New AMS Radiocarbon Ages from the Preceramic Levels of Coxcatlan Cave, Puebla, Mexico: A Pleistocene Occupation of the Tehuacan Valley?

Somerville, Andrew D.; Casar, Isabel; Arroyo-Cabrales, Joaquı́n

doi:10.1017/laq.2021.26

Cited by 7 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 39 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Simple stone tools discovered in Chiquihuite Cave, Mexico, date from ∼26,500 to 19,000 cal BP and represent a previously unknown tradition (Ardelean et al, 2020;Becerra-Valdivia and Higham, 2020). At Coxcatlan Cave, Mexico, re-dating butchered small mammals associated with minimally worked stone tools established a 33,448 to 28,279 cal BP date for the site's lowest cultural level (Somerville et al, 2021). Simple flaked stone artifacts are known from numerous ancient South American sites.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Human Occupation of the North American Colorado Plateau ∼37,000 Years Ago

Rowe

Stafford²,

Fisher

et al. 2022

Front. Ecol. Evol.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Calibrating human population dispersals across Earth’s surface is fundamental to assessing rates and timing of anthropogenic impacts and distinguishing ecological phenomena influenced by humans from those that were not. Here, we describe the Hartley mammoth locality, which dates to 38,900–36,250 cal BP by AMS 14C analysis of hydroxyproline from bone collagen. We accept the standard view that elaborate stone technology of the Eurasian Upper Paleolithic was introduced into the Americas by arrival of the Native American clade ∼16,000 cal BP. It follows that if older cultural sites exist in the Americas, they might only be diagnosed using nuanced taphonomic approaches. We employed computed tomography (CT and μCT) and other state-of-the-art methods that had not previously been applied to investigating ancient American sites. This revealed multiple lines of taphonomic evidence suggesting that two mammoths were butchered using expedient lithic and bone technology, along with evidence diagnostic of controlled (domestic) fire. That this may be an ancient cultural site is corroborated by independent genetic evidence of two founding populations for humans in the Americas, which has already raised the possibility of a dispersal into the Americas by people of East Asian ancestry that preceded the Native American clade by millennia. The Hartley mammoth locality thus provides a new deep point of chronologic reference for occupation of the Americas and the attainment by humans of a near-global distribution.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Human Occupation of the North American Colorado Plateau ∼37,000 Years Ago

Rowe

Stafford²,

Fisher

et al. 2022

Front. Ecol. Evol.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…All five prehispanic irrigation networks were sampled, and all canal systems have dates of at least cal 3500 BC (Table 1 and Figure 3). These dates fall within the Abejas phase (c. 4425–2595 BC) of the Late Archaic period (MacNeish, 2001; Somerville et al, 2021). This was a time when MacNeish (2001) postulates that the first semi-permanent pit house villages developed on the valley bottom, as well as the widespread incorporation of domesticated plants into a diet still dominated by non-domesticates.…”

Section: Chronology Of the Fossilized Canal Systemsmentioning

confidence: 80%

“…Calibrated 2-sigma radiocarbon probability distributions with sample numbers and locality information grouped by canal system. Cultural chronologies are based on MacNeish (2001) and Somerville et al (2021).…”

Section: Chronology Of the Fossilized Canal Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This was a time when MacNeish (2001) postulates that the first semi-permanent pit house villages developed on the valley bottom, as well as the widespread incorporation of domesticated plants into a diet still dominated by non-domesticates. Dates from the San Marcos, Llano de la Taza, and Atzompa systems extend the use of irrigation to cal 5500 BC, within the Coxcatlán phase (c. 5888–4425 BC) of the Archaic period, a time when seasonally nomadic populations are believed to begin practicing horticulture (MacNeish, 2001; Somerville et al, 2021). Irrigation was apparently initiated coevally with the emergence of horticulture in this arid setting, therefore the foundations of these irrigation networks reflect decisions made during the Archaic period about how and why to manage water.…”

Section: Chronology Of the Fossilized Canal Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Relict canals of the Tehuacán Valley, Mexico: A Middle- to Late-Holocene dryland socio-hydrological system

2022

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The travertine-lined irrigation canal networks of the Tehuacán Valley, Mexico allowed pre-Hispanic indigenous communities to overcome risks of crop failures in an arid setting. Segments of these systems are still in use today, therefore understanding when and how these irrigation networks functioned allows us to identify which attributes of a coupled socio-hydrological system are important for maintaining the long-term resilience of irrigation systems in drylands. This paper summarizes the results of an interdisciplinary study of this prehispanic irrigation network involving mapping, radiometric dating, and diatom analyses of materials extracted from the travertine lined canals. All of the canal networks were functioning by ca. 2000 BC, at the transition from the Late Archaic to the Formative period, which is before archeological evidence for widespread community-level aggregation. Provocatively, some canals are potentially as old as 6000–4000 BC, which would mean that hunter-gatherers initiated irrigation coevally with the introduction of semi-domesticated maize, a tropical species which would require supplemental water in this arid context. The canals both facilitated agricultural intensification and enhanced the distribution of aquatic ecosystems. The resilience of these systems to their unique spring dependent context demanded frequent maintenance and the integration of multiple canal networks to mitigate geohydrological vulnerabilities of reduced discharge. These conditions set up a long-term reciprocal dynamic between people and water in the Tehuacán Valley. The results demonstrate that rigidities inherent to tightly coupled socio-hydrological systems in dryland settings were overcome by institutional arrangements first developed by indigenous communities deep in prehistory.

show abstract

“…I currently think the best evidence points to an entry between 14,500 and 16,000 years ago to the continental US. There are a few very early (>20,000 cal BP) sites (e.g., the Cerutti Mastodon site in California, Chiquihuite and Coxcatlan Caves in central Mexico, and the White Sands footprints in New Mexico (Ardelean et al 2020;Bennett et al 2021;Holen et al 2017;Somerville et al 2021), but these have convinced few archaeologists (Braje et al 2017;Chatters et al 2021;Potter et al 2018;. Better evidence comes from the ∼16,000-year-old Gault/ Friedkin (Texas) and Coopers Ferry (Idaho) sites (Davis et al 2019;Waters et al 2011;Williams et al 2020), and the 14,500-year-old sites of Page-Ladson (Florida) and Paisley Cave (Oregon; Halligan et al 2016;Shillito et al 2020).…”

Section: Colonization Of the New Worldmentioning

confidence: 99%

Scale Matters

2022

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

New AMS Radiocarbon Ages from the Preceramic Levels of Coxcatlan Cave, Puebla, Mexico: A Pleistocene Occupation of the Tehuacan Valley?

Cited by 7 publications

References 39 publications

Human Occupation of the North American Colorado Plateau ∼37,000 Years Ago

Human Occupation of the North American Colorado Plateau ∼37,000 Years Ago

Relict canals of the Tehuacán Valley, Mexico: A Middle- to Late-Holocene dryland socio-hydrological system

Scale Matters

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About