Posted on 06/10/2015 3:13:24 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
A stretch of floodplain in northwestern Oklahoma, already known for its profusion of prehistoric hunting sites, has turned up new find: a scatter of butchered bison bones dating back nearly 11,500 years -- extending the evidence of bison hunting in the area by centuries, archaeologists say...
Together, these artifacts lend new depth to the already ample record of ancient hunts -- including three bison-kill sites that are even older -- in a region of the southern Plains known as the Beaver River complex...
The latest find was made on a narrow bench of land between two arroyos by Carlson's colleague, Dr. Leland Bement, while surveying previously discovered bison-kill sites nearby.
The three other sites in the complex are all found within a range of just 700 meters along the Beaver River, Bement noted, and the oldest of them is more than 12,000 years old, dating to the era of the widespread Clovis culture...
The sites discovered here are noteworthy for the hunting technique that they reveal: the use of so-called "arroyo traps," which the archaeologists say is the oldest known method of large-scale bison hunting... "Each kill was of between 30 and 60 animals."
Although the newly found scattering of bones doesn't include any evidence of the kill itself, their fragmentation, along with the presence of stone tools, indicate that they were processed by prehistoric hunters, Carlson said...
What's more, flakes of charcoal found among the bones yielded radiocarbon dates that fell within the same range suggested by ratios of carbon and nitrogen isotopes in the bison bone: 10,020 radiocarbon years before the present, or between 11,300 and 11,650 calendar years ago.
(Excerpt) Read more at westerndigs.org ...
Just a little ways into Wyoming on I90 from SD, there is a buffalo kill spot. The Indians stampeded them over a cliff, and..........
Try to imagine butchering a buffalo with stone tools.
A fascinating book about it is Imagining Head-Smashed-In: Aboriginal Buffalo Hunting on the Northern Plains
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And to change the subject, it is probably safe to say that another 11,500 years will quietly pass before the good people of Oklahoma will see Oklahoma University playing for a national college football championship. Go Notre Dame!
Thanks again for such lovely links.
I don’t know if they had them but obsidian shards can be as sharp as glass.
My pleasure.
I have a huge collection of Indian stone tools that I have picked up myself in south Texas. They have an edge but nothing like having a metal knife.
5500 years before “Let there be light”.
Skinning an elk one year, my boy asked if we could use stone tools. I am nowhere near a knapper, but I can whack an obsidian nodule with a rock. I got a wedge knocked off and it was ridiculously sharp, sharper than any steel blade dreamed of being. Skinning the elk was a breeze, except a little too much pressure would make a slice through the hide without knowing it. A steel blade will give feedback that you are hitting hide now, obsidian will simply cut on through.
They have used obsidian blades for eye surgery.
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