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Introduction
Gary Haynes is Foundation Professor of Anthropology (Emeritus) at the University of Nevada, Reno. He is currently writing papers which were originally planned as separate book chapters describing actualistic studies of extant elephants, experimental studies of elephant bones, and examination of fossil proboscidean assemblages. He has also written extensively about the earliest peopling of North America and megafaunal extinctions.
ORCID ID: 0000-0003-3797-3669
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August 1985 - June 2015
Publications
Publications (172)
A claim that an assemblage of broken mastodon bones and associated cobbles provides evidence of human behavior in North America dated 130 ka is not adequately supported. The article appeared in the journal Nature, which means that it will be widely read and cited. Before the claim can be accepted, we must have a much clearer description of the stra...
An adolescent Mammuthus columbi at the 24 ka Inglewood site in the eastern USA had not been killed or scavenged by carnivores, and its bones had not been trampled or weathered before burial. The bones were well preserved in an anaerobic and impermeable matrix which was disturbed in the 20th century by earthmoving equipment. The weight of the mechan...
This paper reviews the published information, uncertainties about claims, and possible technological and cultural relationships of a sample of sites which have older-than-Clovis dates in North America. The goal is to trace the origins of “Classic” Clovis techno-cultural patterns. Some sites in the sample contain lithic artifacts and some do not. Pr...
This work presents data obtained from experiments conducted on wild and captive wolves. Actualism is a very useful tool for taphonomic studies, as it allows us to understand the behavior of fauna in the past. However, not many past experimental studies have dealt with wolves as taphonomic agents. The results of the study show that wolves modify ani...
The prehistory and colonial history of Hwange National Park and surrounding lands, presented as a narrated Powerpoint presentation at a Symposium held in Hwange (town), Zimbabwe in 2023
Title page and contents of the 2009 edited book about the extinctions of North and South American megafaunal taxa.
This is an optimized version of the file: My PhD dissertation (Catholic University of America Anthropology Studies No. 50) which describes experiments and actualistic fieldwork with captive and wild carnivores, in projects investigating fracture patterns, marking by teeth and stone tools, and other modifications to large-mammal bones. Some of the s...
Bone modifying events observed in African elephant ranges 1982-2002, and documented patterns in mortality profiles, bone surface marks, fracturing, and spatial distributions
This paper describes weathering modifications to elephant bones in Zimbabwe, southern Africa, and discusses possible implications about conditions of deposition and the time elapsed since death or skeletonization. The observed patterns of proboscidean bone weathering, the times elapsed since death, and burial times may not be same as for bones of s...
Proboscideans may have been important prey for Pleistocene foragers in the Americas. Dozens of proboscidean sites have been claimed to show evidence of human involvement dating to MIS 3 or in a few cases even earlier. Summaries are provided here for >70 sites. Also presented are discussions of patterns and variability in the claims. Suggestive trac...
Proboscideans may have been important prey for Pleistocene foragers in the Americas. Dozens of proboscidean sites have been claimed to show evidence of human involvement dating to MIS 3 or in a few cases even earlier. Summaries are provided here for >70 sites. Also presented are discussions of patterns and variability in the claims. Suggestive trac...
This is a peer-reviewed and corrected/updated discussion of >100 late Quaternary proboscidean sites in Africa, Europe, and Asia with evidence for hominin involvement. Lower Palaeolithic/Early Stone Age hominins created far fewer proboscidean assemblages than hominins in later Palaeolithic phases, in spite of the time span being many times longer. M...
Mammal remains preserved in the permafrost zone often bear traces of postmortem transformations, reflecting aspects of the palaeoenvironment and the processes that took place during the accumulation of host sediments. Multidisciplinary studies including radiocarbon dating, infrared spectroscopy, and microfossil analyses and grain size of infilling...
Archaeologists working in Mexico recently claimed evidence for pre-Last Glacial Maximum human occupation in the Americas, based on lithic items excavated from Chiquihuite Cave, Zacatecas. Although they provide extensive array of ancillary studies of the cave’s chronostratigraphic and paleoenvironmental record, the data they present do not support t...
Archaeologists working in Mexico recently claimed evidence for pre-Last Glacial Maximum human occupation in the Americas, based on lithic items excavated from Chiquihuite Cave, Zacatecas. Although they provide extensive array of ancillary studies of the cave's chronostratigraphic and paleoenvironmental record, the data they present do not support t...
Archaeologists working in Mexico recently claimed evidence for pre-Last Glacial Maximum human occupation in the Americas, based on lithic items excavated from Chiquihuite Cave, Zacatecas. Although they provide extensive array of ancillary studies of the cave's chronostratigraphic and paleoenvironmental record, the data they present do not support t...
NOTE: Figure previews were blacked out during conversion of the pdf to the Researchgate website -- they do appear when the full text of the paper is viewed.
This paper illustrates death positions of lightly scavenged or unscavenged large mammal carcasses, providing context for interpreting the body positions of mammoths, such as the frozen carcasse...
Various chronologies of the earliest Native American occupations have been proposed with varying levels of empirical support and conceptual rigor, yet none is widely accepted. A recent survey of pre-Clovis dated sites (Becerra-Valdivia and Higham 2020) concludes a pre-Last Glacial Maximum (>26,500–19,000 cal yr BP) entry of humans in the Americas,...
Reliable methods are needed to distinguish anthropogenic from non-anthropogenic causes of proboscidean limb bone breakage in fossil assemblages because of theoretical uncertainty about human-proboscidean relationships in the Pleistocene. This paper compares experimentally broken bones of African elephants (Loxodonta africana) and mammoths (Mammuthu...
In Europe, the Last Glacial period was mostly characterized by a dry and cold steppe environment that supported well-adapted animal taxa, notably woolly mammoth, which coexisted with Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans. This paper provides a synthesis of mammoth and human interactions in Eastern Europe, using the results of zooarcheological...
In Europe, the Last Glacial period was mostly characterized by a dry and cold steppe environment that supported well-adapted animal taxa, notably woolly mammoth, which coexisted with Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans. This paper provides a synthesis of mammoth and human interactions in Eastern Europe, using the results of zooarcheological...
This file is the entire book manuscript, with a few uncorrected bits here and there. It would have been too expensive to publish as a hard copy. The book is an introductory guide and streamlined history (and prehistory) of Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe, famous for its elephants and other wildlife. There are 10 chapters, a lengthy bibliography, a...
This is the first page of the article: The paper is a response to the comments from Germonpre et al. about “Friend or Foe? Large canid remains from Pavlovian sites and their archaeozoological context” (Wilczynski et al. 2020), published in this journal. Germonpre et al. say this article contains several inaccuracies or errors. Our response begins w...
This is the first page of the paper, with the publisher's free share-link to the full text (expires 23 August 2021) -- In the current volume of the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, Germonpre et al. comment on our article “Friend or foe? Large canid remains from Pavlovian sites and their archaeozoological context” (Wilczynski et al. 2020). Th...
In the current volume of the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, Germonpré et al. comment on our article “Friend or foe? Large canid remains from Pavlovian sites and their archaeozoological context” (Wilczyński et al. 2020). The authors say there are inaccuracies or errors in our paper, in an attempt to refute our rejection of the hypothesis of...
The placement and frequency of anthropogenic bone surface modifications (BSMs) on proboscidean bones are variables that could indicate how Paleolithic people utilized carcasses, thus providing evidence about the economic value of proboscideans. A single study published decades ago (Crader 1983) provides data about anthropogenic BSMs on bones of ele...
The placement and frequency of anthropogenic bone surface modifications (BSMs) on proboscidean bones are variables that could indicate how Paleolithic people utilized carcasses, thus providing evidence about the economic value of proboscideans. A single study published decades ago (Crader 1983) provides data about anthropogenic BSMs on bones of ele...
The paper provides a guide for identifying carnivore effects on proboscidean bones, which may partially or wholly reduce analysts’ variability in reporting frequencies of carnivore modifications in fossil proboscidean assemblages.
This file is an extract from the out-of-print book "The Early Settlement of North America: The Clovis Era" by G. Haynes. The file has 36 text pages, and also includes all references cited in the book's seven chapters. The file provides a view of some history and conflicts in the study of what is generally called 'the peopling of North America.'
This is an updated list of >170 late Quaternary proboscidean sites with probable/possible evidence for human involvement. The sites were compiled from refereed and unrefereed publications and communications from colleagues. It is a work in progress and not claimed to be exhaustive. Also presented are summaries of important sites and discussions of...
This is an excerpt from chapter 5 of an out-of-print book (The Early Settlement of North America, (c) Cambridge University Press) by G. Haynes. This section discusses megaammal-hunting by fluted-point makers near the end of the Pleistocene.
Free-roaming African savanna elephants (Loxodonta africana africana) mark and fracture their tusks in life. It is probable that extinct proboscideans Mammuthus spp., Mammut americanum, and Palaeoloxodon antiquus also marked and broke their tusks in life. Some depictions of elephant tusk breaks (e.g., Haynes and Klimowicz 2015) and surface marks hav...
This is a visual introduction to places in Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park where humans left signs of their presence before the National Park was established in the early 20th century. Some sites were created thousands of years ago by stone age hunter-gatherers, and other sites are only about 70 years old.
Around 50,000 years ago, North America was home to 48 genera of large terrestrial mammals. But by 10,000 years ago, 36 of those genera had become extinct. The disappearance of such a huge proportion of animal types is bewildering. By far, most of the extinct genera were “megafauna,” which are animals having an adult body mass >45 kg (>100 lbs). Equ...
The paper is a guide to identifying carnivore effects on proboscidean bones, which may help analysts quantify and characterise modifications in fossil assemblages.
Loxodonta africana bones are repeatedly trampled when deposited at localities where elephant traffic is frequent, such as water sources and mineral licks. This paper discusses and illustrates several major effects of elephant trampling, including bone scattering and re-positioning at death sites, the breakage of even the largest elements, and marki...
Draft version of a Table listing archeological sites which had surface-marked proboscidean bones; also with brief discussion and references cited. Comments, additions, corrections are requested.
In this paper we discuss recent claims that dogs were first domesticated from wild wolves in the Middle Upper Paleolithic (MUP), about 27 ka BP. According to our data, we think the presence of large canids at the Pavlovian/ MUP sites is a result of hunting specialization and not a sign of an early process of dog domestication. Our interpretation is...
This Table lists ~150 late Quaternary proboscidean sites that have certain or possible traces of hominin utilization, specifically evidence for killing, scavenging, and butchering, along with a sample of references. The sites are arranged by world landmasses. This list is far from complete.
I welcome suggested additions and corrections.
Chapter 7 describes people, events, and adventures in Hwange during the early days of the Rhodesian era; Chapter 8 chronicles how the Wankie Game Reserve was transformed into a world-class National Park by Ted Davison and his crew.
Chapter 9 looks at how the past remains in place in Hwange, and how the long war of liberation was fought in the Park; Chapter 10 is a personal reflection about Hwange.
A History of Hwange National Park: Intro and first 4 chapters
Carcasses of African savanna elephants (Loxodonta africana africana) are affected by large and small carnivores which mark, move, break, and subtract bones. Bone-gnawing scavengers modify proboscidean carcasses and individual bones in patterned sequences. We summarize how scavengers modify major skeletal elements in stages which may reflect the ext...
This paper compares lithic and faunal assemblages from Milovice (Czech Republic) and Krak ow Spadzista (Poland) archaeological sites, with the aim of reconstructing temporal variations and patterning in Gravettian hunting of Mammuthus primigenius (woolly mammoth) in Central Europe. Milovice I was occupied ~1 ky earlier than Krak ow Spadzista, and i...
Table 1 lists a sample of late Quaternary proboscidean sites that have certain or possible traces of hominin utilization, such as evidence for killing, scavenging, and butchering. The sites are arranged by different world landmasses. This list is far from complete. New sites are introduced in the literature regularly at conferences and in refereed...
The presentation describes several bonesite features which distinguish killing from scavenging of modern African elephants by humans and carnivores, and suggests parallels in archeological assemblages of mammoth remains
The oldest unequivocal evidence of mammoth hunting in prehistoric Central Europe has been found in the Gravettian archaeological site Kraków Spadzista (Poland). The site contains thousands of lithic artifacts and the remains of >100 woolly mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius), with radiocarbon dates clustering ∼25–24 ka uncal BP. A fragment of a flint...
This Chapter summarizes how Ted Davison created the game reserve in Zimbabwe that is today's Hwange National Park. The chapter is based on Davison's own writings, archival research, preserved notes and records, and personal interviews.
This is the published version of the paper, now with assigned volume number and page numbers
This is an early report of a project which hopes to find diagnostic evidence distinguishing proboscidean-killing from scavenging by humans and carnivores.
The world of Gravettian hunters, an introduction to the Special Issue - Volume 90 Special Issue - Jarosław Wilczyński, Piotr Wojtal, Gary Haynes
This article interprets the life conditions of woolly mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius) from the Upper Paleolithic archaeological site Kraków Spadzista in Poland. We propose that the mammoths’ irregular mortality profile (also known as age profile) was shaped over several decades by major death events, which serially depleted the youngest cohorts....
The presentation is a first attempt to distinguish killing from scavenging of mammoths by Gravettian hunter-gatherers
Upper Paleolithic faunal assemblages in Central Europe are sometimes dominated by bones and teeth of woolly mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius). Notably higher numbers of mammoths are found in some Gravettian sites than in others. However, mortality profiles may differ; some profiles appear dominated by juvenile mammoths, and some are dominated by pos...
This reply continues the contretemps between S. Holen et al. and myself regarding the newly reported Cerutti Mastodon. The Cerutti Mastodon materials may have been modified by hominins 130,000 years ago, as claimed by Holen and colleagues, but an alternative hypothesis that earthmoving disturbances could be to blame still has not been adequately co...
This is a pdf of the Powerpoint presentation made at the session in honor of Dennis Stanford
The poster describes the Smithsonian’s National Taphonomic Reference Collection (NTRC), a new resource that will provide archeologists and paleobiologists with comparative materials to help interpret taphonomic evidence preserved in bone assemblages.
The transition from foraging to food production in interior southern Africa is still not well understood, despite being central to hypothesized migration and diffusion routes connecting the earliest agropastoralist sites in central Africa with the southern African subcontinent. Hwange National Park (14,650 sq. km), Zimbabwe is located along these p...
This paper summarizes the context and results of long-term actualistic field studies of mammal bones at carnivore kills and mass death sites on three continents; it also updates analyses and data from the work. The main topics are variability, such as in bone representation and carnivore effects on bones, and the possible ecological implications of...
Around 50,000 years ago, North America was home to 48 genera of large terrestrial mammals. But by 10,000 years ago, 36 of those genera had become extinct. The disappearance of such a huge proportion of animal types is bewildering. They are not part of a “mass” extinction, because of the clear size selectivity and the extremely wide variety of other...
During the Late Pleistocene, modern Homo sapiens began dispersing out of Africa and into the rest of the world. The timing of the arrival of humans on each continent parallels the disappearance of many megafaunal genera. The Late Pleistocene also saw climate-caused changes in plant communities and moisture regimes, which would have affected megafau...
This paper summarizes standard methods for estimating ontogenetic ages of individual proboscideans and alternative approaches to presenting the data. Age (a.k.a. mortality) profiling of multiple-mammoth assemblages can provide information about possible causes of death, population health, and other ecologically significant topics, even when the ass...
This slide show summarizes data about the life conditions of mammoths excavated in Kraków Spadzista Trench B+B1. The topics presented include the mammoths' demographic history based on an age profile, taphonomic information from the bone assemblage, estimates of shoulder heights for individuals of different ages, and paleobiological characteristics...
This paper summarizes the context and results of long-term actualistic field studies of mammal bones at carnivore kills and mass death sites on three continents; it also updates analyses and data from the work. The main topics are variability -- such as in bone representation and carnivore effects on bones -- and the possible ecological implication...
Mandibles and teeth of 82 individual Mammuthus primigenius from Kraków Spadzista Trench B+B1 were assigned AEY (African Equivalent Year) life-ages, using age-determination methods developed from tudies of Recent African elephants (Loxodonta africana). The resulting age profile is similar to two other age profiles prepared earlier that were based on...
During over 30 years of actualistic fieldwork in Zimbabwe's wildlife reserves, a range of pathological or anomalous bone, tusk, and tooth specimens have been observed in a sample of over a thousand skeletons of African elephant (Loxodonta africana). This paper describes some specimens to compare them with similar prehistoric examples seen in mammot...
Well preserved and partially articulated bones of a 12-15-year old Columbian mammoth were excavated by a team of Smithsonian Institution archeologists, paleontologists, and volunteers in 1982, led by Dennis Stanford and Frank Whitmore. The site, just east of Washington, D.C.’s Capital Beltway in Prince George's County, Maryland, also contained a re...
This paper provides more information about a 24,000 year old mammoth site in Maryland, USA, and challenges a recent re-interpretation of bone fragmentation at the site (Karr 2015 in the journal Quaternary International vol. 361). The re-interpretation contends that the mammoth bones had been defleshed, disarticulated, broken, and dispersed by carni...
This slight revision of the original report describes excavations and presents early analytical results from a mammoth bone site salvaged by staff and volunteers from the Smithsonian Institution in 1982. The partial skeleton of an LGM Mammuthus columbi was recovered from alluvial sediments over a Cretaceous deposit exposed within a drainage ditch n...
Studies of the patterned effects of human and non-human utilization of recent elephant carcasses provide context for understanding how similar processes in the past affected mammoth bones. This information might explain similarities and differences among mammoth sites and assemblages in different times and places in prehistory, such as the Pavlovia...
Mandibles and teeth of 81 individual Mammuthus primigenius from Kraków Spadzista Street (B) were assigned life-ages, using age-determination methods widely applied to death samples of Recent African elephants. The resulting age profile is similar to two earlier age profiles prepared by other researchers that were based on different sized samples fr...
This paper reviews the published information, uncertainties about claims, and possible technological and cultural relationships of a sample of sites which have older-than-Clovis dates in North America. The goal is to trace the origins of “Classic” Clovis techno-cultural patterns. Some sites in the sample contain lithic artifacts and some do not. Pr...
Large Carnivore neotaphonomy is used to provide guidelines for understanding fossil bone assemblages. However, few studies have been carried out on the taphonomic signatures of wolves (Canis lupus) in their natural settings. From 2001 to 2007, 56 wolf feeding places were studied in 2 geographic areas of Poland (Bialowieza, Bieszczady). We recorded...
The paper describes pathological and abnormal examples of African elephant bones and teeth, such as fractures and age-related changes, and compares them with similar examples from Mammut and Mammuthus.
This book chapter provides brief histories of the three major camps in the National Park, and glimpses of the people behind them in the colonial era.
This chapter is about the native African peoples who once lived in the land that is now designated Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe
This chapter is a history of elephant-hunting in Zambezia and chronicles some experiences of well-known hunters such as F.C. Selous. It also summarizes effects the ivory trade had on Hwange elephants in the 19th and early 20th centuries, before the National Park was established.
Clovis-era subsistence varied from site to site and region to region, but large mammals numerically dominate at archaeological sites with food remains. Plant remains are extremely scarce in Clovis sites. The lack of specialized processing and storage technology suggests seeds and nuts were not prominent in the diet, as they became in later times. S...
Ungulates often gnaw on animal bones, antlers, horns, and ivory in order to maintain certain nutritional requirements. The resulting modifications to bones and other skeletal elements have been variously described and reported, but are largely absent from most taphonomic reference works. Previous accounts of such gnawing behaviors have been restric...
Clovis-era subsistence was variable from site to site and region to region, but large mammals numerically dominate at archeological sites with food remains. Plant remains are extremely scarce in Clovis sites. The lack of specialized processing and storage technology suggests seeds and nuts were not prominent in the diet, as they became in later tim...
Human-caused extinctions of terrestrial mammals in large parts of the world such as North America may have been side-effects of rapid long-distance dispersals (biogeographic range-change) by Homo sapiens moving outward from the Old World. The extinctions help explain how modern humans briskly explored and populated large, empty, and increasingly un...
Large carnivore neotaphonomy is used to provide guidelines for understanding fossil bone assemblages. However, few studies have been carried out on the taphonomic signatures of wolves (Canis lupus) in their natural settings. From 2001 to 2007, 56 wolf feeding places were studied in 2 geographic areas of Poland (Bialowieza, Bieszczady). We recorded...
This presentation at the INQUA Congress in Bern in 2011 described results of a project to discover details about the origins of agropastoralism just south of the Zambezi river, in northwestern Zimbabwe. The study area is located along a probable corridor of cultural diffusion or human movement from east and central Africa towards the far southern t...
A map of Hwange National Park showing archeological and nonarcheological localities and sites that have chronometric dates on materials
Modern African elephants affect habitats and ecosystems in significant ways. They push over trees to feed on upper branches and often peel large sections of bark to eat. These destructive habits sometimes transform woody vegetation into grasslands. Systems of elephant trails may be used and re-used for centuries, and create incised features that ex...
The site of Mtoa Ruins (Zimbabwe National Monument Number 42, Hwange District), probably dating to the early to mid 19th century, has generally been overlooked in archeological literature. This paper describes primary data and features of the site, which was (and still is) an important spiritual focus for local people.
This paper summarizes results of a project which was focused on the later Holocene phases of the LSA, just before agropastoralism appeared in Zimbabwe’s northwest region. NSF funding supported the major parts of the project, with supplementing funding from the Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. Several rockshelters in the study ar...
This is a one-page obituary of Paul S. Martin, who died in 2010. Martin, a paleoecologist at the University of Arizona, was a sustained advocate of the hypothesis that human hunting was the most important factor behind megafaunal extinctions at the end of the Pleistocene.
The paper describes the hundreds of rock engravings ("petroglyphs") of human and animal footprints and other unidentified shapes in eight rockshelters, two of which were partly excavated. The rockshelters are located very near Bumbusi National Monument, a Late Iron Age stone-wall site. Engravings such as these are found relatively infrequently in Z...
Questions
Question (1)
I have posted a list of such sites worldwide (available on researchgate for free download), but I'm hoping to add sites which may not have been published widely or that are still being investigated.
