Archaeologica.org

Plenty of nicely rounded river rocks in there. Your hand axe must have stood out like a sore thumb.

Thanks to Michelle for posting that. I'll email and see what I get.

Manystones wrote:Neolithic - how exactly with an isolated find like this does the local Finds Liaison Officer Laura Mclean reach this conclusion?

My experience with the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) was simply that most of them lacked the confidence to date anything earlier than "possibly Mesolithic or Neolithic".

If you would like Beagle I can send you a copy of my thread on the PAS Forum Board before the thread was pulled without following the rules and the board itself co-incidentally closed down. Funny because it followed a remark on the website that the scheme had been going well. Additionally I have correspondence where I have tried to hold someone to account for the unauthorised withdrawal of the thread.... guess what? I haven't had a response.

Not blood?

At the Anzick-Wilsall site in southwestern
Montana, two children were cremated and buried in a cache of more
than 100 items, including fluted Clovis points, carved bobe
foreshafts, etc. It has 14C dates of 11,115 and 8600 yrs BP (no
explanation for the discrepancy) and amino-acid dates of 10,240-
10,940 BP. It is the only known example of a Clovis burial but,
unfortunately, the cranial fragments don't offer much morphological
information.

References:

Dixon, E.J. (1999). Bones, Boats & Bison: Archaeology and the first
colonization of western North America. Albuquerque: University of New
Mexico Press. (for 14C dating of Anzick))

Fiedel, S.J. (2000). The peopling of the New World: present evidence,
new theories, and future directions. Journal of Archaeological
Research. 8 (1): 39-103. (for amino-acid dating of Anzick).

Two separate pits, one containing the remains of two infants [image] and the other of a single baby [image], were discovered at the same Stone Age camp of Krems-Wachtberg in Lower Austria. Both graves were decorated with beads and covered in red ochre, a pigment commonly used by prehistoric peoples as a grave offering when they buried adults.

A preliminary analysis of the skeleton, wich was well preserved, showed that she had lost her molar teeth from some time as the roots had filled in naturally; possible bone paleo-pathologies on the lower and upper limbs were also remarked.
The burial was covered by more than forty stones of different sizes; they were assembled directly over the body (particularly its upper part) and arranged to form a small tumulus. On some of them, there were traces of red ochre.

have been found at 300,000 year old Homo heidelbergensis sites in France and Czechoslovakia. Neandertal burial sites sometimes include ochre as a grave good
in Swaziland, is a 43,000 year old ochre mine

so you're saying what
that two children were cremated
and that cranial fragments were later rubbed with ochre
or that they were before they were cremated
that sounds pretty tenuous

http://www.livescience.com/history/0612 ... urial.html
Quote:
Two separate pits, one containing the remains of two infants [image] and the other of a single baby [image], were discovered at the same Stone Age camp of Krems-Wachtberg in Lower Austria. Both graves were decorated with beads and covered in red ochre, a pigment commonly used by prehistoric peoples as a grave offering when they buried adults.


http://web.unife.it/progetti/notes/emezzoc.htm
Quote:

A preliminary analysis of the skeleton, wich was well preserved, showed that she had lost her molar teeth from some time as the roots had filled in naturally; possible bone paleo-pathologies on the lower and upper limbs were also remarked.
The burial was covered by more than forty stones of different sizes; they were assembled directly over the body (particularly its upper part) and arranged to form a small tumulus. On some of them, there were traces of red ochre.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_ochre
Quote:
have been found at 300,000 year old Homo heidelbergensis sites in France and Czechoslovakia. Neandertal burial sites sometimes include ochre as a grave good
in Swaziland, is a 43,000 year old ochre mine

so you're saying what
that two children were cremated
and that cranial fragments were later rubbed with ochre
or that they were before they were cremated
that sounds pretty tenuous

...

Biographies

Dr. Juliet E. Morrow
Juliet E. Morrow is currently a Survey Archeologist with the Arkansas Archeological Survey. Her 1996 doctoral dissertation summarized the evidence for the Peopling of the Americas and focused on the technology and mobility of Clovis and related fluted-point makers. She has directed investigations of dozens of sites in the Midwest and Midsouth, including large-scale excavations at the Martens Clovis camp in St. Louis County, Missouri, the Late Mississippian Greenbrier town near Batesville, Arkansas and the National Geographic-funded King Mastodon site in Jonesboro, Arkansas. Her specialties include lithic technology and osteology. She teaches archeology and anthropology courses at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro and at the annual training program of the Arkansas Archeological Survey/Society. Julie is a vice-president on the executive board of the Missouri Archaeological Society and in 2003 received the MAS award for Public Archeology for excavation of the Martens Clovis camp. In her position with the Survey, she uses her experience in geology and pedology to search for buried Clovis era sites. Recent research includes the study of Clovis tools from the Anzick site----the only known Clovis burial, as well as stone tools from the East Wenatchee, Simon, and Murray Springs Clovis sites...

http://www.clovisinthesoutheast.net/morrow.html

Clovis sites elsewhere give us some insight into ritual and belief systems. In southern Ontario ( Ellis and Deller 1991 ) a cache of about 200 burnt chert implements were discovered in a pit which may represent the remains of a cremation burial. Furthermore, at a Clovis burial site in Montana, powdered red ochre (hematite) was found on the remains of two adolescents and the grave goods that were buried with them. The use of red ochre on burials is an ancient one that extends back to European and Asian traditions. The practice persisted amongst many Aboriginal groups until the 19th century.

http://www.umanitoba.ca/anthropology/ma ... ovis2.html

Did you get the .avi to work. I heard from one other person, that their's didn't work. I've heard the DVD files work no problem

I've been keepping the possibilty of a cremation ceremony in mind, especially with the amount of ocher being used, and the number of "axes" and choppers.