The Plainview/Folsom-aged bison Bonebed 2 at Bonfire Shelter, originally excavated in the 1960s, is argued to be the earliest North American bison jump (Dibble 1970; Dibble and Lorrain 1968). Yet, it is far older than all other known jumps, and well south of where the great majority of these sites are found. Dibble (1970) reasonably argued that its age and location was not compelling evidence against it being a bison jump. However, Binford (1978) observed that the skeletal composition of Bonebed 2 did not resemble a kill. To assess whether Bonfire Shelter could have been utilized as a jump and whether it was, we explore two lines of evidence bearing on the issue, a GIS analysis of the site and upland topography, and zooarchaeological analysis of the recovered bison remains. Although our GIS analysis indicates that Bonfire Shelter meets many of the criteria of a jump locality, our reanalysis of the faunal remains suggests this was not the primary kill locus, but instead a processing area to which high-utility portions of at least 24 bison were transported and butchered. Where the bison were killed, and how, is not known.
Most models of Folsom adaptation consider specialized bison hunting and high rates of residential mobility to be defining characteristics. We use spatial and assemblage content data from a sample of 619 Folsom sites located throughout the Great Plains, Rocky Mountains, and Southwest to evaluate whether the archaeological record actually reflects these characteristics. Three spatial scales of analysis are utilized. First, site scale analysis of a subset of sites shows a great deal of variability in spatial and temporal characteristics. Sites can be roughly divided into small, single occupation locales and large, serially occupied sites. Second, day-to-day foraging occurs at what we term the foraging scale. This intermediate spatial scale is poorly understood for Folsom groups, though large sites such as Blackwater Draw and Lindenmeier provide clues that are supplemented by information from the ethnographic record. Third, the macro-regional scale analysis utilizes the entire site sample and indicates that the Folsom archaeological record consists primarily of small locales scattered across the landscape punctuated by only a few large, serially occupied sites. Overall, our analysis suggests that Folsom adaptive systems were more variable than normally recognized, and, in certain settings, may have been characterized by reduced residential mobility. Furthermore, we postulate that Folsom land use, rather than being conditioned primarily by mobile prey, may have been at least partly conditioned by more predictable resources such as wood, water, and toolstone.
Archaeomagnetic dating in the American south-west is progressing rapidly in terms of both method and application. Of particular importance has been the creation of u master curve of geomagnetic direction change ,for the region. However, confirmation, extension and refnement of this curve are always welcome contributions to the technique. So, efforts are under way to accumulate a large body of well-dated virtual geomagnetic pole positions and document these through publication so that the basis for dating samples of unknown age can be evaluated. This article adds 23 new dated pole positions to the list discussed in Eighniy (1991) and reports the results of our experiments with refining the south-west USA master curve, especially the creation of a new south-west master curve, SWCV.595.
Except for the addition of modern material remains, the archaeological record is a finite resource, which means that, at some point in the future, there will be nothing left to find. In this paper, we model trends in archaeological discovery based on the growth of the field and the probability of site discovery. We compare this model to seven diverse datasets of archaeological discovery trends: (1) all sites from the state of Wyoming, USA; (2) high-altitude archaeological sites from the state of Colorado, USA; (3) mostly complete Neandertal crania; (4) monumental sites of the Maya Classic period; (5) proboscidean kill/scavenge sites globally; (6) Upper Paleolithic sites from Europe; and (7) a compilation of shipwreck discoveries. We forecast discovery trends over the current century. We show that, for all datasets, rates of discovery are in decline, and some segments of the record are near depletion.
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