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Vertebrate faunas from the Aubrey Clovis site
... Accordingly, Cannon and Meltzer (2004Meltzer ( , 2008 suggested that Clovis people were not specialized in big game hunting, but instead they pursued a more generalized foraging strategy, to include only in part large-game animals. New evidence from residential camps dating to the Clovis period in Texas suggests use of wide variety of animals, such as turtles, snakes, birds and rodents (Yates and Lundelius 2001). Transient camps in Oregon show lithic assemblages in environments with low large mammal density (Pinson 2011). ...
Subsistence of the first inhabitants of the New World has been largely debated among researchers interested in past lifeways. In this article, we focus on the subsistence of these early inhabitants using skeletal material excavated at Lagoa Santa, central Brazil. To contextualize these data, we provide a thorough review of Paleoamerican diet, discussing the big-game hunting hypothesis in light of botanical and zooarchaeological data from North and South America. This review shows a diversity of subsistence strategies in the first inhabitants of the New World as responses to variable ecological conditions. Our skeletal study shows that Lagoa Santa has significantly higher prevalence of dental caries than hunter–gatherer series from the Americas. These results strongly suggest that the big-game hunting hypothesis does not hold for central Brazil, showing the importance of plant resources in the subsistence of Paleoamericans.
... 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 taphonomically reexamined to avoid an uncritical and equally myopic bias towards small (and potentially noncultural) fauna. ...
Clovis-era subsistence varied from site to site and region to region, but large mammals numerically dominate at archaeological sites with food remains. Plant remains are extremely scarce in Clovis sites. The lack of specialized processing and storage technology suggests seeds and nuts were not prominent in the diet, as they became in later times. 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. © 2014 by Kelly E. Graf, Caroline V. Ketron, and Michael R. Waters. All rights reserved.
... Clovis hunters did pursue bison prior to the extirpation of mammoths from the North American Plains (Meltzer 2009). The archeological record contains numerous examples of Clovis points associated with bison remains (Figure 1), including two bison at Sheaman, Wyoming (Frison 1982), and three bison at the Aubrey site (Ferring 1995(Ferring , 2001Yates and Lundelius 2001). Bison remains are found in Clovis-age deposits at Lubbock Lake (Johnson 1995), Gault (Collins 1999a(Collins , 1999bWaguespack and Surovell 2003), and the Wilson-Leonard site (Collins 1998). ...
Clovis hunters of the North American Great Plains are known for their ability to hunt and scavenge mammoths. Less is known of their hunting strategies for other large animals, such as horse, camel, and bison, although remains of these animals have been found at several Clovis camps.
Recent investigations of the Jake Bluff site on the southern Plains have identified a Clovis bison kill in an arroyo. The apparent use of an arroyo style trap for bison hunting provides the opportunity to study Clovis hunting strategies that came to be widely used during later Paleoindian
times. The arroyo style bison trap is generally attributed to Folsom and later groups, and yet the Jake Bluff site yielded an association of Clovis-style projectile points with the remains of 22 Bison antiquus at the bottom of a short arroyo. The late date of 12,838 cal. BP suggests that the
site spans the gap between the Clovis mammoth hunter and the Folsom bison hunter, indicating that some Clovis hunters developed the arroyo style bison trap to capture multiple bison at the same time, and as mammoths were extirpated from certain areas during the Pleistocene to Holocene transition.
... 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 taphonomically 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). ...
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.
... The presence of the ossicles without the presence of other parts of the skeleton was interpreted as in situ decay of a piece of skin brought to the site by people. The presence of Paramylodon at the Aubrey site in Texas is also based solely on the presence of dermal ossicles (Yates and Lundelius 2001). The localized concentration of dermal ossicles (134 specimens) again suggests in situ 94 Brian G. Redmond et al. decomposition of skin but this concentration is found in the pond deposits outside the area of human occupation so must be consider suspect in terms of its association with human activity. ...
The nature and extent of early human exploitation of late Pleistocene mega-mammals of North America have been vigorously debated; however, direct evidence of predation has been established for a small number of taxa. Until now, evidence of butchering and human utilization of ground sloths has been limited to South America. Osteological and taphonomic analyses of one curated collection of Jefferson's Ground Sloth (Megalonyx jeffersonii) from northern Ohio, USA, have identified possible butchering marks on one femur. Historical research determined that the skeletal remains were originally recovered from a bog prior to 1915. Metric assessment of the ten skeletal elements identified this sloth as one of the largest individuals on record. SEM analysis of the left femur documented forty-one stone-tool marks, and their pattern and location indicate the filleting of leg muscles. XAD-purified bone collagen from the femur returned an AMS C radiocarbon age of 11,740±35 bp (13,738 to 13,435 cal. bp), which is as much as 700 years older than the calculated maximum age for Clovis. Although diminished somewhat by the lack of primary provenience data, these results offer significant evidence for late Pleistocene human exploitation of this North American taxon.
... Clovis subsistence remains the subject of debate Meltzer, 2002, 2003;Haynes, 2002Haynes, , 2009Meltzer, 2004), but the pursuit of large, now extinct mammalsdparticularly mammoth and bison, and perhaps equids and camelsdwas an important and potentially high-ranked facet of their diet (Surovell and Waguespack, 2009). Extant,medium-sized mammals such as deer and pronghorn are also known from Clovis sites on the northern and southern Plains (Lundelius, 1972;Walker, 1982;Walker and Frison, 1986;Yates and Lundelius, 2001). Mammoth, bison, and equids were predominantly if not exclusively grazers, and in grassland or parkland environments their dietary requirements probably promoted a pattern of frequent movement in search of suitable forage. ...
Instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA) was used to characterize the chemical composition of chert from a primary source in western North Dakota. Known as Sentinel Butte, this source is part of the Eocene-age White River Group (WRG), a widespread geological formation on the central and northern Plains. INAA results demonstrate that it is chemically distinct from other known chert-bearing WRG. Further, analysis of three bifaces from the nearby Beach Clovis cache site demonstrates that they are made of chert from Sentinel Butte, and most likely the other 55 White River Group Silicate (WRGS) bifaces in the cache are as well. Although Clovis caches typically are dominated by materials transported hundreds of kilometers, it is argued that the advance manufacture and caching of bifaces even a short distance from a source may be a highly effective tactic to reduce gearing up time and hence search costs associated with the pursuit of mobile game at the close of the Pleistocene.Research highlights► Naturally-occurring chert nodules of sufficient quality for flaked stone tool manufacture occur on Sentinel Butte, ND, USA, in White River Group (WRG) deposits. ► Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis (INAA) demonstrates that Sentinel Butte chert possesses a distinctive chemical composition, enabling its separation from other northern and central Plains sources of White River Group Silicates (WRGS). ► INAA analysis of three WRGS bifaces from the Beach Clovis Cache reveals that they are made of Sentinel Butte chert. ► Despite the presence of the cache only 19 km from Sentinel Butte, the energetic expenditure involved in the manufacture and transport of some 58 bifaces to the cache site represents considerable time savings in the context of Clovis subsistence and technological organization.
... North Texas: Two sites found deeply buried in alluvial terraces in the upper Trinity River drainage have produced very rich Early Paleoindian faunal assemblages: Aubrey and Lewisville. The excavators of Aubrey explicitly state that there is no indication of human involvement with mammoth here, and they present no compelling case for the use of other extinct mammals (Ferring, 2001;Yates and Lundelius, 2001; see also Grayson and Meltzer, 2002, p. 328). On the other hand, they do report that burned specimens of many other taxa were recovered in and around hearths, which does provide convincing evidence of subsistence use. ...
North American archaeologists have spent much effort debating whether Early Paleoindian foragers were specialized hunters of megafauna or whether they pursued more generalized subsistence strategies. In doing so, many have treated the foraging practices of early North Americans as if they must have been uniform across the continent, even though others have pointed out that adaptations appear to have varied among groups inhabiting different kinds of environments. Resolving these issues fully requires referring to archaeofaunal data and evaluating those data critically. In this paper, we conduct such an evaluation of the existing Early Paleoindian faunal record, which we then use to test the hypothesis that early Americans across the continent specialized in the hunting of megafauna. After detailed attention is given to taphonomic issues, to the limited geographical distribution of sites with secure associations between humans and prey taxa, and to differences among sites in the roles that they likely played in settlement and subsistence systems, it becomes clear that the faunal record provides little support for the idea that all, or even any, Early Paleoindian foragers were megafaunal specialists. It does appear, however, that there was considerable variability in Early Paleoindian prey choice across the continent, which was likely related to variability in the environments that different groups inhabited.
... For example, turtles are listed by Cannon and Meltzer (2004) as a food animal procured by Clovis foragers, based upon records of burned and possibly cut specimens from a very few sites such as Blackwater Locality 1 (NM) and Aubrey (TX), but no maps or photographs are available from these sites to evaluate the evidence, and the numbers of individual animals represented in the sites are not reported. A ''personal communication'' unspecific about the exact number of specimens is cited as the data source from Blackwater Locality No. 1 (cited by Johnson (1977) and reiterated in Johnson, 1987), while no counts are available of the Aubrey specimens (Yates and Lundelius, 2001, pp. 106–108). ...
This paper addresses misrepresentations and errors in attacks directed against the Overkill hypothesis that was proposed by Paul Martin to explain selective late Pleistocene extinctions. The opposing Climate-Change hypothesis to explain extinctions is driven by ideology as much as by objective reasoning because it is repeated so frequently without strong new evidence to support it, but it has failed to nail down a victory in public opinion. Overkill, which is not an anti-climate-change hypothesis, is perhaps too “flexible” to persuade all scientists, especially because negative evidence (a lack of megafaunal killsites) is considered to be as corroborative as positive evidence. Multiphase models of extinctions that propose different genera died out at different times have become less and less likely as more radiometric dating is done, and overlook the documented variability in atmospheric radiocarbon around the end of the Pleistocene, which prevents the high resolution chronology-building necessary to support a discontinuous model of the extinctions. The extinctions were geologically abrupt, selective, and unique, and therefore they require unique explanations.
... Since these canids were in both eastern Table 1 The extinct late Pleistocene mammals of North America, including three extinct species of extant North American genera (Canis dirus, Panthera leo, anda The single record for this genus may actually pertain to Holmesina and should be reanalyzed (Grayson, in press a). b Harlan's ground sloth continues to be referred to as both Glossotherium (e.g., Yates and Lundelius, 2001) and Paramylodon (e.g., McDonald, 1995). c Genus survives outside of North America. ...
The Great Basin of arid western North America provides one of the most detailed late Pleistocene and Holocene mammal records available for any part of the world, though the record is by far strongest for small mammals. Of the 35 genera of now-extinct North American Pleistocene mammals, 19 are known to have occurred in the Great Basin, a list that is likely to be complete or nearly so. Of these 19, seven can be shown to have survived beyond 12,000 radiocarbon years ago, a proportion similar to that for North America as a whole. Horses, camels, mammoth, and helmeted musk-oxen appear to have been the most abundant of these genera. Pygmy rabbits (Brachylagus idahoensis), yellow-bellied marmots (Marmota flaviventris), and bushy-tailed woodrats (Neotoma cinerea) declined in abundance at the end of the Pleistocene, at about the same time as populations south of their current arid western distributional boundary were extirpated. Subsequent declines occurred during the hot/dry middle Holocene. Pygmy rabbits also declined as modern pinyon-juniper woodlands developed across the Great Basin. The Snake Range of eastern Nevada has seen the late Pleistocene or Holocene extinction of both northern pocket gophers (Thomomys talpoides) and pikas (Ochotona princeps). Coupled with the rarity of yellow-bellied marmots here, these histories make the Snake Range a biogeographic oddity. These and other Great Basin mammal histories provide significant insights into the possible responses of Great Basin small mammals to global warming.
Flat-headed peccary (Platygonus compressus) were a common member of late Pleistocene faunal communities in the eastern United States, particularly in areas characterized by dissected, rugged terrain with numerous caves, crevices, and fissures that afforded shelter from severe weather for farrowing and when sick, injured, or aged. The taxon was not common on the Great Plains and in the Far West. Using the Gaussian-resampled inverse-weighted McInerny method (GRIWM) to analyze the distribution of direct radiocarbon ages, we found that final extinction likely occurred during the Younger Dryas, be-tween~12,500 cal B.P. and~12,000 cal B.P. Currently, evidence for actual contemporaneity of flat-headed peccary and human (Clovis) foragers does not exist. The late Pleistocene-Younger Dryas shift to a nutrient-decelerating mode of ecosystem fueling and its concomitant effect on forage quality may have arrested reproductivity. Simple simulations indicate that small increases in inter-birth interval and/or juvenile mortality could have resulted in rapid extinction of the animal.
Pollen analysis of pond and spring deposits at the Aubrey Clovis site in North Texas provides a 1300-year record of late glacial grassland vegetation from 17,200 to 15,900 cal years BP. Forty-six pollen taxa are identified in the well-preserved assemblages. The late glacial pollen record at the Aubrey site represents three environments: upland, riparian, and lacustrine-wetland. The pond-related sediments are dominated by 80% Poaceae pollen, an unusually high amount in pollen records; the spring tufa sediments are dominated by Cyperaceae. Cattail (Typha latifolia) and other wetland plants, including green algae Botryococcus, Pediastrum, and Chara were present. The riparian habitat of the wide late glacial alluvial valley had alder (Alnus), willow (Salix), cottonwood (Populus), and water elm (Planera aquatica). The upland vegetation was a treeless grassland with comparatively high amounts of Asteraceae-type pollen; it is therefore called the aster prairie. Quercus, Juniperus, Carya, Ulmus, Ambrosia, and Chenopodiaceae pollen are much less abundant than found in modern grassland pollen records. Small amounts of Artemisia, Pinus, and Picea pollen are present, a consequence of long-distance transport. Regional late glacial cool-wet climate produced moist prairie soils. The Cross Timbers oak forest that occurs near the site today had not yet formed. Dissimilarity analysis of the pollen data shows that the late glacial aster prairie has no analog with modern shortgrass, mixed-grass, or tallgrass prairies. In contrast, a favorable analog exists with fossil pollen data from a lower zone at Patschke Bog, central Texas, and Muscotah Marsh, northeastern Kansas, indicating that a grassland characterized by high amounts of Asteraceae pollen formed a unique late glacial vegetation type in the region, earlier in Texas and later in Kansas. Because of its chronology and location in the eastern Great Plains, the late glacial aster prairie may be ancestral to the modern tallgrass prairie.
Early Paleo-Indians in North America are historically hypothesized to have been large-game specialists. Despite decades of research, Early Paleo-Indian diets are alternately portrayed as of either specialist or generalist. Though some suggest that these terms are not useful, debate over the nature of these diets continues. Authors who have studied Early Paleo-Indian archaeofaunas from North America have analyzed either a conservative dataset, consisting only of taxa whose remains meet criteria indicating they were part of Early Paleo-Indian diet, or a liberal dataset which includes all taxa regardless of the presence or absence of evidence that represented taxa were part of the diet. Camp sites are assumed to be more indicative of long-term, average Early Paleo-Indian diet, but single-event kill sites and multiple-event kill sites are included in analyses. Richness, evenness, and heterogeneity of mammalian taxa and of body size classes for conservative and liberal datasets show that many assemblages cannot be categorized as representing either specialist or generalist diets regardless of dataset used or diversity measure employed. Early Paleo-Indian diet breadth was diverse and in some cases more diverse than during the subsequent Archaic.
Some 13,000 years ago, humans were drawn repeatedly to a small valley in what is now Central Texas, near the banks of Buttermilk Creek. These early hunter-gatherers camped, collected stone, and shaped it into a variety of tools they needed to hunt game, process food, and subsist in the Texas wilderness. Their toolkit included bifaces, blades, and deadly spear points. Where they worked, they left thousands of pieces of debris, which have allowed archaeologists to reconstruct their methods of tool production. Along with the faunal material that was also discarded in their prehistoric campsite, these stone, or lithic, artifacts afford a glimpse of human life at the end of the last ice age during an era referred to as Clovis. The area where these people roamed and camped, called the Gault site, is one of the most important Clovis sites in North America. A decade ago a team from Texas A&M University excavated a single area of the site-formally named Excavation Area 8, but informally dubbed the Lindsey Pit-which features the densest concentration of Clovis artifacts and the clearest stratigraphy at the Gault site. Some 67,000 lithic artifacts were recovered during fieldwork, along with 5,700 pieces of faunal material. In a thorough synthesis of the evidence from this prehistoric "workshop," Michael R. Waters and his coauthors provide the technical data needed to interpret and compare this site with other sites from the same period, illuminating the story of Clovis people in the Buttermilk Creek Valley. © 2011 by Michael R. Waters, Charlotte D. Pevny, and David L. Carlson All rights reserved.
In order to study the effects of human processing decisions on consumption and destruction of small animal skeletons by scavengers, twenty-six blacktailed jackrabbits were dry roasted or boiled and their skeletons presented to scavengers at various locations throughout the Sevier Desert of Utah. Skeletons of all samples were quickly and substantially destroyed, with roasted animals surviving at one-half to one-third the rate of their boiled counterparts. Survivorship of elements was unrelated to skeletal density in either case, but rather to the amount of adhering tissue, marrow, and fat. Axial elements tended to be preferentially destroyed, particularly in the case of roasting. These effects echo ethnographic and ethnoarchaeological observations on the relationship between cooking, length of site occupation, and small animal survivorship and carry clear implications for how we use the relative frequencies of large and small animals to interpret prehistoric subsistence. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Like many dimensions of human behavior during the early phases of New World occupation, interpretations of Early Paleoindian
subsistence practices are highly contentious. Different researchers examining the same faunal record have arrived at opposing
conclusions regarding what Early Paleoindians were hunting, collecting, and eating. Some argue that Early Paleoindians were
quintessentially “large game specialists;” others see a pattern of “generalized foraging.” This debate has important implications
for evaluating possible causes of Pleistocene extinctions. While at the core of the issue is a fundamentally simple question–“What
did Early Paleoindians hunt?”–the interpretation of direct human involvement in the demise of multiple species of animals
is clouded by larger issues concerning hunter-gatherer economics and climate change. Our concern is with the former, and we
examine Early Paleoindian hunting from an ethnographic, zooarcheological, and behavioral ecological standpoint.
KeywordsEarly Paleoindian diet-large-game predation
In order to evaluate the contribution that Clovis-era hunting made to the end-Pleistocene extinctions, we must examine the
North American empirical evidence fairly, without using models from different continents and different taxa as blueprints
for the process of human hunting impacts. Before trying to decide how (or if) Clovis hunting could have had a significant
effect on American megamammal extinctions, 1 a worthwhile thing to know or estimate is the size of the continental populations of megamammals during the Clovis era. Of
course, no direct measure is possible, but there are some possible clues and guides in the methods employed in modern wildlife
conservation practices.
KeywordsClovis era-megafauna-extinction risks
The North American archaeological phenomenon known as Clovis is famous for the fact that a number of sites that contain diagnostic Clovis artifacts also contain the remains of mammoth and perhaps other extinct genera. In the past, this has led many to assume that Clovis subsistence adaptations were or- ganized around large, now-extinct mammals. It has also seemed to support the argument that the colonization of the Americas by hunters about 11,500 years ago caused the extinction, either directly or indirectly, of some 35 genera of primarily large mammals. Here, we review all sites known to us that have been suggested to provide evidence for the association of Clovis-age archaeological material with the remains of now-extinct Pleistocene mammals. Of the 76 sites reviewed, only 14 provide strong evidence that Clovis-aged people hunted such mammals. Of these sites, 12 contain the remains of mammoth, while two contain the remains of mastodon. Although the prime focus of the analysis we present is on Clovis-age archaeological associations with now-extinct mam- mals, we conclude that there is no evidence provided by the North American archaeological record to support the argument that people played a significant role in causing Pleistocene extinctions here.
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