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Anthro Notes National Museum of Natural History Bulletin for Teachers Vol. 12 No. 3 Fall 1990 THE FIRST SOUTH AMERICANS: ARCHAEOLOGY AT MONTE VERDE i!§RARlLS When didTTuman beings first set foot in the In recent years, the most significant New World? How did they get here? What advances in the study of the First Ameri- lifeways did they follow? How did they cans have come from innovative data adapt to and affect the ancient American recovery and analysis techniques that have ecosystem? These questions have been hotly yielded vastly more accurate reconstructions debated for over 100 years. Scientists now of ancient environments and subsistence agree only that big-game hunters were in strategies. For example, the soil from a North America by 11,500 years ago. house floor at Monte Verde, in Chile, contained amino acids specific to collagen, The earliest possible date for the initial a protein found in bone, cartilage, and skin. arrival of early humans and other aspects of Microscopic analysis of the material their culture are disputed, although field suggested that a thick skin, possibly a work over the last fifteen years has yielded mastodon hide, had been used in the more evidence about their economy, construction of the shelter. The first South technology and social organization. But the Americans were not just specialized big- biggest surprises have come from South game hunters armed with large bifacially- America, where recent work suggests that chipped projectile points, like the Clovis this continent was occupied by at least hunters of North America, but collected 12,000 years ago, and possibly much earlier, wild plant foods and fished in streams and by people with very diverse subsistence lakes. A few North American sites, such as strategies. PLEiSTOCEaJE HUK7^R-^ATttET?E?S |M THE CHILEAN fOREST-S Page 2 Anthro Notes Meadowcroft Rockshelter, have also and inorganic remains have been studied by provided evidence of diverse economic an interdisciplinary research team to strategies at an early date. reconstruct the paleoecology of the site area and to critically evaluate the evidence for In the early 1970s, evidence about the first human intervention in the site. Specialists South Americans was limited to a small include more than sixty scientists from such series of stone tools and animal bones, disciplines as geology, palynology, botany, mostly from caves and rockshelters. Dates entomology, animal pathology, paleontology, for these sites were often questionable, and ecology, forestry engineering, malacology, many of the tools were not clearly made by diatomology, and microbiology. human hands. Twenty years of work by Latin American archaeologists and others The area around Monte Verde today has have provided more reliable and accepted moderately warm, dry summers and cold, data. Sites such as Tequendama, Tibito and rainy winters, with a mean annual El Abra in Colombia, Monte Verde in Chile, temperature fluctuating between 12 and 15 Los Toldos in Argentina and Pedra Furada C. The climate that prevailed in the late in Brazil are all radiocarbon dated to 1 1,500 Pleistocene after the ice sheets receded years ago or possibly earlier. While the resembled this setting, although it was minimum occupation age of South America probably slightly cooler and more humid. A appears to be around 12,000 years ago, some forest made up of a mixture of deciduous evidence suggests a possibility that the and coniferous trees covers the region today; earliest South Americans actually arrived as it abundantly supplies numerous varieties long ago as 20,000 to 35,000 years ago. of edible tubers, nuts, berries, fruits, and soft and leafy plants throughout the year. Monte Verde Discovered There are also small game, freshwater mollusks, and fish. In late Pleistocene times, The Maullin River flows through the cool mastodons, saber-tooth tigers, ground sloths, forested country west of the Andes in South and probably camelids roamed the area. As Central Chile. In 1976, while directing the the Late Pleistocene sea level was lower, the anthropology program at the Southern nearest point on the Pacific coast lay about University of Chile, in Valdivia, I was 65 kilometers west of the site and offered surveying the river near the site of Monte many edible species of marine organisms. Verde with a number of Chilean and The early inhabitants of Monte Verde could Argentinean colleagues. Buried in the banks choose from all of these varying sources of of a small tributary creek, we found an food. unusual site. Layers of peat bog, which only form in cool wet climates where organic Late Pleistocene Settlement Structure materials are water-logged before they have a chance to decay, had preserved organic The excavation at Monte Verde was divided remains to an extraordinary degree. Not arbitrarily into east and west sides. On the only did we find chipped stone tools and east side the remains of ten or eleven animal bones but also well-preserved foundations of residential huts were wooden tools, house foundations of wood recovered. The foundations measure about and earth, and the remains of medicinal and 2.5 by 3.5 meters and are formed by small edible plants. These suggested the presence timbers, limbs, and roughly shaped planks of a complex village settlement. usually held in place by wooden stakes. Fallen branches and vertical post stubs To our surprise, radiocarbon dates on both reveal that the hut frames were made the cultural and non-cultural levels placed primarily of hardwoods. The side walls were this settlement between 12,000 and 13,000 placed against a log foundation and then years ago. In another area of the site, deeper apparently draped with animal skins as deposits contained stone tools and possible suggested by the presence of a few small cultural features that may be even older. fragments of skin still clinging to the fallen side poles. Preliminary results of micro- At Monte Verde, the extraordinary preser- scopic and other studies by microbiologists vation, diversity, and complexity of organic and pathologists suggest that the skins are Page 3 Anthro Notes most likely from a large animal, probably a the site served a special purpose, rather than mastodon. as living quarters. A wide variety of plant remains, stone tools, Tools and Food Remains at Monte Verde food stains, and small braziers (shallow pits for holding burning coals) was found on the The stone tools from Monte Verde are living surface inside each hut. The braziers, similar to those from other sites in the which contained ash, specks of charcoal, Americas, although the use of naturally and the remains of numerous plant foods, fractured stones, common at Monte Verde, were probably used to heat each hut and to has not been widely reported from other warm the food. Cooking was evidently a sites. The organic remains, however, are communal effort, as shown by the discovery more unusual. More than four-hundred of two large clay and charcoal hearths bones, including those of extinct camelids, centrally located outside the huts. The mastodons, and small game were recovered recovery of three roughly-shaped wooden from the site. Most of the bone remains are mortars and several grinding stones near the rib fragments of at least seven individual hearths suggest that the preparation of plant mastodons. Several bones were modified as food took place next to the hearths. possible digging sticks, gouging tools, or other implements. Who were these ancient South Americans? No human bones have yet been recovered Beside the wooden architecture foundations, from the excavations at Monte Verde, but several types of artifacts made of wood there are two indirect sources of were excavated, including a sharply pointed information about the site's inhabitants. One lance-like implement, three crude wooden is the imprint of a foot preserved in clay mortars, two tool hafts or handles, and more around a large hearth. Another consists of than three hundred pieces of wood possible coprolites (fossil excrement) that appear to be of human origin. These were recovered from small pits dug in the ground also near a hearth. The west side of the site is characterized by a unique structure and activity area. The central feature is a roughly ovoid-shaped artificial rise of sand with a little gravel. Resting on this rise is an architectural foundation made of sand and gravel compacted to form a peculiar wishbone shape. Fragments of upright wooden stubs were present approximately every few centimeters along both arms of the structure. Presumably these are the remains of a pole frame draped with hides. The same type and size of braziers recorded on the east side of the site were found both inside and outside the structure. Of particular interest is the association of the hearths with preserved bits of apparent animal hide, of burned seeds and stalks of bulrush reed, and of masticated leaves of plants found in warmer environments and used today by the THC AR£UAEDLD<q|STS FOOUO ElMfeMCe OF SKifJ Houses , woo-^eM Tool s, Focrrpra kits local Mapuche Indians for medicinal AMP COVRDMTE3 AT THe SITE purposes. The shape, the location, and the artifactual content of the wishbone feature suggest that the structure and this end of Page 4 Anthro Notes exhibiting cut or planed facets, burned of South America and hence reminds us that areas, cut marks, and\or smoothed and we will probably discover and verify yet thinned surfaces. Several bones were earlier sites in North America in the future. sharpened and burned. Their association The next few years will undoubtedly yield with underground plant parts (tubers and additional information from both continents rhizomes) and with grooved wooden slats about the entry date of the first Americans with horizontal grooves suggest that they and about their environment, technology, might have been used as digging sticks and and lifeways.
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