Renewed investigations at the Folsom Palaeoindian type site.

Renewed investigations at the Folsom Palaeoindian type site. The Folsom site (New Mexico, USA) is justly famous as the placewhere in 1927 four decades of sometimes bitter controversy came to anend, when it was finally demonstrated humans had been in the New Worldsince the Pleistocene (Meltzer 1993). Folsom became the type site forthe Palaeoindian period and distinctive fluted projectile projectilesomething thrown forward.projectile syringesee blow dart.projectile vomitingforceful vomiting, usually without preceding retching, in which the vomitus is thrown well forward. point thatbears its name (see Hofman 1999). Yet, as the excavations done in the1920s by the Colorado (now Denver) and American Museums of NaturalHistory focused initially on the recovery of Bison antiquus skeletonssuitable for museum display, and latterly on documenting the associationof projectile points with those bison remains, many fundamentalquestions of interest about the site's stratigraphic, environmentaland archaeological context were left unanswered (and often not asked). To rectify that situation, a long-term field project was begun in1997, sponsored by the Quest Archaeological Research Fund and underpermit from the State of New Mexico. Our initial expectations weremodest, made so by the knowledge that the last year of major excavationson site (1928) were extensive and ostensibly got `around the Indiansbuffalo hunt' (as Peter Kaisen, the field foreman, reported inAugust of that year). While there is no question much of the site wasremoved by the earlier work, it was unexpected and gratifying todiscover that the site is much larger than was realized in the 1920s,and that considerable material of archaeological interest remains. Folsom is located in the shadow of Johnson Mesa in northeastern NewMexico (FIGURES 1 & 2), and straddles Wild Horse Arroyo Wild Horse Arroyo is an archeological site which was excavated in 1926 near Folson, New Mexico. This site is significant because it was the first time that artifacts indisputably made by humans were found directly associated with faunal remains from an extinct form of bison from -- whichheads on the mesa, and downstream feeds into the Dry Cimarron River.Much of the work in the 1920s concentrated on the south bank of thearroyo, and that is where our most intensive excavations have takenplace. All together, over the last three field seasons, a relativelysmall area, ~17 sq. m, of the bonebed on the south bank has beencarefully examined, and yielded a concentration of bison remains,including several remarkably well-preserved crania cra��ni��a?n.A plural of cranium. (FIGURE 3), alongwith post-cranial elements (particularly vertebrae VertebraeBones in the cervical, thoracic, and lumbar regions of the body that make up the vertebral column. Vertebrae have a central foramen (hole), and their superposition makes up the vertebral canal that encloses the spinal cord. , mandibles, anddistal limb elements). The recovery pattern is similar to that in the1920s, based on work with the museum collections by Meltzer and LawrenceTodd (unpublished). Noticeable by their scarcity are meat-rich longbones, suggesting these higher-yield parts were transported out of thekill area -- though whether they were taken off site, or remain on sitein an as-yet-to-be discovered adjoining habitation HABITATION, civil law. It was the right of a person to live in the house of another without prejudice to the property. 2. It differed from a usufruct in this, that the usufructuary might have applied the house to any purpose, as, a store or manufactory; whereas , remains to bedetermined. [FIGURE 1 2 & 3 ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Bone preservation is exceptional, largely as a consequence of thestratigraphic context of the kill, which took place during the fallseason on a dry, dusty surface, and which -- very soon after the nearly30 carcasses were abandoned -- was blanketed in fine-grained aeolian Ae��o��li��an?adj.1. Of or relating to Aeolis or its people or culture.2. Greek Mythology Of or relating to Aeolus.3. aeolian Variant of eolian.n.1. silts. In turn, a sheet wash of gravel came over the bonebed area, whicheffectively armoured the deposit, and was in turn buried under severalmetres of late Holocene pond deposits. As yet, no lithic lith��ic?1?adj.Consisting of or relating to stone or rock.Adj. 1. lithic - of or containing lithium2. lithic - relating to or composed of stone; "lithic sandstone" tools have been recovered in situ In place. When something is "in situ," it is in its original location. in the bonebed,or in our other excavations across the site, including on the NorthBank. However, waterscreening of all sediment from the bone bed (throughnested 31.75-mm and 15.875-mm mesh screens) has yielded upwards of 50pieces of microdebitage, along with a rich record of gastropods, whichare proving invaluable in reconstructing the environment at the time ofthe occupation nearly 11,000 years ago. As best can be determinedpresently, the kill at Folsom was a single episode; there is no otherPalaeoindian presence at the site. Of especial interest in the recent work is the realization thebonebed is much more extensive than previously known, and spilled out ofa tributary headcut (under the present south bank), into thepalaeochannel of Wild Horse Arroyo (under the present north bank). Thatfinding has implications for the nature and scale of the kill, now beingexplored. Analyses of recovered materials are ongoing, and additionalfieldwork is planned. References HOFMAN, J.L. 1999. Unbounded hunters: Folsom bison hunting on thesouthern Plains, circa 10500 BP, the lithic evidence, in J. Jaubert, J.Brugal, F. David & J. Enloe (ed.), Le bison: gibier et moyen desubsistance de hommes du paleolithique aux paleoindiens des grandesplaines: 383-415. Antibes: Editions APDCA. MELTZER, D.J. 1993. Search for the first Americans. Washington(DC): Smithsonian Books. DAVID J. MELTZER, Department of Anthropology, Southern MethodistUniversity, Dallas TX 75275, USA. dmeltzer@mail.smu.edu