Early Art in North America: Clovis and Later Paleoindian Incised Artifacts from the Gault Site, Texas (41BL323)

Abstract

Engraved and carved bone and stone artifacts capture our imaginations and are known worldwide from archaeological contexts, but they are seemingly rare and oftentimes difficult to recognize. While preservation issues play a role in the limited recovery of early art objects, research on incised stones and bone from the Gault site in Texas demonstrates that an expectation to find such artifacts plays a key role in their identification and recovery. The presence of incised stones found by collectors at Gault alerted archaeologists to the potential for finding early art in systematic excavations. To date, 11 incised stones and one engraved bone of Paleoindian age (13,000–9,000 calibrated years before present) have been recovered and of these, the Clovis artifacts are among the earliest portable art objects from secure context in North America. The presence of incised stone and bone at Gault led to the development of an examination protocol for identifying and analyzing engraved and incised artifacts that can be applied to a wide variety of archaeological contexts.

Early human symbolic behavior in the Late Pleistocene of Wallacea

“…The practice of incising abstract patterns on stones either before the knapping process or afterward is rare worldwide (38,39) and, to our knowledge, unique within ISEA (and Sahul)-the closest examples in Asia being a stone core engraved with crossed and parallel lines, which dates to 30 ka in China (40), and five incised stones from Xom Trai Cave in Vietnam (22-19 ka) (41). Similar objects occur in UP France (42) and at Clovis sites (39).…”

3D Scan Data for Selected Clovis-Age Artifacts from the Gault Site (41BL323), Central Texas, USA

“…Overall, the Gault Clovis assemblage is comprised of approximately 600,000 artifacts, around ninety-five percent being lithic material; most recovered from nine major excavation blocks from less then three percent of the entire site. Recently published studies of the Gault Clovis materials include an analysis of incised stones Lemke et al (2015), Clovis blade technology Williams (2016), Clovis Flake analysis Velchoff Littlefield (2015), and Optically Stimulated Luminescence ages of the Clovis component in Area 15 Rodrigues et al (2016). Current analytical investigations include microscopic use-wear, geomorphological, paleomagnetic, microfossil, and starch grain analyses.…”

Paleoindian ochre mines in the submerged caves of the Yucatán Peninsula, Quintana Roo, Mexico

“…There are several possibilities to consider, none of which are mutually exclusive. As previously noted, interpretations of Paleoindian ochre use in other regions of North America often categorize them into “utilitarian” or “ritual-symbolic” contexts ( 12 , 19 ). Experimental studies and archaeological evidence have demonstrated that ochre could have had practical or medicinal value as antiseptic ( 25 ), as sunscreen ( 26 ), for therapeutic consumption or geophagia ( 27 ), for hide tanning ( 13 , 28 , 29 ), for tool hafting ( 30 , 31 ), as a repellent of vermin (such as ticks or lice), or for purging parasites ( 25 , 32 ).…”