Clovis and the American Mastodon at Big Bone Lick, Kentucky (original) (raw)
Related papers
DID CLOVIS HUNTERS HAMSTRING THE BOWSER ROAD MASTODON?
The 2013 to 2016 archaeological recovery of the Bowser Road mastodon (Mammut americanum), Orange County, New York, (R.M. Gramly, 2017*) advances PaleoAmerican and Clovis studies (+/- 11,000 to 13,000 years before present).______ A case is made in this paper that the heel bone area chop-marks were made with an Achilles tendon severing (hamstringing) axe. Winner of Best Student Paper and Presentation: Eastern States Archaeological Federation 2017 conference, New London, Connecticut, USA._______ The following is paraphrased from (R.M. Gramly, 2017)*: Butcher evidence on 82 separate bone components. Included in the assemblage were atlatl handles (spear throwers) made from curated human-split proboscidean ribs from a separate animal/s (Strontium test confirmation).These atlatls (twenty-one) were ritually broken and placed at the head of the mastodon skeleton.________ C13 and C12 dated collagen (three tests) were performed on samples from the mastodon. One C13 and and one C12 bioapatite test were performed, as well. The immediate above tests were from three labs*, respectively: Beta Analytic Radiocarbon Dating Laboratory (Beta-391565) 10,950 +/-40 RCYBP (= Radio Carbon Years Before Present) | 12,730-12,855 CYBP (= Calendar Years Before Present) by Dr. Ron Hatfield; Arizona AMS Laboratory at the University of Arizona 11,187 +/-88 RCYBP | 12, 840-13,220 CYBP via Drs. Greg Hodgins and C. Vance Haynes, Jr (AA105131); Dr. Douglas K. Dvoracek at the University of Georgia’s Center for Applied Isotope Studies UGAMS labs: 10,946 +/-35 RCYBP | 12,730-12,835 CYBP; and 10,530+/-35 RCYBP | 12,410-12,575 CYBP [bioapatite] (respectively: UGAMS-20742c; UGAMS-20742a).______ *Archaeological Recovery of the Bowser Road Mastodon, Orange County, New York. A book by R.M. Gramly. Published by: ASAA/Persimmon Press Monographs in Archaeology, 2017. North Andover, Massachusetts: 364 pages, color.
The Cerutti Mastodon Site: Archaeological or Paleontological
The newly reported California discovery of mastodon remains possibly altered by humans more than 130 ka is unprecedented and potentially transformational. It calls for a concerted effort in North and South America to investigate other such ancient contexts that substantially predate the commonly accepted late-glacial timing of the first peopling of the New World.
Mastodons (Mammut Americanum) and the Late-Glacial Vegetation of the Eastern Usa
2018
Numerous studies of tooth plaques and remains of gut contents of have confirmed that mastodon diet was composed of woody browse species, forbs, nuts, and fruits. However, fossil gut contents also suggest that mastodon diet included significant amounts of spruce, even though spruce is a low-quality, chemically-defended food. Most extant large mammals only browse on spruce when all other food sources are exhausted, and mastodon tusk growth increments indicate that mastodons were not food limited as they moved toward extinction (Fisher, 2009). Here we review the vegetation associated with mastodon habitat from the Great Lakes to the Gulf Coast, USA, over the period 18-10 ka cal BP using pollen assemblage data from 29 sites located near proboscidean fossil remains. Pollen data were acquired from the Neotoma Database and pollen abundance was converted into species biomass abundance using the Landscape Reconstruction Algorithm (LRA) of Sugita (2004a, 2004b). Although spruce was the dominant conifer throughout the Great Lakes Region until ca. 10 ka cal BP, deciduous species such as ash, oak, and elm comprised 50% or more of the vegetation assemblages even at the earliest and northernmost sites, and remained at similar levels until mastodon extinction. Many of these species have been found in mastodon gut contents. These vegetation assemblage reconstructions support the suggestion that mastodons were not food limited as they neared extinction. Moreover, these analyses of landscapes surrounding mastodon sites strongly suggest that the contemporaneous forest, composed of large amounts of spruce intermixed with ash, elm, and oak, was unlike the forests found in much of eastern North America today.
Geology and taphonomy of the North Java mastodon site, Wyoming County, New York
Palaeontographica Americana, 2008
A partial skeleton of an American mastodon [Mammut americanum (Kerr, 1792)], consisting of approximately 25% of a single adult animal, was collected from a site in the town of North Java, Wyoming County, New York State, in Summer 2001. Th e fi nd includes a complete upper left third molar, a complete right femur and fi bula, fragments of other long bones, fragments of the skull and mandible, a complete thyrohyoid, 24 different ribs (11 of which are complete), portions of all four feet, and a complete left tusk. All material was recovered from spoil piles dredged from a pond at the site; no bones were found in situ. Exhaustive search of the surrounding area suggests that these are all the bones preserved at the site. Th e majority of bones show evidence of scavenging, with tooth marks resembling those of a large canid being particularly common on several of the bones. These marks, together with the patterns of breakage and abrasion, suggest that the skeleton was exposed for a considerable length of time, or perhaps multiple times, before final burial. Comparison of the size of the tusk and femur with those of other mastodon material from New York State supports the hypothesis of significant sexual dimorphism in mastodons and suggests that the North Java animal might have been a female. Bone collagen from the specimen has been radiometrically dated to 11,560 ± 60 14C yr BP (Beta Analytic 176928). The geological setting of the site appears to be a shallow kettle in a kame deposit. The taphonomic analysis presented here represents one of the most thorough studies of a naturally deposited noncultural proboscidean site. Bone modifications observed here will be useful for comparison with culturally modified sites.
Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory
Toward the end of the Pleistocene, the world experienced a mass extinction of megafauna. In North America these included its proboscideans—the mammoths and mastodons. Researchers in conservation biology, paleontology, and archaeology have debated the role played by human predation in these extinctions. They point to traces of human butchery, such as cut marks and other bone surface modifications (BSM), as evidence of human-animal interactions—including predation and scavenging, between early Americans and proboscideans. However, others have challenged the validity of the butchery evidence observed on several proboscidean assemblages, largely due to questions of qualitative determination of the agent responsible for creating BSM. This study employs a statistical technique that relies on three-dimensional (3D) imaging data and 3D geometric morphometrics to determine the origin of the BSM observed on the skeletal remains of the Bowser Road mastodon (BR mastodon), excavated in Middletow...
1989
The Shelton Mastodon Site (Oakland County, Michigan) was the subject of a five-year multidisciplinary study and yielded late Wisconsinan remains of algae, plants, invertebrates and vertebrates. The vertebrate faunule is comprised of: Esox lucius, Perca flavescens, Rana catesbeiana, R. clamitans, Meleagris gallopavo, Microtus pennsylvanicus, Ondatra zibethicus, Castor canadensis, Canis sp., Alces alces, Cervalces scotti (extinct), and Mammut americanum (extinct). The bones were derived from marginal lacustrine strata deposited adjacent to a forested moraine and show evidence of prolonged exposure and subaerial weathering. Nine radiocarbon dates (eight from Pleistocene and one from Holocene; seven conducted on wood and two on bone) were obtained. Dates on the principal bone-bearing strata range from 12,320 i 110 to 11,740 f 175 years before present (ybp), which corresponds to the age of the Twocreekan substage of the late Wisconsinan. Two projectile points inferred on typological grounds to be between 8,500 and 9,900 years old were found at the lower level of the Holocene bog soil overlying the Pleistocene sediments. Floral remains associated with the Pleistocene vertebrates suggest the presence of a forest dominated by conifers (mostly spruce), while the strata at a higher level contain a heterogeneous mixture of trees (mostly pine), sedges, and grasses. Some pieces of wood have gnaw marks, inferred to be those of Castor canadensis. Habitat preferences of the 10 molluscan and 25 diatom genera recovered from
Evidence for the diet and habitat of two late Pleistocene mastodons from the Midwest, USA
Quaternary Research (2018), 1–21, 2018
We analyzed intestinal contents of two late-glacial mastodons preserved in lake sediments in Ohio (Burning Tree mastodon) and Michigan (Heisler mastodon). A multi-proxy suite of macrofossils and microfossils provided unique insights into what these individuals had eaten just before they died and added significantly to knowledge of mastodon diets. We reconstructed the mastodons' habitats with similar multi-proxy analyses of the embedding lake sediments. Non-pollen palynomorphs, especially spores of coprophilous fungi differentiated intestinal and environmental samples. The Burning Tree mastodon gut sample originates from the small intestine. The Heisler mastodon sample is part of the large intestine to which humans had added clastic material to anchor parts of the carcass under water to cache the meat. Both carcasses had been dismembered, suggesting that the mastodons had been hunted or scavenged, in line with other contemporaneous mastodon finds and the timing of early human incursion into the Midwest. Both mastodons lived in mixed coniferous-deciduous late-glacial forests. They browsed tree leaves and twigs, especially Picea. They also ate sedge-swamp plants and drank the lake water. Our multi-proxy estimates for a spring/summer season of death contrast with autumn estimates derived from prior tusk analyses. We document the recovered fossil remains with photographs.