Renewed investigations at the Folsom Palaeoindian type site.

MELTZER, DAVID J.

The Folsom site (New Mexico, USA) is justly famous as the place where in 1927 four decades of sometimes bitter controversy came to an end, when it was finally demonstrated humans had been in the New World since the Pleistocene (Meltzer 1993). Folsom became the type site for the Palaeoindian period and distinctive fluted projectile point that bears its name (see Hofman 1999). Yet, as the excavations done in the 1920s by the Colorado (now Denver) and American Museums of Natural History focused initially on the recovery of Bison antiquus skeletons suitable for museum display, and latterly on documenting the association of projectile points with those bison remains, many fundamental questions of interest about the site's stratigraphic, environmental and archaeological context were left unanswered (and often not asked).

To rectify that situation, a long-term field project was begun in 1997, sponsored by the Quest Archaeological Research Fund and under permit from the State of New Mexico. Our initial expectations were modest, made so by the knowledge that the last year of major excavations on site (1928) were extensive and ostensibly got `around the Indians buffalo hunt' (as Peter Kaisen, the field foreman, reported in August of that year). While there is no question much of the site was removed by the earlier work, it was unexpected and gratifying to discover 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 New Mexico (FIGURES 1 & 2), and straddles Wild Horse Arroyo -- which heads on the mesa, and downstream feeds into the Dry Cimarron River. Much of the work in the 1920s concentrated on the south bank of the arroyo, and that is where our most intensive excavations have taken place. All together, over the last three field seasons, a relatively small area, ~17 sq. m, of the bonebed on the south bank has been carefully examined, and yielded a concentration of bison remains, including several remarkably well-preserved crania (FIGURE 3), along with post-cranial elements (particularly vertebrae, mandibles, and distal limb elements). The recovery pattern is similar to that in the 1920s, based on work with the museum collections by Meltzer and Lawrence Todd (unpublished). Noticeable by their scarcity are meat-rich long bones, suggesting these higher-yield parts were transported out of the kill area -- though whether they were taken off site, or remain on site in an as-yet-to-be discovered adjoining habitation, remains to be determined.

[FIGURE 1 2 & 3 ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Bone preservation is exceptional, largely as a consequence of the stratigraphic context of the kill, which took place during the fall season on a dry, dusty surface, and which -- very soon after the nearly 30 carcasses were abandoned -- was blanketed in fine-grained aeolian silts. In turn, a sheet wash of gravel came over the bonebed area, which effectively armoured the deposit, and was in turn buried under several metres of late Holocene pond deposits.

As yet, no lithic tools have been recovered in situ in the bonebed, or in our other excavations across the site, including on the North Bank. However, waterscreening of all sediment from the bone bed (through nested 31.75-mm and 15.875-mm mesh screens) has yielded upwards of 50 pieces of microdebitage, along with a rich record of gastropods, which are proving invaluable in reconstructing the environment at the time of the occupation nearly 11,000 years ago. As best can be determined presently, the kill at Folsom was a single episode; there is no other Palaeoindian presence at the site.

Of especial interest in the recent work is the realization the bonebed is much more extensive than previously known, and spilled out of a tributary headcut (under the present south bank), into the palaeochannel of Wild Horse Arroyo (under the present north bank). That finding has implications for the nature and scale of the kill, now being explored. Analyses of recovered materials are ongoing, and additional fieldwork is planned.

References

HOFMAN, J.L. 1999. Unbounded hunters: Folsom bison hunting on the southern Plains, circa 10500 BP, the lithic evidence, in J. Jaubert, J. Brugal, F. David & J. Enloe (ed.), Le bison: gibier et moyen de subsistance de hommes du paleolithique aux paleoindiens des grandes plaines: 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 Methodist University, Dallas TX 75275, USA. dmeltzer@mail.smu.edu