A Multi-Method Approach to Inferring Early Agriculturalists’ Stone Tool Use at the Crescent Bay Hunt Club Site

While there has been much research on the function of stone tools via use-wear analysis, it is clear that a multipronged approach, including an evaluation of material acquisition, production, and tool use, is necessary if tool function is going to prove truly useful for understanding past cultures. Moreover, the role of chipped lithic tools in the economies of agriculture-based populations has seen little research compared to preagricultural systems. A sample of lithic artifacts from the Crescent Bay Hunt Club site, a twelfth- to fourteenth-century Oneota village at Lake Koshkonong in southeastern Wisconsin, are subjected to a multiple-method analysis to determine individual tool use. An assemblage-based analysis provides an overall understanding of the lithic economy. A combination of microscopic identification of edge damage and surface polishes and an analysis of protein residue provides independent lines of evidence that yield strong inferences about tool use in the lithic economies of sedentary agricultural groups in the midcontinent.     

The application of luminescence dating in American archaeology

Luminescence dating is underutilized in American archaeology given the theoretical advantages of direct dating that it confers. Recent advances in understanding the physical processes underlying the method have also made it more reliable as a dating tool. This research as well as potential applications is reviewed.     

Middle paleolithic scraper reduction: Background,clarification, and review of the evidence to date

The hypothesis that the principal varieties of Middle Paleolithic scrapers reflect varying degrees of resharpening and rejuvenation, rather than discrete emic types, has generated considerably controversy over the past decade. While there have been certain misunderstandings surrounding the proposed models of scraper reduction, this controversy also reflects different approaches taken by prehistorians in interpreting lithic artifacts. Placing the notion of scraper reduction in the context of lithic processes generally known as the Frison Effect, this article presents the background and intellectual context of this interpretation and attempts to clarify the models themselves and their test implications. It also reviews and summarizes data generated by several independent tests of the hypothesis and presents new data bearing on this question.     

Assessing Collector Bias: A Geometric Morphometric Analysis of a Collection of Isolated Clovis Points from the Midcontinent

Clovis points are found across the contiguous United States as isolated surface finds and as elements of assemblages in surface and subsurface deposits. Despite being scattered over the continent, Clovis points exhibit a remarkable degree of standardization, yet there is still a demonstrable level of variation in their shapes across regions. Including isolated points in regional comparative analyses would significantly increase sample sizes and spatial coverage of these analyses; however, the effects of collector bias—the tendency to collect the most typical and aesthetically pleasing points—are unknown. Here, we examine the shape of a sample of isolated Clovis points from the midcontinent using geometric morphometric techniques. We show that resharpening had little effect on the shape of points and that our sample of isolated points are similar in shape to points from assemblages in the midcontinent. Our findings suggest that isolated points have research potential when collector bias is limited.     

New evidence for the Mousterian and Gravettian at Rio Secco Cave,Italy

Abstract

The dearth of evidence for late Neanderthals in Europe reduces our ability to understand the demise of their species and the impact of the biological and cultural changes that resulted from the spread of anatomically modern humans. In this light, a recently investigated cave in the northern Adriatic region at the border between the Italian Alps and the Great Adriatic Plain provides useful data about the last Neanderthals between 46·0 and 42·1 ky cal b.p. Their subsistence is inferred from zooarchaeological remains and patterns in Middle Palaeolithic lithic technology. Unexpected evidence of the ephemeral use of the cave during the early Upper Palaeolithic Gravettian period shows a change in lithic technology.     

Clovis biface technology at the Topper site,South Carolina: evidence for variation and technological flexibility

The Topper site in the South Atlantic Coastal Plain of South Carolina provides a rare glimpse of the entire range of Clovis tool manufacture. Topper is a quarry-related site along the Savannah River with an outcrop of Coastal Plain chert and a buried Clovis component. This paper focuses on the 174 bifaces and diagnostic debitage from recent excavations to understand biface production at Topper. I present the process of manufacture then measure the variation in production characteristics at the site in terms of our current knowledge of Clovis biface technology. I conclude that Topper flintknappers used reduction strategies typical of Clovis-period tool production but created a biface assemblage with greater flexibility in design than documented at most other Clovis sites. This variation in biface production suggests greater variability in Clovis behavior across America—Clovis groups adapted to local resource conditions and adjusted the organization of their technology accordingly.     

Clovis Hunting and Large Mammal Extinction: A Critical Review of the Evidence

The North American archaeological phenomenon known as Clovis is famous for the fact that a number of sites that contain diagnostic Clovis artifacts also contain the remains of mammoth and perhaps other extinct genera. In the past, this has led many to assume that Clovis subsistence adaptations were organized around large, now-extinct mammals. It has also seemed to support the argument that the colonization of the Americas by hunters about 11,500 years ago caused the extinction, either directly or indirectly, of some 35 genera of primarily large mammals. Here, we review all sites known to us that have been suggested to provide evidence for the association of Clovis-age archaeological material with the remains of now-extinct Pleistocene mammals. Of the 76 sites reviewed, only 14 provide strong evidence that Clovis-aged people hunted such mammals. Of these sites, 12 contain the remains of mammoth, while two contain the remains of mastodon. Although the prime focus of the analysis we present is on Clovis-age archaeological associations with now-extinct mammals, we conclude that there is no evidence provided by the North American archaeological record to support the argument that people played a significant role in causing Pleistocene extinctions here.     

Spatiotemporal dynamics of the Clovis–Folsom transition

Despite the importance of the Clovis–Folsom transition for understanding the history of western North America, its spatiotemporal dynamics remains unclear. Here we report a three-part study in which we investigated the transition using radiocarbon dates from Clovis and Folsom sites. In the first part of the study, we used dates from Folsom site-phases to determine when and where Folsom originated. In the second part of the study, we employed Clovis and Folsom dates in analyses designed to determine whether Folsom spread via demic diffusion or cultural diffusion. In the third part of the study we investigated the velocity of the Clovis–Folsom transition. The analyses suggest that Folsom first appeared around 12,800 calBP in the northern High Plains and spread north and south from there. They also suggest that the spread of Folsom was, at least in part, the result of population expansion. In addition, the analyses indicate that the spread of Folsom was relatively fast for a prehistoric diffusion but well below the maximum velocity that has been estimated for such events. These findings, in turn, have implications for the hypotheses that have been put forward to explain the Clovis–Folsom transition. They refute the idea that the Clovis–Folsom transition resulted from an extraterrestrial impact over northern North America at 12,900 ± 100 calBP but are consistent with the alternative proposal that the transition was a response to climate-driven environmental change.     

Phenetics,cladistics, and the search for the Alaskan ancestors of the Paleoindians: a reassessment of relationships among the Clovis,Nenana, and Denali archaeological complexes

Clovis, Nenana, and Denali are the earliest well-documented archaeological complexes in the New World. Clovis has been found at sites throughout the lower 48 states of the USA and in parts of Canada but not in Alaska, whereas Nenana and Denali have been found in Alaska but not elsewhere in North America. In 1991, Goebel and colleagues reported phenetic analyses of tool types from Clovis, Nenana, and Denali. They found that Nenana clustered more closely with Clovis than with Denali, and concluded from this that Nenana was likely ancestral to Clovis. Goebel et al.'s study has been cited frequently since it was published, and their conclusions have been widely accepted. Here we explain why analyses of the type performed by Goebel et al. are problematic and also demonstrate empirically that their results are dependent on the algorithm and distance measure used. We then reanalyze their dataset with a technique from biology called cladistics. Cladistics has replaced phenetics as the method of choice for reconstructing evolutionary relationships in biology, because it is more objective. The results of this analysis differ from those obtained by Goebel and colleagues. The results strongly suggest that Denali and Clovis are in fact more closely related to each other than either is to Nenana.     

The Hogeye Clovis cache,Texas: quantifying lithic reduction signatures

The Hogeye Clovis cache is comprised of 52 late-stage bifaces, finished points, and knife/cores cached in central Texas. Because these artifacts were all likely made and cached approximately 13,000 years ago by one or a handful of knappers belonging to a single band with a shared Clovis cultural template, Hogeye provides a rare opportunity to investigate Clovis lithic reduction signatures. This paper builds on previous analyses and presents new methods for quantifying Clovis biface production signatures, including serial flaking and the timing of last overshot flaking. The results show that the Hogeye cache bifaces technologically and morphologically differ from other regional Clovis biface reduction signatures. Additional data is needed to determine whether these differences reflect individual knapping preferences or regional cultural signatures. The methods used and developed here are not Clovis-specific and could be modified and combined with other analytical techniques to identify reduction signatures in biface assemblages from other times and places.     

Technical microwear and residues in identifying bipolar knapping on an anvil: experimental data

The functional study of the stone tool artefacts from the Middle Pleistocene site of Isernia la Pineta (Molise, central Italy) revealed microtraces that display certain features that did not fit in with what we know as use-wear traces. The suspicion that these microtraces may be technical traces derived from bipolar flaking, which is prevalent at this site, led us to initiate an experimental programme to check our hypothesis. The experiments conducted allowed us to identify residues associated with bipolar flaking on an anvil and to characterise the microscopic traces derived from this production technique. Our results proved very useful in identifying the artefacts produced by bipolar flaking, as well as in determining the basic lithological features of the anvil. Moreover, these experiments allowed us to assess the possible interferences that these kinds of technical traces can cause when performing the functional analyses of lithic assemblages produced by the bipolar technique.