Across Atlantic Ice

by Dennis J. Stanford

  The bone rods vary substantially in size, with lengths ranging between 125 and 276 millimeters, with a mean of 225 millimeters. Widths range between 14 and 30 millimeters, but eleven of the twelve range between 24 and 30 millimeters. It is interesting to note that groups of rods have the same width measurements: three are 24 millimeters wide, four are 26 millimeters wide, and two are 29 millimeters wide. Altogether they have a mean width of 25.5 millimeters. If the smallest is not included, the mean width is 26.5 millimeters. Width was clearly more standardized than length.

  Three of the double-beveled bone rods from the East Wenatchee Site exhibit simple decorative embellishment. Two have a zipper-like incised design along the midlines of their interior surfaces (figure 2.13a). Unfortunately, preservation is poor and details of the individual incisions are not clear. The third specimen exhibits small curved incisions on the back surface of the beveled end. These shallow incisions cover the surface and resemble fingernail impressions.

  Mike Gramly, one of the archaeologists who investigated the East Wenatchee cache site, has proposed that the bone rods found there were composite sled shoes, tied together and lashed to wooden sled runners.50 The bevels on the ends of the rods would have allowed enough overlap to produce a continuous composite runner. He notes that similar bone sled shoes were used by Inuits but readily admits that much more study needs to be done before this interpretation can be supported or rejected. We have difficulty accepting it. Skids for sled runners seem highly unlikely because of the complexity of the lashing that would have been required and the inevitable interference with traction that lashing would have caused. One might also expect distinct wear patterns to develop quickly, but there are none. Furthermore, the decorative embellishments would not have been visible.

  FIGURE 2.13.

  Bone, antler, and ivory tools: (a) East Wenatchee decorated bi-bevel rod; (b) Anzick bi-bevel rod; (c) Anzick foreshaft; (d) Blackwater Draw point; (e) Florida decorated point (sagaie); (f) Florida barbed point; (g) Florida point; (h) Sheridan Cave, Ohio, point; (i–k) Florida atlatl hooks; (l) Blackwater Draw ivory billet; (m) Murray Springs, Arizona, shaft wrench. Outlines show (h) side view of base bevel; (j) section; (k–m) cross sections.

  Another Clovis cache site, Anzick in southwestern Montana, contained more than 132 artifacts and bone tools buried in a collapsed rock shelter.51 This site was similar to the East Wenatchee Site, as it contained a large number of bifacially flaked stone artifacts, including Clovis points, a few unifacially retouched tools, and bone rods. A notable difference from East Wenatchee was the presence of the partial remains of two subadult human skeletons. The remains of a toddler consisted primarily of skull fragments, and the artifacts were all stained with red ocher. The other individual has been shown to be unassociated with the Clovis materials.52

  Eleven bone rods were among the artifacts collected from the disturbed deposits of the site: two complete rods, four fragments with beveled ends, and five midsections.53 One complete rod is much like those from East Wenatchee and is beveled at both ends (figure 2.13b). The other is beveled on one end only, with the opposite end indented and tapered mostly flat but slightly rounded (figure 2.13c). Six of the seven bevels are incised, primarily in a crosshatch pattern, and there was organic residue thought to be resin on the beveled ends.

  The complete rods are about the same length as those from East Wenatchee, but they are proportionally narrower. They measure 220 and 281 millimeters in length, but the width at their widest point ranges between 15 and 20 millimeters, with a mean of 17.9 millimeters. As with the East Wenatchee specimens, there seems to be a greater standardization of width than length.

  The archaeologists Larry Lahren and Rob Bonnichsen have hypothesized that the double-beveled bone rods from Anzick were foreshafts for spears.54 Clovis points would have been hafted onto one of the bevels, and the other would have been lashed to a wooden main shaft. But hafting Clovis points onto the bevels of the bone rods by inserting a wedge would have produced a bulky and weak joint connection. Since this construction would have made penetration beyond the hafting area difficult, we think there are more plausible functional interpretations for these artifact forms.55

  Five closely related Clovis sites have been excavated in the San Pedro Valley, Arizona, not far from the border with Mexico.56 While three of these sites are animal kill and butchering locations, two, Naco and Escapule, may represent mammoths that died after being speared and eluding their Clovis hunters. The only formalized bone tool recovered from any of these Arizona sites was excavated at Murray Springs (figure 2.13m). It is 259 millimeters long, 21 millimeters thick, and shaped like an eyebolt. The head, 58 millimeters wide, has a hole 25–30 millimeters in diameter bored through the center. The handle is 34 millimeters wide where it joins the head and gradually tapers to an approximate width of 21 millimeters at the opposite end. The hole was purposely beveled, the most pronounced beveling being at the top and bottom on opposite sides of the tool. C. Vance Haynes Jr. and E. Thomas Hemmings have convincingly argued that this unique artifact is a spear or dart shaft straightener.57

  Bone and ivory objects recovered during the excavations of the various Blackwater Draw, New Mexico, Clovis localities include roughly fashioned expedient tools made of mammoth bone and carefully shaped formal tools, also mostly made of bone. All of these were directly associated with flaked stone tools, including Clovis points, and with mammoth remains. Among the formalized artifacts are four points, an awl, an ivory billet, a possible flaker or ornament, and a bead preform.

  Only one of the points is complete, and it has been identified as antler rather than bone. It has an oval cross section and is beveled at one end and tapers to a point at the other. Oblique scratches are visible on the bevel. The pointed tip of this specimen shows impact fracturing, and because it was found associated with a mammoth carcass it is probably a projectile point (figure 2.13d). Its length and width are 237 and 17.2 millimeters, respectively, falling within the range of the bone rods from the Anzick Site. The other three specimens are fragmentary, but all closely resemble portions of the complete artifact.

  An ivory tool found in the Blackwater Draw Clovis sediments was made from a short quarter section of mammoth tusk that was ground into a cylindrical shape (figure 2.13l). This tool is 46 millimeters wide and 34.8 millimeters thick and would have measured more than 73.5 millimeters long when complete. It has been described as a burnisher or a hammer used for flintknapping.58 One end is slightly convex and polished; the other end is damaged by impact and longitudinal flake scars that are characteristic of hafted flintknapping hammers.59

  Among the other bone tools is a small bone fragment that was ground to a narrow, sharp point to serve as a perforating tool for hide working or a basket-making implement. A small, rounded rectangle with perforations incompletely drilled from both ends is a possible bead preform. A fragment of a possible canine tooth exhibits polishing and has been interpreted as an ornament or flaker, but it is too incomplete to adequately assess its function.

  A modified section of a mammoth tusk tip was also found at Blackwater Draw.60 Although this is not a formal tool, it is an important specimen because it illustrates some of the techniques used by Clovis people to work ivory. The slightly curved section was removed by a sequence of scoring and chopping around the diameter of the tusk. After its cross section was reduced in mass, it was flexed until it snapped away from the rest of the tusk. It measures 730 millimeters long and 97 millimeters in diameter at the base. What sort of tool or tools were intended to be made from this piece of ivory is unknown, but it could have been further sectioned into beveled rods like those from East Wenatchee and Anzick or projectile points similar to those found in other localities at Blackwater Draw.

  The Sheaman Site, in eastern Wyoming near the boundary between South Dakota and Nebraska, also produced a bone or antler rod in association with bifacial reduction flakes, a Clovis-like projectile point, several flaked stone tools, and bison bone.61 All of these artifac
ts were concentrated slightly below a burned and buried paleosurface. The rod is a flattened cylinder that tapers slightly to a tip broken in a distinctive manner that suggests it impacted a resistant material with considerable force. The other end terminates in a flat bevel that is lightly incised with a crosshatch pattern. The artifact’s length (not including the missing portion) is 203 millimeters, and it is 13 millimeters wide. Since it has impact damage reminiscent of the damage to the bone projectile point from Blackwater Draw and it is proportionally longer and narrower than the bone rods from Anzick and East Wenatchee, we conclude that it was used as a projectile point.

  Numerous ivory and bone projectile points / foreshafts, locally termed pins, have been recovered from rivers and springs in northern Florida, but because of the acidic upland soils typical of the southeastern United States, no carved ivory artifacts have been found in terrestrial Paleo-Indian sites in Florida. All of the Florida ivory specimens were found in submerged river channel locations that were inundated by inland water table rise during the Holocene. The largest concentration, which accounts for more than half of the sample, comes from the lower karst (limestone with cracks and caverns) section of the Aucilla River. Other river basins that have produced ivory objects include the Santa Fe, Ichetucknee, and Oklawaha.

  Most of the known Florida ivory specimens have been recovered from stratigraphically mixed late Pleistocene deposits, where they are associated with extinct fauna, including mammoth and mastodon. Flaked stone projectile points found at these sites include Clovis fluted and an unfluted southeastern point type named Suwannee, some varieties of which are pre-Clovis.62 Many of the ivory and bone implements are also points, and there are good indications, because of their extraordinary preservation, that they were made from fresh rather than fossil ivory and mastodon bone, strongly suggesting a direct association between humans and mastodons. The points are similar in shape and relative proportion to those from Clovis sites in the western United States. Generally speaking, they are roughly cylindrical and taper to a sharp point at one end. The opposite end terminates in a flat bevel (figure 2.13e). Recently an incomplete example with a single barb was found (figure 2.13f).

  The length of these points is highly variable because after they were broken during use they were reworked into progressively shorter weapon tips, just like stone points. The best-preserved specimens show that their surfaces were burnished to slickness except on the beveled end, which was roughened and grooved for hafting. In addition, two of the ivory points exhibit incised decoration extending from the interior end of the bevel down the shaft toward the tapered end. One of these designs is a zigzag pattern (figure 2.13e), and the other is a series of parallel lines that run transverse to the long axis (figure 2.13g).

  Jim Dunbar, an archaeologist who has researched these Florida sites, argues that the ivory tools were foreshafts with fluted stone points hafted to the scored bevel and the pointed end inserted in a socket in the main shaft.63 His interpretation does not include a separate wedge on the opposite side of the stone point from the bevel, as suggested for the Anzick pieces. He bases this reconstruction on the breakage patterns observed on the artifacts. Although this hafting method would be less bulky than the wedge method, the connection between the stone point and the ivory foreshaft would be weak. Our experience with replicated Clovis weaponry indicates that penetration through the hide of an animal would have been severely impeded by either of these configurations. Thus, as with the Anzick hypothesis, we think that alternative interpretations are more plausible. For instance, taking the well-documented bevel-hafting method used by historic Inuit hunters as a model, we conducted experiments using ivory rods as projectile points and found that they are extremely lethal and penetrate thick modern elephant hide deeply with little difficulty. We think it likely that these were points, probably used on thrusting spears. Damage to many of them supports either interpretation.

  There are other possible Clovis bone points, but because of poor preservation they are not common. A cylindrical bone point of unknown association was found in southeastern Saskatchewan in the early 1900s.64 There are no dated geological or artifact associations for this specimen, but the probability that it was made from the long bone of a mammoth or mastodon and its resemblance to bone points of known Clovis age suggest that it was of early manufacture. Another long bone point has been described from Lower Klamath Lake in southern Oregon.65 The presence of blue silt stains on the point and on associated mammoth bones suggests that they are contemporaneous. The similarity of this specimen to other artifacts of known antiquity also favors a Clovis-age origin. Finally, two bone points were recovered from Sheridan Cave in Ohio (figure 2.13h). Although they were not in direct association with Clovis artifacts, Ken Tankersley, the excavator of the site, has made a convincing argument that they are at least Paleo-Indian.66 All of its characteristics fit well with the other Clovis bone points.

  C. Andrew Hemmings has identified ivory objects from Sloth Hole, Florida, as atlatl hooks, the projections on the end of spear throwers where the spear was seated (figure 2.13i–k).67 The discovery of these hooks supports the idea that Clovis hunters used these effective weapons for hunting big game. On the other hand, an expected artifact form in Clovis assemblages that has been elusive is an eyed needle. But two fragmentary specimens made of ivory were recovered from a river context in Florida. It is not possible to say that they were definitely associated with Clovis artifacts, but since they were made from fresh ivory and mammoths went extinct during Clovis times, this seems likely.

  Not all bone tools need be made in formal styles. There has been a lot of controversy over the use of percussion flaking for the manufacture of expedient tools from the bones of large mammals, especially mammoths. Studies such as the Ginsberg experiment, the experimental butchery of an elephant, demonstrated conclusively that fresh, heavy cortical bone could be processed using techniques akin to stone knapping into cores that produce sharp-edged bone flakes.68 Furthermore, a growing number of flaked mammoth bones are being found at Clovis sites, such as Lange-Ferguson in western South Dakota, where bone flaking has been identified and described.69

  Several formalized bone and antler tools and manufacturing technologies have been documented for the Folsom period, 10,900–10,300 BP, which immediately followed Clovis on the High Plains of North America. Folsom artifact types include fluted projectile points; various kinds of flaking tools, including an elk antler tool that we think was used for fluting points; eyed needles; cut and incised bone disks and fragments (possibly ornaments or gaming pieces); and a hide flesher, a tool probably used to remove unwanted tissue from animal hides, made from a bison tibia. Virtually all of these materials have come from sites interpreted as base camps. Manufacturing techniques include grooving, incising, abrading, chopping, polishing, and drilling. Since Folsom probably derives from Clovis, it is likely that these artifact types and manufacturing techniques extend well back into Clovis times. We expect them to be found if and when Clovis campsites with good organic preservation are excavated.

  FIGURE 2.14.

  Gault Site incised stones: (a) geometric; (b) possible zoomorphic; (c) crosshatched; (d) double sided, with spear fletching.

  ARTISTIC EXPRESSION

  Evidence of Clovis ornamentation is minimal and rare, and the representation of animals and humans in cave art is totally absent, with the possible exception of a couple of mammoth figures in the west. Although bone artifacts probably served a utilitarian function, some were decorated with incised hatching marks or zipper or zigzag designs, as noted above. It is possible that the double-beveled bone rods were conjoined into burial or other ceremonial objects.70 Probable bone bead preforms and a tiny pebble with a natural hole in the center found in the Clovis level at the Shawnee Minisink Site in southeast Pennsylvania, as well as beads from Blackwater Draw, indicate that Clovis peoples probably wore decorative or ritual objects.71

  Small incised stones have been recovered from the Clovis level at the Gault
Site in central Texas.72 These stones are mostly thin limestone slabs that are natural in the area. The incising is mostly geometric designs, especially hatching and crosshatching (figure 2.14a and c), but at least two stones may be etched with animal representations. Some people think one of these resembles a running fox or a type of canine (figure 2.14b), and the other seems to represent several fletched spears stuck in an animal (figure 2.14d). The latter stone has the same basic design on both sides. Similar incised stones appear at other Clovis sites but are rare because of poor preservation in acidic soils or differences in site function or simply because they have not been recognized. However, a figure of a mastodon was recently found incised in a fragment of a mastodon long bone eroding out of the sediment at Viro Beach, Florida (figure 7.7h). While it has no direct association with Clovis, it was likely produced during that time or possibly even earlier.73

  3

  BERINGIA

  Out of Asia on Foot

  The well-known Beringian land bridge / ice-free corridor theory was originally put forth on the basis of geological studies of the timing and extent of the great North American glaciers, as well as the lowering of the sea level, as a logical explanation of the peopling of the Americas. The archaeological profession quickly adopted the theory because it explained how hunters too primitive to have watercraft could have crossed the Bering Sea. With each retelling, in schools, books, and public lectures, the theory took deeper hold, eventually becoming dogma, and generations of professors have taught it to accepting students. The idea that people walked from northeast Asia to present-day Alaska was transmuted into certainty and is still recognized by many as the only answer to the question of where all prehistoric people in the New World originated. A great deal of research in Alaska and more recently in Siberia has focused on finding the evidence to prove it, without much to show for the effort.