Knife River Quarry to be Dedicated as NHL

Knife River Quarry is well known to those who study prehistoric lithics on the Plains of North America.  Owned and protected for many years by the Lynch family of North Dakota, the quarry was included as a National Historic Landmark in 2011.  The dedication will happen this Saturday, June 9 at the property.  Thanks to Damita Engel of Metcalf Archaeological Consultants, Inc. for writing the nomination, an often thankless task.

A sample of KRF from lithic sourcing web page.

Bismarck Tribune Article

Official NPS link

While visiting the quarry, don’t miss the Knife River Indian Villages National Park.  A great stepping stone into the Upper Missouri region and the village where Lewis and Clark picked up their most famous guide, Sakakawea.

Earth Lodge at Knife River

For more on North Dakota’s Historic Preservation programs visit their site here.

Clovis Eye Candy

Happy Vernal Equinox.

We’re working on some new imagery for the Clovis site.  Everybody loves the points.  To think that this was probably stuck in the mammoth it was found with over 12,000 years ago.

Blade Cache

A little lithic eye-candy for tool-users out there.  These are some quick photos I shot while making an examination of some blades for the ongoing tool analysis here at Blackwater Locality 1 (LA3324).  Excuse the poor quality of the photos but look forward to seeing them in full all-color glossy glory in the future.

In 1990 a tool cache, including four blades and a large, unifacial flake knife, was unearthed along the western margin of the prehistoric pond on the Clovis site by Joanne Dickenson.  Many blades are known from the site and are fairly typical of the Clovis tool-kit, being used as knives, scrapers, and preforms for other tools.

All of these tools were made from extremely high quality Edwards Plateau chert from Texas, although not from the same core.  This material hints at the vast distances traveled by early hunter-gatherers on the high plains.

Artifact of the Week 2/6/2012

LA3324/25285

LA3324/25285

Gray chert Folsom point (catalog number 25285) recovered 15 August 1985.  Discovered on the east side surface of the South Bank.  The specimen appears in Boldurian’s (1990; pp 70-71, Figure 38A) Plains Anthropologist Memoir 24 on Lithic Technology at the Mitchell Locality of Blackwater Draw.  Click the image for a higher resolution.

A Surprise Find

Sometimes in archaeology things don’t always go as planned, and sometimes the past hides gems under our noses (or boots).

Last November, students working with ENMU faculty as a part of an NSF New Mexico EPSCoR grant gained experience in climate change research. The purpose of the study is to better understand the Pleistocene to Holocene transition, and to apply the results to modern climate changes. Students collected pollen, phytolith, diatom, ostracod, and stable carbon isotope samples from a variety of sites along the eastern border of New Mexico. One of the areas that was of interest lies a few hundred meters south of the main portion of Blackwater Locality #1 known as Locality X. This locality has been surveyed and excavated sporadically over the last few years, and is mainly composed of lithic debitage.The climate study group was attempting to relocate a unit that was dug during the ENMU 2010 Field Session, which can prove to be a daunting task, even with good notes and today’s technology. The students did locate the unit, but in the process disturbed an adjacent unexcavated unit. During the screening of the disturbed dirt, a small arrowhead surfaced and revealed more information about this locality.

Much of the early work in Locality X was limited to surface collection and limited coring.  This southern portion of the site has yielded Paleoindian, Archaic, and Late prehistoric components including an anomalous metate fragment on the surface, arrow and dart points, and a graver.  Although we tend to focus on and highlight the Paleoindian components of the Blackwater Draw site, we always keep in mind that the occupation ranges from Clovis-age deposits through Proto-Historic and even Historic Native American settlement.  The arrow points found scattered on the southern landscape of the site probably indicate hunting that occurred around the outflow channel and dunes between the ancient lake bed and the draw.

Artifact of the week 11/9/2011

Folsom ultrathin biface from the Clovis site North Bank.

Ultrathin bifaces are a recently recognized element distinctive to the Folsom toolkit.  Ultrathin bifaces are found at many Folsom sites including those in North Dakota, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas.  Ultrathin bifacial manufacturing technology appears consistent between numerous sites recognized by distinctive, opposed diving bifacial thinning flakes (Root et al. 1994).

Morphologically, the Folsom ultrathin biface is broad in width, has finely retouched excurvate margins, and is extremely thin (Boldurian 1999:111).  Functionally, its use is generally interpreted as a non-hafted knife or cutting implement used for butchering and processing game.  Pegi Jodry (1998) has suggested that ultrathin bifaces were used and maintained by women for specialized butchering required for drying strips of meat.

Comments welcome.

Boldurian, Anthony T.  1999  Clovis Revisited:New Perspectives on Paleoindian Adaptations from Blackwater Draw, New Mexico.  University of Pennsylvania Museum, Philadelphia.

Jodry, Margaret A.  1998  The Possible Design of Folsom Ultrathin Bifaces as Fillet Knives for Jerky Production.  Current Research in the Pleistocene 15:75-77.

Root, Matthew J., J. D. William, Marvin Kay, and L. K. Shifrin  1999  Folsom Ultrathin Biface and Radial Break Tools in the Knife River Flint Quarry Area.  In Folsom Lithic Technology: Explorations in Structure and Variation, edited by D. S. Amick, International Monographs in Prehistory, Archaeological Series, Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Photo of the Week

An Agate Basin point made of Alibates Agate from north Texas found in situ below a bison mandible.  While the quality of these photos are not great, they show an amazing find that was not discovered until long after the bison mandible was exposed and pedestaled.  This mandible is contained in the excavated bonebed still on display in the South Bank Interpretive Center at the Blackwater Draw site.

Under analysis by the blog author.

View of the hafting end.

Photo of the Week 10/2/2011

This is one of Blackwater Draw’s most notable artifacts pictured in situ in 1963.  The detailed photo is great for scale and the top photo shows its association with mammoth remains.  The knife is made of Edwards Plateau chert and was found in perfect condition as were other stone tools and points from this mammoth kill.  The abundance of complete stone tools associated with this mammoth kill has led researchers to speculate that they were abandoned amidst butchering activities.

Photo of the Week 9/9/2011

An excellent example of the gravers discovered at Blackwater Draw.  This was excavated in 1963 and is made of Edwards Plateau chert.

Pre-Clovis site in Texas?

For decades archaeologists have been searching for sites that conclusively prove that a pre-Clovis culture existed in the Americas.  Several sites have been discovered and excavated within the Western Hemisphere that could potentially be pre-Clovis, but the data is equivocal and has been highly criticized- leaving no sites to date widely accepted as being pre-Clovis.  A recent article published in the March issue of Science (vol. 331) by Michael R. Waters et al, claims to have found proof of a pre-Clovis culture at the Debra L. Friedkin Site in central Texas.  The authors state that a lithic assemblage, dating between 13.2 and 15.5 thousand years ago underlies a Clovis assemblage and that the stratigraphic integrity is sound (Waters et al, 2011).

Artifacts found at the Buttermilk Creek Complex at the Debra L. Friedkin archaeological site in Texas appear to be 13,200 to 15,500 years old, predating the Clovis culture in North America by about 2500 years, researchers say. [Image courtesy of Michael R. Waters; © Science/AAAS

It will be interesting to see what conclusions further analysis produces about the site, and if it is ultimately accepted by the archaeological community as being pre-Clovis.

As always, please comment and join in the discussion about this site, Waters’ claims, and the dating techniques used.  A full reference to the Science article can be found below.

Waters, Michael R.
2011 The Buttermilk Creek Complex and the Origins of Clovis at the Debra L. Friedkin Site, Texas.  Science 331:1599-1603.

Here is a link to the AAAS News website with an interview with Waters.