Mammoth Ivory Rods in Eastern Beringia: Earliest in North America

Abstract

The Holzman archaeological site, located along Shaw Creek in interior Alaska, contained two mammoth ivory rods, of which one is bi-beveled, within a stratigraphically sealed cultural context. Dated 13,600–13,300 cal BP, these are the earliest known examples of osseous rod technology in the Americas. Beveled ivory, antler, and bone rods and points share technological similarities between Upper Paleolithic Europe, Asia, eastern Beringia, and the Clovis tradition of North America and are important tool types in understanding the late Pleistocene dispersal of modern humans. The Holzman finds are comparable to well-known Clovis tradition artifacts from Anzick (Montana), Blackwater Draw (New Mexico), East Wenatchee (Washington), and Sherman Cave (Ohio). We describe these tools in the broader context of late Pleistocene osseous technology with implications for acquisition and use of mammoth ivory in eastern Beringia and beyond.

Late date of human arrival to North America: Continental scale differences in stratigraphic integrity of pre-13,000 BP archaeological sites

“…At Dry Creek [ 12 ] and Broken Mammoth [ 60 , 61 ], the oldest cultural component occurred beneath a thin sand layer that physically separated that component from the younger components. At the Holzman site, up to 20 cm of culturally sterile loess deposits separate components 4 from component 5a and sterile bands of sand deposits separate components 5a from 5b [ 9 , 13 ].…”

“…The sample includes eight sites with components argued to pre-date 13,000 BP, five from eastern Beringia and three from south of the ice sheets. Beringian pre-13,000 BP sites include Broken Mammoth [ 7 , 39 , 40 ], Dry Creek [ 10 , 12 ], Holzman South [ 9 , 13 ], Swan Point [ 6 , 8 ], and Owl Ridge [ 41 , 42 ]. All Beringian sites occur within a 200 km reach of the Tanana River valley and its tributaries in eastern Alaska and are buried in Pleistocene loess.…”

“…No consensus has been reached among archaeologists about the date of initial human arrival to the Americas, but all agree that human populations were distributed across the North American continent by 13,000 BP, as evidenced by fluted Clovis projectile points and associated artifacts from surface and buried contexts [ 1 – 5 ]. Before 13,000 BP, the clearest evidence for human presence comes from eastern Beringia, the unglaciated portions of Alaska and the Yukon Territory [e.g, 6 – 13 ]. Evidence for humans south of the Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets prior to 13,000 BP remains sparse and controversial despite more than a century of fieldwork in the region [e.g., 14 – 26 ].…”

A female woolly mammoth’s lifetime movements end in an ancient Alaskan hunter-gatherer camp

“…Despite the Swan Point mammoth remains being found in an archaeological context, we have no direct evidence, such as embedded or closely associated weaponry, hunting lesions, or a clear primary kill site setting to verify that the human occupants of Swan Point-or any site in Alaska-actively hunted mammoths (25,26,45). Some mammoth individuals at Swan Point are represented only by cranial elements, which would be consistent with a scavenging scenario (25,49,50).…”

The Swan Point Site, Alaska: The Chronology of a Multi-Component Archaeological Site in Eastern Beringia

“…The Swan Point Site, Alaska 717 sites are the most discussed (Yesner 2001(Yesner , 2007Potter et al 2011Potter et al , 2014Wygal et al 2018Wygal et al , 2021. While each of these sites also have later Holocene components, there has been little published yet on these periods, because they have relatively limited archaeological content (Holmes 1996;Gilbert 2011;Potter et al 2011;Wygal et al 2018).…”