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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 6, 2001)
lu ary6.Jj D /utionsii; liilanthrof i, campus £. its mays: t the lufc essofes as like car ting wills riencede iroducec; Kyle Fie. is in bre,. villsper,:, l least r. gTVwail aid. aline pr TVisf :h adver, donatio:; \ssocia; tgastat: h ofetji: to have.. ill prtE- mesan twillk ; like flic ieadenr. vill brin: autCol- .butpeo- : sitoutu xicoun- V/m’ 1 ■S A netlty icey® 3tnefe parts oi w ralia. taly. ^ ile datio rman Cats.ti tion e, the o fona.l echno d nd the in "Lo« : rockirs ichand id range v'henlis- ^d>0’ ing ■yan -7272 Tuesday, February 6, 2001 TECHN THE BATTALION SPEARHEADING HlSTO A&M anthropologists in search of America’s earliest settlers By Stuart Hutson ■ The Battalion As Michael Waters gently thumbs a piece of flint that may appear to be no more than a simple arrow head to the average observer, his eyes take on a deep gaze, re vealing that a few simple lines cut in stone tell a greater story than a thousand lines of text. For Waters and his colleague Harry Shafer, both pro fessors of anthropology at Texas A&M, this story is of the first human settlements in America, and it is written in a collection of artifacts from the heart of Texas. Waters and Shafer, along with researchers from the University of Texas-Austin and sev eral other institutions, are halfway through a three-year-long exca vation of Gault Site, a 30-acre area in Bell County, Texas. The area’s limestone hills and bubbling creeks made an ideal site 11,500 years ago for the early inhabitants of the New World to stop, take a breather and make a few tools. “This is possibly the largest concentration of artifacts from this group ever found,” Shafer said. “Normally, small kill sites are found that reveal one or two artifacts, often on the ground’s surface, maybe resulting from one of these guys throwing a spear at a mammoth, missing and What did they look like? The only complete skele tal remains found of Clovis hunters were of two small children, so no direct evi dence is present as to what these early residents of North America looked like. However, Waters and Shafer said that if modern people were to see a Clovis hunter walking down the street to day, they probably would not recognized them. “They probably just had smaller and skinnier skulls with more rugged features — like those of a NFL line backer,” Shafer said. The skull to the right is a replica of a skull of a woman who lived at the end of the Folsom period that immedi ately followed the Clovis period. The woman’s face below is a researcher’s in terpretation of how the Fol som woman’s face may have looked. then running away yeah, like he’s going back for his spear. “These people seemed to think that this was an ide al staging ground, where they could rest, have babies, make tools and socialize. And, evidently they thought it was a really, really ideal setting, because they kept returning for thousands of years. Today, it is one of our greatest opportunities to rediscover some things about these ancient people.” The people are named the Clovis hunters, after a site in New Mexico where arti facts from their culture were first found. Waters said the group lived between 11,500 and 10,900 years ago in North Ameri ca, surviving largely by hunting herds of mammoths and bison. “This is a truly unique cul ture,” Shafer said. "The elements of the culture are shared by mem bers all across thescountry, and they were masters of craftsman ship, especially when it came to making spear points, because they were such an intricate part of their lives.” COME HERE OFTEN? “The Clovis hunters were pulled across the land by the herds of animals which they were hunt ing,” Shafer said. “So they proba bly spent much of their lives trav eling in order to follow the seasonal migrations of the mam moths or bison.” He said this nomadic lifestyle resulted in an extremely rugged and dangerous routine for the Clovis, who needed places to rest and recuperate. “This site is really just a stag ing point B for a trip to point A, which in this case was hundreds of miles away into what is now Kansas,” Shafer said. “This area had vast supplies of what they needed, and most of all, flint for the tools they would use for the trip. ... We know that they stuck with the same tools because we have found worn spear tips that originated in Kansas.” Waters said the Texas site was visited regularly for 9,000 years, offering invaluable clues to the evolution of the area’s cultures. “It helps us put things in more of a timeline perspective where we can say that this particular tool and the people that used it came after this other one,” he said. “It also helps us understand how technologies (how the cultures made tools) changed and when they changed. “Spear points made in the fash ion of the Clovis hunters are here, but so are those of the Folsom (the next cultural category of people, ranging from 10,300 to 10,800 years ago) as well as those of oth ers that followed.” 6, O 0 O l J G a p s ARCHAIC ings at the Gault site may provide evidence for the first theory. “The excavation of this old site didn’t find any spear points that would indicate a cul ture before the Clo vis,” Waters said. “But what we may find is that the technol ogy we find as pre dominant in this area is the same as is found in Alaska near the Bering Strait. This, then, could mean that the culture was carried across from the Old World.” FOLSOM CLOVIS SO, WHAT'S YOUR POINT? Being able to sequence the technological changes (especially those involving making spear tips) may help to form a more decisive picture of how the original human inhabitants of North America first conquered the land. Waters said. There are several theories of early inhabita tion of North America. Waters said a common theory is that people with the culture of the Clovis migrated across a temporary ice bridge that formed across the Bering Strait (the gap between Alaska and Asia). These people then migrated down through North America, traveling between two gigantic sheets of ice that covered much of the continent. Other theories, however, depict a culture of hunters predating the Clo vis, who migrated to North Ameri ca through means other than across , the Bering Strait, such as by boat. This culture then evolved into the Clovis hunters. Waters and Shafer said find- SHARPENING THEIR SKILLS Shafer said the Clovis methods of making spear heads not only make the culture stand out, but may also link them to the Old World. . “You can tell that the later spear points were made in a much more cavalier way,” he said. “The later cul tures were more stationary around ar eas where they could just pick up an other piece of flint and make a knife or spear head if one broke, but the Clo vis had to design their tools to be durable and high-quality.... They were real craftsmen who would start with a piece of flint the size of a brick and, in a few minutes, chisel it down to an artfully crafted, durable spear head. “The later cultures would just take shards from the flint and then just shape those into spearheads. The Clovis method is a school of technology that was probably taught to children — I think this because we have found spear heads with really basic mistakes — and had a 2,000 year-old history back in the Old World.” Shafer said part of the skill put into making the spearheads may also come from a respect for the beasts the Clovis hunted. “These people lived in a world where everything was mystical and magical,” he said. “They could have put a crude point on a sim ple rock and I assure you that it would have been just as deadly, but these people chose the best, most decorative materials and took care in the design. “I would think, though, that it wouldn’t be EDGE SEIARPEMED w i ih quartzite limestone tone any less or any more significant than a farmer who goes to church praying for rain. These peo-ij pie were dependent upon nature, and were therefore Ih; tune with it in a way that we lost thousands of years agb.: This may have been a way of mapping themselves in. with the natural clockwork.” DULLED EDGES THICK CEMTER for extra strength ELUTED IMDEnTIOM for insertion into end of spear PHOTO ILLUSTRATIONS BY STUART VILLANUEVA & RUBEN DELUNA/The Battalion WHERE THERE'S HURT THERE'S HOPE POST ABORTION PEER COUNSELING ♦ Peer Grief Counseling ♦ Help for Symptoms of Abortion Trauma ♦ 10-week Recovery Program ♦ Emotional & Spiritual Support ♦ Free & Confidential Jtofie PneqM&ncy Geniebl Call and ask for the PACE (Post Abortion Counseling & Education) Director. QO 205 Brentwood • College Station yJ ZJ I Zj <3 www.hopepregnancy.org Date Night Only s 25.00 per couple Appetizer, 2 salads, 2 entrees, & a dessert to share CENARE Italian Restaurant Only Tuesdays and Wednesdays No coupon needed 404 University Dr. 696-7311 Tutor] okit Tkese are weekly classes 4:00 5:30 7:00 8:30 Monday Math 142 Math 141 Physics 201 Math 152 Tuesday Marvit math 141 Math 131 Physics 202 Math 142 (Biweekly) Wednesday Epstein Math 166 Math 142 Physics 201 Thursday Math 131 Math 141 Physics 202 Math 142 (Biweekly) 485-8556 For review sessions check www.tutor]okn.com Page 5 A3 —(