ChapterPDF Available

Clovis-era Subsistence: Regional Variability, Continental Patterning

Authors:

Abstract and Figures

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 times. Sites dated to a possible proto-Clovis phase, 1,000—3,000 years older than the generally accepted age of Clovis, also contain mostly or exclusively large-mammal remains. Many (perhaps most or all) of the largest animals were probably killed and butchered by Late Glacial foragers; they were not found dead and scavenged by people. Proboscidean carcass utilization by Clovis butchers was often incomplete, because Clovis foraging bands were small in number, very mobile, and most likely could predict where to find vulnerable prey.
Content may be subject to copyright.
293
1,2 Department of Anthropology, University of Nevada–Reno,
Reno, Nevada 89557
Corresponding author e-mail: 1gahaynes@unr.edu
Chapter 17
Clovis-era Subsistence:
Regional Variability,
Continental Patterning
Gary Haynes1 and Jarod M. Hutson2
ABSTRACT
Clovis-era subsistence varied from site to site and region to region, but large mammals numerically domi-
nate 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. Sites dated to a possible proto-Clovis phase, 1,000–3,000 years older than the
generally accepted age of Clovis, also contain mostly or exclusively large-mammal remains. Many (perhaps
most or all) of the largest animals were probably killed and butchered by Late Glacial foragers; they were
not found dead and scavenged by people. Proboscidean carcass utilization by Clovis butchers was often
incomplete, because Clovis foraging bands were small in number, very mobile, and most likely could predict
where to nd vulnerable prey.
KEYWORDS: Clovis subsistence, Late Glacial, large mammals
Introduction
In this paper we summarize the evidence about Clovis-era
subsistence. We also refer to other sites dated earlier than
the fairly narrow Clovis interval proposed by Waters and Staf-
ford (2007; see Haynes et al. 2007 for disagreement), thereby
stretching out the time span to include what we designate a
proto-Clovis period (as suggested by Haynes 2002:253 and
Ferring 2012). We examine data for North America south of
the continental ice sheets, leaving aside Alaskan uted-point
assemblages, because the far northern uted points may be
signicantly younger than those in the lower 48 states (Goebel
2011; Graf et al. 2011; Keene et al. 2009). Clovis or Clovis-like
uted bifaces have been found in Central and South America,
but their chronostratigraphic contexts and associations are
less clear than in the United States. Our sample includes one
site from northern Mexico that was recently discovered and
excavated, but no others south of the USA–Mexico border.
Our focus is on the animal and plant foods that people pro-
cured or processed just before and during the Clovis era. By
necessity we examine only mammals. The evidence about hu-
man use of birds, reptiles, amphibians, sh, and invertebrates
is extremely slim. Only ve sites with adequate evidence that
humans utilized such animals are listed in Cannon and Melt-
zer (2004); these should be closely examined in future studies
of the Clovis era.
Research History
The rst speculations about a preferred Clovis-era diet began
with the earliest discoveries of associated animal bones and
uted projectile points, specically Dent, CO (Bilgery 1935, as
cited in C. V. Haynes et al. 1998 and Saunders 2007; Figgins
1933), Blackwater Draw, NM, and Miami, TX (Sellards 1938,
1952). At the time, these nds hinted that big-game animals
were the major part of the diet. Some archaeologists chal-
Clovis-era Subsistence: Regional Variability, Continental Patterning
294
lenged the likelihood that Clovis foragers specialized in mega-
fauna hunting, although such a limited specialization was not
usually claimed in the professional literature, except perhaps
as a strawman or caricature. The generally accepted model
of subsistence allowed for variety in the diet. For example, a
textbook by Harvard professor Gordon Willey (1966:38), which
every student of American prehistory had to read, stated posi-
tively that Paleoindian “livelihood did not depend on the big
Pleistocene animals of the hunt” for subsistence.
The paleoecologist Paul Martin’s publications (e.g., 1967,
1973, 1984, 2005; Martin and Steadman 1999) blamed Clo-
vis-era hunting for the apparently synchronous extinction of
many megafaunal taxa, and thus strengthened the possibil-
ity that Clovis hunting efforts were especially directed to the
largest animals. Martin’s idea has been regularly attacked
over the years (e.g., Grayson 1988, 1989; Grayson and Melt-
zer 2002, 2003; Meltzer 1993).
Other writers have disagreed with the view of Clovis-era
people as megafauna specialists. For example, Hemmings
(2004: xi) proposed 116 species of plants and animals had
“clear evidence of utilization by Early Paleoindians,” out of a
total of 352 different species recorded in 246 sites. Although
acknowledging that “Clovis people had a clear preference for
mammoth and mastodon” (Hemmings 2004: xi), Hemmings
concluded that Clovis people had a generalist foraging adap-
tation.
Several writers (e.g., Grayson 1991, 2001; Grayson and
Meltzer 2002, 2003) underscore that there is no empirical
evidence (such as bones associated with lithics) proving hu-
mans hunted most of the continent’s largest mammalian spe-
cies in the late Pleistocene. A recurring argument is also put
forward that the largest animals outnumber the smaller ones
in the sample because their bones preserve better and are
easier to nd than small mammal bones. This may be true,
but it does not prove that Paleoindian people chose small
game more often than we see in the archaeological record
(Surovell and Waguespack 2009: 96; Waguespack and Surov-
ell 2003).
More recently, Cannon and Meltzer (2004, 2008) re-
viewed evidence about animals that “Early Paleoindian”
people chose to exploit, and concluded that foragers of the
Late Glacial hunted the most abundant or convenient fau-
nal species found in different regions of the continent, and
were therefore not big-game specialists. Referring to virtu-
ally the same body of data, Surovell and Waguespack (2009)
concluded that Clovis-era people clearly decided to hunt big-
game even when smaller animals must have been more abun-
dant, implying a pattern that some might call “specialization”
but which is not really an obligate self-limitation, rather a
strong and rational preference.
This is the state of the discourse at present—no as-
signment of Clovis-era foragers as specialists or generalists
satisfactorily explains the data. In this paper we present a
sampling of evidence about subsistence, rather than each
and every claim that has been advanced, and we discuss the
implications.
Materials and Methods
Clovis-era Diets: What Is the evidence?
Three lines of evidence about Clovis-era dietary choices are
summarized here (following Haynes 1998). First and most
important is empirical evidence. Clovis-era sites sometimes
contain remains of animals and plants used by people, such
as bones with cutmarks or burned seeds in re features. An-
other possible type of empirical evidence is protein/blood
residue identied on stone tools, although analytical results
of this method are subject to doubt by some scholars (e.g.,
Eisele et al. 1995; Fiedel 1996). We present some results of
this method with caution.
A second line of evidence—more a line of reasoning than
actual evidence—is based on ethnographic analogy. We briey
consider some potential issues after our description of the
empirical data. Another line of reasoning, distinct from actual
evidence, comes from the application of social theories when
interpreting archaeological assemblages. We consider some
possibilities below after discussing ethnographic analogy.
Empirical Evidence of Clovis-era Diet: Fauna
For our sample, we start with the sites that Cannon and Melt-
zer (2008) listed as containing the strongest evidence of diet,
but we have made additions and deletions after reexamining
the available data. Cannon and Meltzer (2004, 2008) evalu-
ated taphonomy in deciding which sites and assemblages to
include and which to reject from their list of archaeological
assemblages yielding compelling evidence about human prey
choices. A possible problem they note is that earlier excavators
of Clovis sites did not always screen sediments, so smaller fau-
nal materials—if they had been present—would have gone un-
noticed, potentially biasing species lists. Also, the supportabil-
ity of claims about stone-tool-made cutmarks or human-made
bone breaks should be rigorously examined. It is beyond the
scope of our own paper to make a more rigorous and hands-on
taphonomic analysis of every site in the list, but we think much
more than desktop taphonomy must be done.
Two Cannon and Meltzer papers (2004, 2008) list several
site faunules from an “Early Paleoindian” period. The 2004
paper includes several that are older than Clovis, while the
2008 paper includes only one older site, Hebior, which did
not contain Clovis artifacts. Hebior does not belong in our
Clovis-era list, although we do consider it and other older
sites after rst surveying only the Clovis era. We also deleted
Pleasant Lake from the list because it contained no lithic
tools and its dating is uncertain. Several other mastodons
from Michigan similar to the Pleasant Lake nd have been in-
terpreted as butchered by people (Fisher 1984a, b), and some
archaeologists have accepted the sites as Paleoindian. These
other sites were not included on Cannon and Meltzer’s list
and are not on our Clovis-era list.
Other sites on the Cannon and Meltzer (2008) list may
not belong if they do not provide evidence about Clovis food
remains. We refer here to Lewisville as an example, but we
think all sites in the list need reexamination.
Haynes and Hutson
295
Lewisville has nine mammalian genera in its faunal list,
including numerous small rodents, far more taxa than any
other Clovis-era site. Only six lithic items were found at the
site (Crook and Harris 1957), following earth removal during
dam construction in the 1950s. A reworked Clovis point was
stuck in a burned red clay feature interpreted as a hearth,
an enormous hearth as it turns out, measuring 8 by 10 ft
across and extending to a depth of 36 in., one of 21 burned
sediment features mapped as hearths. The site fauna may
not reect human subsistence practices. Heizer and Brooks
(1965: 228) wrote that “it would be hard to point to a more
confusing instance of collecting, recording, and incompetent
reporting” of such a potentially important site. Two radio-
metric dates in excess of 37,000 14C yr BP were much too
old for Clovis, and the inferred original depth of the Clovis
point, supposedly well below the original paleo land surface,
led some authorities to wonder if the point was intrusive
or planted and the so-called hearths were actually burned
rodent nests (Graham and Heizer 1967; Heizer and Brooks
1965; Krieger 1962; Sellards 1960: 161–62). Another site situ-
ated on the same Trinity River terrace as Lewisville, Lagow
Sand Pit (Crook and Harris 1957; Shuler 1923), contained a
Holocene human skeleton intrusive into fauna-bearing Pleis-
tocene sediments (Crook 1961; Oakley and Howells 1961),
suggesting that a similar mixing of materials of very different
ages may have occurred at Lewisville. The site was reexam-
ined in 1979 and 1980 during a low-water period (Stanford
1983), and the burn features mapped by Crook and Harris
(1957) were reinterpreted as Clovis hearths dug into older
sediments containing pre-Clovis animal bones, mixing mate-
rials of different ages.
The inclusion of just this one site, Lewisville, with its un-
usually wide variety of small animal taxa, has a signicant ef-
fect on any comparative analysis of the breadth of Clovis-era
diets. We have kept Lewisville in our list without adding to
or subtracting from species in the Cannon and Meltzer list, to
avoid what Cannon and Meltzer (2008: 7) call a “myopic focus
on megafauna when it comes to the Late Pleistocene.” Still, we
contend the evidence from this site, and probably others such
as Aubrey (Yates and Lundelius 2001), should be taphonomi-
cally reexamined to avoid an uncritical and equally myopic bias
towards small (and potentially noncultural) fauna.
At this point we begin our reconsideration of Clovis diet
with a list of 20 Clovis-era assemblages from 19 sites (Tables
17.1 and 17.2) deemed relevant by Cannon and Meltzer
(2008). Including carnivores, there are 164 animals (121 large,
43 medium/small) represented from 19 genera. If we exclude
the four carnivore genera and their 10 individuals, following
Cannon and Meltzer, the sites in our list contain a minimum
number of 117 large mammals from 7 genera (adult body
weights over 100 lbs [44 kg]), and 37 medium/small mammals
from 8 genera. Cannon and Meltzer (2008) analytically distin-
guished “large herbivore” (adult animal weighing over 44 kg)
from “megafauna” (equated only with proboscideans, bison,
horse, and camel) in their analysis of regional differences in
diets. The mean proportions of large herbivores and mega-
fauna in the Eastern sites discussed by Cannon and Meltzer
(2008) were 77% and 49% respectively, while the proportions
of large herbivores and megafauna in the Plains were 100%
and 100%, and in the Western sites the proportions were
both 95%. In our edited list, the mean Eastern proportions
are 72% large herbivores and 37% megafauna, and the mean
Plains and Western proportions are unchanged. Deleting He-
bior and Pleasant Lake signicantly lowers the proportion
of megafauna in eastern sites, but has less notable effect on
large-herbivore proportion. If we deleted Lewisville, the pro-
portions of megafauna and large herbivores in Eastern sites
would be higher.
If Lewisville’s unusual faunal list does provide Clovis-
era dietary evidence to the extent that Cannon and Meltzer
(2008) believe, the wide variety in the Eastern diet may result
from the greater biotic diversity in the sites’ geographic loca-
tions. Many sites in the East (and some in the other regions)
are located within transitional, ecotonal environments where
different physiographic provinces meet and where biotic
diversity would be relatively higher than deeper within the
provinces. Some Eastern sites are also near the Great Lakes
and the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coasts (Cannon and Melt-
zer 2008: 12, their g. 3), subregions with relatively higher
biotic diversity than in the Plains and West.
At rst sight the numbers certainly suggest that Clovis
foragers, in general, disproportionately ate the largest ani-
mals, at least in the West and Plains. Surovell and Wagues-
pack (2009) proposed on several grounds that the largest
animals were deliberately selected. A statistical analysis of
Paleoindian faunas shows that smaller animals with predict-
ably higher taxonomic diversity and encounter rates must
have been deliberately passed up. The appearance of size-
related hunting is prima facie evidence of a preference for
the largest animals. Surovell and Waguespack do not label
this Clovis-era preference for megafauna a “specialization,”
except insofar as it shows deliberate hunting choices were
made on the basis of body size; but Clovis-era people were
also apparently willing to change their hunting behavior (that
is, switch prey) when larger mammals were seasonally dif-
cult to locate, when the megafauna became extinct, or when
risks of hunting failure had to be reduced.
Other sites not included in the Cannon and Meltzer
(2004, 2008) lists may contain useful evidence about human
involvement with the animal carcasses. Some of the addi-
tional sites are not well published, or the publications pro-
vide equivocal evidence, but we consider them here to avoid
overlooking all possibilities. Table 17.3 lists the sites (and ref-
erences) brought forward for an expanded inventory relevant
to Clovis-era subsistence.
The rst site added to the list is Coats-Hines, TN, inter-
preted as a mastodon-butchering locus created in pond de-
posits. At least two mastodons were found in apparent asso-
ciation with undiagnostic stone tools, lithic akes, a possible
bone point tip, an antler tine, and bones of deer, muskrat,
canid, rodent, turkey, and turtles. One mastodon vertebra is
said to be cutmarked, but the specimen has not been pub-
Clovis-era Subsistence: Regional Variability, Continental Patterning
296
Table 17.1 Sites with occurrences of mammalian taxa showing possible evidence for human subsistence use in the Clovis-era, edited from Cannon and
Meltzer (2004, 2008, where references can be found). The two Blackwater loci are included as parts of a single site. In most cases, we have used the MNI
counts in Cannon and Meltzer (2008), or estimated an MNI of 1 based on very low bone counts; however, in the cases noted, we have used MNI counts from
other sources. Question marks indicate incomplete or unclear data.
Site/assemblage Taxa (MNI) Notes
Alexon (Wacissa River), FL Bison (MNI=1) May post-date Clovis (Cannon and Meltzer 2008)
Aubrey, TX Gopher (MNI=1?); deer (MNI=1?); Numerous other taxa were also found in the Clovis
bison (MNI=1?) camp areas (Yates and Lundelius 2001)
Blackwater BSW and Blackwater GS, NM Mammoth (MNI=7?); bison (MNI=1?); Hester (1972:170) refers to seven mammoth kills
horse (MNI=1) with artifacts
Bull Brook, MA Caribou (MNI=1); beaver (MNI=1)
Colby, WY Mammoth (MNI=7)
Dent, CO Mammoth (MNI=14) Saunders (2007) counted 14 mammoths
Domebo, OK Mammoth (MNI=1)
Escapule, AZ Mammoth (MNI=1)
Jake Bluff, OK Bison (MNI=15)
Kimmswick, MO Mastodon (MNI=2?); deer (MNI=1?) Numerous other taxa were found in two Clovis
levels (Graham et al. 1981; Graham and Kay 1988)
Lange-Ferguson, SD Mammoth (MNI=2) The uted points were not excavated within the
mammoth bonebed (Hannus 1990), but were
found nearby in a comparable stratum
Lehner, AZ Mammoth (MNI=13); camel (MNI=3);
bison (MNI=4); bear (MNI=2)
Lewisville (1950s), TX Horse (MNI=8); deer (MNI=9); wolf (MNI=2);
cottontail (MNI=13); prairie dog (MNI=8);
woodrat (MNI=4); vole (MNI=1);
Deer mouse (MNI=8); raccoon (MNI=5)
Lubbock Lake, TX Mammoth (MNI=3) Johnson (1987:121-123) also interprets as
butchered one Camelops (camel), one Arctodus
(short-faced bear), and two Equus (horse) individuals
Miami, TX Mammoth (MNI=5)
Murray Springs, AZ Mammoth (MNI=2); bison (MNI=11)1 The MNI counts are from C. V. Haynes and Huckell
2007)
Naco, AZ Mammoth (MNI=1)
Udora, Ontario Caribou (MNI=1?); hare (MNI=1?); Arctic fox (MNI=1?)
Whipple, VT Caribou (MNI=1?);
lished and described adequately. The mastodon may repre-
sent human subsistence, but perhaps some of the other taxa
may be natural (“background”) occurrences, which would be
common in pond deposits. Radiometric dates from above,
within, and below the marked mastodon bones range from
10,260 ± 240 14C yr BP to 14,750 ± 220 14C yr BP.
The second site is El Fin del Mundo in northern Mexico,
with two buried bone beds and several other loci, including
an upland campsite. The upper bone bed included the re-
mains of two disarticulated juvenile gomphotheres, buried
under diatomaceous deposits in valley ll, along with ve
lithic akes. Two Clovis points were found nearby. Dates on
the upper bone bed have been published as about 13,000 cal-
endar years. The lower and older bone bed, containing bones
of horse, tapir, bison, and mastodon, yielded no artifacts, and
does not represent human subsistence. The camp locus con-
tained hundreds of lithic tools, including fragmentary Clovis
points, blade cores, and scrapers. More detailed information
about this important locality should be forthcoming.
Pleasant Lake, MI, is the third site we add to the list. Can-
non and Meltzer (2004, 2008) had included it in their “Early
Paleoindian” sites showing acceptable evidence about subsis-
tence. A single mastodon’s bones exposed by dragline exca-
vation were surface marked and broken, interpreted as done
by people, but no artifacts were associated with the bones.
We have doubts that the skeleton actually does provide evi-
dence of human butchering practices, but as with Lewisville
we include the site to give it the benet of the doubt. No
direct radiocarbon dates are available, but a post-Clovis date
(roughly 10,400 14C yr BP) came from wood within a tusk pulp
cavity and a pre-Clovis date (roughly 12,000 14C yr BP) came
from organics below the bones.
The fourth site added is Lindsay, MT, a single adult mam-
moth buried in loess, directly dated variously from 9,500 to
12,500 14C yr BP. The more recent dating is at the oldest end
of the range, but prior dates averaged 11,210± 190 14C yr BP.
Some bones were interpreted as stacked, battered by stones,
and cutmarked, but no aked-stone artifacts were found with
the bones. Some breaks appeared to have been made when
the bones were fresh or near fresh, possibly by trampling or
Haynes and Hutson
1 A skull of a 12th bison was also found, separated from the area 4–5 main concentration of bison bones
297
animal gnawing, although humans cannot be ruled out as
agents of some breakage. A few marks may have been made
by stone tools, although others appear to have been created
by steel tools (Krasinski 2010).
The fth site added to the Clovis list is Duewall-New-
berry, TX, containing the partial skeleton of a single adult
mammoth eroding out of stratied alluvial sediments in a
cutbank of the Brazos River. Some elements apparently had
been broken by impact (or trampling) when in fresh or near-
fresh condition; others had weathered before breaking; some
had carnivore gnaw damage on them; and some may have
been cut by stone tools (Krasinski 2010). No lithic artifacts
were found, and the bones could not be directly dated, al-
though a terminal Pleistocene age is suggested by the strati-
graphic position.
A sixth site (actually a locality with several nd spots)
is Wally’s Beach, Alberta, where one set of Equus bones was
cutmarked and partly articulated and six other Equus bone
loci were lithic-associated (Kooyman et al. 2006). Also found
in the locality were cutmarked, partly articulated bones of
one Camelops and nondiagnostic lithic implements (Kooyman
et al. 2012). Several dates on bones establish a Clovis-era age
for various large-mammal taxa at the locality, ranging be-
tween 11,000 and 11,350 14C yr BP (Kooyman et al. 2001). The
locality also yielded uted points, two of which tested posi-
tive for horse-protein residue and one for bovid, interpreted
as either bison or helmeted musk ox (discussed below) (Kooy-
man et al. 2001:687).
Other sites with cutmarked or broken bones may be
worth considering, but we do not include all of them in our
revised list because the evidence is still equivocal. Examples
are the mastodons from Michigan, as mentioned above, in-
terpreted as killed by humans, based on certain characteris-
tics of the bones and the season of death. Another example
is the Stolle mammoth found in 1977 in a New Mexico playa,
not far from the Clovis type site Blackwater Draw. No lithic
tools were found in association, although a caliche boulder
and cobble were near the single animal’s partly articulated
bones, and one bone fragment had unusual deep cuts (C. V.
Haynes pers. comm. 2012). The stratigraphic position of the
bones below a black mat indicates a Clovis age.
Another kind of empirical information about Clovis-era
diets may come from protein- or starch-residue analysis. In
theory, animal and plant proteins and starch on lithic speci-
mens should be detectable by recording the residue mor-
phologies or by measuring protein reactions with specic
antibodies. Lab procedures have been developed to identify
biotic taxa from certain kinds of residues, but some may
be prone to misidentication (Haslam 2006) or to giving
false positives, especially the more sensitive protein-de-
tection methods (Eisele et al. 1995; Fiedel 1996; Jahren et
al. 1997; Wadley and Lombard 2007; see Gundy 2008 and
Vish 2008 for more recent reviews). Many researchers think
this kind of analysis is valid and acceptable, so we present
some results here, although with a note of caution. Table
Number of sites Minimum number
Taxon (common name) (occurrences) of individuals (MNI)
Mammoth 11 56
Mastodon 1 2
Horse 2 9
Camel 1 3
Bison 6 33
Caribou 3 3
Deer 3 11
Bear 1 2
Wolf 1 2
Raccoon 1 5
Arctic fox 1 1
Beaver 1 1
Prairie dog 1 8
Gopher 1 1
Hare/cottontail 2 14
Woodrat 1 4
Deer mouse 1 8
Vole 1 1
Table 17.2 Summary of data from Table 1, showing numbers of occurrences
of mammals (arranged roughly by decreasing body size) in Clovis-era sites
with evidence for human diet choices, based mostly (see text) on Cannon
and Meltzer (2004, 2008). Note that carnivores are included in this and Table
1; bear and wolf are counted as “large mammals.”
Site Animal (common name) Archaeological evidence References
Coats-Hines, TN Mastodon (MNI=2) Nondiagnostic lithics; purported Breitburg et al. 1996;
cutmarks on bones Deter-Wolf et al. 2011
El Fin del Mundo, Sonora, Mexico Gomphothere (MNI=2) Fluted points near bones bedded Holliday et al. 2009; Mentzer 2009;
with akes Sanchez and Carpenter 2013;
Sanchez et al. 2009
Pleasant Lake, MI Mastodon (MNI=1) Broken and marked bones; Fisher 1984a,b
no lithic tools
Lindsay, MT Mammoth (MNI=1) Broken bones; no lithic tools; Davis & Wilson 1985;
possible cutmarks Hill and Davis 1998;
Krasinski 2010
Duewall-Newberry, TX Mammoth (MNI = 1) Broken bones; no lithic tools; Steele and Carlson 1989
possible cutmarks
Wally’s Beach, Alberta Camel (MNI = 1); Cutmarked bones, lithics Kooyman et al. 2001, 2006, 2012
Horse (MNI = 7)
Table 17.3 Other Clovis-era sites with possible evidence for mammal hunting.
Clovis-era Subsistence: Regional Variability, Continental Patterning
298
17.4 lists positive results for the presence of protein resi-
due on lithic materials, which may be subsistence evidence.
Not all the lithic items in this list have been unambiguously
identied as part of Clovis technology. The items labeled
“Gainey” may have been manufactured rather later than
classic Clovis points. Similarly, two other specimens often
thought to postdate Clovis have positive results for “el-
ephant” (presumably mammoth or mastodon); these are a
stemmed point from Utah and an unuted lanceolate from
Oklahoma. If the results on each of these possibly post-Clo-
vis specimens are not false positives, the items may indeed
date to the Clovis era, before proboscidean extinctions; or,
alternatively, mammoths and mastodons did not become
extinct until later than Clovis when the points were in use.
Other examples that could have been added to the list but
were left off to avoid overemphasizing residue analysis are:
Fluted points from two sites in the Great Basin with positive
results for deer, bear, bighorn sheep, and turkey or goose
(Mullins and Herzog 2008); two unstratied Alaskan micro-
blade assemblages (Gerlach et al. 1996) of uncertain ages,
with positive results for deer, human, rabbit, sturgeon, bear,
cat, and mouse; Alaskan uted points (Dixon 1993; Loy and
Dixon 1998), which may postdate the Clovis era, with posi-
tive results for mammoth, bison, and sheep; and, from Pais-
ley Cave No. 2 (OR), a smooth cobble excavated from a level
dated >200 years older than Clovis, which had elephant
protein identied on it, according to a public presentation
made at the University of Nevada, Reno, by D. Jenkins (2011
pers. comm.), but which has not yet appeared in a print
publication. Our list should be considered only a sampling
of the reports available about residue analysis.
Yet another set of sites may provide further evidence
about a long-lasting pattern of large mammal hunting in the
Late Glacial. These occurrences may be part of a proto-Clovis
phase of early human dispersal in North America just before
the invention or earliest archaeological visibility of uting.
They date 1,000–3,000 years before the oldest Clovis date
(~11,550 ± 14C yr BP from Aubrey, TX). Sites dating signi-
cantly earlier than this, such as localities with mammoth limb
bones interpreted as broken by humans 40,000–20,000 years
ago (during the Middle Wisconsin) or 20,000–15,000 years
ago (during the Last Glacial Maximum) (Holen 2006, 2007,
2012, and this volume) are not included here; their temporal
separation from the Clovis era seems excessive, and they do
not have associated cultural materials that could link them
technologically or behaviorally to Clovis.
The possible existence of a span of time with a lithic
technology lacking uted bifaces, a proto-Clovis phase such
as proposed by Haynes (2002:253) and others (e.g., Ferring
2012), is suggested to us by three sets of evidence:
(1) the lithic assemblages recovered from the deepest lev-
els at the Debra Friedkin site in Texas (Waters et al.
2011b), OSL-dated with large standard errors to up to
3,000 years older than the site’s presumed Clovis level,
and which contain lithic materials very much resem-
bling Clovis in manufacturing and implement classes,
hinting at an ancestral relationship to Clovis;
(2) mammal hunting/butchering sites with non-Clovis arti-
facts and dating up to 1,500 years older than Clovis;
(3) indirect indications that localized megafaunal populations
may have suffered abrupt collapse between about 2,500
and 1,000 years before Clovis in the eastern United States.
In this last case, data come from buried stratied sedi-
ments in New York State and Indiana (Gill et al. 2009; Rob-
Haynes and Hutson
Table 17.4 Positive identications from residue studies of possible/probable Clovis-era materials, arranged alphabetically. Note that “human” identied
from East Wenatchee has not been included in any discussion of subsistence. “Bovid” is entered as Bison.
Site/locality Taxa with “positive ID” References
34BV177, OK (unuted lanceolate [Plainview] point)1 Elephant Puseman 2004
42TO5135, UT (Haskett stemmed point)1 Elephant Duke 2013 pers.comm.; Yost 2013
East Wenatchee, WA Human, bison, [other?] bovine, deer, rabbit Gramly 1991, 1993
Mahaffy cache, CO (Clovis?) Sheep, bear, horse, camel Yohe and Bamforth In Press
Martins Creek, OH [undiagnostic lithics, mastodon Elephant, deer Brush & Smith 1994; Brush &
and deer bones] Yerkes 1996; Brush et al. 1994
Nobles Pond, OH (Gainey tools, mostly endscrapers) Deer, bear, caribou, elk, rabbit, cat, dog, Seeman et al. 2008
guinea pig, mouse, chicken2
Shoop endscrapers, PA Cervid (for 1 of 15 tested endscrapers) Hyland et al. 1990
Wally’s Beach, Alberta Bovid (either bison or helmeted musk ox?), horse Kooyman et al. 2001
Western Iowa northern loess hills Gainey point Cervid Molyneaux 2000
1 Point type previously thought to postdate Clovis.
2 Some genera at Nobles Pond were identied on small numbers of tested items and may be false positives or soil contamination, such as “guinea pig”
and “chicken” (Seeman et al. 2008:Table 2).
299
inson et al. 2005; Robinson and Egan 2012), where the rela-
tive abundance of Sporormiella dramatically declined before
changes in re regime or climate occurred; Sporormiella is
a fungus that thrives in megafaunal dung (Davis and Shafer
2006) deposited in and around ponds and wet areas. Al-
though changes in salinity and water depth could have af-
fected the Sporormiella concentrations, another possible in-
ference is that megafaunal numbers collapsed locally due to
human hunting. We note that numerous other sites in New
York State have yielded mastodon and mammoth skeletons
that postdate the time of the Sporormiella drop-off (Feranec
and Kozlowski 2012), possibly because low-density and very
mobile human hunting before Clovis affected only some of
the region’s proboscideans.
Table 17.5 lists four additional sites with artifacts and
megafaunal bones that predate Clovis, within our suggested
proto-Clovis phase, specically
(1) Manis, WA, a mastodon site several centuries older
than Clovis, which contained a bone splinter or point
embedded in a rib (Waters et al. 2011a);
(2) Hebior; and
(3) Schaefer, two mammoth sites in Wisconsin about 1,500
years older than Clovis, with nondescript lithics in as-
sociation (Joyce and Blarina-Joyce 2002; Overstreet and
Kolb 2003). A third mammoth discovery from Wiscon-
sin, Mud Lake, is not included here because proposed
butchering marks (Johnson 2007) have not been veri-
ed (Krasinski 2010).
(4) Firelands, OH, with a cutmarked femur from a Jeffer-
son’s ground sloth, dated 11,740±35 14C yr BP, which is
200 14C years or more older than Clovis (Redmond et al.
2012).
If these four Late Glacial sites, all older than Clovis, are
indicative of human-foraging behavior, they show that human
choices to hunt and process the very largest land mammals
began centuries before the Clovis-era and continued through
it, a patterned foraging choice with a long history.
Table 17.6 is the expanded list of sites (n=37, MNI=202,
or 190 without carnivores) showing possible evidence of
proto-Clovis and Clovis-era utilization of mammalian taxa, in-
cluding the Cannon and Meltzer (2004, 2008) sites plus other
large-mammal sites mentioned above, and the protein-residue
sites.
If we apply the same analysis as Cannon and Meltzer
(2008) did to this larger list (Table 17.7), distinguishing
“large herbivores” from “megafauna,” the mean proportions
for the East site faunules are 80% large herbivores and 55%
megafauna; for the Plains, the mean proportions are 100%
and 94%; and for the West, the mean proportions are 82%
and 90%. Cannon and Meltzer (2008) performed a multifac-
tor analysis that incorporated presence of hearths and re-
covery method and calculated the (weighted) means as 2.4
genera per site in the East, 1.29 in the Plains, and 1.8 in
the West, which differ signicantly. Without the multifactor
analysis, the variety in mammalian taxa eaten per site in
the three different regions is a bit more similar; the mean
number of genera is 2.21 per site in the East, 1.78 per site
in the Plains, and 1.67 per site in the West. The mean num-
ber of mammal genera per region is signicantly different (p
= 0.751), but we note that the possibly questionable small
genera from just two sites, Lewisville and Nobles Pond, are
strongly inuencing the calculations.
Site Evidence, date References
Manis, WA Mastodon (MNI = 1), Waters et al. 2011a
bone sliver/point
embedded in rib
Hebior, WI Mammoth (MNI = 1), Overstreet and Kolb 2003
associated lithics
Shaefer, WI Mammoth (MNI = 1), Joyce and Blarina-Joyce 2002
associated lithics
Firelands, OH Jefferson’s Ground Redmond et al. 2012
Sloth (MNI = 1), no
lithics, cutmarked bone
Table 17.5 Sites dating up to 1,500 years before the Clovis era, interpreted
as containing subsistence remains. These are considered to belong to a
proto-Clovis period, when human populations directly ancestral to Clovis
had not yet developed the distinctive biface uting.
Number Minimum number of
Taxon of sites individuals (MNI)
Mammoth 15 60
Mastodon 4 6
Gomphothere 1 2
“Elephant” 3 3
Jefferson’s Ground Sloth 1 1
Horse 4 17
Camel 3 5
Bison 9 36
Elk 1 1
Caribou 4 4
Deer 6 14
Cervid (indeterminate) 2 2
Sheep 1 1
Bear 3 4
Wolf 1 2
Raccoon 1 5
Arctic fox 1 1
Beaver 1 1
Prairie dog 1 8
Gopher 1 1
Hare/cottontail 3 15
Woodrat 1 4
Deer mouse 1 8
Vole 1 1
Table 17.6 Complete list of mammalian taxa, arranged roughly by
decreasing body size, and numbers of occurrences dated to the proposed
contiguous proto-Clovis to Clovis periods; data sources are Cannon and
Meltzer (2004, 2008), the blood residue cases, and published information
about the additional archeological sites mentioned in the text. Note that
“bovid” and “bovine” are included here as Bison, although they may be musk
ox (or cattle?); the taxon “human” (from Table 4) is not included.
Clovis-era Subsistence: Regional Variability, Continental Patterning
300
Another Possible Consideration besides Empirical Data:
Ethnographic Analogy as a Guide to Diet
Studies of historic-period hunter-gatherers may or may not
provide useful models for understanding human dietary
choices in the past, keeping in mind the possibly unknow-
able differences between modern peoples and late Pleisto-
cene human populations. Ethnographies are snapshots of
recent foragers who live in a developed world, and their
behavior may be different from that of prehistoric foragers
whose ability to disperse and explore was far less limited.
Except for Inuit whalers, subsistence hunters of very large
mammals can almost never be found in the world anymore.
Modern foragers, many of them hunting and gathering only
part-time, usually target medium and small game animals,
which are more abundant than larger animals, and they may
rely more on collected plant foods than on hunted game an-
imals (see Lee 1968; Silberbauer 1981; Tanaka 1976 for dis-
cussion of Central Kalahari San subsistence). By developing
Haynes and Hutson
Large herbivore Large herbivore Megafauna
Assemblage Region Mammal genera genera proportion Megafauna genera proportion
34BV177, OK East 1 1 1.00 1 1.00
Alexon (Wacissa River), FL East 1 1 1.00 1 1.00
Aubrey, TX East 3 2 0.67 1 0.33
Bull Brook, MA East 2 1 0.50 0 0.00
Coates-Hines, TN East 1 1 1.00 1 1.00
Duewall-Newberry, TX East 1 1 1.00 1 1.00
Domebo, OK East 1 1 1.00 1 1.00
Firelands, OH East 1 1 1.00 1 1.00
Hebior, WI East 1 1 1.00 1 1.00
Kimmswick, MO East 2 2 1.00 1 0.50
Lewisville (1950s), TX East 9 2 0.22 1 0.11
Martins Creek, OH East 2 2 1.00 1 0.50
Nobles Pond, OH East 9 4 0.44 0 0.00
Pleasant Lake, MI East 1 1 1.00 1 1.00
Shaefer, WI East 1 1 1.00 1 1.00
Shoop, PA East 1 1 1.00 0 0.00
Udora, Ontario East 3 1 0.33 0 0.00
Western Iowa northern loess hills East 1 1 1.00 0 0.00
Whipple, VT East 1 1 1.00 0 0.00
Mean 2.21 0.80 0.55
Blackwater BSW and Plains 3 3 1.00 3 1.00
Blackwater GS, NM
Dent, CO Plains 1 1 1.00 1 1.00
Jake Bluff, OK Plains 1 1 1.00 1 1.00
Lange-Ferguson, SD Plains 1 1 1.00 1 1.00
Lindsay, MT Plains 1 1 1.00 1 1.00
Lubbock Lake, TX Plains 1 1 1.00 1 1.00
Mahaffy cache, CO Plains 4 4 1.00 2 0.50
Miami, TX Plains 1 1 1.00 1 1.00
Wally’s Beach, Alberta Plains 3 3 1.00 3 1.00
Mean 1.78 1.00 0.94
42TO5135, UT West 1 0 0.00 1 1.00
Colby, WY West 1 1 1.00 1 1.00
East Wenatchee, WA West 3 2 0.67 1 0.33
El Fin del Mundo, Sonora, Mexico West 1 1 1.00 1 1.00
Escapule, AZ West 1 1 1.00 1 1.00
Lehner, AZ West 4 3 0.75 3 0.75
Manis, WA West 1 1 1.00 1 1.00
Murray Springs, AZ West 2 2 1.00 2 1.00
Naco, AZ West 1 1 1.00 1 1.00
Mean 1.67 0.82 0.90
Table 17.7 Numbers per site of all mammal genera, large herbivore genera, and megafauna genera in the combined proto-Clovis and Clovis sites, organized
by region (East, Plains, West), following Cannon and Meltzer (2008).
301
these sorts of observations into a line of reasoning, some
prehistorians may be inclined to believe that uted-point-
makers rarely tried to kill the very large Pleistocene mam-
mals, instead choosing to forage entirely for smaller game
animals, plant foods, and aquatic resources, in proportion
to patchy occurrences. Even so, recent foragers in temper-
ate and northern latitudes hunt and gather in regionally dis-
tinct ways, depending on seasonality of resource availability,
abundance of preferred resources, abilities to move freely in
the landscape, and other contingencies. For example, some
male hunting is as much for show as for procuring meat
(Bliege Bird and Smith 2005; Bliege Bird et al. 2001; Hawkes
and Bliege Bird 2002; Smith et al. 2003), and large mammals
may be actively pursued in spite of high risks and costs. Sig-
nicant differences may have existed between the hunting
behaviors of recent foragers and the predicted behavior of
Pleistocene foragers, as suggested by the preponderance of
large mammals in the Late Glacial sites.
Yet Another Possible Consideration: Theoretical Models as a
Guide to Diet
Several general and middle-range theories can be applied to
the study of Late Glacial hunter-gatherers, including, for ex-
ample, theories of optimization, human behavioral ecology
(Bettinger 1991; Kelly 1995) ), and nutritional ecology (Haws
and Hockett 2004; Hockett 2012). Optimization Theory may
be used to predict that mammoths would not have been de-
liberately hunted, because mammoths were rapidly becom-
ing extinct at the time uted-point-makers were seeking
food. Disappearing species are suboptimal choices to hunt
since they are hard to locate, as Marginal Value Theorem
has sometimes been interpreted to predict. Based on this
reasoning, and taking into account the ethnographic snap-
shots of foraging behavior mentioned above, a belief may be
widespread among archaeologists that uted-point-makers
foraged only for the more commonly encountered game ani-
mals, plants, and aquatic resources locally and did not regu-
larly or frequently hunt large mammals that were on their
way to extinction. It has also been argued that rational hu-
man beings do not optimally forage only by balancing caloric
returns against temporal and caloric expenses (Haws and
Hockett 2004; Hockett 2012), because they also have taste
preferences, nutritional needs besides energy, and cultural
constraints such as taboos.
Byers and Ugan (2005) argued that very large mammals
are too costly to hunt and process, and that it would have
been impractical for Paleoindians to specialize in hunting
them. Byers and Ugan compared a range of animals, from
mammoth size down to small squirrels and waterfowl, and
made a case that the per-hour returns from pursuing, killing,
and processing the largest animals (e.g., mammoths, bison,
and even deer) would be outweighed by the returns from the
smaller animals to be found in greater abundance and requir-
ing much less search and processing times. As Surovell and
Waguespack (2009) have argued, the Byers and Ugan optimi-
zation modeling implies a negative correlation between prey
body size and archaeological abundance in sites, yet Clovis-
era sites show a positive correlation, as do other archaeologi-
cal nds around the world. A potential fault in the Byers and
Ugan modeling is the model’s suite of predicted encounter
rates, estimated using allometric scaling of body size and
spatial density, which may be much different from actual en-
counter rates in different parts of the real world. Animals are
not randomly or evenly distributed in space, especially herd-
ing species. Another weakness is the estimation of carcass-
handling times—Clovis-era people did not fully utilize the
carcasses of many mammoths they killed, which means the
costs of processing were much reduced (and the energy yield
was also reduced). We discuss this possibility below.
Discussion of the Faunal Evidence
The total number of archaeological sites or localities contain-
ing mammals is 37 in our combined Clovis-era and proto-
Clovis list, with a minimum of 152 large mammals (not count-
ing 6 large carnivores) and 38 medium/small mammals (not
counting 6 small carnivores) (Table 17.6). Note that a number
of other animals, such as a horse from Murray Springs (repre-
sented only by teeth) and a possible bison from Lange-Fergu-
son lacking descriptive data, have not been included in this
list. Is this list useful or adequate for speculating about meat
in the Clovis-era human diet in a continental area the size
of southern Canada, the 48 continental United States, and
northernmost Mexico?
The 37 sites or localities in the list are almost all open air
(except for the underwater Alexon site), most dating to within
1,500 years of each other. This number of fauna-bearing sites
is astonishing for the short chronometric range, especially
because the sites are not protected within caves, and for the
most part are not long-term camping localities like the Upper
Paleolithic limestone caves of western Europe or the coastal
cave sites in South Africa, which were occupied repeatedly
for thousands of years. Especially unusual is the North Ameri-
can archaeological record of proboscidean kills (Surovell and
Waguespack 2008), because a record this rich from such a
limited time window is simply not to be found in other parts
of the world where proboscideans exist(ed) (see also Surovell
et al. 2005; Surovell and Grund 2012).
The proto-Clovis and Clovis-era sites are an adequate
sample for validly speculating about human meat-procure-
ment patterns, although the geographic spread of the sites
would make a continental pronouncement about Late Glacial
diet imprecise. This issue was a main theme in Cannon and
Meltzer (2008), too. In other words, Clovis-era subsistence
varied region by region, as most likely did proto-Clovis sub-
sistence, but an important identiable pattern overlies the
variability.
One pattern mentioned above is the degree of large-
mammal carcass utilization by Late Glacial foragers, which we
think reveals another dimension to forager decisions, namely
the desire or need to make greater or lesser use of animal car-
casses that can be interpreted as reecting relative hunger,
competition for resources, ease of the hunt, or planning for
Clovis-era Subsistence: Regional Variability, Continental Patterning
302
future needs during anticipated shortages of resources. Based
on neo-taphonomic studies (e.g., Haynes 1982, 1991), some
features of the mammoth and mastodon assemblages in Tables
17.2 and 17.6 can be seen to reect the degree of human uti-
lization of the carcasses. Foraging people had rst access to
proboscidean carcasses, and the carcasses were not merely
scavenged by people after carnivore predation or other natu-
ral deaths of the animals. Cutmarks have been documented
on at least three individual mammoths from Dent, one from
Blackwater Draw, one from Naco, one from Lindsay, and one
from Duewall-Newberry, for certain (Krasinski 2010; Saunders
2007), while others have not been so rigorously examined. The
cuts, along with the scarcity or low level of carnivore ravaging
traces reported or illustrated in the literature (see Krasinski
2010; Steele and Carlson 1989) and the archaeologically re-
corded clustering of many skeletal assemblages (for example,
closely associated skeletal elements mapped at Blackwater
Draw, Domebo, and Colby) bedded with uted points convince
us that mammoths were killed and butchered by small groups
of spear-wielding humans. Based on the neness of cutmarks
on some bone surfaces (Krasinski 2010; Saunders 2007), un-
modied lithic akes were likely used in much of the meat
stripping or dismemberment. Saunders (2007: 178) has sug-
gested that some butchering at Dent was done serially—partly
when the carcasses were fresh and later when they were stiff,
although the length of time needed for mammoth carcasses to
stiffen in the late-Pleistocene Plains is unknown. Judging from
our own experiences in butchering African elephant carcasses
in all stages of post-mortem changes, we think the likeliest
explanation for cutmarks made on a stiff mammoth carcass
would be a frozen carcass, not a carcass dried out from post-
mortem passage of time. Observations in Canadian winters
of wolf-killed bison (Haynes 1982) have indicated that large
animal carcasses do not freeze very quickly even in extreme
air temperatures; the great bulk of mammoth carcasses may
have prolonged their internal freezing over multiple days and
nights. Certainly more experiments could be done in this re-
gard to gain a better idea about stiff-carcass butchering and its
implications for human-subsistence behavior.
Mammoth-carcass utilization by people was not heavy in
Late Glacial North America, but was comparatively light. This
is different from the full utilization made by modern people
such as the Efe and Lese of the Ituri Forest, Democratic Re-
public of the Congo (formerly Zaire) (Duff y 1984; Fisher 1987,
1992). One informant (personal communication from R. Bailey
2004 to Byers and Ugan 2005:1627) described two elephant-
butchery events involving 10 men deeshing an elephant in
2.5 hours and 30 people taking 24 hours to process the meat.
In all, a total of 745 person-hours may have been expended
in processing, not counting travel time to the carcass. An-
other ethnographic example (Fisher 1992) cited by Byers and
Ugan (2005:1627) described three other Efe and Lese elephant
butchery events involving 25–35 people taking >100 hours to
process the meat, which does not include the time needed to
build and tend res for drying meat. Unlike these events, the
Clovis mammoths were not processed to the same extent, and
Clovis group sizes were likely much smaller, judging from the
limited cultural debris at many kill/processing sites.
The extreme degree of carcass use by recent elephant-
hunters is similar in many ways to what has been documented
at Upper Paleolithic Gravettian sites of the Pavlovian phase in
central Europe such as Krems-Wachtberg (Austria) and Hohle
Fels Cave (Germany) (Fladerer et al. In Press), where burned
and extensively fractured mammoth limb bones, if they came
from fresh carcasses, suggest full meat consumption and
marrow procurement around hearths, perhaps in response to
seasonal nutritional shortages. The Pygmy/Gravettian model
of maximized use of carcasses contrasts with the Clovis-era
model of very light utilization, or satiscing behavior, which
is just sufcient to satisf y some immediate needs (Simon
1956). Immediate returns from proto-Clovis and Clovis car-
casses were limited, and people abandoned much that was
probably still recoverable at each carcass. Both satiscing and
maximizing are examples of optimizing strategies, as would
be any intermediate levels of carcass utilization. Intermediate
utilization is expected if proto-Clovis and Clovis-era people,
after weighing all costs and benets, processed carcasses to
satisfy immediate needs but still left usable resources such as
meat and articulated body parts because further processing
was too costly.
The Clovis-associated mammoths that have been ad-
equately described were not fully utilized, and this may have
been a continent-wide pattern. The proto-Clovis Hebior and
Schaefer mammoth bones were in close anatomical position
but have been described as extensively cutmarked (John-
son 2006, 2007), although the marks may not be butcher-
ing traces (marks often mistaken for butchering traces are
discussed in Haynes and Krasinski 2012; Krasinski 2010;
Krasinski and Haynes 2012). No fresh meat-stripped bones
were broken for extracting marrow or grease during the car-
cass processing, unlike the common practice among mod-
ern tribal people when elephant carcasses are processed in
Africa, and the mammoth body parts were not scattered as
from redistribution of meat among different families or as-
sociates. Some Clovis-era mammoth skeletons retained par-
tial or nearly complete anatomical order (such as multiple
animals at Blackwater Draw), although others were jumbled
from natural redeposition or perhaps discarded in midden
heaps (e.g., Dent, Lehner). At Colby, a meat cache has been
proposed (Frison and Todd 1986) to explain the mix of partly
articulated and partly disarticulated mammoth bones.
Maximized carcass use would have involved extensive
bone breakage, absent from almost all Clovis sites, although
mammoth limb bones were occasionally broken by Clovis
people to make artifacts, such as the Murray Springs bone
wrench (a.k.a. spear-shaft straightener) (Haynes and Hem-
mings 1968). However, in one Clovis-associated mammoth
skeletal site with broken but recognizable limb bones (Lange-
Ferguson), the fragmenting occurred after the bones were
meat-stripped, dried, and not pristinely fresh, sometime
before weathering had progressed beyond stage 1 (Behrens-
meyer 1978), as seen in Hannus’s (1989, 1990) illustrations
Haynes and Hutson
303
of specimens and Pete Bostrum’s online photograph of his
casts of fragments (http://lithiccastinglab.com/gallery-page
s/2001septemberlangefergusonpage2.htm). On some of the
Lange-Ferguson fragments there are linear fracture fronts di-
rected by incipient drying cracks, but there is no discernible
sign of fresh bone deformation or impact marks from a ham-
merstone, which experiments show are created whenever
fresh bone is broken by dynamic impact (Haynes and Krasin-
ski 2010). Another site with broken mammoth limb bones,
Duewall-Newberry (Steele and Carlson 1989), does not have
a Clovis association, but its estimated age of 10,000–12,000
14C yr BP places it in or near the Clovis-era, and it may be
another example of dried/deeshed bone breakage by peo-
ple. Lubbock Lake also has broken and putatively cutmarked
mammoth elements, although large-mammal trampling and
sediment abrasion probably account for many modications
that have been illustrated (Johnson 1987, 1989) from this and
several other sites. Lange-Ferguson and Duewall-Newberry
show a mix of different conditions of mammoth bone—near-
fresh (only partly greasy after soft tissue had gone) and early
weathering (few drying cracks). Other sites with broken ele-
ments, such as the mastodon site of Pleasant Lake, exposed
by dragline excavation (Fisher 1984a, b), yielded no lithic
tools, and the bone-surface marks and breaks may have been
created post-depositionally. Therefore, among the reported
Late Glacial sites having lithics associated with proboscidean
bones, breakage is rare and did not occur as part of a fresh
carcass processing event, reecting less than maximal use of
carcasses.
The incomplete utilization of Clovis-era mammoth/
mastodon carcasses indicates the hunting of very large her-
bivores was not an act meant to provide maximum long-term
nourishment, but rather a type of event that provided for-
aging people with ample immediate returns at deliberately
low cost. Such behavior is expected at ecocenters or refugia
where resources were locally abundant, and where the hunt-
ers were extremely mobile, perhaps in exploratory mode. A
more intensive utilization, carrying the enormous costs that
Byers and Ugan (2005) argue would have made mammoths
too expensive to depend upon, did not occur in the proto-
Clovis and Clovis eras.
Summary of Faunal Evidence: Late Glacial Choices of Animals
to Hunt
We have lumped the few proto-Clovis sites with those of the
Clovis-era since they are not so clearly separate in terms of
prey choice, carcass utilization, and even chronology. Most
contain proboscideans. We think the emerging picture of
faunal choices made by Late Glacial humans indicates an ef-
cient subsistence pattern, even if utilization of the largest
animals was less than optimal.
The largest animals were non-randomly aggregated
(Haynes 2013, 2002:201) during the difcult and climatically
unstable millennia following the Last Glacial Maximum, mak-
ing them simple to track along well-used migration trails and
easier for hunters to pursue. The effects of shifting climates
in the Late Glacial probably led to the structured distribution
of large mammals, with them clustered around physiographic
transitions and ecotones. Similar behavior has been observed
in recent times, when large mammals adopt refugial habits
(Haynes 2013, 2002). In the lean season, or during lengthy
stress periods of drought or vegetation change following
climate-change, animals gravitate to parts of their ranges or
explore new ranges where resources remain adequate, particu-
larly water, feed, and cover. Human foragers in refugia would
rank the largest terrestrial mammals very highly, because of
the promise of greatly lessened search cost and much lowered
risk of search failure. In such situations, prey are spatially clus-
tered, leave easily recognizable signs in the landscape such as
dung or migration trails, and make predictable movements
such as treks to water every day (Haynes 2012).
Giving up time for human foraging in particular refugial
patches would be rationally extended if animals were per-
ceived as spatially concentrated in those patches. Foragers
would expect to continue encountering more animals if they
found just one or a few in such patch types. The result in the
long run would be opportunistic hunting, in which the larg-
est mammals were actively pursued when their presence was
noted, but switching prey to broaden the diet breadth during
explorations or travel in non-refugial areas where large mam-
mals were thought to be scarce.
Even under refugial conditions, human hunter-gatherers
may have disproportionately selected the largest animals for
reasons other than foraging efciency. Speth (2010; Speth et
al. 2013) has suggested socio-political or status-related mo-
tives and costly signaling (Bliege Bird et al. 2001; Smith et
al. 2003) were possible factors—such as the hunters’ desire
to heighten status by taking greater than optimal risks and
delivering unusual returns.
Eventually, as the largest mammals became scarcer every-
where, including in refugial patches, the effort of deliberately
seeking them would have been more and more costly. Yet long-
distance searching for relatively scarce large animals can still be
an optimal foraging strategy. Grimstead (2010, 2012) showed
that foraging up to 100 km from a central residential place
is optimal when comparing returns from deer (a “large herbi-
vore” in Cannon and Meltzer’s 2008 terms, or “megafauna” in
the standard denition of the word) against those from jack-
rabbit (a small herbivore), according to Cannon’s (2003) Central
Place foraging model. That distance may have been no more
than a two-day journey for a t forager or family of foragers.
If trails were as visible and habitually used for generations by
game animals as they are in Africa’s protected national parks,
game reserves, and forestry lands, the long-distance tracking
of large mammals would have been manageable and relatively
uncomplicated. Water sources were important sites regularly
visited by large mammals, making them useful places for hu-
man groups to monitor. We agree with Surovell and Wagues-
pack (2009; also Waguespack and Surovell 2003) that by the
Clovis era, encounters with large mammals, no matter how
infrequent, were preferred by very mobile foragers, even if the
foragers were not actively searching only for large mammals.
Clovis-era Subsistence: Regional Variability, Continental Patterning
304
Empirical Evidence of Clovis-era Diet: Flora
The proportion of plant food in the Clovis-era diet is very
difcult to know. Tiny numbers of seeds and plant-food frag-
ments from few sites may be all the evidence we ever have
to work with. Hemmings (2004) listed the Early Paleoindian
sites he thought had food remains (Table 17.8). The sites yield
almost negligible levels of evidence, certainly not an indica-
tion of regular dietary intake. Extending the time range of this
examination into proto-Clovis does not add more information
because so few of the possible Late Glacial archaeological sites
with acceptable evidence from the proto-Clovis period have
not have provided sufcient quantities of iodine, vitamins E,
K, and C, and folic acid; hence, some plant foods must have
been eaten, regardless of whether or not empirical evidence
has been found. However, very little (probably no) special-
ized grinding technology was deposited at archaeological
sites until after the Clovis era, implying little Clovis reliance
on the use of small hard seeds or nuts. These kinds of plant
foods, such as acorns or grass seeds, became the staples
of many later (post-Clovis, Archaic) groups in both Eastern
and Western regions. The plant-processing tools themselves
should have been preserved even when more fragile plants
parts were not, but such tools are rarer than the plant re-
mains. The nds are: a polished food-processing stone from
Paisley Cave, which was used once and discarded (Jenkins et
al. 2012a, b); one possible grinding stone from Blackwater
Draw (possibly used in intknapping) (Hester 1972); items
described as pulping planes or cleavers from Debert, Nova
Scotia (MacDonald 1968); and modied cobbles from Mi-
chaud, ME (Spiess and Wilson 1987). Some of that scarcity
may be a result of later people removing or recycling the
tools, but we think the scarcity is a result of the meager
need of such technology.
Clovis-era subsistence: Conclusions
Late Glacial human groups left incomplete or sketchy evi-
dence about their dietary choices, but the existing record
from archaeological contexts is potentially more informative
and useful than records from many other times and places
in the world. We propose the following testable hypotheses
about Clovis-era subsistence:
(1) Fluted-point-makers ate the meat from large, medium,
and small animals.
(2) Very large animals were killed—at least some of them
—and not scavenged after death, judging from the
presence of cutmarks on bone surfaces that would have
been stripped of meat by scavenging carnivores if hu-
mans had not been at the carcass very early after the
animals’ death. The pursuit of the largest mammals was
an active venture.
(3) Late Glacial people did not avoid hunting the largest
mammals when extinction began to occur.
(4) Late Glacial people were not obligate specialists in
megafaunal hunting; but even if we deem them to be
foraging generalists who hunted and gathered smaller
animals and collected plant foods such as roots, berries,
and nuts, they nonetheless also hunted megafauna.
(5) The human use of very large mammal carcasses often
reects satiscing decision making, which was a way to
achieve acceptably low levels of return while avoiding
some costs.
(6) Diet breadth was rationally determined from region to re-
gion, in keeping with the human practice of foraging for
higher-ranked preferences as well as lower-ranked needs.
Haynes and Hutson
Common name Totals
Acalypha 13
Amaranth 1
Blackberry 15
Buckbean 2
Chenopod, Lambs Quarter, Goosefoot 23
Grape 3
Hackberry 1
Hawthorn 150
Hickory (nut) 5
Smartweed 2
Winter Cress 1
Unidentied plant species 36
Table 17.9 Names and numbers of Shawnee-Minisink edible plant remains
(Gingerich In Press, 2006)
yielded botanical remains. Clovis-era Shawnee-Minisink (Dent
1999; Gingerich 2006, In Press) has yielded the most variety
of possible plant food items (Table 17.9). However, as Ging-
erich points out, the amounts of seeds and nut fragments from
Shawnee-Minisink would not have sustained anyone and can-
not be considered enough for a meal. Hence, the plant food
remains were only a supplemental part of the diet at the site,
just as the smaller mammals (e.g., deer mouse, woodrat, vole)
in the Clovis-era site Lewisville may have been.
This scarcity of plant remains may be a result of either
the destructive nature of cooking and diagenic processes,
or a signier of the opportunistic and subordinate nature
of botanical food choices. Plant foods must have featured
regularly in Late Glacial diets (as they do in most hunter-
gatherer diets), because meat and fat do not provide a bal-
anced input of essential nutrients. An all-meat diet would
Site or locality Spedes (number of occurrences)
Austin Cave, TN Hickory nut (1)
Gault, TX Hackberry (4)
Israel River complex, NH Water lily (1)
Levi Rockshelter, TX Hackberry (2)
Lewisville, TX Hackberry (10)
Lubbock Lake, TX Netleaf hackberry (5)
Shawnee-Minisink, PA [see Table 9]
Table 17.8 Clovis-era sites with plant remains that may be food items
(references and more information are in Hemmings 2004:16-23, and
Appendix 2, p. 266; also Haynes 2002: 179).
305
(7) Prey-switching clearly occurred when necessary or ben-
ecial.
(8) Small animals, plant foods, and aquatic resources were
procured after active searching.
Variability within the Patterning
The labeling of proto-Clovis and Clovis-era diets as “gen-
eralist” versus “specialists” cannot be supported from the
data at hand. These words have different meanings to dif-
ferent researchers, and to brand this discourse as a debate
is pointless. To us, the word specialist implies obligate lim-
iting of diet, and the word generalist implies obligate va-
riety in diet. Every human being is a generalist, although
there are times when patterned preferences dominate the
diet. Rarely or never are hunter-gatherer groups exclusively
carnivorous or vegetarian, because such limited diets do
not supply all necessary nutrition without the benet of
modern supplements. We accept the probability that proto-
Clovis and Clovis-era populations had omnivorous diets—
they ate whatever was available if those foods were accept-
able or preferred. They made choices about what to pursue
and procure, and we think the archaeological record tells
us something about those choices, even though the record
may be affected by preservational, discovery, and recovery
biases. We point out, as did Cannon and Meltzer (2008),
that diets varied place to place, although the variability is
overlain with a dominance of large mammals when viewed
continent-wide. The regional/local variability in diets was
nested within what Surovell and Waguespack (2009) recog-
nized as a larger-scale pattern—the opposite of variability.
We think important sociological and cultural sense can be
made of this seeming contradiction.
When viewed at the largest possible spatial scale, lithic
technology is consistent by the time of Clovis, with central
features shared over much of the continent south of the
shrinking ice sheets for a relatively brief time interval near
the end of the Pleistocene. The existence of 13,000 uted
points (Anderson et al. 2010; see the Paleoindian Database of
the Americas online, http://pidba.utk.edu/main.htm) appear-
ing within a very short time interval reects the continent-
wide human sharing of biface technology within a meta-
population whose component sub-populations shared not
only lithic abilities and tastes, but also shared the ability to
communicate, which explains the rapid spread of biface ut-
ing. Different sub-populations probably also shared norms
of social organization, belief systems, and other aspects of
culture, including subsistence behaviors. Over time, founder
effects and re-adaptations made uted-point subpopulations
less interested or able to imitate each other.
Diets varied season to season, region to region, and band
to band in the Late Glacial interval, but persistent traditions
and norms also carried through for centuries from the found-
ing community of the proto-Clovis and Clovis-eras, producing
an archaeological record that tells us something important
about human subsistence preferences.
Acknowledgments
GH thanks the organizers of the Paleoamerican Odyssey confer-
ence for the invitation to participate. We both thank the Zimba-
bwe Parks and Wildlife Authority for three decades of permission
to carry out actualistic and neotaphonomic studies in Hwange
National Park, which has greatly expanded our approaches to in-
terpreting fossil bone collections. We thank Vance Holliday and
Stuart Fiedel for very helpful comments on an earlier draft of
this manuscript. We especially thank the archaeological and pa-
leoecological researchers and colleagues who have shared in-
formation and sometimes allowed us access to examine bone
collections. We are grateful to M. Cannon and D. Meltzer, T.
Surovell and N. Waguespack, Vance Holliday, and C. V. Haynes,
Jr., for stimulating our thinking about Paleoindian subsistence,
even though we sometimes disagreed with them.
References Cited
Anderson, D. G., D. S. Miller, S. J. Yerka, J. C. Gillam, E. N. Johanson,
D. T. Anderson, A. C. Goodyear, and A. M. Smallwood 2010 PIDBA
(Paleoindian Database of the Americas) 2010: Current status and
ndings. Archaeology of Eastern North America 38:63–90.
Behrensmeyer, A. K. 1978 Taphonomic and ecologic information
from bone weathering. Paleobiology 4:150–62.
Bettinger, R. 1991 Hunter-Gatherers: Archaeological and Evolution-
ary Theory. Plenum Press, New York.
Bilgery, C. 1935 Evidences of Pleistocene man in the Denver Ba-
sin: Preliminary report. Ms. on le at the Denver Museum of Nature
and Science.
Bliege Bird, R., and E. A. Smith 2005 Signaling theory, strategic
interaction, and symbolic capital. Current Anthropology 46(2):221–48.
Bliege Bird, R., E. A. Smith, and D. W. Bird 2001 The hunting
handicap: costly signaling in male foraging strategies. Behavioral
Ecology and Sociobiology 50:9–19.
Breitburg, E., J. B. Broster, J. B. Reesman, and R. G. Stearns
1996 The Coats-Hines site: Tennessee’s rst Paleoindian-mast-
odon association. Current Research in the Pleistocene 13:6–8.
Brush, N., M. Newman, and F. Smith 1994 Immunological analy-
sis of int akes from the Martins Creek mastodon site. Current Re-
search in the Pleistocene 11:16–18.
Brush, N., and F. Smith 1994 The Martins Creek mastodon: A Pa-
leoindian butchery site in Holmes County, Ohio. Current Research in
the Pleistocene 11:14–15.
Brush, N., and R. W. Yerkes 1996 Microwear analysis of chipped
stone tools from the Martins Creek mastodon site, Holmes County,
Ohio. Current Research in the Pleistocene 13:55–57.
Byers, D.A., and A. Ugan 2005 Foraging theory, Early Paleoindian
diet breadth, and megafaunal specialization. Journal of Archaeological
Science 32:1624–40.
Cannon, M. D. 2003 A model of central place forager prey choice
and an application to faunal remains from the Mimbres Valley, New
Mexico. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 22:1–25.
Cannon, M. D., and D. J. Meltzer 2004 Early Paleoindian forag-
ing: Examining the faunal evidence for large mammal specialization
and regional variability in prey choice. Quaternary Science Reviews
23:1955–87.
—— 2008 Explaining variability in Early Paleoindian foraging.
Quaternary International 191:5–17.
Clovis-era Subsistence: Regional Variability, Continental Patterning
306
Crook, W. W. 1961 A revised interpretation of the Lagow discov-
ery, Texas. American Antiquity 26:545–48.
Crook, W. W., Jr., and R. K. Harris 1957 Hearths and artifacts of
Early Man near Lewisville, Texas and associated faunal material. Bul-
letin of the Texas Archaeological Society 28:7–97.
Davis, L. B., and M. C. Wilson 1985 The late Pleistocene Lindsay
mammoth (24DW501), eastern Montana: Possible man-mammoth
association. Current Research in the Pleistocene 2:97–98.
Davis, O. K., and D. S. Shafer 2006 Sporormiella fungal spores, a
palynological means of detecting herbivore density. Palaeogeography,
Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 237:40–50.
Dent, R. J. 1999 Shawnee-Minisink: New dates on the Paleoin-
dian component. Poster presented at the 64th Annual Meeting of
the Society for American Archaeology, 24–28 Mar., Chicago.
Deter-Wolf, A., J. W. Tune, and J. B. Broster 2011 Excavations and
dating of late Pleistocene and Paleoindian deposits at the Coats-
Hines site, Williamson County, Tennessee. Tennessee Archaeology 5(2):
142–56.
Dixon, E. J. 1993 Quest for the Origins of the First Americans. Uni-
versity of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.
Duffy, K. 1984 Children of the Forest: Africa’s Mbuti Pygmies. Wave-
land Press, New York.
Eisele, J., D. D. Fowler, G. Haynes, and R. A. Lewis 1995 Survival
and detection of blood residues on stone tools. Antiquity 69:36–46.
Feranec, R. S., and A. L. Kozlowski 2012 New AMS radiocarbon
dates from late Pleistocene mastodons and mammoths in New York
state, USA. Radiocarbon 54(2):275–79.
Fiedel, S. J. 1996 Blood from stones? Some methodological and
interpretive problems in blood residue analysis. Journal of Archaeo-
logical Science 23:139–47.
Figgins, J. D. 1933 A further contribution to the antiquity of
man in America. Proceedings of the Colorado Museum of Natural History
12(2):4–10.
Fisher, D. C. 1984a Mastodon butchery by North American Pa-
leoindians. Nature 308:271–72.
—— 1984b Taphonomic analysis of late Pleistocene mast-
odon occurrences: Evidence of butchery by North American Paleo-
indians. Paleobiology 10(3):338–57.
Fisher, J. W., Jr. 1987 Shadows in the forest: Ethnoarchaeology
among the Efe Pygmies. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation in Anthro-
pology, University of California, Berkeley.
—— 1992 Observations on the late Pleistocene bone assem-
blage from the Lamb Spring site, Colorado. In Stanford, D. J., and
Day, J. S. (eds.), Ice Age Hunters of the Rockies, pp. 51–81. Niwot (CO),
University Press of Colorado and Denver Museum of Natural History.
Fladerer, F. A., T. A. Salcher-Jedrasiak, and M. Händel In press
Hearth-side bone assemblage within the 27 ka BP Krems-Wachtberg
settlement: Fired ribs and the mammoth bone-grease hypothesis
Available online 29 June 2012, Quaternary International hp://dx.doi.
org/10.1016/j.quaint.2012.06.030
Frison, G. C., and L. C. Todd 1986 The Colby Mammoth Site: Tapho-
nomy and Archaeology of a Clovis Kill in Northern Wyoming. University
of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.
Gill, J. L., J. W. Williams, S. T. Jackson, K. B. Lininger, and G. S. Rob-
inson 2009 Pleistocene megafaunal collapse, novel plant com-
munities, and enhanced re regimes in North America. Science
326(5956):1100–03.
Gingerich, J. A. M. 2006 Preliminary report on excavations at
Shawnee-Minisink. Poster presented at 71st Annual Meeting of the
Society for American Archaeology, 26–30 Apr., San Juan, Puerto Rico.
—— In press Revisiting Shawnee-Minisink. In In the Eastern
Fluted Point Tradition, edited by J. A. M. Gingerich. University of Utah
Press, Salt Lake City.
Goebel, T. 2011 Ice-Age humans of the Bering Land Bridge: Ar-
cheology of Serpentine Hot Springs, Bering Land Bridge National
Preserve, Alaska. National Park Service Bering Land Bridge website,
accessed 19 July 2012 hp://www.nps.gov/bela/historyculture/
people.htm .
Graf, K. E., H. Smith, H., and T. Goebel 2011 Was Clovis in Berin-
gia? Current status of uted points in Alaska. Paper presented at the
76th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, 30
Mar.–3 Apr., Sacramento.
Graham, J. A., and R. F. Heizer 1967 Man’s antiquity in North
America: Views and facts. Quaternaria 9:225–35.
Graham, R. W., and M. Kay 1988 Taphonomic comparisons of
cultural and noncultural faunal deposits at the Kimmswick and Barn-
hart sites, Jefferson County, Missouri. In Late Pleistocene and Early
Holocene Paleoecology and Archeology of the Eastern Great Lakes Region,
edited by R. S. Laub, N. G. Miller, and D. W. Steadman, pp. 227–40.
Bulletin of the Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences 33.
Graham, R. W., C. V. Haynes, Jr., D. L. Johnson, and M. Kay 1981
Kimmswick: A Clovis-mastodon association in eastern Missouri. Sci-
ence 213:1115–17.
Gramly, R. M. 1991 Blood residues upon tools from the East
Wenatchee Clovis site, Douglas County, Washington. Ohio Archaeolo-
gist 41(4):4–9.
——— 1993 The Richey Clovis Cache: Earliest Americans Along the
Columbia River. Persimmon Press Monographs in Archaeology, Buffalo.
Grayson, D. K. 1988 Perspectives on the archaeology of the rst
Americans. In Americans before Columbus: Ice Age Origins, edited by R.
C. Carlisle, pp. 107–123. Ethnology Monographs 12, Department of
Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh.
—— 1989 The chronology of North American late Pleistocene
extinctions. Journal of Archaeological Science 16:153–65.
—— 1991 Late Pleistocene mammalian extinctions in North
America: Taxonomy, chronology, and explanations. Journal of World
Prehistory 5:193–231.
—— 2001 The archaeological record of human impacts on
animal populations. Journal of World Prehistory 15(1):1–68.
Grayson, D. K., and D. J. Meltzer 2002 Clovis hunting and large
mammal extinction: A critical review of the evidence. Journal of
World Prehistory 16:313–59.
—— 2003 A requiem for North American overkill. Journal of
Archaeological Science 30:585–93.
Grimstead, D. N. 2010 Ethnographic and modeled costs of long-
distance big-game hunting. American Antiquity 75: 61–81.
—— 2012 Prestige and Prejudice: The Role of long-distance
big-game hunting as an optimal foraging decision. American Antiquity
77(1):168–78.
Gundy, B. J. 2008 Presumptive blood testing blind study. Appen-
dix E in: Gundy, B. J., Mohney, K. W., Espenshade, C. T., A. T. Vish, and
M. G. Sams 2008 New Castle County, Delaware, Brandywine Hundred,
Blue Ball Area Transportation Improvements: A Few Hours in the Pied-
mont: Archaeological Investigations of Site 7NC-B-54 (Ronald McDonald
Haynes and Hutson
307
House). Report prepared for the State of Delaware Department of
Transportation, submitted by Skelly and Loy, Inc.
Hannus, L. A. 1989 Flaked mammoth bone from the Lange/Fer-
guson site, White River Badlands area, South Dakota. In Bone Modi-
cation, edited by R. Bonnichsen and M. Sorg, pp. 395–412. Center for
the Study of the First Americans, Institute for Quaternary Studies,
University of Maine, Orono.
—— 1990 The Lange-Ferguson Site: A case for mammoth
bone butchering tools. In Megafauna and Man, Discovery of Ameri-
can’s Heartland, edited by L. Agenbroad, J. Mead, and L. Nelson, pp.
86–99. Mammoth Site of Hot Springs, South Dakota, and Northern
Arizona University, Flagstaff.
Haslam, M. 2006 Potential misidentication of in situ archaeo-
logical tool-residues: Starch and conidia. Journal of Archaeological Sci-
ence 33(1):114–21.
Hawkes, K., and R. Bliege Bird 2002 Showing off, handicap signaling,
and the evolution of men’s work. Evolutionary Anthropology 11:58–67.
Haws, J. A., and B. S. Hockett 2004 Theoretical perspectives
on the dietary role of small animals in human evolution. In Petits
Animaux Sociétiés Humaines. Du Complément Alimentaire aux Res-
sources Utilitaires, pp. 173–84. XXIVe Rencontres Internationales
d’Archéologie et d’Histoire d’Antibes. Editions APDCA, Antibes.
Haynes, C. V., Jr., and E. T. Hemmings 1968 Mammoth-bone shaft
wrench from Murray Springs, Arizona. Science 159:186–87.
Haynes, C. V., Jr., and B. B. Huckell 2007 Murray Springs: A Clovis
Site with Multiple Activity Areas in the San Pedro Valley, Arizona. The
University of Arizona Press, Tucson.
Haynes, C. V., Jr., M. McFaul, R. H. Brunswig, and K. D. Hop-
kins 1998 Kersey-Kuner Terrace Investigations at the Dent and
Bernhardt sites, Colorado. Geoarchaeology 13(2):201–18.
Haynes, G. 1982 Utilization and skeletal disturbances of North
American prey carcasses. Arctic 35(2):266–81.
——— 1991 Mammoths, Mastodonts, and Elephants: Biology, Be-
havior, and the Fossil Record. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
—— 1998 Clovis ecology, diet, and mammoth-hunting. Paper
presented at 63rd Annual Meeting of the Society for American Ar-
chaeology, 27–31 March, Seattle.
—— 2002 The Early Settlement of North America: The Clovis Era.
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
—— 2012 Elephants (and extinct relatives) as earth-movers
and ecosystem engineers. Geomorphology 157–158:99–107.
—— 2013 Extinctions in North America’s late glacial land-
scapes. Quaternary International 285:89–98.
Haynes, G., and K. E. Krasinski 2010 Taphonomic eldwork in
Southern Africa and its application in studies of the earliest peo-
pling of North America. Journal of Taphonomy 8(2-3):181–202.
Haynes, G., D. G. Anderson, C. R. Ferring, S. J. Fiedel, D. J. Grayson,
C. V. Haynes, Jr., V. T. Holliday, B. B. Huckell, M. Kornfeld, , D. J. Melt-
zer, J. Morrow, T. Surovell, N. M. Waguespack, P. Wigand, and R. M.
Yohe 2007 Comment on “Redening the age of Clovis: Implica-
tions for the peopling of the Americas” by M. Waters and T. Stafford.
Science 317:320b.
Heizer, R. F., and R. A. Brooks 1965 Lewisville—Ancient campsite
or wood rat houses? Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 21:155–65.
Hemmings, A. 2004 The organic Clovis: A single continent-wide
cultural adaptation. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation in Anthropol-
ogy, University of Florida.
Hester, J. J. 1972 Blackwater Locality No. 1: A Stratied, Early Man
Site in Eastern New Mexico. Fort Burgwin Research Center (Southern
Methodist University) Publication No. 8.
Hill, C. L., and L. B. Davis 1998 Stratigraphy, AMS radiocarbon
age, and stable isotope biogeochemistry of the Lindsay mammoth,
eastern Montana. Current Research in the Pleistocene 15:109–12.
Hockett, B. 2012 Optimizing energy—the epistemology of
primitive economic man. In Archaeology, New Approaches in Theory
and Techniques, edited by I. Ollich-Castanyer, pp. 3–40. InTech. On-
line DOI:10.5772/2412.
Holliday, V. T., E. P. Gaines, and G. Sanchez Miranda 2009 Geo-
archaeology of El Fin Del Mundo, A Clovis site in Sonora, Mexico.
Paper (no. 94-7) presented at annual meeting of the Geological Soci-
ety of America, 18–21 October, Portland, OR. Geological Society of
America Abstracts with Programs, Vol. 41, No. 7: 257.
Hyland, D. C., J. M. Tersak, J. M. Adovasio, and M. I. Siegel
1990 Identication of the species of origin of residual blood on
lithic material. American Antiquity 55(1):104–12.
Jahren, A. H., N. Toth, , K. Schick, , J. D. Clark, and R. G. Amund-
sen 1997 Determining stone tool use: chemical and morpho-
logical analyses of residues on experimentally manufactured stone
tools. Journal of Archaeological Science 24:245–50.
Jenkins, D. L., L. G. Davis, T. W. Stafford, Jr., P. F. Campos, B.
Hockett, G. T. Jones, L. S. Cummings, C. Yost, T. J. Connolly,
R. M. Yohe, II, S. C. Gibbons, M. Raghavan, M. Rasmussen, J. L. A.
Paijmans, M. Hofreiter, B. Kemp, J. L. Barta, C. Monroe, M. T. P.
Gilbert, and E. Willerslev 2012a Clovis-age Western Stemmed
projectile points and human coprolites at the Paisley Caves. Sci-
ence 337:223–28.
—— 2012b Supplementary materials for “Clovis-age West-
ern Stemmed projectile points and human coprolites at the Paisley
Caves.” www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/337/6091/223/DC1
Johnson, E. 1987 Cultural activities and interactions. In Lubbock
Lake. Late Quaternary Studies on the Southern High Plains, edited by E.
Johnson, pp. 120–58. Texas A&M University Press, College Station.
—— 1989 Human-modied bones from early Southern Plains
sites. In Bone Modication, edited by R. Bonnichsen and M. Sorg, pp.
431-–71. Center for the Study of the First Americans, Institute for
Quaternary Studies, University of Maine, Orono.
—— 2006 The taphonomy of mammoth localities in south-
eastern Wisconsin (USA). Quaternary International 142–143:58–78.
—— 2007 Along the ice margin—The cultural taphonomy of
late Pleistocene mammoth in southeastern Wisconsin (USA). Quater-
nary International 169-170:64–83.
Joyce, D. J., and R. A. Blarina-Joyce 2002 A chronological assess-
ment of the Schaefer mammoth site, southeastern Wisconsin. Cur-
rent Research in the Pleistocene 19:43–45.
Keene, J. L., T. Sakamoto, T. Goebel, M. R. Waters, and B.
Gal 2009 A new buried and datable uted point site in Beringia:
New information from Serpentine Hot Springs. 17th Annual Arctic
Conference Program and Abstracts 35. Institute of Arctic and Alpine
Research (INSTAAR), University of Colorado at Boulder.
Kelly, R. L. 1995 The Foraging Spectrum: Diversity in Hunter-Gatherer
Lifeways. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C.
Kooyman, B., L. V. Hills, P. McNeil, and S. Tolman 2006 Late Pleis-
tocene horse hunting at the Wally’s Beach site (DhPg-8), Canada.
American Antiquity 71(1):101–21.
Clovis-era Subsistence: Regional Variability, Continental Patterning
308
Kooyman, B., L. V. Hills, S. Tolman, and P. McNeill 2012 Late Pleis-
tocene western camel (Camelops hesternus) hunting in southwestern
Canada. American Antiquity 77(1):115–24.
Kooyman, B., M. E. Newman, C. Cluney, M. Lobb, S. Tolman, P. Mc-
Neill, and L. V. Hills 2001 Identication of horse exploitation
by Clovis hunters based on protein analysis. American Antiquity
66(4):686–91.
Krasinski, K. E. 2010 Broken bones and cutmarks: Taphonomic analy-
ses and implications for the peopling of North America. Unpublished
Ph.D. dissertation in Anthropology, University of Nevada, Reno.
Krasinski, K. E., and G. Haynes 2012 Probabilistic models for
identifying cutmarks. Paper presented at 77th annual meeting of
the Society for American Archaeology, 18–22 April, Memphis, TN.
Krieger, A. D. 1962 The earliest cultures in the western United
States. American Antiquity 28:138–43.
Lee, R. B. 1968 What hunters do for a lliving, or, how to make
out on scarce resources. In Man the Hunter, edited by R. B. Lee and I.
DeVore, pp. 30–48. Chicago, Aldine de Gruyter.
Loy, T. H., and E. J. Dixon 1998 Blood residues on uted points
from eastern Beringia. American Antiquity 63:21–46.
MacDonald, G. F. 1968 Debert: A Palaeo-Indian Site in Central Nova
Scotia. National Museums of Canada Anthropology Papers No. 16.
Martin, P. S. 1967 Prehistoric overkill. In Pleistocene Extinctions:
The Search for a Cause, edited by P. S. Martin and H. E. Wright, Jr., pp.
75–120. New Haven (CT), Yale University Press.
—— 1973 The discovery of America. Science 179:969–74.
—— 1984 Prehistoric overkill: The global model. In Quater-
nary Extinctions: A Prehistoric Revolution, edited by P. S. Martin and R.
G. Klein, pp. 354–403. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.
——— 2005 Twilight of the Mammoths: Ice Age Extinctions and the
Rewilding of America. University of California Press, Berkeley.
Martin, P. S., and D. W. Steadman 1999 Prehistoric extinctions
on islands and continents. In Extinctions in Near Time, edited by R.
MacPhee, pp. 17–55. Kluwer Academic/Plenum, New York.
Meltzer, D. J. 1993 Is there a Clovis adaptation? In From Kostenki
to Clovis: Upper Paleolithic– Paleo-Indian Adaptations, edited by O. Sof-
fer and N. Praslov, pp. 293–310. Plenum, New York.
Mentzer, S. M. 2009 Micromorphology of El Fin del Mundo Clo-
vis site, Sonora, Mexico. Paper presented at annual meeting of the
Geological Society of America, 18–21 Oct., Portland, OR.
Molyneaux, B. L. 2000 Update on the Northern Loess Hills Clovis
point. Newsletter of the Iowa Archaeological Society 50(4):1–2.
Mullins, D., and N. Herzog 2008 Protein residue analysis of
uted and stemmed points from the eastern Great Basin: Implica-
tions for Paleoarchaic subsistence strategies. Paper presented at the
31st annual Great Basin Anthropological Conference, 8–11 October.
Oakley, K. P., and W. W. Howells 1961 Age of the skeleton from
the Lagow sand pit, Texas. American Antiquity 26:543–45.
Overstreet, D. F., and M. F. Kolb 2003 Geoarchaeological contexts
for late Pleistocene archaeological sites with human-modied woolly
mammoth remains in southeastern Wisconsin, U.S.A. Geoarchaeology
18(1):91–114.
Puseman, K. 2004 Protein residue analysis of a Plainview projec-
tile point from site 34BV177. PaleoResearch Institute Technical Re-
port 04-23.
Redmond, B. G., H. G. McDonald, H. J. Greeneld, and M. L.
Burr 2012 New Evidence for late Pleistocene human exploita-
tion of Jefferson’s ground sloth (Megalonyx jeffersonii) from northern
Ohio, USA. World Archaeology 44 (1):75–101.
Robinson, G. S., and M. G. Egan 2012 Before the Younger Dryas
and after Columbus: Further studies of Sporormiella records from
New York and New Jersey. Paper presented at 97th annual meeting
of the Ecological Society of America, 5–10 August, Portland.
Robinson, G. S., L. P. Burney, and D. A. Burney 2005 Landscape
paleoecology and megafaunal extinction in southeastern New York
State. Ecological Monographs 75(3):295–315.
Sanchez, G., and J. Carpenter 2013 The El Bajio Clovis site in
Sonora, Mexico. Online, Archaeology Southwest http://www.archae-
ologysouthwest.org/what-we-do/information/exhibits/peo/el-bajio/
accessed 07 March 2013.
Sanchez, G., E. P. Gaines, V. T. Holliday and J. Arroyo-Cabrales
2009 El Fin del Mundo. Archaeology Southwest 23 (3):6–7.
Saunders, J. J. 2007 Processing marks on remains of Mammuthus
columbi from the Dent site, Colorado, in light of those from Clovis,
New Mexico: Fresh carcass butchery versus scavenging? In Paleoin-
dian Archaeology: From the Dent Site to the Rocky Mountains, edited by
R. H. Brunswig and B. L. Pitblado, pp. 155–184. University Press of
Colorado, Boulder.
Seeman, M. F., N. E. Nilsson, G. L. Summers, L. L. Morris, P. J. Barans,
E. Dowd, and M. E. Newman 2008 Evaluating protein residues
on Gainey phase Paleoindian stone tools. Journal of Archaeological
Science 35:2742–50.
Sellards, E. H. 1938 Artifacts associated with fossil elephant. Bul-
letin of the Geological Society of America 49:999–1010.
——— 1952 Early Man in America: A Study in Prehistory. University
of Texas Press, Austin.
—— 1960 Some early stone artifact developments in North
America. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 16:160–73.
Shuler, E. W. 1923 Occurrence of human remains with Pleisto-
cene fossils, Lagow sand pit, Dallas, Texas. Science 57:333–34.
Silberbauer, G. B. 1981 Hunter and Habitat in the Central Kalahari.
New York, Cambridge University Press.
Simon, H. A. 1956 Rational choice and the structure of the envi-
ronment. Psychological Review 63(2):129–38.
Smith, E. A., R. Bliege Bird, and D. W. Bird 2003 The benets of
costly signaling: Meriam turtle hunters and spearshers. Behavioral
Ecology 14(1)116–26.
Speth, J. D. 2010 The Paleoanthropology and Archaeology of Big-
Game Hunting: Protein, Fat or Politics? Interdisciplinary Contributions
to Archaeology. Springer, New York.
Speth, J. D., K. Newlander, A. A. White, A. K. Lemke, and L. E. Ander-
son 2013 Early Paleoindian big-game hunting in North America:
Provisioning or politics? Quaternary International 285:111–39.
Spiess, A. E., and D. B. Wilson 1987 The Michaud site: A Paleo-
Indian site in the New England Maritimes Region. Occasional Publica-
tions in Maine Archaeology No. 6 (The Maine Historical Commission
and the Maine Archaeological Society, Inc.).
Stanford, D. 1983 Pre-Clovis occupation south of the ice sheets.
In Early Man in the New World, edited by R. Shutler, pp. 65–72. Sage
Publications, Beverly Hills.
Steele, D. G., and D. L. Carlson 1989 Excavation and taphonomy
of mammoth remains from the Duewall-Newberry Site, Brazos
County, Texas. In Bone Modication, edited by R. Bonnichsen and
Haynes and Hutson
309
M. Sorg, pp. 413–30. Center for the Study of the First Americans,
Institute for Quaternary Studies, University of Maine, Orono.
Surovell, T. A. and B. S. Grund 2012 The associational critique of
Quaternary overkill and why it is largely irrelevant to the extinction
debate. American Antiquity 77:672–87.
Surovell, T. A., and N. M. Waguespack 2008 How many elephant
kills are 14? Clovis mammoth and mastodon kills in context. Quater-
nary International 191:82–97.
—— 2009 Human prey choice in the late Pleistocene and its
relation to megafaunal extinctions. In American Megafaunal Extinc-
tions at the End of the Pleistocene, edited by G. Haynes, pp. 77–105.
Springer, Dordrecht.
Surovell, T. A., N. M. Waguespack, and P. J. Branting-
ham 2005 Global archaeological evidence for proboscidean
overkill. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA
102(17):6231–36.
Tanaka, J. 1976 Subsistence ecology of central Kalahari San. In
Kalahari Hunter-gatherers: Studies of the !Kung San and Their Neighbors,
edited by R. B. Lee and I. DeVore, pp. 98–119. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press.
Vish, A. T. 2008 Blood residue studies synthesis. Appendix F In:
Gundy, B. J., Mohney, K. W., Espenshade, C. T., Vish, A. T., and M.
G. Sams 2008 New Castle County, Delaware, Brandywine Hundred, Blue
Ball Area Transportation Improvements: A Few Hours in the Piedmont:
Archaeological Investigations of Site 7NC-B-54 (Ronald McDonald House).
Report prepared for the State of Delaware Department of Transpor-
tation, submitted by Skelly and Loy, Inc.
Wadley, L., and M. Lombard 2007 Small things in perspective: The
contribution of our blind tests to micro-residue studies on archaeo-
logical stone tools. Journal of Archaeological Science 34(6):1001–10.
Waguespack, N. M., and T. A. Surovell 2003 Clovis hunting strat-
egies, or how to make out on plentiful resources. American Antiquity
68:333–52.
Waters, M., T. W. Stafford, Jr. 2007 Redening the age of Clovis:
Implications for the peopling of the Americas. Science 315:1122–26.
Waters, M., T. W. Stafford, Jr., H. G. McDonald, C. Gustafson, M. Ras-
mussen, E. Cappellini, J. V. Olsen, D. Szklarczyk, L. J. Jensen, M. T.
Gilbert, and E. Willerslev 2011a Pre-Clovis mastodon hunting
13,800 years ago at the Manis site, Washington. Science 334:351–53.
Waters, M. R., S. L. Forman, T. A. Jennings, L. C. Nordt, S. G. Driese,
J. M. Feinberg, J. L. Keene, J. Halligan, A. M. Lindquist, J. Pierson, C.
T. Hallmark, M. B. Collins, and J. E. Widerhold 2011b The Butter-
milk Creek Complex and the origins of Clovis at the Debra L. Fried-
kin site, Texas. Science 331 (6024):1599–1603.
Willey, G. R. 1966 An Introduction to American Archaeology, Volume
One: North and Middle America. Prentice-Hall, Inglewood Cliffs (NJ).
Yates, B. C., and E. L. Lundelius 2001 Vertebrate faunal remains
from the Aubrey Clovis site. In The Archaeology and Paleoecology of the
Aubrey Clovis Site (41DN479), Denton Country, Texas, edited by C. R.
Ferring, pp. 103–19. Center for Environmental Archaeology, Depart-
ment of Geography, University of North Texas.
Yohe, R. M., and D. B. Bamforth In Press Late Pleistocene protein
residues from the Mahaffy Cache, Colorado. Journal of Archaeological
Science, doi: 10.1016/j.jas.2013.01.015.
Yost, C., “with assistance from P. Kováik” 2013 Protein residue
analysis of a Haskett projectile point from site 42TO5135, Great Salt
Lake Desert, Utah. PaleoResearch Institute Technical Report 13-016.
Golden, CO.
Clovis-era Subsistence: Regional Variability, Continental Patterning
... It is noteworthy that no other taxon is presented on as many sites or is represented by as many individuals (Waguespack and Surovell, 2003; Surovell and Waguespack, 2008). Among proboscidean remains of numerous bifacial points were discovered which lead to the conclusion that these bone accumulations were an effect of human hunting (Frison, 1987; Frison and Todd, 1986; Frison, 1989; Haynes and Hutson, 2013; Johnson, 2007). The discovery of projectiles together with cut marks on remains may indicate that humans killed mammoths (Haynes, 1999). ...
Article
Full-text available
This article presents the results of use-wear analysis of the backed implements (shouldered points and backed blades) discovered at Kraków Spadzista, trench B + B1. Of the 197 examined tools, 113 specimens (55%) wear traces of use. In this group, 55 artefacts show a complete set of clear, characteristic impact traces and could be interpreted as the flint parts of thrown weapons. They were used in mammoth hunting at the Kraków Spadzista site 24 thousand years ago. The hafting method can be identified on the basis of the direction of linear traces and impact negatives. Most of these artefacts were placed at the top of wooden or bone shaft. Only single specimens were attached laterally.
Article
Full-text available
The timing of human entrance into North America has been a topic of debate that dates back to the late 19th century. Central to the modern discussion is not whether late Pleistocene-age populations were present on the continent, but the timing of their arrival. Key to the debate is the age of tools—bone rods, large prismatic stone blades, and bifacially chipped and fluted stone weapon tips—often found associated with the remains of late Pleistocene fauna. For decades, it was assumed that this techno-complex—termed “Clovis”—was left by the first humans in North America, who, by 11,000–12,000 years ago, made their way eastward across the Bering Land Bridge, or Beringia, and then turned south through a corridor that ran between the Cordilleran and Laurentide ice sheets, which blanketed the northern half of the continent. That scenario has been challenged by more-recent archaeological and archaeogenetic data that suggest populations entered North America as much as 15,300–14,300 years ago and moved south along the Pacific Coast and/or through the ice-free corridor, which apparently was open several thousand years earlier than initially thought. Evidence indicates that Clovis might date as early as 13,400 years ago, which means that it was not the first technology in North America. Given the lack of fluted projectile points in the Old World, it appears certain that the Clovis techno-complex, or at least major components of it, emerged in the New World.
Article
Full-text available
Research into the earliest occupations in the southeastern United States has been underway since the 1930s, when a pattern of large-scale excavations combined with the reporting of surface finds was initiated that continues to this day. Work at Macon Plateau and Parrish Village, excavated during the New Deal, was followed by a series of stratigraphic excavations in floodplains, rockshelters, and other locales from the 1940s onward. These early studies produced a basic cultural sequence, portions of which were defined by cross-dating findings from the Southeast with discoveries made in other parts of the country. The Southeast is unique in that surveys of fluted projectile points have been conducted in every state, some since the 1940s. These surveys now encompass a wider range of projectile points and other tool forms, and the large numbers of Paleoindian artifacts found in the region suggest intensive occupation. Whether these quantities reflect the presence of large numbers of early people, or of modern collectors and extensive agriculture, remains the subject of appreciable debate. The regional radiocarbon record is fairly robust for the latter end of the period, but far more sample collection, analysis, and interpretation is needed. The regional literature is burgeoning, with research being conducted in every state, much of it funded by CRM activity.
Article
Bones of recent mammals in the Amboseli Basin, southern Kenya, exhibit distinctive weathering characteristics that can be related to the time since death and to the local conditions of temperature, humidity and soil chemistry. A categorization of weathering characteristics into six stages, recognizable on descriptive criteria, provides a basis for investigation of weathering rates and processes. The time necessary to achieve each successive weathering stage has been calibrated using known-age carcasses. Most bones decompose beyond recognition in 10 to 15 yr. Bones of animals under 100 kg and juveniles appear to weather more rapidly than bones of large animals or adults. Small-scale rather than widespread environmental factors seem to have greatest influence on weathering characteristics and rates. Bone weathering is potentially valuable as evidence for the period of time represented in recent or fossil bone assemblages, including those on archeological sites, and may also be an important tool in censusing populations of animals in modern ecosystems.
Article
G/wi society and culture have been shaped by the rugged natural environment. The volume focusses on the interrelationships, the socio-cultural system and habitat of the hunter-gatherer G/wi bushmen of the central Kalahari Desert of Botswana. Drawing on ten years of field-experience, the author sets out the foundations of G/wi society, with descriptions of their social, political and economic organisation, living patterns, subsistence technology, and seasonal adaptations. -John Sheail