The (Clovis-First) Empire Strikes Back

[Digit]

Do they? I've only seen them in open water or on land. Also between the ice shelf and open water is usually pack ice.

Roy.

[Minimalist]

Maybe I'm using the terms improperly but I would assume that where the ice meets the ocean is nothing but pack ice.

I agree, no one in the right mind would move towards the thick ice... like you say, what would be the point? But the boundary between open sea and ice should be roughly the same now as it was then.

[Digit]

Ice shelf was used earlier Min, anyway, I find it difficult to believe that anyone in their right mind would actually chose to live on pack ice that is vulnerable to being over ridden by other other ice, that will at it' southernmost edge be melting and is vulnerable to wind drift.
As I have pointed out a number of times before the Innuit live on land.
No one lives on the sea ice.
Pack ice that has been subject to on shore wind tends to close up the water channels, and can then ride up into uneven ridges that sled haulers in modern times have found very difficult to traverse.
I have no reason to assume that neither the Innuit nor anyone else are/were masochists!

Roy.

[E.P. Grondine]

Also watch out for the ice sheet bias. Who would go on an ice sheet? What foods?

Applied to North America, why would anyone be looking to hang out in Ohio or NY during the last glacial maximum? The Gulf Coast area would have been far more reasonable.

Hi min -

You have to remember that animals will migrate south-north well over 500 miles in an annual cycle. For example, eastern bison would migrate from winter pasturage at salt licks south of the Ohio River to summer pasturage south of the ice sheet. Kill sites were usually at marshes (wallers, wallows) along those paths; no one wants to deal with a mobile 2 ton bison. Same for mammoth.

A friend who had trained in the winter arctic while in military service had grave doubts about the Berringia crossings. But if a herd was encountered at its summer pasturage, it would have been followed south during the following 6 months to relatively balmy climes.

Similar game migrations went up and down the Shenandoah Valley. Something similar likely occurred along the coastal strip, with fresh water springs being key along that route, instead of salt licks.

I can't say much about the NY sequence, other than that it appears to have been year round, possibly sifting to elk or moose base in the winter, from what little I've seen about it and can vaguely remember. I suppose a lot of it is underwater now.

It would appear to me that one of the key things to keep in mind is exhaustion of pasturage.
The human populations appear low, from what we've found of them so far.

[E.P. Grondine]

Nobody here gets out alive anyhow, so big whoop.

The problem is when everyone goes at once.

But I would like a better handle on Paleo before I check out. Soup to nuts. That's why I'm here. Taking notes on your postings that bear on prehistory for all I'm worth.

And if I ever get a little bit ahead, your book's on my short list.

Thanks, glad to pass knowledge on. If "Man and Impact in the Americas" ever makes it to a second edition it will all be in there. (PM me for a much lower price than amazon.)

[E.P. Grondine]

That guy at NG must feel like he is reporting a tennis match.

It would be funny if it weren't so sad.

[Minimalist]

Yeah the issue is not did animals migrate but rather was the vegetation near the glacier sufficient to sustain the herds. I agree completely that if the animals did not go there, neither did the predators.

[E.P. Grondine]

More joy:

http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnol ... d=14698363

[Minimalist]

It's up to him to find the evidence to support his idea.

[uniface]

You have to remember that animals will migrate south-north well over 500 miles in an annual cycle. For example, eastern bison would migrate from winter pasturage at salt licks south of the Ohio River to summer pasturage south of the ice sheet.

Lar Hothem (First Hunters) noted that lithic drift during the Paleo and Early Archaic eras in Ohio was from south to north (e.g., Paoli chert from Kentucky north into Ohio) -- a pattern found by others as well.

Similarly, I know of a Hardaway point of silicified shale from North Carolina found at the forks of the Susquehanna in east-central Pennsylvania. (Interestingly, several heavy hitters are openly hypothesizing that Hardaway was independent of, and very possibly older than, Clovis).

(Curiouser and curiouser : in the areas where they overlapped, they seem to have avoided each other. Specific locales produce either Hardaway or Clovis points, but not both).

[E.P. Grondine]

You have to remember that animals will migrate south-north well over 500 miles in an annual cycle. For example, eastern bison would migrate from winter pasturage at salt licks south of the Ohio River to summer pasturage south of the ice sheet.

Lar Hothem (First Hunters) noted that lithic drift during the Paleo and Early Archaic eras in Ohio was from south to north (e.g., Paoli chert from Kentucky north into Ohio) -- a pattern found by others as well.

Yes... but note that any good chert source along the migration routes would be used. The key sites that are not being looked at hard enough are the marshes along those migration routes. But then so much has been lost, and is being lost.

Great joke - I was at the freeway visitors center on my way to Big Lick, which was about 14 miles away, and an English tourist came in and asked about "Indian" sites in Kentucky. The attendant told him that there were none, and that Kentucky had simply been a hunting ground.

Similarly, I know of a Hardaway point of silicified shale from North Carolina found at the forks of the Susquehanna in east-central Pennsylvania. (Interestingly, several heavy hitters are openly hypothesizing that Hardaway was independent of, and very possibly older than, Clovis).

(Curiouser and curiouser : in the areas where they overlapped, they seem to have avoided each other. Specific locales produce either Hardaway or Clovis points, but not both).

I don't have any problem with older than Clovis. (Do you know the Nuckolls sites in Tennessee?)

But if you're trying to tie North America unifaces with very early European unifaces, and and an ice sheet crossing, then there is a problem: no DNA matches, and no reason to go onto the ice. Not whales. not seals, not fish. No remains. I guess one could fuel a fire with blubber, but why bother?

I will now assert without detailed citation (other than take a look at the Paleo Indian database Clovis distribution) that generally, Clovis fluting was brought up from South America, and then adopted by everyone who saw it - and at this time the everyone in southern North America was generally C mt DNA, with the Savanah River peoples from South America being quite different.

That they may have avoided each other in this case is understandable. Or that two C mt DNA groups may have avoided each other is understandable as well. Different game species, perhaps.

The Dalton maritime archaic shows up ca. 8,350 BCE. You can see its influence in later Hardaway.

[uniface]

But if you're trying to tie North America unifaces with very early European unifaces, and and an ice sheet crossing, then there is a problem: no DNA matches, and no reason to go onto the ice.

Then what (until recently) were the Eskimos doing on it every winter ? Harvesting food !

re. Clovis-Solturean similarities :
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1013315/posts

"They had the only upper-Paleolithic biface technology going in Western Europe," Stanford points out. They were the first to heat-treat flint, and the first to use pressure flaking--removing flakes by pressing with a hardwood or antler tool, rather than by striking with another stone. "In northern Spain, their technology produced biface projectile points with concave bases that are basally thinned," he notes, not bothering to say he could just as well be describing Clovis points. The pressure flakes Solutrean knappers removed are so long it's almost a fluting technique--"almost," he's careful to say, but not quite.

The parallels between Solutrean and Clovis flintknapping techniques seem endless. The core technology, "the way they were knocking off big blades and setting up their core platforms," he explains, "is very similar to the Clovis technique, if not identical." They perfected the outre passé--overshot--flaking technique later seen in Clovis, which removes a flake across the entire face of the tool from margin to margin. It's a complicated procedure, he emphasizes, that has to be set up and steps followed precisely in order to detach regular flakes predictably. When you see outre passé flaking in other cultures, you're looking at a knapper's mistake. The Solutreans, though, set up platforms and followed the technique through to the end, exactly as we see in Clovis. "No one else in the world does that," Stanford insists. "There is very little in Clovis--in fact, nothing--that is not found in Solutrean technology," he declares.

Archaeologist Kenneth Tankersley of Kent State University seconds Stanford and Bradley's opinion: "There are only two places in the world and two times that this technology appears--Solutrean and Clovis."

On and on the similarities pile up. We find carved tablets in Clovis sites remarkably similar to Solutrean specimens. Both cultures cached toolstone and finished implements. Stanford and Bradley know of about 20 instances of caches at Solutrean sites; in North America, by comparison, according to Stanford, "we're up to about nine or ten." Just like Clovis knappers, Solutreans used flakes detached by outre passé to make scrapers and knives. Clovis bone projectile points bear an uncanny resemblance to ones made by Solutreans. When French archaeologists saw the cast of a wrench used by Clovis craftsmen at the Murray Springs site in Arizona to straighten spear shafts, they declared it remarkably similar to one found at a Solutrean site.

http://archaeology.about.com/library/we ... 103199.htm

All of the tools and techniques of Clovis can be found in Solutrean assemblages, including thin projectile points, wedges, very long thin bifaces, outré passé flaking, red ochre, gouge-eyed needles, bone and ivory projectiles points, bevelled ivory foreshafts, decorated bone rods, and limestone palettes.

Going on the principle that once might be an accident and twice a coincidence but the third (and subsequent) similarities indicate a pattern, I think there's a pattern here (with or without DNA and sites that would be, by definition, under 400+ feet of ocean).

I wish I were familiar with the Nuckolls site other than through reading about it in various recent accounts. Speaking of unifaces, and from that site in particular, I devoutly wish they had considered them important enough to catalogue and illustrate as they did the point types. I wonder if they even still have them . . .

[Rokcet Scientist]

I guess one could fuel a fire with blubber, but why bother?

Because it's available, because it's adequate, and because it means you don't have to schlepp firewood, i.o.w. there is no limit to your range on the ice shelf. Pretty essential to nomadic hunter/gatherers...

Besides: although they can make it, IRL fire is rarely made by people (like the Inuit) who live(d) on the ice for very long periods, even generations. People living on the ice are the original haute cuisine connaisseurs: they ate/eat sushi! Raw fish and sea mammal meat. Nothing to it! It's an acquired taste.

I did it last night! Had 2 nice fat (raw) herrings with chopped onions. Yummie!

[Minimalist]

Yuck.

Anyway, people will use anything that burns for fuel.

[Digit]

Which people live/have lived on the ice for generations RS?
We're not gonna have another of your no proof no evidence ideas are we?

Roy.