Volume 27, Number 2 Center for the Study of the First Americans Department of Anthropology April, 2012 Texas A&M University, 4352 TAMU, College Station, TX 77843-4352 ISSN 8755-6898 World Wide Web site http://centerfirstamericans.org and http://anthropology.tamu.edu BUTTERMILK 7 Clovis toolmakers didn’t work exclusively with stone CREEK In the conclusion of her superb series on the Clovis culture, Charlotte Pevny shares her encyclopedic knowledge of osseous tools—those made of bone, antler, and ivory—and gives us an overview of what makes the Clovis lifestyle unique among early Americans. 15 Hot on the Clovis trail in Oregon In the vastness of the Great Basin, who better to discover “old dirt” bearing Clovis artifacts Looking over the shoulder of CSFA Director than BLM personnel who tramp Mike Waters as TAMU students excavate Block A. across it daily? Leads have yielded UO anthropologist Pat O’Grady RUBEN OLAGUE RUBEN four probable Clovis sites and a rockshelter ripe with promise. The Part I: A Pre-Clovis Occupation first of our 2-part series. 17 They’ll go to any heights to track along the Margin of the Amarillo ancient fiber artifacts Another look with new technology Southern High Plains at materials recovered in the Ft. Worth 1968 excavation of Guitarrero HE SEARCH FOR PRE-CLOVIS oc- Cave in the highlands of Peru. cupations in the New World has been Friedkin Two scientists explain what such site driven in part by our preconceived Houston artifacts as cordage can tell us T and describe the difficulties of life notions of what this record should look like. For Louis Leakey, steeped in the ancient at high elevations. The second Corpus half of our series on fiber artifacts. archaeology of Africa, the crude chopperlike researchers, Christi stones of the Calico site in the Mojave Des- more highly ert in California fit his expectation that unso- developed tech- ogy, or even the Arctic microblade tra- phisticated lithic technologies were used by nologies closer to the dition, seem appropriate antecedents. the earliest folks in the Americas. For other European Upper Paleolithic blade technol- Because Clovis is unique compared 2 Volume 27 n Number 2 with all the technologies that follow it stone, and people routinely walked hun- CSFA Director Mike Waters, principal in- in North America, many of us expect it dreds of miles to obtain it. Friedkin is one vestigator at the Friedkin site, describes should be unique in the temporal direction of several important early sites that line the site setting this way: “It is situated as well: an isolated cultural flowering, a the margin of this Plateau like a string of along Buttermilk Creek, a spring-fed kind of spontaneous technological muta- pearls, including such sites as Gault, with creek that flows all year long so water is tion seeking a specific late-Pleistocene its Clovis-age cobble floor, and Aubrey. always abundant. Adjacent to the stream niche in which to flourish. The southern margin of the Edwards channel is a riparian zone with big trees, Plateau is relatively well watered, which and outside of this, two terraces on the The Debra L. Friedkin site would have increased the attractiveness floodplain, then a colluvial slope, and Which is partly why the rather prosaic of the area for mobile hunter-gatherers. finally bedrock of the Edwards lime- assemblage recently excavated from the Debra L. Friedkin site on the margin of the Edwards Plateau in central Texas has created such a stir: Underneath dis- tinctive Folsom and Clovis strata lies a 20-cm-thick layer of sediment containing thousands of locally made chert artifacts. The site is one of a string of sites lo- cated at the margin of the Southern High Plains along the outcrop of a major source of toolstone widely used throughout pre- The Mammoth Trumpet (ISSN 8755-6898) is published quarterly by the Center for the Study of the First Americans, Department of Anthropology, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843-4352. Phone (979) 845-4046; fax (979) 845-4070; e-mail [email protected]. Periodical postage paid at College Station, TX 77843-4352 and at ad- ditional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to: Mammoth Trumpet Department of Anthropology, Texas A&M University 4352 TAMU College Station, TX 77843-4352 Copyright © 2012 Center for the Study of the First Americans. Permission is hereby given to any non-profit or educational organization or institution toreproduce without cost any materials from the Mammoth Trumpet so long as they are then distributed at no more than actual cost. The Center further requests that notification of reproduction of materials under these conditions be sent to the Center. Address correspondence to the editor of Mammoth Trumpet, 2122 Scout Road, Lenoir, NC 28645. Michael R. Waters Director and General Editor e-mail: [email protected] Ted Goebel Associate Director and Editor, Current Research in the Pleistocene e-mail: [email protected] James M. Chandler Editor, Mammoth Trumpet e-mail: [email protected] Laurie Lind Office Manager C & C Wordsmiths Layout and Design Tops Printing, Inc. Printing and mailing UNLESS NOTED, ALLPHOTOS CENTERFOR THESTUDY OF THEFIRST AMERICANS Web site: www.topsprinting.com Forman collects OSL samples from Block A, World Wide Web site http://centerfirstamericans.com 2007. The light-colored layer below his knees The Center for the Study of the First Americans is a non-profit organization. Subscrip- is the older colluvium, and the darker sedi- tion to the Mammoth Trumpet is by membership in the Center. ments above are the floodplain deposits. Mammoth Trumpet, Statement of Our Policy history, the Edwards Plateau chert. This Many years may pass between the time an important discovery is made and the acceptance of research homogeneous light brown chert occurs as results by the scientific community. To facilitate communication among all parties interested in staying abreast of breaking news in First Americans studies, the Mammoth Trumpet, a science news magazine, boulder-sized nodules within the Edwards provides a forum for reporting and discussing new and potentially controversial information important limestone deposits that are exposed at the to understanding the peopling of the Americas. We encourage submission of articles to the Managing southern margin of the Plateau. This Editor and letters to the Editor. Views published in the Mammoth Trumpet are the views of contributors, chert source was identified early on by and do not reflect the views of the editor or Center personnel. –Michael R. Waters, Director foragers as exceptionally desirable tool- April n 2012 3 stone. The site is located logical Components”). Repeated dat- at the headwaters of the ing of the sediments encasing the catchment.” artifacts conservatively indicated Consistent with its a minimum age range of 13,200 to prime location as a quarry, 15,500 CALYBP, hundreds to thou- camping, and probable sands of years before the commonly hunting locale, the Fried- accepted age range of 12,800–13,100 kin site contains evidence CALYBP for Clovis. Dr. Forman’s two of regular use from Clovis columns of OSL dates show broad through the late Archaic, agreement between his OSL dates a pattern consistent with and the date ranges of Clovis and 13,000 years of regular post-Clovis archaeological cultures. use documented at the Waters recollects, “We’ve worked nearby Gault site. on this for five years. In the first The site was cer- year when we found artifacts below tainly used at the end of Clovis, I thought, That’s interesting, the Pleistocene: three but I don’t know what it means.” But Folsom points were re- as subsequent excavation seasons covered from the 2.5-cm- yielded greater numbers of artifacts thick Folsom layer; from below the Clovis horizon, systematic the underlying thin Clo- differences between the two assem- vis stratum were recov- ered three bifaces with overshot flake-removal Buttermilk Creek Complex artifacts scars, three channel from the Friedkin site. Top row, two flakes, and five blade seg- bifaces and a discoidal core (far right). ments, but no projectile Second row, utilized flakes. Third points. Both strata also row (left–right), ground hematite, contained a small quan- bifacially flaked utilized flake, bend- tity of other tools along break tool, and radially broken biface. with abundant micro- and Bottom row, blades and bladelets. macrodebitage. blages led Waters to conclude that the assemblage was similar, The pre-Clovis Buttermilk Creek Complex assemblage but not identical, to Clovis. The Friedkin site also appears to have been used earlier. As The assemblage underlying the Clovis horizon—which Dr. Waters and his team excavated below the Clovis level in Waters and his team have termed the “Buttermilk Creek Com- the 52 1-by-1-m units in excavation Block A, they continued plex”—includes tools, cores, flakes, blades, microblades, and to discover artifacts: 2,268 pieces of macrodebitage (>3/8″), debitage of all sizes. The 56 tools include 12 bifaces, of which 6 13,204 pieces of microdebitage (<3/8″), and 56 tools, all of it are late-stage midsection and end fragments and 4 are smaller made of Edwards chert. The lack of preservation of organic fragments from late-stage bifaces. On these bifaces, flake scars matter made it impossible to radiocarbon date the site. So appear to terminate at or before the midline, suggesting that Waters turned to luminescence-dating specialist Steve For- outre passé (overshot) flaking typical of Clovis biface thinning man of the University of Illinois–Chicago to provide opti- (MT 26-2, “What It Means to Be Clovis”) was not a technique cally stimulated luminescence (OSL) dates of the sediments routinely used by these earlier site occupants.