A View of Some Actualistic and Taphonomic Trends in Paleoindian Studies

stone age institute publication series Series Editors Kathy Schick and Nicholas Toth Stone Age Institute Gosport, Indiana and Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana Number 1. THE OLDOWAN: Case Studies into the Earliest Stone Age Nicholas Toth and Kathy Schick, editors Number 2. BREATHING LIFE INTO FOSSILS: Taphonomic Studies in Honor of C.K. (Bob) Brain Travis Rayne Pickering, Kathy Schick, and Nicholas Toth, editors Number 3. THE CUTTING EDGE: New Approaches to the Archaeology of Human Origins Kathy Schick, and Nicholas Toth, editors Number 4. THE HUMAN BRAIN EVOLVING: Paleoneurological Studies in Honor of Ralph L. Holloway Douglas Broadfield, Michael Yuan, Kathy Schick and Nicholas Toth, editors STONE AGE INSTITUTE PUBLICATION SERIES NUMBER 2 Series Editors Kathy Schick and Nicholas Toth breathing life into fossils: Taphonomic Studies in Honor of C.K. (Bob) Brain Editors Travis Rayne Pickering University of Wisconsin, Madison Kathy Schick Indiana University Nicholas Toth Indiana University Stone Age Institute Press · www.stoneageinstitute.org 1392 W. Dittemore Road · Gosport, IN 47433 COVER CAPTIONS AND CREDITS. Front cover, clockwise from top left. Top left: Artist’s reconstruction of the depositional context of Swartkrans Cave, South Africa, with a leopard consuming a hominid carcass in a tree outside the cave: bones would subsequently wash into the cave and be incorporated in the breccia deposits. © 1985 Jay H. Matternes. Top right: The Swartkrans cave deposits in South Africa, where excavations have yielded many hominids and other animal fossils. ©1985 David L. Brill. Bottom right: Reconstruction of a hominid being carried by a leopard. © 1985 Jay H. Matternes. Bottom left: Photograph of a leopard mandible and the skull cap of a hominid from Swartkrans, with the leopard’s canines juxtaposed with puncture marks likely produced by a leopard carrying its hominid prey. © 1985 David L. Brill. Center: Photo of Bob Brain holding a cast of a spotted hyena skull signed by all of the taphonomy conference participants. © 2004 Kathy Schick, Stone Age Institute. Back cover credits. Top: © 2004 Stone Age Institute. Bottom left: © 2004 Kathy Schick, Stone Age Institute. Bottom right: © 2005 Greg Murphy. Published by the Stone Age Institute. ISBN-10: 0-9792-2761-5 ISBN-13: 978-0-9792-2761-5 Copyright © 2007, Stone Age Institute Press. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, without permission in writing from the publisher. CHAPTER 2 RATHER ODD DETECTIVE STORIES: A VIEW OF SOME ACTUALISTIC AND TAPHONOMIC TRENDS IN PALEOINDIAN STUDIES GARY HAYNES BSTRACT A something that helped me recognize how the detective During the last three decades of American Paleoin- work can bedevil our imperfect minds. dian research, some taphonomists played a mug’s game I fi rst met C. K. Brain in 1982 when I went to Africa while others knew all about the game’s ambiguous rules. to fi nd fi eld sites and agreeable governments willing to After Paleoindianists discovered a string of infl uential issue research permits for a planned study of elephant 1970s publications by researchers working mainly in Af- bones. My research plans came together in Zimbabwe rica, they changed their attitude towards taphonomy. But instead of South Africa, so I did not see Bob Brain again many Paleoindianists idiosyncratically used taphonomy until 1984, when we met in Carson City, Nevada, at a to create support for unusual propositions or to lend plau- conference about animal-bone modifi cations. One day sibility to off-beat theses such as an unexpectedly early Dr. Brain, while eating lunch with Kate Scott and me human presence in the Americas, instead of testing hy- at an A&W Root Beer stand across the street from the potheses through taphonomic analysis. After the 1980s, soon-to-be-bankrupt casino where the conference took taphonomic research has greatly advanced in allowing place, warned us that “Taphonomy is a mug’s game.” clear and defi nite interpretations of Paleoindian bone as- Here’s what I think he meant: Too many taphonomists semblages, but stubborn personalities and the tendency were duping themselves into serving causes instead of to “brand” certain sites continue to discourage the most seeking the more complex truths about site-formation rigorous skeptical inquiry that is taphonomy. The pro- processes. In fact, maybe ultimate complex truths were cess of explaining archaeological contexts through ta- unattainable, which is an insight reached by other con- phonomy is a make-or-break step that must be applied scientious taphonomists. In spite of years of study of all to the earliest sites. the variables, no single predictor could tell us how to ex- plain every example of bone settling, bone survival, bone subtraction from assemblages, bone marking by human INTRODUCTION butchers and feeding carnivores, or the other end-effects This is a detective story, but a rather odd one. of taphonomic processes. C. K. Brain (1981) In this paper, I offer a personal view of the last three decades of American Paleoindian research, some of America’s deep prehistory is a very foreign country, which was carried out by taphonomists who may never and clever detectives are needed to uncover how people have realized they were playing a mug’s game, and some did things then.1 Some Paleoindianists have been able to of which was done by au courant researchers who knew show us through taphonomic research what the world of all about the game’s ambiguous rules. Readers will soon foragers was like in the distant past, but not all the detec- understand that because I was a participant in this recent tives have been equally canny. Years ago C. K. Brain said period of history, my viewpoint has affected how I inter- 1 Apologies to readers of L. P. Hartley’s 1953 novel The Go-Between (Hartley, 2002). 26 Breathing Life into Fossils: Taphonomic Studies in Honor of C.K. (Bob) Brain pret the scientifi c activity and opinions of the time. But gist and geologist (Miller and Dort, 1978) as an example having convictions is an unavoidable part of the practice of how prehistoric people deliberately fl aked mammoth of science. bones into tools. While the process of fl aking bone was replicated and thus plausible, it still needed actualistic FIRST FLUSH OF AMBITION testing to show whether noncultural processes could be eliminated as potential causes of the same results. I take it you are in the fi rst fl ush of ambition, Also in the 1970s, thanks to Professor C. Vance and just beginning to make yourself disagreeable. Haynes (who is not related to me) and then-graduate You think (do you not?) that you have only to student Jeff Saunders, both at the University of Ari- state a reasonable case, and people must listen zona, Paleoindianists could clearly see how relevant to reason and act upon at once. It is just this age-profi ling can be in explaining the possible agencies conviction that makes you so unpleasant. that contributed animal bones to fossil sites. Saunders F. M. Cornford (1908) (1977) thought the mass mammoth site of Lehner, AZ, contained the remains of a herd of related animals killed The starting point of my review is the middle of the together, because the age distribution was so similar to 1970s, when I was a graduate student learning about what is seen in modern African elephant herds. When the fi rst native cultures in eastern North America. The I went to Africa a few years later to study elephant bi- themes that occupied my Paleoindianist colleagues and ology and behavior, I was determined to see how age teachers were primarily (1) the timing of the earliest hu- profi les could vary in elephant bone assemblages when man colonization and (2) the technology and subsistence the causes of mortality varied. After a few years of fi eld- of the fi rst peoples. Both themes were ripe for the appli- work in Africa, I suggested (Haynes, 1987) that mam- cation of taphonomic principles. moth age-profi les in Clovis sites such as Lehner might Contemporary developments in hominid paleontol- refl ect climatic stresses on the populations rather than ogy were barely given notice in the papers and publi- mass-hunting by humans, an interpretation at odds with cations written by Paleoindianists of those days. Yet by Saunders’ (1980).2 1976, thanks to the Wenner-Gren Conference and the re- A hinge point in Paleoindianists’ changing attitude sulting Fossils in the Making book, which “crystallize[d] towards taphonomy developed during the key years 1978- the new science of taphonomy and [helped] to chart its 1985. Within this span, perhaps 1981 was most critical: future course” (Brain, 1981: ix; Brain, 1980:73), Paleo- C. K. Brain’s The Hunters or the Hunted book appeared indianists discovered a string of infl uential publications in the same year as Lewis Binford’s Bones book, Pat by Andrew Hill, Kay Behrensmeyer, Pat Shipman, and Shipman’s book Life History of a Fossil, a Science paper others. To me in my Paleoindian program, which in those by Stanford and colleagues about an elephant they butch- days had the status of a déclassé suburb far from the bus- ered to create bone fl akes—thus in their opinion proving tling metropolis of hominid evolutionary studies, the ta- that pre-Clovis people fl aked mammoth bones in North phonomists seemed to be training through one of two America—and the hiring of A. K. Behrensmeyer at the axes—Harvard’s or rival Berkeley’s. Without mentoring Smithsonian Institution’s Natural History Museum, or training and without peers sharing interests within which slimly avoided a federal hiring-freeze (Harrison, my own Paleoindian program, I ingenuously entered 1981).

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