Mammoth ivory was the most suitable osseous raw material for the production of Late Pleistocene big game projectile points

Pfeifer, Sebastian J.; Hartramph, Wolfram L; Kahlke, Ralf‐Dietrich; Müller, Frank A.

doi:10.1038/s41598-019-38779-1

Cited by 19 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…Also uncertain is the exact geologic context of the dated ivory artifact. Last, because ancient ivory can be collected and used to make durable tools long after the death of the mammoth or mastodon ( 32 ), a radiocarbon age on ivory does not necessarily date the production of the artifact. Because of these uncertainties, the significance of the ivory foreshaft’s age is equivocal.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The age of Clovis—13,050 to 12,750 cal yr B.P.

Waters

Stafford²,

Carlson

2020

Sci. Adv.

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Thirty-two radiocarbon ages on bone, charcoal, and carbonized plant remains from 10 Clovis sites range from 11,110 ± 40 to 10,820 ± 10 14C years before the present (yr B.P.). These radiocarbon ages provide a maximum calibrated (cal) age range for Clovis of ~13,050 to ~12,750 cal yr B.P. This radiocarbon record suggests that Clovis first appeared at the end of the Allerød and is one of at least three contemporary archaeological complexes in the Western Hemisphere during the terminal Pleistocene. Stemmed projectile points in western North America are coeval and even older than Clovis, and the Fishtail point complex is well established in the southern cone of South America by ~12,900 cal yr B.P. Clovis disappeared ~12,750 cal yr B.P. at the beginning of the Younger Dryas, coincident with the extinction of the remaining North American megafauna (Proboscideans) and the appearance of multiple North American regional archaeological complexes.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The age of Clovis—13,050 to 12,750 cal yr B.P.

Waters

Stafford²,

Carlson

2020

Sci. Adv.

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“…They are also more variable than industrial ones, as the available data show. For example, the varying amount of mineralization in bone, ivory, and antler causes mechanical properties to also vary among species [19], in some cases significantly so [20]). Further, these materials change their properties when they are wet vs. dry [21], or in very cold weather conditions [particularly ivory, see 22].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The effect of worked material hardness on stone tool wear

Rodriguez¹,

Yanamandra²,

jd@nyu.edu³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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The identification of ancient worked materials is one of the fundamental goals of lithic use wear analysis and one of the most important parts of understanding how stone tools were used in the past. Given the documented overlaps in wear patterns generated by different materials, it is imperative to understand how individual materials' mechanical properties might influence wear formation. Because isolating physical parameters and measuring their change is necessary for such an endeavor, controlled (rather than replicative) experiments combined with objective measurements of surface topography are necessary to better grasp how polish formed on stone tools. Therefore, we used a tribometer to wear natural flint surfaces against five materials (bone, antler, beech wood, spruce wood, and ivory) under the same force, and speed, over one, three, and five hours. The study aimed to test if there is a correlation between polish formation and the hardness of the worked material. We measured each raw material's hardness using nano-indentation test, and we compared the surface texture of the polished flint bits using a 3D optical profilometer. The interfacial detritus powder was analyzed with a scanning electron microscope to look for abraded flint particles. We demonstrate that, contrary to expectation, softer materials, such as wood, create smoother polishes than hard ones, such as ivory.

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“…Fifteen percent of the artefacts from Maszycka are of mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius BLumenBach) ivory. The absence of mammoth bones in the faunal assemblage speaks in favour of collecting, either from cadavers-mammoth was part of the faunal community in eastern central Europe during GS-2 (Ginter et al, 2005;Kahlke, 2015)-or remains from permafrost (Pfeifer et al, 2019). The third raw material class to be mentioned is long bone from large mammals.…”

Section: Raw Materials and Typological Spectrummentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Ivory also played a certain role in the western European early Middle Magdalenian, especially in the French Jura (Malgarini et al, 2017), but it was used to a much lesser extent. Unlike in western Europe (Gaudzinski et al, 2005), mammoth ivory remained relatively abundant in eastern central Europe throughout GS-2 (Pasda & Pfeifer, 2019;Pfeifer et al, 2019) and was still frequently used as raw material in the territory of Poland in the Upper Magdalenian (Boroń, 2010). The second particularity of Maszycka is the dominance of ungrooved, single-bevelled points with rectangular and triangular cross sections (type A, see above).…”

Section: Archaeostratigraphic Classification Of the Assemblagementioning

confidence: 99%

The Antler, Ivory, and Bone Artefacts from Maszycka Cave (Southern Poland). New Signals from a Late Upper Palaeolithic Key Site

Pfeifer

2022

J Paleo Arch

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The well-known Late Upper Palaeolithic cave site of Maszycka (southern Poland), excavated in the end of the nineteenth century as well as in the 1960s, furnished a collection of 89 osseous artefacts manufactured from cervid antler, mammoth ivory, and mammal long bone. The great majority are finished tools, mostly projectile points, while raw material blocks, pre-forms, and production waste are represented by only a few pieces. Based on the presence of the characteristic double-split antler tools, distinct projectile morphologies, and recurring ornaments, the assemblage from Maszycka can be assigned to the early Middle Magdalenian facies à navettes which dates to around 19 - 17.5 ka cal. BP. Compared to the western European sites, which also belong to this facies, Maszycka is characterised by a high proportion of ivory tools, reflecting the abundance of this favourable raw material in eastern central Europe, as well as an unusually high proportion of decorated tools, which may relate to an increased need for symbolic communication within the small and geographically isolated Magdalenian group. Both the remarkable typo-technological similarities of the bone industry from Maszycka to contemporary assemblages in France and the gap in the central European archaeological record between 22 and 19 ka cal. BP speak in favour of a direct immigration of Magdalenian hunter-gatherers from western Europe immediately after the end of the Last Glacial Maximum. Their relations to the bearers of the Epigravettian adjacent to the east and south remain to date poorly understood.

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Mammoth ivory was the most suitable osseous raw material for the production of Late Pleistocene big game projectile points

Cited by 19 publications

References 48 publications

The age of Clovis—13,050 to 12,750 cal yr B.P.

The age of Clovis—13,050 to 12,750 cal yr B.P.

The effect of worked material hardness on stone tool wear

The Antler, Ivory, and Bone Artefacts from Maszycka Cave (Southern Poland). New Signals from a Late Upper Palaeolithic Key Site

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