The Coats-Hines Pre-Clovis Site in Williamson County, Tennessee

Workers constructing the 13th hole of the Crockett Springs Golf Course in 1977 unearthed mastodon bones.  Paleontologists took note of the discovery and 17 years later when they learned lots adjacent to the golf course were going to be transmogrified into residential housing, they surveyed a nearby drainage ditch and found another partial mastodon skeleton along with fossils of horse, deer, a canid, muskrat, turkey, painted turtle, and frog.  This time they also discovered evidence that attracted archaeologists–10 stone tools, 24 lithic flakes, and part of a bone spear tip embedded in a mastodon bone.  The tools included a bifacial knife and hide scrapers made from local Fort Payne chert.  Moreover, there were butcher marks on the mastodon backbone, suggesting these ancient Americans removed the proboscidean’s tenderloin.  The apparently butchered mastodon bone yielded radiocarbon dates translated to ~14,000 calender years BP.  Archaeologists regard this as the pre-Clovis era.

Williamson County, Tennessee. 

Photo of the Nashville Golf and Country Club which was formerly known as the Crockett Springs Golf Course.  I couldn’t find a photo of the 13th hole where the mastodon bones were found.  I don’t know which hole this is.

A 3rd survey of the drainage ditch in 2005 found parts of yet another mastodon, and a few years later in this generous spot they found fragmentary evidence of a large Pleistocene mammal, but it was in such poor condition, it couldn’t be identified.  Underneath this, they recovered a Pleistocene-aged deer antler.  In 2010 the owners of the new house built next to the drainage ditch gave permission to the archaeologists to dig a deep trench in their backyard.  Here, the archaeologists found 1582 fragmented bones of mastodon, deer, turkey, turtle, and frog along with 11 more human made artifacts all located 10 feet below the surface of the yard.

Mastodon bones found in trench.

Mastodons roaming future golf course.

The home owners were nice enough to let archaeologists dig this deep trench in their backyard.  I had a trench like this dug in my backyard a few months ago.  Unfortunately, they didn’t find any fossils.  They were replacing the drainage line for my septic tank.  Cost me $5,000.

Geologists think the Coates-Hines site was an intermittent pond that existed between 22,000 BP-12,000 BP.  A stream periodically became blocked, creating the pond, then on occasion it drained.  I propose beavers were the agent that blocked the stream.  Every so often, predators would kill all the beavers in this locality, and the dam would fall into disuse and break down.  A new population of beavers would recolonize the site, and the cycle would begin anew.  About 12,000 years ago, rain washed soil down the adjacent hillside and buried the old pond site and stream with colluvial sediment.

The ancient beaver pond provided an ideal location for a Paleo-Indian base camp.  The ancient Americans opportunistically ambushed big game that browsed aquatic plants, but they also had easy access to muskrats, turtles, fish, frogs, and edible plants such as cattails.  All the species of fossil animals found at this site are notably edible.

Reference:

Wolf, Aaron; Jesse Tune, and John Broster

“Excavations and Dating of Late Pleistocene and Paleoindian Deposits at the Coats-Hines Site, Williamson County, Tennessee”

Tennessee Archaeology 5 (2) Fall 2011

http://csfa.tamu.edu/cfsa-publications/Tune-TA5-2011.pdf

A Probable Pre-Clovis Bison Butcher Site in Washington

Archaelogists believe they’ve found evidence of a bison butchered by humans 14,000 calender years ago.  In 2003 workers digging a pond on Orcas Island, which is adjacent to Vancouver Island in the Pacific Northwest, uncovered a complete skull of an extinct bison (Bison antiquus) along with 97 bones from the same animal–the most complete specimen ever found.  One of the workers kept it in a box in his toolshed until 2005 when he finally turned it over to Stephen Kenady, a local archaeologist. 

Map of Orcas Island.  These islands used to be part of the mainland during the Ice Age when the ocean receded due to an increase in glacial ice.  Many fossils of Pleistocene mammals have been discovered in the region, including other bison fossils, giant ground sloth, and giant short-faced bears.  Low acid bogs are abundant here, explaining the abundance of fossils.  The Paisley Cave pre-Clovis site, where 14,000 year old human coprolites were discovered, is also nearby.

Upon examination of the bones, Dr. Kenady, Randall Shalk, and Robert Mierendorf determined the animal had been butchered by humans.  The taphonomy of the bones–green fractures and cleaver-chopped bone–strongly matched those of other known butchered bones from Clovis and post-Clovis archaeological sites.    Bones from the best edible cuts were missing–another clue.  And the bones weren’t scratched as if they’d been water transported which would be an explanation for how they could resemble being butchered.  The scientists believe the animal either was killed by humans or died naturally on a frozen pond in winter.  During spring the ice melted, and the bison sank to the bottom of the pond to become buried under mud when the body of water silted over and became a low acid bog.

Skull of Bison antiquus.  This species of bison had horns intermediate in size between extant modern bison (Bison bison) and the also extinct long-horned bison (Bison latifrons).  From google images.

Photo I took of a long-horned bison housed at the Georgia College Museum in Milledgeville.  This fossil was found at Clark Quarry near Brunswick and is the only complete skull ever found in the state of this species.

Photo I found of long-horned bison horns from google images.  I added this one because I like the size comparison with the person in the picture.

The modern bison is smaller than both Pleistocene bison species.  Bison antiquus was on average 25% larger, meaning they grew to 7 and 1/2 feet tall and 2400 pounds.  Bison latifrons was even larger.  There are a number of possible reasons why Pleistocene bison grew larger.  The Pleistocene environment may have been a richer foraging environment, and they needed to grow larger to battle large carnivores such as giant panthers, saber-tooths, and dire wolves.  The smaller size of the modern bison may be an adaptation enabling them to run longer distances to avoid human hunters.  The evolution of a smaller size may mean they reach sexual maturity and can breed faster to keep up with the toll of human hunting.  The extinction of large carnivores, and the ascent of human populations likely shaped this evolution to a smaller size.

Both species occurred in Georgia, and they overlapped geographically and temporally.  Bison latifrons may have been a lowland swamp species much like African water buffalo; Bison antiquus may have been an upland species, preferring hilly dry regions.  It saddens me that today there are no wild bison left in the southeast.

Reference:

Lepper, Bradley

“Pre-Clovis Butchers of Bison antiquus”

Mammoth Trumpet 26 (3) July 2011

See also from my June 2010 archives–”Were there three species of bovine roaming the southeast during the Pleistocene?”

The Paisley Cave Pre-Clovis Site

For this week’s blog entry I’m going to step away from southeastern North America and discuss a fascinating site in south central Oregon.  The Paisley Cave site collectively includes 8 different caves and rock shelters created when waves from an ancient Pleistocene Lake (Lake Chewaucan) eroded hollows into the upland bedrock about 17,000 years ago.  By 14,500 years ago weather patterns changed, becoming drier, and the lake receded away from the caves for a distance of about a mile.  But the climate here was still wetter than that of today, and the environment consisted of conifer woodland, meadow, and lakeside marsh; unlike the sagebrush desert which is now the primary type of ecotone at this location.  The caves were ideal shelters for Paleo-Indians, and the surrounding area provided abundant rock (obsidian) for tool-making, and a plentiful supply of big game, small game, waterfowl, fish, and edible wild plant foods.

Most of the caves contain evidence of early Holocene (~9,000o BP)occupation–charcoal from human-lit fires, basketry, and interesting tools such as wooden pegs and sagebrush rope.  But a cave known as Cave number 5 yielded evidence of pre-Clovis material including obsidian projectile points, debitage (the leftover flakes from stone tool processing), and scrapers, all associated with bones of megafauna–a camel ankle bone, the jaw bone of an extinct goat (Harrington’s Mountain goat? Oreamnos harringtoni), bison bones, and two long bones that looked like they were broken for the marrow.  There is one spot in this cave that’s been interpeted as a possible hearth, a  “a bowl-shaped depression with a rock lined base,” where a burned horse bone was discovered.  Moreover, very old processed grass fiber and muscle sinew were found in the cave.  Most importantly, however, was the fossilized human feces carbon dated to 14,290 calender years BP which predates the Clovis era (13,200-12,500 BP).

DNA testing of the feces indicates these people descended from Siberians, meaning they were Asiatic, like native Americans.  An analysis of their fecal content showed they ate bison, dog, squirrel, bird, fish, wild sunflower seeds, and grass.

The Topper site near Allendale, South Carolina (which I visited a couple of years ago) yields tools in soils dating to before Clovis also.

Archaeologists and crew excavating the pre-Clovis trench at the Topper Site in Allendale, South Carolina.  The people there were very nice to me when I visited two years ago.

Tools found in the Aucilla River in Florida also date to slightly before the Clovis era.  I theorize small bands of humans began crossing Beringia and migrating across North America before the LGM (28,000-15,000 BP) when glaciers would’ve blocked their passage.  The reason evidence is lacking is because they were so few in number and so scattered they left little proof.

References:

Pinson, Ariane

“Paisley Caves: What’s the scoop on the poop?”

Mammoth Trumpet 23 (4)  October 2010

www.uoregon.edu/-ftrock/paisley_caves_description.php