mountaineer site. Stiger sug-

A Folsom spear point recovered fromthe Mountaineer site (overall length

approximately 4.5 cm).

projectile points, point fragments, knives, scrapers, andother tools lay inside and nearby the house ring. Most of

the stone tools were made from local quartzite. Althoughsuspected contamination prevented reliable dating of col-

lected charcoal samples, associated bison bone fragments pro-duced bone collagen dates averaging approximately10,375–10,400 RCYBP, or roughly calendar 12,000 years ago.

“We think this was an overwintering site,” Stiger says, in

Folsomon a

Mountain Top

10 Volume 21 ■ Number 3

part because of the substantial nature of the teepee construc-tion and the way artifacts were dispersed inside and outside thestructure. For example, debitage dispersal suggests occupantsperiodically “cleaned” the house. Larger debitage tossed into adebitage dump southeast of the structure was deposited in afan-shaped area leading away from what Stiger conjectures wasa doorway, consistent with similar patterns elsewhere thatimply maintenance activity and long-term occupation of pre-historic structures.

“My guess is they would have been there for months,” saysStiger. “There is lots of debitage inside the structure, and a lotof it is tiny pressure flakes,” suggesting they were making toolsand possibly processing meat, bone, and hides. “We have gotchannel flakes fitted to preforms andfinished projectile points. . . . We alsohave one projectile point in the house

The Mountaineer site, according to Stiger, quite likely was ahunting camp. The occupants may have been preparing forspring hunting rounds to the valley floor, readily accessiblefrom the mesa top, or they may have hunted the mountainslopes—Stiger confesses that “we haven’t figured that out yet.”In either case, he adds, meat from readily available bison andlarge mammals such as elk could easily have been brought tothe site for processing. Stiger is still searching for the site’sprimary residential trash dump, for significant faunal and floralremains could tell us a lot about precisely which seasons thesite was occupied and the kinds of activities that took placethere. So far bison and weasel are the only species detected—weasel probably used to produce clothing, Stiger guesses,

rather than as food. Taken to-gether, collected stone andbone evidence from insideand outside the structure tellsStiger that Folsom people re-visited the site for long peri-ods and were busy while theywere there.

Some stone work, includ-ing unique overshot tech-niques, appears similar to thatused in manufacturing flutedClovis-style projectile points.Blades were manufactured ofquartzite, though, and Stiger

notes they are “not as nice andbeautiful as those of chert manu-factured by Clovis peoples.” Butthe existence of such toolmakingtechniques suggests a connectionwith the earlier Clovis people, longconsidered the First Americans.

Our changing view of classicFolsomFolsom was a Great Plains bisonkill site discovered in 1926 nearFolsom, New Mexico (MT 21-1,“The Denver Museum of Nature& Science: A History of Early-

Paleoindian Research,” and Folsom: New Archaeological In-vestigations of a Classic Paleoindian Bison Kill, “SuggestedReadings”), before the discovery of Clovis in 1933 at Black-water Draw. Unique fluted stone tools found in associationwith Great Plains bison (Bison antiquus) at the first Folsomsite established beyond doubt the antiquity of early Ameri-cans. Similar to earlier Clovis projectile points, Folsom pointsare smaller, with finely retouched edges and characteristicear-like projections at the base. Over the years, Folsom hascome to be seen less as a separate cultural entity than as partof a cultural continuum stretching out from Clovis. Recentresearch elsewhere (MT 16-1, “On the Cusp betweenPleistocene and Holocene”) suggests that Folsom people, ahighly adaptable, skillful, and well-organized culture, lived ina relatively benign climate where game was plentiful. Of the

House at start of 2003 field season.The dotted line shows the approxi-mate boundary of the house. Maxi-

mum width is approximately 5 m.

Looking southeast across the partiallyexposed structure. The southern halfof the structure is outlined by the arc

of tumbled rocks. ▲

▲

and pressure flakes to that in atrash spot outside.”

New research throughout theregion is producing more variationin Folsom-age sites, Stiger notes,with mountain sites in MiddlePark, Colorado, excavated by Uni-versity of Wyoming showing evi-dence of winter occupation.Maybe, he suggests, it’s time torethink our model of Folsom. “Per-haps they are overwintering in themountains,” he explains, and sea-sonally adapting to the plains insummer—an observation con-trary to conventional wisdom thatsees them exclusively roaming the Great Plains and leaving littletrace of ephemeral housing. “Typically, you just don’t think ofFolsom being in the mountains at 8,600 feet,” Stiger concedes.“You don’t think of them as being settled enough to construct arather substantial structure either. I think this whole basin wascontinually occupied. Hunter-gatherer societies are highly mo-bile, and they occupy an area even if they are not physicallypresent there—it remains part of their long-term land use.”

While stopping short of declaring the mountains, ratherthan the plains, the primary “home” of Folsom people, Stigersuspects they may well have been “at home in both places.” Buthe believes they may have spent more time in the mountainsbecause “that’s certainly where the action is.” More may berevealed as artifact analysis from this site continues and otherFolsom sites are unearthed.

June ■ 2006 11

Denver✱

ColoradoSprings

✱

✱ GrandJunction

✱Gunnison

several Folsom sites found in the Gunnison Basin, Mountain-eer is among the largest. Discover magazine in January 2004underscored its significance when it named the house findone of the “Top 100 Science Stories of 2003.” More completedetails of the project appear in the April 2006 issue of Ameri-can Antiquity.

Although the Rockies can be inhospitable in winter, Stigerdoubts that the climate in prehistoric times would have pre-cluded Folsom-age people from enduring winter on Tender-foot Mountain. “The climate probably would not have beendissimilar to today,” he notes, although summers might havebeen cooler. Since researchers recently put a weather stationatop the mesa, we are discovering that winter weather there is,according to Stiger, “a heck of a lot nicer” than in the valley(“except for the wind,” he concedes). It isn’t uncommon forvalley temperatures to dip to -30°F during the winter, and

precipitation is greater in the valley than on the mesa.“Gunnison is at the intersection of several major drainages,” heexplains, “and we get all the cold there.” On the mesa it’s a bitwarmer, particularly in the higher-elevation sun, and Folsom-age climate on the mountain might also have promoted moretrees such as spruce and juniper. Although the mesa top is barenow, Stiger suspects aspen might have grown there in Folsomtimes, providing significant cover for hunter and the hunted.There is no doubt that the people who were there left theirmark behind.

A workshop besides a homeThe staggering mass of material collected from across the firstexcavation block at Mountaineer likely will take years to ana-lyze. Researchers so far have found more than 65 clusters ofstone tools and collected more than 40,000 artifacts. While 5 ofthe clusters are of Archaic age (8,000–1,000 years ago), finds

include 17 clusters of Folsom-age (10,900–10,300 RCYBP) tools.The Folsom clusters found inside and outside the structurevary significantly, suggesting to Stiger repeated site occupa-tions. So far, however, diggers haven’t found bone tools orother perishables such as fiber.

But there’s little mystery surrounding the bulk of the toolstone source. The region’s active river system moved quartzitetoolstone almost to the doorstep of Folsom house, Stiger notes,providing toolmakers with “hundreds of sources of quartzite inthe valley, cobbles and bedrock.” Toolstone would have beenreadily available at a distance of a quarter mile to 5 miles. “Theycould pick up toolstone at the base of the mountain,” he says.“It is literally a stone’s throw away.”

Not all the tools were made from local quartzite. “We aregetting some chert tools,” he explains, “but we are not surewhere the chert comes from.” Although chert is found about

5 miles away, Stigerfinds it to be of poorquality. Researchershave also recoveredflakes of obsidian,

traceable to New Mexico. Overallthe site, says Stiger, is a bonanzaof material. He frankly admitsthat college ownership of it is adefinite bonus for researchers.Among those writing their thesesand dissertations on aspects ofthe project are graduate studentsfrom Southern Methodist Uni-versity, who helped to unearth 3of the more than 15 Folsom occu-pations on the site.

Folsom people were equally athome in the mountains ofColorado and the plains east ofthe Rockies, as this map of knownsites shows.

Good science . . . and a bit of luckWestern College has owned the mesa and used it for campusrecreational purposes since the 1930s. Surveyors recordedMountaineer as a lithic scatter in 1994, after construction wasstarted on a cell-phone tower atop the mesa. Plans called forinstallation of more electronics sites atop the mountain, and in2000 researchers surveyed, mapped, and collected artifactsfrom across the mesa. Finding a Folsom presence there was awelcome surprise.

He was back in the lab and going through material in thebags that had been recovered from that survey, Stiger recalls,when he found the “side of a projectile point with an ear comingdown” at its base. He remembers looking at it and saying, “MyGod! That looks like Folsom”—an observation that ran counterto conventional wisdom that said Folsom wasn’t in the moun-tains of southwest Colorado. “So I went back up there,” hecontinues, “and went to the spot where I thought that point

12 Volume 21 ■ Number 3

came from and I found another piece of it. It fit in place and Ihad the complete base of a Folsom point. I spent the next twoweeks up there on my hands and knees and found 20 moreFolsom points on the surface. I’d find three a day. I shouted forjoy, I can tell you that. It was a real mind-blowing experience.”

Putting their noses into the dirt, researchers detected moreand more paleolithics. It wasn’t long before site boundarieswere expanded and test pitsdug. Folsom material ap-peared in shallow depositssome 20 cm under the surface;the site was registered andmoney was sought for contin-ued research. “I have sincespent a lot of time down on myhands and knees on this site,”Stiger declares. Archaeologi-cal field schools have beenheld there each season since

knowledge of the surrounding environment. A lot remainsunknown about the site, Stiger admits, and he’s likely to beprobing its secrets for years.

“It is a lifetime of work here,” he says. “There are so manyquestions to be answered. This is just a marvelous area forresearch archaeology.” In coming seasons, he hopes to openmore pits, find a trash dump, perhaps find a “dog yard” to

explore questions relat-ing to early domestica-tion of dogs. The housesite, in particular, willbroaden research poten-tial. Residential artifactassemblages for Folsomand Archaic-age peoplesare emerging in themountains, Stiger ex-plains, and it would behelpful to be able to usesimilar units when com-paring these cultures.There’s also some Clovismaterial in the basin. “Iwould like to open upsome of those,” he re-flects, “and see if we are

looking at continuity [from Archaic] back to Clovis.“I think all this is going to tell us a whole lot,” he concludes. “It

probably will confuse us a whole lot. But that’s good, too. Some-times it’s important to know what you don’t know.”

–George Wisner

Suggested ReadingsDowning, C. G. 2004 “Discover’s Guide to the Top 100 Science

Stories of 2003.” Discover, 25 (1).

Hall, D. A. 2000 “On The Cusp Between Pleistocene and Ho-locene.” Mammoth Trumpet, 16-1:1.

——— 2001 “Hoofs Open Window on the Past.” Mammoth Trum-pet, 16-1:20.

Meltzer, D. J. 2006 Folsom: New Archaeological Investigations of aClassic Paleoindian Bison Kill. University of California Press.

Mountaineer Site, Gunnison County, Colorado, Web site www.coloradohistory-oahp.org/programareas/shf/projects/2005/mountaineer.htm

Powell, E. A. 2003 “Starter Home.” Archaeology, 56-6, Nov./Dec.

Stiger, M. 2006 “A Folsom Structure in the Colorado Mountains.”American Antiquity, 71 (2):321–351.

Western State College of Colorado, Folsom Archaeology in theGunnison Basin, Web site www.western.edu/anthropology/folsom/

How to contact the principal of this article:Mark StigerProf. of Anthropology and Director of CT Hurst MuseumWestern State CollegeGunnison, CO 81231e-mail: MStiger@western.edu

Discussing the house on sitesummer 2005 (left–right) Brian

Andrews, Mark Stiger, DavidMeltzer, and Lewis Binford.

2001. Besides the usual run of stone tools, researchers havefound a bone-processing area containing broken bison ribsconcentrated around an anvil stone with a large hammer chop-per in the middle of it.

Archaic material is scattered in clusters several hundredmeters away from the house structure. Significantly, sincenone was found within the house itself, Stiger believes it un-likely the Folsom material was incorporated into a house builtby early-Archaic people. Besides producing some of its bestFolsom diagnostics, discovery of the house set the stage forresearchers to conduct some unique experimental archaeol-ogy to see if they could duplicate the burned clay “daub”fragments they theorized were originally mud plaster used toseal cracks in the house walls. They torched two models ofteepee structures built of rock, aspen, and willow, and plas-tered with mud from on and off the site. The experimentsucceeded: Researchers concluded that the structure was builtof local material and that burning such a structure, eithernaturally or purposely after abandonment, could account forthe remains uncovered on site.

Stiger concedes he doesn’t know how many people livedatop the mesa. Although he hasn’t found a way to accuratelymeasure total occupancy for the site, Stiger says he confidentlyexpects to find another Folsom-age structure. “Based on otherethnographic studies,” he explains, “we probably had seven oreight people and two houses up there.” While recent NativeAmericans are thought to have overwintered in villages or atleast in large groups, Stiger doubts that would have been thecase for Folsom people. Their neighbors might have beenquite visible 10 or 15 miles away from the mesa top, he allows,and these mountain-top dwellers could easily have seen theircampfires or known what they were doing based on their

June ■ 2006 13

OWARD THE CLOSE of the Pleistocene, between ca.12,000 and 11,000 radiocarbon years ago, as piedmontglaciers retreated into the valleys of the southern

hearth 1 were dated at 11,800 ± 250 RCYBP; three other dateson charcoal from hearths 2, 3, and 4 ranged from 10,600 ± 90RCYBP to 10,130 ± 210 RCYBP.

Over 800 stone artifacts were recovered in association withthe hearths in Level Va in the Alero Tres Arroyos. The assem-blage features large flake tools, identified as endscrapers,sidescrapers, and unifacial knives. Two fragments of bifacialprojectile points were also recovered. Abundant bone frag-ments associated with the early occupation, predominantlyremains of guanaco but also including bones of the southern

South American horse(Hippidion saldiasi) andground sloth (Mylodondarwinii), testify to thesuccess of the earlyhunters in the cool tun-dra-like country at thesouthern end of thehemisphere.

Fell’s CaveFor archaeologists, themost famous site insouthern Patagonia isFell’s Cave, located ca.50 km north of theStraits of Magellan. Thecave, actually a smallrockshelter at the baseof a basalt conglomeratecliff overlooking a broadglacial outwash channel,was first excavated byJunius Bird in the mid-1930s. Even then, wellbefore radiocarbon dat-ing was developed, itwas obvious that the ear-liest occupation zone,capped by rock fall, waslate Pleistocene in age,as many bones of extincthorse and ground slothas well as guanaco, fox,

and bird were directly associated with hearths and artifacts.Subsequently, three radiocarbon samples collected from theearly occupation levels in the 1960s rendered dates of10,720 ± 300 RCYBP and 10,080 ± 180 RCYBP on bone; and11,000 ± 170 RCYBP on charcoal.

Fell’s Cave served as an excellent campsite for aboriginalhunters from the late Pleistocene through the Holocene intoprotohistoric times. Deep deposits of silt and rubble accumu-lated, and five major periods of occupation are distinguished.Paleoenvironmental data derived from sediment samples col-lected by Bird and later analyzed by Vera Markgraf indicatethat at the time of Period I, the earliest occupation zone,between ca. 11,000 and 10,000 RCYBP, there was very coolherbaceous grassland in the surrounding area. The numerous

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Paleoamericansin Patagonia

TAndes, Paleoamerican populations expanded into the grass-lands of Patagonia. They had to cope with a harsh environ-ment: a vast open steppe, cold and windswept at all seasons ofthe year. But there was plentiful game to hunt—herds ofhorses and the southern South American camelid, the gua-naco; and flocks of large flightless rhea birds. Adequateshelter was to be found in caves or rock overhangs; and goodtoolstone was locallyavailable for weaponpoints, knives, andscrapers. Settling intotheir territory, earlyhunters adjusted well tothe Patagonian environ-ment as it changed fromlate-Pleistocene to early-Holocene conditions.

Since the pioneerwork by Junius Bird atFell’s Cave in the 1930s,a number of other late-Pleistocene archaeologi-cal sites in southern-most South Americahave been excavated byChilean and Argentinearchaeologists. Some re-cent investigations aresummarized in theCSFA volume Where theSouth Winds Blow, ed-ited by Laura Miotti,Mónica Salemme, andNora Flegenheimer(2003).

Alero Tres ArroyosAt the end of the Pleis-tocene, hunters werecamping in the rock-shelter now known asthe Alero Tres Arroyos, which is situated in a rock outcrop inthe northeastern sector of the island of Tierra del Fuego. Atthat time the Straits of Magellan was not an open seaway.There was still glacial ice in its southern reach, and in itsnorthern reach was a braided proglacial stream drainingeastward into the Atlantic. The first people to enter Tierra delFuego could have crossed on foot, following herds of gameonto the eastern grasslands of the great island. At ca. 53° S.latitude, the Alero Tres Arroyos is the southernmost late-Pleistocene archaeological site in the world.

Excavations at the Alero Tres Arroyos were carried out byMauricio Massone in the early 1980s and again in the late1990s. Five hearths were uncovered in the earliest occupationlevel, Va, a silty clay deposit. Burned bones associated with

The Patagonian steppes extend over a vast areaeast of the southern Andes. This region of

South America was occupied by Paleoamericanhunters before the close of the Pleistocene.

The Patagonian steppes extend over a vast areaeast of the southern Andes. This region of

South America was occupied by Paleoamericanhunters before the close of the Pleistocene.

14 Volume 21 ■ Number 3

PACIFICOCEAN

ATL ANTICOCEAN

km0 1000

Colombia

Peru

Chile

VenezuelaSurinam

Brazil

Bolivia

Uruguay

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Guyana

Ecuador

Fr.Guiana

Paraguay

km0 200

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Alero Tres Arroyos✪

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Fell’s Cave

Cueva delMedio

Piedra Museo

Los Toldos

CerroTres Tetas

Cueva Casadel Minero

Localities discussedin this article

bones of fox within the early occupation zone suggest the useof furs for clothing in this severe late-Pleistocene environment.

The artifacts associated with Period I indicate the empha-sis on hunting expectable in open grasslands. The assem-blage features large flake scrapers and utilized flakes,choppers, bird-bone awls, and bone tools used to flake stone.Most distinctive are so-called fishtail projectile points, featur-ing a broad blade, slight shoulders converging to a broadconvex-sided stem, and a slight lateral flare at the base.

Fishtail projectile pointshave proved to be a distin-guishing feature of late-Pleis-tocene archaeological sites insouthern South America, asso-ciated in excavated sites withradiocarbon dates ranging inage from ca. 11,000 RCYBP to

ca. 10,300 RCYBP; and usually found with remains of now-extinct fauna. As well as Fell’s Cave, major excavated siteswhich have yielded a number of specimens include Cueva delMedio on the west side of the Straits of Magellan; and farthernorth, Tagua-tagua in central Chile, and Cerro El Sombreroand Cerro La China in Buenos Aires province. Surface findsare also known from Uruguay and the state of Rio Grande doSul in southeast Brazil. These distinctive stone projectilepoints appear to be closely associated with hunting econo-mies in open country.

Because the bases of some fishtail points are fluted, someNorth American archaeologists have assumed that the earlyfishtail points of southern South America are related to Clovispoints. Argentine archaeologists, who are most familiar with

the type, note signifi-cant differences. Fish-tail points are smalleron average than Clovispoints; and different inform, with pronouncedbasal stems. UnlikeClovis points, they arenormally made onflakes, not biface pre-forms; and usuallyshaped by marginal re-touch, not completeoverall flaking. Only avery few specimensfeature basal thinningby fluting, and not bythe same technique asClovis. The compara-

tive dating presents the biggest problem for visualizing aClovis connection: the earliest radiocarbon-dated fishtailpoints in South America are those most distant to the south,and these dates indicate that the southernmost fishtail pointsites are virtually contemporary with Clovis sites in farawayNorth America.

The Piedra Museo localityNorthward from the Straits of Magellan region, the terrain of

Patagonia rises into a dis-sected upland. In thesteppe country on the cen-tral plateau of the southernArgentine provinces ofSanta Cruz and Magel-lanes, four cave or rock-shelter sites dating ca.11,000 RCYBP or older havenow been identified. Bestknown at present is siteAEP-1 in the Piedra Museolocality, investigated in the1990s by Laura Miotti andMónica Salemme, andtheir associates.

Fell’s Cave was first excavatedby Junius Bird in the 1930s.

Even before the developmentof radiocarbon dating, bones ofnow-extinct animals indicated a

late-Pleistocene age for theearliest occupation zone. A

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June ■ 2006 15

A fishtail projectile point from the Period I zone inFell’s Cave.

cm

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rock outcrop featuring a numberof rockshelters along its rim, somewith prolific rock art. The majorexcavated site, Alero El Puesto 1(AEP-1), is a small rocksheltersituated in a very strategic loca-tion for hunters: it overlooks a lowgrass-covered basin that encloseda small paleolake or lagoon attrac-tive to animals. Successful earlyhunters brought portions of theirgame up to the rockshelter to com-plete the butchering process, andleft tools and weapon points withthe bones.

The animals taken by the earli-est hunters at AEP-1 included theexisting species of guanaco (Lama guanicoe), a smallerspecies of guanaco which is now extinct (Lama gracilis),now-extinct Patagonian horse (Hippidion saldiasi), andthe ground sloth Mylodon. They also hunted two existingspecies of rhea, one of which is not found today inPatagonia. Local hunters adapted to the changing envi-ronmental conditions as the Pleistocene came to a close,the climate became drier, and the steppe vegetationchanged in character from scrub steppe to grass steppe.The archaeologists note a trend over time toward spe-cialization in the hunting of the modern guanaco, as thevarious large mammal species characteristic of Pleistocenetimes died out. By 10,400 RCYBP, bones of modern guanacoconstituted 75 percent of the remains left at the site byhunters, with the remains of Pleistocene horse and smallguanaco then constituting only a small minority of the identi-fiable bone refuse.

The earliest hunters occupied AEP-1 in late-Pleistocenetimes. There is a radiocarbon date of 12,890 ± 90 RCYBP oncharcoal at the base ofthe lowest stratigraphiczone in AEP-1, Unit 6.Two additional datesfrom Unit 6 are 11,000± 65 RCYBP on charcoaland 10,925 ± 65 RCYBPon a modified horsebone. The lower part ofthe overlying Unit 4/5produced a date of10,400 ± 80 RCYBP. Theearliest artifact assem-blage, from Unit 6, con-sists of a small numberof uniface knives andsidescrapers made on flakes. A polished bone point wasalso recovered from Unit 6. The artifact assemblage fromUnit 4/5 is larger, still featuring unifacial flake knives andscrapers, but also including two fragments of fishtail projec-tile points.

Other early southern Patagonian sitesAEP-1 is not the only archaeological site with late-Pleistoceneradiocarbon dates in the southern Patagonian province ofSanta Cruz. In a canyon not far from Piedra Museo is LosToldos 3, a cave excavated by Augusto Cardich in the early1970s. The earliest occupation zone, in Level 11, yielded a

Ruth Gruhn examines the stratigraphic section exposed inFell’s Cave, May 1970.

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distinctive assemblage of large broad unifacially trimmedflake tools in association with bones of Hippidion and Lamagracilis, and a radiocarbon date of 12,600 ± 600 RCYBP.

In recent years two additional late-Pleistocene rocksheltersites have been investigated in southern Patagonia. At thelocality of Cerro Tres Tetas in Santa Cruz province, Cueva 1,CT3, excavated by Rafael Paunero and associates, producedsix dates ranging from 11,560 ± 140 RCYBP to 10,853 ± 70

RCYBP on charcoal fromhearths in the lower levels ofstratigraphic Unit 5, in associa-tion with a small assemblage offlake sidescrapers, retouchedflakes, unifacial knives, andflaking detritus. Just to thesouth, in the province ofMagellanes, the lowest occupa-tion zone in the site of CuevaCasa del Minero I, also exca-vated by Paunero and associ-

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Rock painting on the ceilingin Los Toldos Cueva 3.

ates, produced dates of 10,990 ± 55 RCYBP and 10,967 ± 65RCYBP on charcoal from hearths in association with bones ofLama guanicoe and the extinct camelids Hemiauchenia andLama gracilis, together with flake tools, flaking detritus, and

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16 Volume 21 ■ Number 3

SK PALEONTOLOGISTS about the origins of the horse,and they’ll tell you the first equines appeared in NorthAmerica about 55 million years ago, just 10 million years

tinct as the Ice Age drew to a close? Most researchers are quickto point out that their evolutionary exit coincided with theappearance of a new predator: the human hunter.

The First Americans left copious evidence, in the form of largespearpoints and similar tools, that they were wellacquainted with big-game hunting. In view of the factthat giant sloths and elephantids, and most camelidsand bison, became extinct in North America atabout the same time as Paleoamericans were be-coming proficient at exploiting megafauna, it ap-pears likely that humans contributed to the localextinction of the horse as well. After all, a horse netsa capable hunter a lot of meat in one handy package.The problem with this theory is that for a very longtime there was little direct evidence to support it.Sure, it seemed logical, but where were the killsites? It was rare to find artifacts associated withhorse remains, and rarer still to see evidence thathumans ate them. There was no smoking gun (or,in this case, bloody spearpoint) to point toward asystematic exploitation of horses as a food source.But with finds like the ones at Wally’s Beach, that’sno longer the case.

Wally’s BeachNew Evidence forPleistocene HorseHunting in Canada

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An example of erosion on theexposed lake bottom of St. Mary

River Reservoir in Alberta, Canada.

An example of erosion on theexposed lake bottom of St. Mary

River Reservoir in Alberta, Canada.

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Wally’sBeach Medicine

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Aafter the dinosaurs died out. Over the epochs, their descendantsextended their range over most of the planet, trav-eling to other continents over land bridges formedduring ice ages. Until about 10,000 years ago,horses were among the most common large ani-mals that graced the American landscape—untilthey suddenly disappeared in the blink of a geo-logic eye. Recent evidence from an archaeologi-cal site called Wally’s Beach in Alberta, Canada,provides intriguing clues about what may havehappened to New World equine inhabitants.

Horses have a long and distinguished lin-eage. Only a few species survive today, and noneis native to the New World. In fact, despite thearguments of a few renegade historians, it’s clearfrom the fossil evidence that horses were absent fromthe Americas for thousands of years until the Spanishreintroduced them sometime after A.D. 1500. Their absence,however, seems odd. Why would North American horsessurvive thousands of years of glaciation, only to become ex-

June ■ 2006 17

On the BeachThe Wally’s Beach site (DgPg-8) is lo-cated northeast of the town of Cardstonin southwest Alberta, within what’snow the St. Mary River Reservoir. Aswith many such finds, its discoverywas serendipitous. Ordinarily Wally’sBeach lies under 9 m of water, but occa-sionally the lake level is lowered so thatrepairs can be made on the spillway anddam. Given the lack of vegetation onthe lake bottom, the fine-grained localsediments, and the unrelenting wind,it’s not uncommon during periods ofdrawdown for erosion to strip away cen-turies’ worth of sediments in just a fewhours.

In the late 1990s, a fellow namedShayne Tolman took his children to thelake, where they found a nice sandy areaeroded to a depth of about 2 m. Whileexploring, they found some interestingartifacts, which Tolman reported to re-searchers at the University of Calgary.Archaeologist Brian Kooyman, geolo-gist Leonard Hills, and geology grad stu-dent Paul McNeil joined Tolman in investigating the site, andthey soon discovered not just more early artifacts, but variousfaunal remains and trackways left by camels, mammoths,horses, and other vanished species. The skeletal remains ofhorses, extinct bison, ex-tinct helmeted musk oxen,and caribou yielded radio-carbon ages ranging from11,000 to 11,350 RCYBP.The excitement of finding amajor Paleoamerican sitegalvanized Tolman into go-ing back to school to get hismaster’s degree under Dr.Hills—“so it inspired him,”Dr. Kooyman concludeswith gentle humor.

In the terminal Pleis-tocene, Wally’s Beach lay on an islandin the St. Mary’s River; a thousandyears earlier, it was probably underglacial ice. The earliest cultural re-mains date firmly to the Clovis period.Hills points out that “the nature of theglacial lake sediments precludes theevidence of any earlier occupations,even if people were there.” But Wally’sBeach offers something nearly as ex-citing: firm evidence that early Ameri-cans were hunting horses, as many ofus have long suspected but couldn’teasily prove.

Lines of evidenceAlthough evidence of Pleistocene horse pre-dation by human hunters has been discov-ered at Lubbock Lake and Bonfire Shelter inTexas, as well as at sites in Oklahoma, Wyo-ming, and elsewhere, Wally’s Beach offersthe best evidence so far: the well-preservedremains of seven horses, sealed in eoliansediments beneath a calcareous paleosol.These finds appear to represent at least twoseparate kills. “Three were in a cluster,”explains Hill. “They were killed at the sametime, and were probably part of a herd. Theother kill site consisted of a double and twosingles. The two horses in the double wereprobably killed at the same time, but wecan’t say all four kills were made at once.”

All seven sets of horse remains producedassociated lithic tools, including in one casea hammerstone, in another a chopper. Fourof the others yielded utilized flakes; one ofthese lay partially under one of the skel-etons, providing excellent evidence that hu-

The horse 2 remains.

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TTTTThe remains of horse B, showingthe cobble and utilized flakeassociated with the find. Notethe articulated ribs and vertebrae.

The remains of horse A. Note thearticulated ribs and vertebrae in theupper right quadrant.

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mans butchered the horses. The same set of remains (horse B)included a cut-marked hyoid bone, prima facie evidence that atleast this horse was butchered.

Radiocarbon assays yielded ages of about 11,300 RCYBP forthe horse remains. In all cases they werewell preserved, and perhaps the mostinteresting aspect of the bones them-selves is their orientation. The remainswere tightly clustered, and certain ele-

ments—particularly limbsand cervical vertebrae—were often either incom-plete or missing alto-gether. This might beexplained by the activity ofanimal scavengers, exceptfor the fact that other partsof the skeletons showed re-markable articulation—asif they had decayed inplace. Moreover, elementsthat would have attractedscavengers, including re-

18 Volume 21 ■ Number 3

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maining long bones, ribs, and vertebrae, were untouched. Nognawing was noted, and in some cases the costal rib cartilagewas intact—which would be amazing indeed if scavengerswere involved. Animal scavengers would have scattered thebones much more widely and devoured frag-ile parts. What the distribution and relativedegree of articulation of these skeletal rem-nants seem to indicate is that specific sec-tions of the carcasses were removed immedi-ately after death, and the remains werealmost immediately covered with windblownsediments. “You can get up to 10 cm of sandmoved in half a day at the site,” Kooymannotes. “Plus, there’s good evidence in thesediments that there was very rapid burial.”

A third line of evidence for horse hunting atWally’s Beach comes from analysis of proteinsrecovered from several Clovis points. SixPaleoamerican points (three of the Clovis tradi-tion, one Folsom, and two Goshen), from ap-proximately the same horizon as the horseremains, were tested for protein residues. All

killed by other creatures in order to add protein to their diets.Could something like this have happened at Wally’s Beach?

According to Hills and Kooyman, that’s highly unlikely.For one thing, scavenging generally involves one carcass at a

time. It’s doubtful that three horses ofdifferent ages would have died to-gether as a group, as was seen atWally’s Beach. Instead, violent deathis the likely cause, and human huntingis the obvious agent. Although othersites show evidence that mired ani-mals were exploited, this probablywasn’t the case at Wally’s Beach. Forone thing, the sediments are verysandy, and despite plentiful evidenceof massive animals like mammoths atthe site, “only in rare cases do thetrackways at the site show deep pen-etration,” according to Hills. Anotherinteresting feature about the animalremains from Wally’s Beach is thathuman hunters apparently took onlyhorse and musk ox, despite the pres-ence of mammoths, camels, and bi-son. “It’s hard to imagine a situationwhere people were systematically

scavenging only the horses,” Kooyman reflects.

Shifting paradigmsWhile Wally’s Beach is a remarkable site with diverse intrigu-ing finds, its primary significance (at least from a First Ameri-cans viewpoint) is that several lines of inquiry have produced

well-documented evidence that humanshunted and butchered horses there during theterminal Pleistocene. Before Wally’s Beachthe evidence for horse predation wasbafflingly rare—especially given the abundantevidence for other big-game hunting. Consid-ering the substantial amount of meat on ahorse, it seems that horse kills should be morecommon than they are. So why are they sounusual?

“I don’t think it’s because there were any so-cial reasons that [Paleoamericans] didn’t eathorses,” says Kooyman. Hills agrees. “Mosthorse remains have been recovered from fluvialsediments,” he points out. Such finds are rarelyin primary context. It may be, he suggests, thatmost horse kills occurred in areas that were notconducive to preservation. Wally’s Beach is aspecial instance where the remains were wellpreserved because they were covered with wind-blown sand within hours.

Wally’s Beach makes it clear that humansalmost certainly played a role in the extinction of horses in theNew World, and Hills, Kooyman, and their colleagues con-clude that they disappeared because of a combination of envi-ronmental stresses and human predation. Changing

Kooyman with a Clovis pointrecovered from Wally’s Beach.

Hills with a mandible from aWally’s Beach horse.

three Clovis specimens tested positive, and two yielded horseproteins (the other was bovid, either extinct bison or musk ox).The argument could be made that the points might have beenused to butcher rather than to kill the horses, since Clovis pointswere often used as multipurpose tools. However, points used asimplements to dismember carcasses are usually found to bebroken and resharpened specimens,but there’s no evidence that the Clovispoints that tested positive for horseproteins were resharpened. There is,however, solid evidence that thepoints had been used to kill animals,for both clearly show the kind of im-pact damage we’d expect ofspearpoints.

And if all that weren’t enough toconvince doubters, a hearth found ashort distance from one of the horsekills contained burned horse teeth—“obvious utilization,” as Hills pointsout.

Careful kills or lucky finds?It’s obvious that humans butcheredhorses for food at Wally’s Beach. The question is, Were theyactively hunting horses, or did they just scavenge them? Hu-mans, always opportunistic creatures, have been known to takeadvantage of situations in which animals were mired or recently

June ■ 2006 19

vegetation zones, climatic shifts,and possibly new diseases mayhave set up the equine populationfor a death blow, which came in theform of humans who depended onhorses for a significant proportionof their protein. Unlike caribou andother herd species with a migratorylifestyle, horses are territorial andstay in one area year-round.“Horses would have provided agame population that was moreavailable throughout the year,”Hills notes, and this may have en-couraged human hunters to dependon horses more than other gamespecies.

A curious consequence of thedearth of evidence for horse preda-tion has been a reluctance amongmost researchers to accept that theFirst Americans ate horse meat, orin fact played a major role in thehorse’s local extinction. “There’s no question that we knowthat horses were quite abundant, yet we rarely see them insites; so it’s reasonable to come to the conclusion that theyweren’t utilized,” says Kooyman. “But now that there’s some

Graduate student Paul McNeil points out amammoth track at Wally’s Beach (DhPg-8)to archaeologist Brian Kooyman (right) andarchaeology student Alan Youell.

evidence, I would hope that people would bewilling to change their minds.”

–Floyd Largent

How to contact the principals of this article:Leonard V. HillsDepartment of Geology and GeophysicsUniversity of CalgaryAlberta, Canada T2N 1N4lvhills@ucalgary.ca

Brian P. KooymanDepartment of ArchaeologyUniversity of CalgaryAlberta, Canada T2N 1N4bkooyman@ucalgary.ca

Paul McNeilDepartment of Geology and GeophysicsUniversity of CalgaryAlberta, Canada T2N 1N4pemcneil@shaw.ca

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Laura Miotti explains the stratigraphy in the rockshelter AEP-1to visitors to the Piedra Museo locality, December 2000.

simple bone awls, all sealed under a rock fall. These tworecently investigated late-Pleistocene sites of southernPatagonia are summarized in Where the South Winds Blow.

Summing up, and looking aheadPaleoamericans arrived in the southernmost regions of thehemisphere before the end of the Pleistocene. By focusing onhunting herd animals and birds, the incoming populationadapted well to the cool open steppe country; and the earlyarchaeological record is now known from a number of camp-sites in rockshelters where tools and weapon points were left

with the bones of now-extinct species. In peopling south-ern Patagonia, Paleoamericans of the southern continentdemonstrated their ability to survive and thrive in a re-strictive environment. In the next article in this series, Ishall describe the late-Pleistocene adaptations of Paleo-americans to other challenging environments, in thecoastal desert and high mountains of Peru.

–Ruth Gruhn

How to contact the author of this article:Ruth GruhnDepartment of AnthropologyUniversity of AlbertaEdmonton AB T6G 2H4, Canadae-mail: rgruhn@gpu.srv.ualberta.ca

Paleoamericans in Patagonia

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20 Volume 21 ■ Number 3

Costa Rica

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Clovis point purchased by archaeologist C. V. Hartman in 1903 as partof a larger collection of archaeological artifacts from Guanacaste;length 5.8 cm (Swauger & Mayer-Oates, 1952)

Clovis and fishtail points found during a surface collection of thequarry-workshop site of Guardiria (Turrialba), in the Turrialba Valley,Cartago province; length of Clovis point (a) 6 cm, length of Clovis point(b) 5.9 cm, length of fishtail point 5.3 cm (Snarskis, 1979).

Clovis point found on the shores of Lake Arenal, Guanacaste; length 8 cm (Sheets & McKee,1994).

Fishtail point found during a surface collection of the quarry-workshop site of Guardiria(Turrialba), in the Turrialba Valley, Cartago province; length 8 cm (Valerio, 2000).

Fishtail point unearthed by pineapple-farming activities in the town of La Virgen de Sarapiquí, Heredia province;length 6.7 cm (León, 2005).

Distribution of fluted Paleoamerican point finds to date in CostaRica. Fluted basal fragments and fluted preforms (10–12) not shown.

——— 1984 Central America: The LowerCaribbean. In The Archaeology of LowerCentral America,” F. W. Lange and D.Stone, eds. School of American Re-search, University of New Mexico Press:195–232.

Swauger, J., and W. Mayer-Oakes 1952 A

site in Central America, thanks to giantchert boulders in a stream bed nextto the site. But the Birlen site also dis-plays chipping debris, not yet systemati-cally collected owing to its greaterdepth, and may turn out to be anothersource of local toolstone, especially in-teresting in light of its lowland locationnot usually associated with Paleo-american sites.

AcknowledgmentsTo my mentor, professor, and dear friendMichael J. Snarskis, a special thanks forthe urgent translation of this report, butwhat I am really most grateful to him for ishis unconditional support and encourage-ment in furthering my professional careerin archaeology.

Thanks also to Harry Massey for hishard work in producing the several figuresillustrating this article, and to profes-sional photographer Fernando Leitón forhis photo of the Birlen fishtail point.

How to contact the author of this article:Magdalena León CotoApartado Postal 749-1000Museo Nacional de Costa RicaSan José, Costa Ricamleoncoto@yahoo.com

Suggested ReadingsAcuña, V. 1993 Florencia-1, un Sitio Paleo-

indio en la Vertiente Atlántica de CostaRica. Vínculos 9 (1–2):1–14. Museo Nacionalde Costa Rica, San José.

Bird, J., and R. Cooke 1977 Los artefactosmás antiguos de Panamá. RevistaNacional de Cultura, No. 6. InstitutoNacional de Cultura, Panamá (Feb.-Mar.)

Ranere, A., and R. Cooke 1991 Paleo-indian Occupation in the Central Ameri-can Tropics. XX International Congress ofthe International Union for QuaternaryResearch, Ottawa, August 1987.

Sheets, P. D. 1994 Chipped Stone Arte-facts from the Cordillera de Tilarán. InArchaeology, Volcanism, and Remote Sens-ing in the Arenal Region de Costa Rica,Payson Sheets and Brian McKee, eds.University of Texas Press, Austin.

Snarskis, M. J. 1979 Turrialba: A Paleo-indian Quarry and Workshop Site in East-ern Costa Rica. American Antiquity 44 (1):125–138.

About the authorMagdalena León has amaster’s in gender stud-ies from Spain, is cur-rently a research archae-ologist in the NationalMuseum of Costa Ricawith a large portfolio ofprivate consultancies inarchaeology, and is inthe MSc. program in ar-chaeology at the Univer-sity of Costa Rica.

Fluted Point from Costa Rica. AmericanAntiquity 17 (3):264–265.

Valerio, W. 2004 Evidencias Paleoindiasarcaicas y su distribución espacial en FincaGuardiria, Turrialba. Cuadernos de Antro-pología. No. 14:135–157. Universidad deCosta Rica.

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