Society for American Archaeology

Clovis and the American Mastodon at Big Bone Lick, KentuckyAuthor(s): Kenneth B. Tankersley, Michael R. Waters and Thomas W. Stafford, Jr.Reviewed work(s):Source: American Antiquity, Vol. 74, No. 3 (Jul., 2009), pp. 558-567Published by: Society for American ArchaeologyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20622443 .Accessed: 27/08/2012 08:56

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CLOVIS AND THE AMERICAN MASTODON AT BIG BONE LICK, KENTUCKY

Kenneth B. Tankersley, Michael R. Waters, and Thomas W. Stafford, Jr.

Contemporaneity of people and the American mastodon (Mammut americanum) at Big Bone Lick, Kentucky, has been exten

sively debated for more than two hundred years. Newly interpreted stratigraphic excavations and direct AMS 14C mea

surements on mastodon bones from Big Bone Lick, Kentucky, indicate that the megafauna are a palimpsest of fossils spanning at least 1,200 calendar years (11,020 ? 30 to 12,210 ? 35 RCyrB.R). The radiocarbon evidence indicates that mastodons

and Clovis people overlapped in time; however, other than one fossil with a possible cut mark and Clovis artifacts that are

physically associated with but dispersed within the bone-bearing deposits, there is no incontrovertible evidence that humans

hunted Mammut americanum at the site.

La contemporaneidad de los seres humanos y el mastodonte americano (Mammut americanum) en Big Bone Lick, Kentucky, ha sido extensamente debatida por mas de doscientos anos. Tanto las excavaciones estratifigrdficas reden interpretadas como

las determinaciones directas de AMS 14 C llevadas a cabo en los huesos de mastodonte procedentes de Big Bone Lick, Ken

tucky, indican que la megafauna es un palimpsesto defosiles que abarcan por lo menos unos 1200 anos civiles (11,020 ? 30

to 12,210 ? 35 RC anos a.p.). A la vez, laspruebas de radiocarbono indican que los mastodontes y la gente Clovis traslaparon en el tiempo. Sin embargo, aparte de un solof?sil de colocaci?n problemdtica y los artefactos Clovis fisicamente asociados

pero dispersados dentro de las capas que contienen restos ?seos, no hay evidencias incontrovertibles que los seres humanos

cazaban a los Mammut americanum en el sitio.

Big Bone Lick, often referred to as the birth

place of American paleontology, is located less than 2 km from the Ohio River in

Boone County, Kentucky. It is one of the largest and most reliable salt springs in eastern North America where brine discharges to the surface near the confluence of Big Bone Lick Creek and Gum Branch under hydrostatic pressure through fault

planes and bedrock fractures in the limestone and shale of the Ordovician-age Cincinnatian Series

(Stout et al. 1932:15; Tankersley 1985; Figure 1).

During the late Pleistocene, saline springs and the

surrounding salt licks attracted a faunal commu

nity including Bootherium bombifrons (Helmeted Musk Ox or Harlan's Musk Ox), Bison antiquus (Late Pleistocene Bison), Cervalces scotti (Stag

Moose), Equus complicatus (Complex-tooth Horse), Paramylodon harlani (Harlan's Ground

Sloth), Mammuthus sp. (Mammoth), Megalonyx jeffersonii (Jefferson's Ground Sloth), Rangifer tarandus (Caribou), Mammut americanum (the

American mastodon), and the people who hunted and scavenged them (Tankersley 1985,1986,1987, 1992a).

In this paper we first present a brief overview of the discovery and investigations of Big Bone Lick. This is followed by a summary of the Uni

versity of Cincinnati's 1981 investigations and a

discussion of new radiocarbon dates for the site.

Historical Background

The mastodon remains and salt springs at Big Bone Lick had been known and used for centuries by native peoples of the Ohio valley. Europeans first saw the site in 1729 (Jillson 1936). Following this,

Kenneth B. Tankersley Department of Anthropology, University of Cincinnati, OH 45221 (tankerkh@uc.edu) Michael R. Waters Center for the Study of the First Americans, Departments of Anthropology and Geography, Texas

A&M University, College Station, TX 77843-4352 (mwaters@tamu.edu) Thomas W. Stafford, Jr. Stafford Research Laboratories, 200 Acadia Avenue, Lafayette, CO 80026 (twstafford@

stafford-research.com)

American Antiquity 74(3), 2009, pp. 558-567

Copyright ?2009 by the Society for American Archaeology

558

REPORTS 559

Figure 1. Location and geologic setting of Big Bone Lick.

Big Bone Lick was periodically visited through the

mid-eighteenth century. In 1765 the American

Philosophical Society sponsored the first structured excavations.

A year later, a second excavation was conducted on behalf of Benjamin Franklin and Lord Shelborn of London, England, which resulted in the collec tion of a substantial number of mastodon fossils. After a detailed examination of the specimens, Franklin and Shelborn presented the first paleon tological report on the site to the Royal Society of

London in 1767. They concluded that an extinct

elephant-like creature lived at a time when the cli mate was different from the present and that this creature was extinct before the arrival of the Shawnee (Jillson 1936). Celebrated anatomist

William Hunter (1768) disagreed with Franklin and Shelborn, and believed that it was much more

likely that the Shawnee hunted the mastodon into extinction (Peale 1802).

Thomas Jefferson also believed that indigenous people hunted mastodons based on Algonquian oral

history, which describes how their ancestors hunted and killed mastodons at Big Bone Lick (Jefferson 1801). In 1795, Jefferson instructed William Henry

Harrison to go to Big Bone Lick and collect an

assemblage of mastodon bones. Harrison went to the site and conducted a massive excavation of the

ground around the salt springs. In 1797, Jefferson sent some of the mastodon fossils to Georges Dagobert Cuvier for examination (Adams 1879). Cuvier (1796, 1800, 1806a, 1806b) used the fos sils as evidence of past catastrophic climatic

change. Between 1803 and 1806, William Goforth, a

medical doctor from Cincinnati, collected more

than five metric tons of fossils at the site for Ben

jamin Franklin and the American Philosophical Society. Goforth described the stratigraphic con

text, stating that the mastodon bones occurred on

the surface of a gravel layer at a depth of 11 feet, below layers of blue clay containing bones of

smaller, more-modern animals such as deer, elk,

bison, and bear. Goforth also argued that the

560 AMERICAN ANTIQUITY [Vol. 74, No. 3,2009]

CENTIMETERS 0 12 3 4 5

Figure 2. Fluted bifaces from Big Bone Lick: (a) found by E. Crawford in the 1960s; (b) found by a local collector, date unknown; (c) found by J.D. Moore in the 1930s; (d) found by W. Goforth 1803-1807; (e) found by a local col

lector, date unknown; (f) found by a local collector in 1898; (g) and (h) found by W. Goforth 1803-1807.

mastodon remains were likely the result of hunt

ing because they were found disarticulated (Cum

ing 1810). During the summer of 1807, Goforth returned to the Lick at the request of then President Jefferson and the American Philosophical Society. He conducted an extensive excavation around the salt springs and assembled an enormous collection of mastodon bones, teeth, and tusks as well as

flaked-stone artifacts. In 1808, Jefferson placed three hundred bones from the Lick on display in a

large room at the White House. He sent duplicate specimens to the Musee d'Histoire Naturelle in

Paris, France. Because the focus of Jefferson's excavations was on the collection of mastodon fos

sils, Goforth was able to keep all of the artifacts recovered during the dig. These artifacts are now curated by the Cincinnati Museum Center and include three Clovis fluted bifaces (Figure 2d, g, and h).

Excavations for mastodon fossils continued

intermittently into the 1830s. Almost three metric

tons of mastodon bones, including 22 tusks, were collected and dispersed to universities, museums, and scientific institutions in New England and Great Britain (Cooper et al. 1831). In 1841, Charles

Lyell (1845), the father of modern geology, exam ined the Quaternary deposits of Big Bone Lick and

placed them into the newly defined Pleistocene and Recent Epochs. Excavations continued at Big Bone Lick after the American Civil War, but by then the

mastodon-bearing deposits had been greatly depleted by nearly a century and a half of intensive excavation. In 1898, however, a local artifact col lector found a fluted biface in possible association with mastodon remains (Figure 2f).

Little work occurred at Big Bone Lick during the twentieth century. Around 1930, another Clo vis fluted biface was found eroding from the late Pleistocene deposits (Figure 2c). Thirty years later, C. Bertrand Schultz became intrigued by the dis

covery of artifacts in physical association with mastodon remains at Big Bone Lick. Motivated by this interest, Schultz headed an interdisciplinary team conducting excavations at the site from 1962 to 1966 with the goal of understanding the associ ation between humans and mastodons. They exposed the remains of numerous mastodons as well as a Clovis fluted biface (Figure 2a). A radio carbon date of 10,600 ? 259 RC yr B.P. (W-1358), calibrated to 12,160

- 12,840 cal yr B.P, was

obtained from a sample of wood excavated in close

proximity to a mastodon tusk in gray, silty clay (Levin et al. 1965:374). A second radiocarbon date of < 200 RC yr B.P. (W-1357) was obtained from the same stratum as the Clovis-age sample. Given that the mastodon bones could not be reliably dated in the 1960s and a more recent radiocarbon date and artifact were obtained from the same stratum,

contemporaneity between mastodon and Clovis artifacts at the site remained ambiguous. Little work was pursued at the site after this time.

The 1981 Investigations

In 1981, Tankersley, working under the auspices of the University of Cincinnati, conducted a geoar chaeological survey of Big Bone Lick to locate strata that contained both mastodon remains and Clovis artifacts. Fieldwork included hand exca vation of eight 1-m2 units (Figure 3, locations H,

M, N, R, T, U, V, and W) in terrace and floodplain

REPORTS 561

Figure 3. Location of mastodon bone samples, section excavations, and core extractions at Big Bone Lick.

cut-bank exposures along Big Bone Lick Creek and Gum Branch (Figure 3). Sediments were

removed in 1 cm levels and water screened

through .64 and .25 mm mesh screens to recover

artifacts and vertebrate fossils for radiocarbon

assays. Additionally, 15 columns of sediment

approximately 3 to 10 m long were extracted using a portable 6 cm diameter split-spoon drill rig (Fig ure 3, locations A, B, C, D, E, F, G, I, J, K, L, O, P, Q, and S). These data were used to define the late Quaternary stratigraphy of the Big Bone Lick area. The location of diagnostic artifacts and fos sil bone, along with radiocarbon dates help to pro vide chronological control (Tankersley 1985, 1987, 1992a).

Quaternary Stratigraphy

Four late Quaternary geomorphic surfaces were

mapped along Big Bone Creek (Figure 1). There is a high-level fluvial deposit, two late Pleistocene terraces (T-2 andT-l), and a Holocene floodplain (Figure 4:T-0). Similar geomorphic surfaces are

found in the neighboring drainage basins that are

tributaries to the glaciated Ohio River Valley (Gray 1984; Tankersley et al. 1983). The sediments asso

ciated with these surfaces were separated into four units that are labeled 1, 2, 3, and 4, from oldest to

youngest. These sediments are lithologically sim ilar and are sometimes difficult to distinguish (c.f.

Swadley 1969).

562 AMERICAN ANTIQUITY [Vol. 74, No. 3, 2009]

Figure 4. Cross-section of Quaternary sediments underlying T-0 and T-l at Big Bone Lick. Location of radiocarbon

dates, fossils, and artifacts is approximate.

Pre-late glacial fluvial deposits (Unit 1) occur on ridge tops at elevations > 200 m above sea level

(Potter 2007). These deposits are up to seven meters thick and composed of deeply weathered, yellow ish brown clayey silt and sand with abundant rounded to subangular pebbles and cobbles of chert,

quartz, and limonitic concretions. There are no

Chronometrie dates from these sediments and fau nal remains are absent.

Terrace 2 (Figure 4:T-2) lies approximately 152-m above sea level. The sediments underlying

T-2 vary from one to four meters thick and are com

posed of light gray to brownish gray clay, clayey silt, and gravelly clay (Unit 2). Within these sedi

ments are heavily mineralized, black to gray, dis articulated bones of Bootherium bombifrons (Helmeted Musk Ox or Harlan's Musk Ox), Equus complicatus (Complex-tooth Horse), and Mam muthus sp. (Mammoth). A fragment of wood from this unit yielded a radiocarbon date of 17,200 ? 600

RCyrB.P. (W-1617;Table 1). The fine-grained sed iments of Unit 2 were deposited within a lacustrine environment when outwash filled the adjacent Ohio River Valley and dammed tributary drainages such as Big Bone Creek (Goldthwait 1959; Tankersley et al. 1983). At that time the tributary valleys

became large lakes. The lake filling the Big Bone

Valley was later drained and the creek downcut created T-2.

Terrace 1 (Figure 4:T-1) lies 146 m above sea

level. It is underlain by a weathered yellowish gray to yellowish brown clayey gravel, silty gravel, and

silty clay (Unit 3) deposited by alluvial processes. Disarticulated remains of Bison antiquus (Bison), Rangifer tarandus (Caribou), and Mammut amer

icanum (Mastodon) occur within the basal gravels of this unit. In most places, Unit 2 rests uncon

formably on Unit 3, which extends beneath the T-l terrace (Figure 5).

Mastodon fossils in Unit 3 occur in three

conditions?pristine, broken, and abraded. Mastodon fossils and Clovis artifacts were found

together in Unit 3. Both the artifacts and mastodon bones were found at the contact between Units 3 and 2 (Figure 5). Radiocarbon dates on wood and bone from the base of Unit 3 range from 10,600 ?

250 RC yr B .P. (W-1358) to 12,210 ? 35 RC yr B .P.

(UCIAMS-35591) (Table 1). Besides the previously recovered Clovis arti

facts from Big Bone Lick, the testing in 1981 recov

ered two additional Clovis artifacts in the same stratum as mastodon fossils. A heavily patinated

REPORTS 563

retouch flake was found in direct association with mastodon bone locality H, and a Clovis blade tool was found exposed in a nearby cut-bank locality M (Figure 6). More specifically, it is a spurred end

scraper manufactured on the distal end of a retouched blade displaying a well-defined blade facet and proximal hinge break. The blade was struck from a prepared polyhedral core manufac

tured from Fort Payne chert, which outcrops almost 400 km southwest of Big Bone Lick.

Blade tools are an important and distinctive trait of the Clovis technological complex. They were first identified at the Clovis type site, Blackwater

Draw, New Mexico. Since their initial discovery, blade tools have been found on Clovis sites across North America including the Aubrey, Kevin-Davis,

564 AMERICAN ANTIQUITY [Vol. 74, No. 3, 2009]

Figure 6. Clovis blade tool found by Tankersley in 1981 at locality M.

and Kincade Rocksheiter sites in Texas, the Bostrom site in Illinois, the Busse cache and Sailor Helton site in Kansas, the Domebo site in Okla

homa, the Cactus Hill and Williamson sites in

Virginia, the Fenn cache in Wyoming, the Little River site complex in Kentucky, the Murray Springs site in Arizona, and the Wells Creek Crater and Carson-Conn Short sites in Tennessee (Tankersley 2004:55).

The modern floodplain (Figure 4:T-0) lies 143.5 to 144.0 m above sea level. The sediments

underlying the floodplain are composed of four to

eight meters of light brown to dark gray colored,

poorly sorted, silty sand, clayey silt, sandy silt, and

gravel (Unit 4). The gravels at the base of the flood

plain contain the disarticulated remains of Bison bison (Modern Bison), Cervus canadensis (Elk), and Odocoileus virginianus (White-tailed Deer), and are especially abundant in the silty sand within the gravel. Radiocarbon dates from Unit 4 range from Modern to 530 ? 120 RC yr B.P. (UGa-4291; Table 1).

Geochronology

The radiocarbon technique has been used since 1965 to date the fauna and artifacts found at Big

Bone Lick. Radiocarbon dating at Big Bone Lick was performed in three phases. The first series of dates were conventional, ?-decay radiocarbon mea

surements made between 1965 and 1981 (Table 1). This work established that the stratigraphy extended from Modern to at least 17,200 ? 200 RC

yr B.P. (W-1617), and that there was a physical association between mastodon remains and Clovis artifacts. It also suggested that there was signifi cant physical mixing of recent and late Pleistocene fossils and sediments (Levin et al. 1965, 1967;

Tankersley 1986, 1987, 1992a, 1992b). Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) 14C dat

ing enables smaller and chemically pure samples to be dated. During the second phase of testing in

1981, samples of bone, teeth, and ivory were sub mitted to the Oxford University Laboratory, in Eng land for dating. These fossils could not be dated, however, because the specimens contained insuf ficient collagen for analysis. These fossils were from Unit 3 in excavation area H. At that time, it was concluded that digenesis destroyed the major ity of the collagen, that the samples were probably significantly older than terminal Pleistocene, and that permeable sediments enabled collagen to be leached.

In 2007, the third phase of testing consisted of a second attempt to date the faunal remains and evaluate the potential Clovis-mastodon associa

tion. Three mastodon fossils collected in 1981 were selected for AMS dating because the specimens were in stratigraphic association with Clovis arti facts or Clovis-age sediments. The three specimens were excavated from a silty clay with gravel hori zon of Unit 3 that was < 30 cm thick, within a one

by-one meter unit at locality H. Interestingly, a foot

bone, possibly a pedal proximal phalanx, SR-7180, had a sharp curvilinear cut on the lateral ventral sur face resembling a human-mediated cut mark. The cut is.3 mm in width and 1.6 cm in length and is not a vascular groove or other kind of natural fea ture. The width of the cut is comparable in size to a chert flake edge, and the curvature and location are consistent with a pattern of butchering.

Chemical preparation and AMS dating followed

procedures described in Stafford et al. (1991) and Waters and Stafford (2007). Data for the chemical

pretreatment and dating results are summarized in Table 1. These bones yielded ages of 11,020 ? 30

REPORTS

Table 1. Radiocarbon Measurements from Wood and Bone, Big Bone Lick, Kentucky.

565

Sample & Taxon ? 1 SD Unit

14CAge, Yr Bp, Cal Bp

Calibrated Age, 2o- (95.4%) (Oxcal 4.0)

Radiocarbon

and Lab

Numbers

14C Dating Method

Wood

Unidentified

Wood

Unidentified

Bone Collagen Bison bison

Wood

Unidentified

Bone

Collagen Mammut

americanum

Bone

Collagen Mammut

americanum

Bone

Collagen Mammut

americanum

Wood

Picea sp.

<200

<250

530 ? 105

10,600 ? 250

11,020 ?30

N/A

N/A

680-314

13,069-11,714

13,039-12,880

12,210?35 14,179-13,961

11,700 ?35 13,676-13,428

17,200 ?600 22,086-19,311

W-1357

W-908

UGa-4291

W-1358

UCIAMS-35590 SR-7180

UCIAMS-35591 SR-7181

UCIAMS-35592 SR-7182

W-1617

?-Decay

Counting

?-Decay

Counting

?-Decay

Counting

?-Decay

Counting AMS

AMS

AMS

?-Decay

Counting

Abbreviations:

AMS = Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Direct 14C Counting M =

University of Michigan Radiocarbon Laboratory SR = Stafford Research Laboratories

UCIAMS = University of California-Irvine Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Laboratory

UGa = University of Georgia Radiocarbon Laboratory W =

University of Wisconsin-Madison radiocarbon Laboratory

RC yr B.R (UCIAMS-35590), 11,700 ? 35 RC yr B.R (UCIAMS-35592) and 12,210 ? 35 RC yr B.R (UCIAMS-35591) (Table 1). Despite their close vertical and horizontal proximity, these ages differ

by 119014C years (1300 calendar years). Collagen content and preservation varies significantly and both decrease with increasing geologic age. The

weight percentage of decalcified collagen varied from 13.7 to 1.2 percent, compared to values of 20 to 21 percent for modern bone, and the physical preservation (collagen pseudomorph) changed from 96 to 50 percent for the youngest and oldest mastodon bones. While the two best-preserved fos sils had Carbon/Nitrogen (C/N) values in the range of modern decalcified collagen (2.9 to 3.6), the old est specimen, SR-7181, had a C/N = 3.85, which is an indication that collagen degradation (deami nation) has occurred. The low (1.2 percent) colla

gen yield and increased C/N values for SR-7181 are indications that collagen degradation is occur

ring for specimens older than 12,000 RC yr (Table 2).

Conclusions

Direct evidence that Clovis people hunted mastodons is demonstrated by the mastodon kill site at Kimmswick, Missouri (Graham et al. 1981; Graham and Kay 1988; Tankersley 1998). Here Clovis projectile points are unequivocally associ ated with mastodon remains. A less secure asso

ciation between Clovis artifacts and mastodon, which may nevertheless represent mastodon hunt

ing, occurs at the Hiscock site, New York. Here,

Clovis-age mastodon bones have been directly dated to 10,790 ? 70 RC yr B.P. (CAMS-27143), 10,850 ? 140 RC yr B.R (NZA-1106), 10,990 ? 100 RC yr B.R (TO-3194), 11,070 ? 70 RC yr B.R

(CAMS-30529), and 11,100 ? 80 RC yr B.R

(CAMS-30528) (Fisher 1988, Laub et al. 1988,

566 AMERICAN ANTIQUITY [Vol. 74, No. 3, 2009]

Table 2. Mastodon Bone Collagen Composition, Big Bone Lick, Kentucky.

Radiocarbon

And Lab

Numbers

Wt% Yield Decalcified Collagen Gelatin

Fraction Collagen Pseudomorph Pseudomorph 513C%o 815N%o

Dated (Modern = 20-21%) (Modern = 100%) (Modern = 100%) (Vpdb) (Air) C/N t~v t.7-/-\tt 1 o ^7 rviC no *-\ 1 1a r to i t r\

UCIAMS-35590 XAD KOH- 13.7

SR-7180 Gelatin

Hydrolyzate UCIAMS-35591 XAD KOH- 1.2

SR-7181 Gelatin

Hydrolyzate UCIAMS-35592 XAD KOH- 7.1 SR-7182 Gelatin

_Hydrolyzate_

96

50

85

98

80

90

-21.19 6.78 3.19

-21.90 7.50 3.85

-21.13 6.36 3.25

Abbreviations:

UCIAMS = University of California-Irvine Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Laboratory

SR = Stafford Research Laboratories

Tankersley et al. 1998). Clovis artifacts have been found at the site and these dates overlap at one

sigma with the current, revised age range of Clo vis (11,050 to 10,800 RC yr B.R; Waters and Stafford 2007).

At Big Bone Lick, Clovis artifacts clearly lie in direct physical association with mastodon bones.

However, these artifacts are rare and appear to lie in a secondary context among a palimpsest of

mastodon bone. One AMS radiocarbon date, 11,020 ? 30 14C yr B.R (UCIAMS-35590), obtained on purified collagen from a well-preserved mastodon phalanx that did not exhibit any abrasions but displayed a possible cut mark, clearly overlaps with the current, revised age range of Clovis

(Waters and Stafford 2007). The information from Hiscock and Big Bone Lick shows that Clovis peo

ples and the American mastodons were contem

porary during the late Aller0d and before the start

of the Younger Dryas. At present, however, there is no direct evidence that these animals were

hunted, killed, or scavenged by Clovis peoples at

Big Bone Lick. Consequently, Kimmswick still

provides the only unequivocal evidence of a Clovis Mastodon interaction.

Acknowledgments. Fieldwork for this study was made possi ble with funding from the Court Family Foundation, funded

by John and Georgia Court, and the Charles Phelps Taft

Foundation. Funding for the recent AMS radiocarbon dating was provided by the North Star Archaeological Research

Program, funded by Joe and Ruth Cramer. We also want to

thank Jessi Halligan for preparation of illustrations and

Laurie Lind for assistance with the bibliography, and the

anonymous reviewers who greatly improved the manuscript.

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Received April 23, 2008; Revised N/A; Accepted August 19, 2008.