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closeClovis points more than simply weapon tips?
Posted by crimedoctor on 24 Feb 2012 at 21:17 GMT
This article argues that Clovis points found in caches “were likely produced with a view to them being used to arm hunting weapons” and that the results of their study are not consistent with an alternative explanation that argues the items were produced for use in rituals. In order to support their position, the authors even go so far as to dispute that the items found at the Anzick site, Montana, long regarded as a number of offerings accompanying a Clovis burial of a youngster, are not grave goods. As they note, I have argued that some cached Clovis “points” were produced more for ritual or display purposes [1], and for that matter, I believe the Anzick site is still a good candidate for a burial or at the very least, a focus of sacred ritual activity, so I believe two comments are necessary.
First, I have never argued that all or even most points from Clovis caches were made solely to be used in ritual or display. I believe, assuming I can read Clovis minds as well as the next person, that for the most part they were intended to be hunting weapons and that the results presented here are consistent with that idea. The only exception, as I stated in my 2009 paper, is the extremely large points/preforms found at the East Wenatchee site in Washington State. The very large items seem to have been placed in pairs of two or three items at the margins of the main concentration of other objects found at that site and my colleagues and I have suggested elsewhere that these may be deliberate separate placements from the main cache of items and even offerings rather than parts of a utilitarian cache [2, 3]. Since the basic data used to evaluate the ideas in this paper are not presented, it is hard for a reader to evaluate the specific placement of the larger East Wenatchee bifaces in the presented histogram of point area and point length (and the scale on the point length diagram [Figure 2b] only goes up to about 5.5 cm[?] which I assume is an error since the bifaces from East Wenatchee for example include several items with overall lengths above 20 cm). Nonetheless, both Figure 2a and 2b indicate there is a small number of very large items at the extreme size end of the cache point distributions (N = 6 or 7) such that an almost bimodal distribution is produced. I suspect these ultra large bifaces are the East Wenatchee artifacts as I have seen few such comparable sized items from any other Clovis cache. This “additional peak” in those distributions might indicate there are some Clovis bifaces produced more for ritual or display purposes but they are swamped out by simply treating the whole set of cache assemblages as representing exactly the same kinds of behaviour (which is a questionable assumption [see 4]).
Second, even if my musings above are incorrect, the analyses presented seem to assume that one can easily separate out various kinds of artifacts into discrete functional roles in any cultural system: that because they tipped weapons they were not also produced for use in ritual or display. The analysis presented here is very reminiscent of Binford’s (5) attempt to see objects as being either technomic, sociotechnic or ideotechnic – that is we can place each tool form into a discrete functional category based on the fact it played a primary, if not exclusive role, in the technological/functional, social or ideological sphere. Aside from perhaps the simplest used stone flake (and I am not convinced about them either), I doubt if any tool from was conceived by its maker in such a minimal way and especially, the very complex tools being discussed here. In short, regardless of whether these points could be intended to be and were used as hunting weapon tips, they could also be intended to serve many other roles or have many other meanings in Paleoindian society.
For example, I was involved in the analysis of a southern Ontario cache of what are clearly over 180 deliberately burned stone objects [2, 3]. The burned objects all were everyday items found on normal occupation sites and yet, the fact they were burned clearly indicates they had served in some social and ideational context and had symbolic meanings that went beyond their mere utilitarian functional role. The fact that such burning of stone objects are reported widely in Paleoindian to Early Archaic times in the Great Lakes vicinity, including even as burial inclusions, reinforces the role of these elaborate stone objects in Paleoindian life beyond their obvious utilitarian purposes. The fact one does not find such use of stone tools in subsequent times for thousands of years in that same geographic area also reinforces the idea that such objects had meanings much beyond some mere utilitarian function to their makers. They were intended to be more than simply tools and to fulfill more than simpy a weapon tip or other function.
With these ideas in mind and returning to the large Clovis points in caches (and out of them), I think it germane to ask the question, even if they ended up being functional tools why would anyone make 15-23 cm long weapon tips at all? If these weapons functioned solely in a utilitarian manner there is no evident reason why they need to be that large (or why they are often made on what are almost semi-precious stones from distances hundreds of kms away). If there was an easy and compelling utilitarian reason to make such large bifaces I would expect people would have invented and used large items over and over again and yet, very few peoples did. And even when others did produce such large bifaces, as in Dalton or Benton assemblages of the Midcontinent, contextual evidence clearly indicates these “hypertrophic bifaces” served roles that were not focused in the utilitarian sphere or certainly went beyond it [e.g. 6, 7]. It is even more difficult to explain why they should go to the trouble of making the large Clovis bifaces by complex, difficult to master techniques, such as by consistent overshot thinning/flaking [e.g. 8], a technique that has been invented and used very few times in human history [9].
As with the Great Lakes assemblages noted above, one also needs to consider the contextual data from Clovis caches to infer their function and the role of such bifaces in Clovis society. The authors minimize the fact that several of these caches such as Simon, Idaho [10], Anzick, Montana [11] and East Wenatchee, Washington [12] are associated with red ochre, a material that can often have great symbolic significance and certainly did for Paleoindians based on compiled evidence [13, 14]. In some cases, like Simon and Anzick the ochre seems to be associated with most or every one of the objects in the cache. However, even at East Wenatchee, where not all objects have a red ochre association, significantly it actually is associated with two of the very largest Clovis cache points/preforms ever reported – coincidence? One can also argue that at Anzick the items were associated with the burial of a sub-adult. If correct, this clearly indicates the large red ochre covered objects were actual offerings as a child would not have the skill or means to amass such objects, and its burial context clearly implies the objects had a meaning beyond a utilitarian one.
Of course, as noted above, the authors of this article dispute the association of the skeletal remains of the child with the stone objects including the large bifaces, I assume to downplay the possible social or ideological roles of Clovis bifaces. They note that the objects and skeletal remains were recovered by workmen using heavy equipment and not under controlled conditions and that the dates on some of the organic Clovis artifacts made on elk antler (ca. 11,000-11,100 RCYBP) are earlier than those on the skeletal material (ca. 10.700-10,800 BP) [15]. The authors interpret this evidence to mean there is no association of the objects and burial and in doing so accept the natural science derived radiocarbon data over what I woud call archaeological objections. There are in fact many other ways to interpret this dating discrepancy in terms of the vagaries of radiocarbon dating itself that are consistent with them being of the same age [15]. Indeed, from an archaeological perspective, an association of some kind seems much more likely. We have a large cache of very elaborate Clovis stone artifacts at Anzick, which is in itself a rare happenstance – when such a cache is found it is time of great celebration amongst archaeologists. Moreover, those items are covered with red ochre, a material often used in sacred ritual, which is not something one sees at every Clovis cache, so the association is an actually rarer happenstance. We also happen to have a very early burial at the same site, one of the earliest directly dated burials anywhere in the Americas, the only one worth considering a Clovis one, and it comes from the exact same site as an incredibly rare red ochre covered cache of Clovis artifacts. What is the probability of this occurring by chance? I would say zero. I would suggest either the two are directly associated as a single event or that the location itself was one that was known already to Paleoindian peoples as one with sacred or symbolic connotations because of the Anzick cache event and hence, was an appropriate place to inter the child.
To sum up, I have no problem with many, if not most, of the larger bifaces from caches being simply unresharpened versions of points that could be use as hunting weapon tips (the largest East Wenatchee items excepted). However, such an intended use does not preclude these artifacts having played a broader role in Clovis life which was clearly more complex and "human" than we often give it credit for-- indeed, as I see it, the only way to explain why Clovis points are as they are and not like the weapon tips of other groups, and why the points occur in certain contexts that are not seen amongst other groups, is to admit these points were more than weapon tips to Clovis peoples or that they saw them as playig multiple roles of which a hunting weapon tip was only one. It may be more difficult to get at Paleoindian worldviews or cultural understandings than it is to get at how they made a living, but that does not mean those worldviews were any less important to our understanding of why people did things as they did [1].
REFERENCES
1. Ellis CJ (2009) The Crowfield and Caradoc sites, Ontario: glimpses of Palaeo-Indian sacred ritual and world view. In: Keenlyside DL, Pilon JL, editors. Painting the Past with a Broad Brush: Papers in Honour of James Valliere Wright. Mercury Series Archaeology Paper 170. Gatineau: Canadian Museum of Civilization. pp. 319–352.
2. Deller DB, C J Ellis , JR Keron (2009) Understanding cache variability: a deliberately burned early Paleoindian tool assemblage from the Crowfield site, southwestern Ontario, Canada. American Antiquity 74: 371-397.
3. Deller DB, C J Ellis (with contributions by JR Keron and RH King) (2011) The Crowfield Site (AfHj-31): A Unique Paleoindian Fluted Point Site from Southwestern Ontario. Ann Arbor: Memoir of the Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan No. 49.
4. Kilby JD (2008) An Investigation of Clovis Caches: Content, Function, and Technological Organization. PhD Dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque.
5. Binford LR (1962) Archaeology as Anthropology. American Antiquity 28: 217-115.
6. Walthall JA, B Koldehoff (1998) Hunter-gatherer interaction and alliance formation and the cult of the long blade. Plains Anthropologist 43:257-273.
7. Sassaman, KE (2010) The Eastern Archaic Historicized. Lanham: Altamira Press.
8. Bradley BA, MB Collins, A Hemmings (2010) Clovis Technology. Ann Arbor: International Monographs in Prehistory, Archaeological Series 17.
9. Stanford DJ and BA Bradley (2012) Across Atlantic Ice: The Origins of America’s Clovis Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press.
10. Kohntopp SW (2010) The Simon Clovis Cache. College Station: Centre for the Study of the First American, Texas A & M University.
11. Lahren LA, R Bonnichsen (1974) Bone foreshafts from a Clovis burial in southwestern Montana. Science 186: 147-150.
12. Gramly RM (1993) The Richey Clovis Cache. New York: Persimmon.
13. Roper DC (1996) Variability in the use of ochre during the Paleoindian period. Current Research in the Pleistocene 13: 40-42.
14. Stafford MD, GC Frison, D Stanford, G Ziemans (2002) Digging for the color of life: Paleoindian red ochre mining at the Powars II site, Platte county, Wyoming, U.S.A. Geoarcheology 18: 71-90.
15. Morrow JE, Fiedel SJ (2006) New radiocarbon dates for the Clovis component of the Anzick site, Park County, Montana. In: Morrow JE, Gnecco C, editors. Paleoindian Archaeology: A Hemispheric Perspective. Gainesville: University of Florida Press. pp. 123–138.
RE: Clovis points more than simply weapon tips?
mark_collard replied to crimedoctor on 07 Jul 2012 at 04:04 GMT
Reply to Ellis’ 'Clovis points more than simply weapon tips?'
Briggs Buchanana,b, J. David Kilbyc, Bruce B. Huckelld, Michael J. O’Brienb, and Mark Collarda*
aHuman Evolutionary Studies Program and Department of Archaeology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada.
bDepartment of Anthropology, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, USA.
cDepartment of Anthropology and Applied Archaeology, Eastern New Mexico University, Portales, NM, USA.
dMaxwell Museum of Anthropology and Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA.
*Author for correspondence: mcollard@sfu.ca.
We are grateful that Christopher Ellis has taken the time to respond to our paper. We reply to his comments on a paragraph-by-paragraph basis.
"'Paragraph 2 (“First, I have never argued…(which is a questionable assumption [see 4]).”)"'
In this paragraph, Ellis argues that his ritual hypothesis focused solely on the large points from the site of East Wenatchee and therefore we did not disprove it in our study. He then suggests that our measurements of some of the large points from East Wenatchee are wrong. Lastly, Ellis contends that the placement of the largest points away from the main cache at East Wenatchee supports his contention that they were deposited ritually.
It is certainly the case that the some of the East Wenatchee points are the largest points in our sample. However, our analyses show that they do not differ in allometric trajectory from other cached points or from points recovered from Clovis kill and camp sites. Thus, our study does in fact cast doubt on Ellis’ hypothesis. Based on the results of our morphometric analyses, there is no reason to believe that the large points from East Wenatchee were intended to be used for a different function than the rest of the East Wenatchee Clovis points, or Clovis points from caches elsewhere in North America, or Clovis points recovered from kill and camp sites. Given that we know some of the kill/camp site points were definitely used for hunting, we contend it is most parsimonious to assume that that function was hunting.
The claim that our measurements of some of the large points from East Wenatchee are wrong is incorrect. The measurements in question are accurate. We suspect the source of the confusion is the fact that the measurements are presented in logarithmic form in the relevant histogram. The rationale for transforming the measurements in this manner is outlined in the Materials and Methods section of our paper.
Regarding the placement of the largest points away from the rest of the cache, we agree that this is potentially meaningful. However, even if it is, it does not contradict our conclusions. The distinction between intended function and actual use is critical here. Our study focused on the intended function of cached Clovis points (i.e. what the knappers had in mind as the points’ function when they made them) not on the way the points were used. As we pointed out, our results are consistent with the predictions of the hypothesis that cached Clovis points were intended to arm hunting weapons but not with the predictions of the other hypotheses of intended function that have been put forward, including the hypothesis that cached Clovis points were produced for use in rituals. We did not claim that our results are inconsistent with the idea that some of the points were deposited in the context of ritual behavior. Indeed, we explicitly stated that we could not discount the possibility put forward by Wilke et al. [1] and Kilby [2] that certain cached Clovis points were created for use in hunting but were deposited ritually instead.
"'Paragraph 3 (“Second, even if my musings…other meanings in Paleoindian society.”)"'
In this paragraph, Ellis argues that our conclusions are flawed because we assumed that tools were made with discrete functional roles in mind. Ellis contends that the makers of Clovis points would not have placed tools into discrete technological, social, or ideological categories. Instead, they would have conceptualized tools as serving different roles in multiple spheres of life.
Obviously, we do not deny that Clovis points could have been designed for multiple purposes. However, we do not agree that researchers should assume that such was the case. A multiple-intended-functions hypothesis is less parsimonious than a single-intended-function hypothesis. Thus, we suggest the way to proceed is to test the single-intended-function hypotheses that have been put forward for cached Clovis points, and only entertain the multiple-intended-functions hypothesis if the data do not support any of the single-intended-function hypotheses. At the moment, the available data are consistent with the hypothesis that cached Clovis points were intended to arm hunting weapons. Consequently, there is no reason to accept the hypothesis that they were intended to have multiple functions.
"'Paragraph 4 (“For example, I was involved in…a weapon tip or other function.”)"'
In this paragraph, Ellis outlines a putative example of the ritual caching of stone tools. The cache in question comes from Ontario and dates to the late Paleoindian period. Ellis argues that the stone tools in the cache “ served in some social and ideational context and had symbolic meanings that went beyond their mere utilitarian functional role. ” Ellis ascribes symbolic meaning to the artifacts based on the evidence of burning and the disuse of the particular type of tool for thousands of years in the same region.
We are not convinced that burning of artifacts and the changing of types over time is an adequate basis to infer ritual use, but that is neither here nor there. The discovery of a cache of stone tools in Ontario that was deposited ritually would not undermine our conclusions. The reason for this is that, as we pointed out earlier, our study focused on intended function and not on actual use. Ellis’ example actually illustrates this distinction. Ellis describes the stone tools in the Ontario cache as “ everyday items ” that were subsequently used in a ritual. This is exactly the scenario that Wilke et al. [1] and Kilby [2] propose for some of the Clovis caches in our sample, and that we explained we could not discount on the basis of our results.
"'Paragraph 5 (“With these ideas in mind…used very few times in human history [9].)"'
In this paragraph, Ellis again questions the idea that the large points from East Wenatchee were intended to arm hunting weapons. He argues that they are too large to be useful for this purpose. He then suggests that because the points in question are made of raw materials transported from hundreds of kilometers away they are more likely to have been designed for ritual purposes. Lastly, Ellis argues that if such large bifaces were useful for hunting they would have been repeatedly reinvented throughout prehistory. That this did not happen is evidence that the large bifaces from East Wenatchee were produced for ritual purposes, according to Ellis.
To begin with, the large East Wenatchee points are big but they are not as big as Ellis suggests. The largest points at the site are 20 cm in maximum length, not 23 cm as Ellis claims.
The claim that the large East Wenatchee points are not useful for hunting because they are too big is undercut by the fact that the size of the points in question is within the range of variation of historically and ethnographically documented spear points [3].
The assertion that the East Wenatchee points are likely to have been produced for ritual purposes because they made from stone brought from hundreds of kilometers away does not hold water either. One reason for this is that the source of the raw materials used to make the East Wenatchee points is unknown [2]. More problematically still for Ellis’ argument, Clovis points from habitation and kill sites as well as caches are often made from raw materials whose geologic sources are hundreds of kilometers from the sites where they are recovered [4,5,6,7]. So, even if the East Wenatchee points had been successfully sourced, and the source was a long distance from the site, the East Wenatchee points would still not be different from many Clovis points found at kill and camp sites across North America. Accordingly, exoticness is not a criterion that can be used to distinguish Clovis points that were intended to be used to arm hunting weapons from Clovis points that were intended to be used in rituals.
Regarding the last point in the paragraph, there are a number of other reasons why large points might not show up in other time periods. Perhaps the most obvious of these is the adoption of technologies that do not require large points, namely the atlatl and dart and the bow and arrow. Thus, absence of reinvention is also not a criterion that can be used to distinguish Clovis points that were intended to be used to arm hunting weapons from Clovis points that were intended to be used in rituals.
"'Paragraph 6 (“ As with the Great Lakes assemblages…meaning beyond a utilitarian one.") "'
In this paragraph, Ellis again argues that we should have used contextual data to shed light on the function of the cached Clovis points in our sample. Ellis also asserts that the occurrence of red ochre on the bifaces found at Simon and Anzick, and on the largest bifaces at East Wenatchee constitutes evidence for ritual use.
We agree that context can be important, and we did not suggest otherwise in our paper. However, contextual information associated with Clovis caches is rare. In fact, only one of the caches (East Wenatchee) included in our sample was excavated by professional archaeologists, and even that site was not excavated completely. This is why we focused on the points themselves.
With regard to the use of red ochre, this substance appears in a variety of early Paleoindian contexts, including on tools in kill and camp sites [8]. In addition, ochre has been hypothesized to have been used in the process of hafting points in other parts of the world [9]. Thus, the presence of red ochre cannot be regarded as an unambiguous indicator of ritual behavior.
"'Paragraph 7 (“Of course, as noted above…was an appropriate place to inter the child”) "'
In this paragraph, Ellis suggests that by raising doubts about the association of the skeletal remains and artifacts at Anzick we were trying to provide stronger support for the hunting-equipment hypothesis.
This is not the case. The context or function ascribed to a cache had no bearing on the outcome of our analyses. This is because, as we have explained several times already, our study focused on the intended function of cached Clovis points not on the way in which they were used. If subsequent research shows that the Anzick cache was part of a burial, it would not affect our conclusions. It would simply mean that the points in the cache were designed to be attached to hunting weapons but were ultimately used in a burial ritual.
"'Paragraph 8 (“To sum up…why people did things as they did [1].”)"'
In the final paragraph of his piece, Ellis argues that determining the intended function of cached Clovis points does not shed light on the broader role points played in Clovis life. He argues that Clovis points must have been used in multiple roles in Clovis life.
We agree with Ellis’ first statement. As we have pointed out repeatedly in this reply, intended function and actual use are not necessarily the same thing. We are less convinced by the idea that Clovis points must have played multiple roles in Clovis life. It is certainly possible that Clovis points played multiple roles in Clovis life, but it is also possible that they had a single role in Clovis life. We prefer to approach this issue in the manner we suggested approaching the issue of multiple intended functions versus single intended function—with reference to the principle of parsimony. A multiple roles hypothesis is less parsimonious than a single role hypothesis. Thus, the starting hypothesis should be that Clovis points had a single role in Clovis life, and that should only be abandoned once we have data in hand that are unambiguously inconsistent with it. At the moment, we are not aware of any evidence that qualifies as unambiguously inconsistent with the single role hypothesis, so we are not willing to adopt the multiple role hypothesis.
"'Concluding remarks"'
It should be obvious from the foregoing that the main thing we and Ellis disagree about is the intended function of the largest points from the East Wentachee Clovis cache. He accepts that the majority of cached Clovis points were intended to be parts of hunting weapons but thinks that the large points from East Wentachee were specifically created for use in rituals, whereas we think the most parsimonious interpretation of the available evidence is that all cached Clovis points, including the large points from East Wenatchee, were intended to be parts of hunting weapons, even if some of them ended up being used in rituals. Given the results of our study and the rarity of contextual information for Clovis caches, the next step has to be to try to identify some qualitative morphological traits that distinguish the large East Wenatchee points from other Clovis points. If a systematic review of the presence/absence of such traits on Clovis points were to reveal that they occur on the large points from East Wenatchee significantly more frequently than on other Clovis points, there would be grounds for thinking the large points from East Wenatchee were not intended to arm hunting weapons. Ritual would not necessarily be the only alternative explanation [2,10,11]. But establishing that the large East Wenatchee points differ from other Clovis points in relation to a set of qualitative morphological traits would certainly strengthen the case for the hypothesis that the large East Wenatchee points were produced for use in rituals.
"'References"'
1. Wilke PJ, Flenniken JJ, Ozbun TL (1991) Clovis technology at the Anzick site, Montana. Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology 13: 242–272.
2. Kilby JD (2008) An Investigation of Clovis Caches: Content, Function, and Technological Organization. PhD Dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque.
3. Blackmore HL (2000) Hunting Weapons from the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century. Dover, Mineola.
4. Ellis C (2011) Evidence for changing toolstone source use and range mobility during the Paleoindian occupation of the Great Lakes/Northeast. Current Research in the Pleistocene 28:32-34.
5. Haynes CV, Jr. (1980) The Clovis culture. Canadian Journal of Anthropology 1:115-121.
6. Haynes CV, Jr. (1982) Were Clovis progenitors in Beringia? In: Hopkins DM, Matthews JV, Schweger CE, Young SB, editors. Paleoecology of Beringia. New York: Academic Press. pp. 383-398.
7. Kelly RL, Todd LC (1988) Coming into the country: early Paleoindian hunting and mobility. American Antiquity 53:231-244.
8. Roper DC (1991) A comparison of contexts of red ochre use in Paleoindian and Upper Paleolithic sites. North American Archaeologist 12:289-301.
9. Lombard M (2007) The gripping nature of ochre: the association of ochre with Howiesons Poort adhesives and Later Stone Age mastics from South Africa. Journal of Human Evolution 53:406-419.
10. Buchanan B (2005) Cultural Transmission and Stone Tools: A Study of Early Paleoindian Technology in North America. PhD Dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque.
11. Lyman RL, O'Brien MJ, Hayes V (1998) A mechanical and functional study of bone rods from the Richey-Roberts Clovis cache, Washington, U.S.A. Journal of Archaeological Science 25: 887–906.
RE: Clovis points more than simply weapon tips?
mark_collard replied to crimedoctor on 07 Jul 2012 at 04:25 GMT
Reply to Ellis’ 'Clovis points more than simply weapon tips?'
Briggs Buchanana,b, J. David Kilbyc, Bruce B. Huckelld, Michael J. O’Brienb, and Mark Collarda*
aHuman Evolutionary Studies Program and Department of Archaeology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada.
bDepartment of Anthropology, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, USA.
cDepartment of Anthropology and Applied Archaeology, Eastern New Mexico University, Portales, NM, USA.
dMaxwell Museum of Anthropology and Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA.
*Author for correspondence: mcollard@sfu.ca.
We are grateful that Christopher Ellis has taken the time to respond to our paper. We reply to his comments on a paragraph-by-paragraph basis.
"'Paragraph 2 (“First, I have never argued…(which is a questionable assumption [see 4]).”)"'
In this paragraph, Ellis argues that his ritual hypothesis focused solely on the large points from the site of East Wenatchee and therefore we did not disprove it in our study. He then suggests that our measurements of some of the large points from East Wenatchee are wrong. Lastly, Ellis contends that the placement of the largest points away from the main cache at East Wenatchee supports his contention that they were deposited ritually.
It is certainly the case that the some of the East Wenatchee points are the largest points in our sample. However, our analyses show that they do not differ in allometric trajectory from other cached points or from points recovered from Clovis kill and camp sites. Thus, our study does in fact cast doubt on Ellis’ hypothesis. Based on the results of our morphometric analyses, there is no reason to believe that the large points from East Wenatchee were intended to be used for a different function than the rest of the East Wenatchee Clovis points, or Clovis points from caches elsewhere in North America, or Clovis points recovered from kill and camp sites. Given that we know some of the kill/camp site points were definitely used for hunting, we contend it is most parsimonious to assume that that function was hunting.
The claim that our measurements of some of the large points from East Wenatchee are wrong is incorrect. The measurements in question are accurate. We suspect the source of the confusion is the fact that the measurements are presented in logarithmic form in the relevant histogram. The rationale for transforming the measurements in this manner is outlined in the Materials and Methods section of our paper.
Regarding the placement of the largest points away from the rest of the cache, we agree that this is potentially meaningful. However, even if it is, it does not contradict our conclusions. The distinction between intended function and actual use is critical here. Our study focused on the intended function of cached Clovis points (i.e. what the knappers had in mind as the points’ function when they made them) not on the way the points were used. As we pointed out, our results are consistent with the predictions of the hypothesis that cached Clovis points were intended to arm hunting weapons but not with the predictions of the other hypotheses of intended function that have been put forward, including the hypothesis that cached Clovis points were produced for use in rituals. We did not claim that our results are inconsistent with the idea that some of the points were deposited in the context of ritual behavior. Indeed, we explicitly stated that we could not discount the possibility put forward by Wilke et al. [1] and Kilby [2] that certain cached Clovis points were created for use in hunting but were deposited ritually instead.
"'Paragraph 3 (“Second, even if my musings…other meanings in Paleoindian society.”)"'
In this paragraph, Ellis argues that our conclusions are flawed because we assumed that tools were made with discrete functional roles in mind. Ellis contends that the makers of Clovis points would not have placed tools into discrete technological, social, or ideological categories. Instead, they would have conceptualized tools as serving different roles in multiple spheres of life.
Obviously, we do not deny that Clovis points could have been designed for multiple purposes. However, we do not agree that researchers should assume that such was the case. A multiple-intended-functions hypothesis is less parsimonious than a single-intended-function hypothesis. Thus, we suggest the way to proceed is to test the single-intended-function hypotheses that have been put forward for cached Clovis points, and only entertain the multiple-intended-functions hypothesis if the data do not support any of the single-intended-function hypotheses. At the moment, the available data are consistent with the hypothesis that cached Clovis points were intended to arm hunting weapons. Consequently, there is no reason to accept the hypothesis that they were intended to have multiple functions.
"'Paragraph 4 (“For example, I was involved in…a weapon tip or other function.”)"'
In this paragraph, Ellis outlines a putative example of the ritual caching of stone tools. The cache in question comes from Ontario and dates to the late Paleoindian period. Ellis argues that the stone tools in the cache “ served in some social and ideational context and had symbolic meanings that went beyond their mere utilitarian functional role. ” Ellis ascribes symbolic meaning to the artifacts based on the evidence of burning and the disuse of the particular type of tool for thousands of years in the same region.
We are not convinced that burning of artifacts and the changing of types over time is an adequate basis to infer ritual use, but that is neither here nor there. The discovery of a cache of stone tools in Ontario that was deposited ritually would not undermine our conclusions. The reason for this is that, as we pointed out earlier, our study focused on intended function and not on actual use. Ellis’ example actually illustrates this distinction. Ellis describes the stone tools in the Ontario cache as “ everyday items ” that were subsequently used in a ritual. This is exactly the scenario that Wilke et al. [1] and Kilby [2] propose for some of the Clovis caches in our sample, and that we explained we could not discount on the basis of our results.
"'Paragraph 5 (“With these ideas in mind…used very few times in human history [9].)"'
In this paragraph, Ellis again questions the idea that the large points from East Wenatchee were intended to arm hunting weapons. He argues that they are too large to be useful for this purpose. He then suggests that because the points in question are made of raw materials transported from hundreds of kilometers away they are more likely to have been designed for ritual purposes. Lastly, Ellis argues that if such large bifaces were useful for hunting they would have been repeatedly reinvented throughout prehistory. That this did not happen is evidence that the large bifaces from East Wenatchee were produced for ritual purposes, according to Ellis.
To begin with, the large East Wenatchee points are big but they are not as big as Ellis suggests. The largest points at the site are 20 cm in maximum length, not 23 cm as Ellis claims.
The claim that the large East Wenatchee points are not useful for hunting because they are too big is undercut by the fact that the size of the points in question is within the range of variation of historically and ethnographically documented spear points [3].
The assertion that the East Wenatchee points are likely to have been produced for ritual purposes because they made from stone brought from hundreds of kilometers away does not hold water either. One reason for this is that the source of the raw materials used to make the East Wenatchee points is unknown [2]. More problematically still for Ellis’ argument, Clovis points from habitation and kill sites as well as caches are often made from raw materials whose geologic sources are hundreds of kilometers from the sites where they are recovered [4,5,6,7]. So, even if the East Wenatchee points had been successfully sourced, and the source was a long distance from the site, the East Wenatchee points would still not be different from many Clovis points found at kill and camp sites across North America. Accordingly, exoticness is not a criterion that can be used to distinguish Clovis points that were intended to be used to arm hunting weapons from Clovis points that were intended to be used in rituals.
Regarding the last point in the paragraph, there are a number of other reasons why large points might not show up in other time periods. Perhaps the most obvious of these is the adoption of technologies that do not require large points, namely the atlatl and dart and the bow and arrow. Thus, absence of reinvention is also not a criterion that can be used to distinguish Clovis points that were intended to be used to arm hunting weapons from Clovis points that were intended to be used in rituals.
"'Paragraph 6 (“ As with the Great Lakes assemblages…meaning beyond a utilitarian one.") "'
In this paragraph, Ellis again argues that we should have used contextual data to shed light on the function of the cached Clovis points in our sample. Ellis also asserts that the occurrence of red ochre on the bifaces found at Simon and Anzick, and on the largest bifaces at East Wenatchee constitutes evidence for ritual use.
We agree that context can be important, and we did not suggest otherwise in our paper. However, contextual information associated with Clovis caches is rare. In fact, only one of the caches (East Wenatchee) included in our sample was excavated by professional archaeologists, and even that site was not excavated completely. This is why we focused on the points themselves.
With regard to the use of red ochre, this substance appears in a variety of early Paleoindian contexts, including on tools in kill and camp sites [8]. In addition, ochre has been hypothesized to have been used in the process of hafting points in other parts of the world [9]. Thus, the presence of red ochre cannot be regarded as an unambiguous indicator of ritual behavior.
"'Paragraph 7 (“Of course, as noted above…was an appropriate place to inter the child”) "'
In this paragraph, Ellis suggests that by raising doubts about the association of the skeletal remains and artifacts at Anzick we were trying to provide stronger support for the hunting-equipment hypothesis.
This is not the case. The context or function ascribed to a cache had no bearing on the outcome of our analyses. This is because, as we have explained several times already, our study focused on the intended function of cached Clovis points not on the way in which they were used. If subsequent research shows that the Anzick cache was part of a burial, it would not affect our conclusions. It would simply mean that the points in the cache were designed to be attached to hunting weapons but were ultimately used in a burial ritual.
"'Paragraph 8 (“To sum up…why people did things as they did [1].”)"'
In the final paragraph of his piece, Ellis argues that determining the intended function of cached Clovis points does not shed light on the broader role points played in Clovis life. He argues that Clovis points must have been used in multiple roles in Clovis life.
We agree with Ellis’ first statement. As we have pointed out repeatedly in this reply, intended function and actual use are not necessarily the same thing. We are less convinced by the idea that Clovis points must have played multiple roles in Clovis life. It is certainly possible that Clovis points played multiple roles in Clovis life, but it is also possible that they had a single role in Clovis life. We prefer to approach this issue in the manner we suggested approaching the issue of multiple intended functions versus single intended function—with reference to the principle of parsimony. A multiple roles hypothesis is less parsimonious than a single role hypothesis. Thus, the starting hypothesis should be that Clovis points had a single role in Clovis life, and that should only be abandoned once we have data in hand that are unambiguously inconsistent with it. At the moment, we are not aware of any evidence that qualifies as unambiguously inconsistent with the single role hypothesis, so we are not willing to adopt the multiple role hypothesis.
"'Concluding remarks"'
It should be obvious from the foregoing that the main thing we and Ellis disagree about is the intended function of the largest points from the East Wentachee Clovis cache. He accepts that the majority of cached Clovis points were intended to be parts of hunting weapons but thinks that the large points from East Wentachee were specifically created for use in rituals, whereas we think the most parsimonious interpretation of the available evidence is that all cached Clovis points, including the large points from East Wenatchee, were intended to be parts of hunting weapons, even if some of them ended up being used in rituals. Given the results of our study and the rarity of contextual information for Clovis caches, the next step has to be to try to identify some qualitative morphological traits that distinguish the large East Wenatchee points from other Clovis points. If a systematic review of the presence/absence of such traits on Clovis points were to reveal that they occur on the large points from East Wenatchee significantly more frequently than on other Clovis points, there would be grounds for thinking the large points from East Wenatchee were not intended to arm hunting weapons. Ritual would not necessarily be the only alternative explanation [2,10,11]. But establishing that the large East Wenatchee points differ from other Clovis points in relation to a set of qualitative morphological traits would certainly strengthen the case for the hypothesis that the large East Wenatchee points were produced for use in rituals.
"'References"'
1. Wilke PJ, Flenniken JJ, Ozbun TL (1991) Clovis technology at the Anzick site, Montana. Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology 13: 242–272.
2. Kilby JD (2008) An Investigation of Clovis Caches: Content, Function, and Technological Organization. PhD Dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque.
3. Blackmore HL (2000) Hunting Weapons from the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century. Dover, Mineola.
4. Ellis C (2011) Evidence for changing toolstone source use and range mobility during the Paleoindian occupation of the Great Lakes/Northeast. Current Research in the Pleistocene 28:32-34.
5. Haynes CV, Jr. (1980) The Clovis culture. Canadian Journal of Anthropology 1:115-121.
6. Haynes CV, Jr. (1982) Were Clovis progenitors in Beringia? In: Hopkins DM, Matthews JV, Schweger CE, Young SB, editors. Paleoecology of Beringia. New York: Academic Press. pp. 383-398.
7. Kelly RL, Todd LC (1988) Coming into the country: early Paleoindian hunting and mobility. American Antiquity 53:231-244.
8. Roper DC (1991) A comparison of contexts of red ochre use in Paleoindian and Upper Paleolithic sites. North American Archaeologist 12:289-301.
9. Lombard M (2007) The gripping nature of ochre: the association of ochre with Howiesons Poort adhesives and Later Stone Age mastics from South Africa. Journal of Human Evolution 53:406-419.
10. Buchanan B (2005) Cultural Transmission and Stone Tools: A Study of Early Paleoindian Technology in North America. PhD Dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque.
11. Lyman RL, O'Brien MJ, Hayes V (1998) A mechanical and functional study of bone rods from the Richey-Roberts Clovis cache, Washington, U.S.A. Journal of Archaeological Science 25: 887–906.
RE: Clovis points more than simply weapon tips?
mark_collard replied to crimedoctor on 07 Jul 2012 at 04:41 GMT
Reply to Ellis’ 'Clovis points more than simply weapon tips?'
Briggs Buchanana,b, J. David Kilbyc, Bruce B. Huckelld, Michael J. O’Brienb, and Mark Collarda*
aHuman Evolutionary Studies Program and Department of Archaeology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada.
bDepartment of Anthropology, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, USA.
cDepartment of Anthropology and Applied Archaeology, Eastern New Mexico University, Portales, NM, USA.
dMaxwell Museum of Anthropology and Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA.
*Author for correspondence: mcollard@sfu.ca.
We are grateful that Christopher Ellis has taken the time to respond to our paper. We reply to his comments on a paragraph-by-paragraph basis.
"'Paragraph 2 (“First, I have never argued…(which is a questionable assumption [see 4]).”)"'
In this paragraph, Ellis argues that his ritual hypothesis focused solely on the large points from the site of East Wenatchee and therefore we did not disprove it in our study. He then suggests that our measurements of some of the large points from East Wenatchee are wrong. Lastly, Ellis contends that the placement of the largest points away from the main cache at East Wenatchee supports his contention that they were deposited ritually.
It is certainly the case that the some of the East Wenatchee points are the largest points in our sample. However, our analyses show that they do not differ in allometric trajectory from other cached points or from points recovered from Clovis kill and camp sites. Thus, our study does in fact cast doubt on Ellis’ hypothesis. Based on the results of our morphometric analyses, there is no reason to believe that the large points from East Wenatchee were intended to be used for a different function than the rest of the East Wenatchee Clovis points, or Clovis points from caches elsewhere in North America, or Clovis points recovered from kill and camp sites. Given that we know some of the kill/camp site points were definitely used for hunting, we contend it is most parsimonious to assume that that function was hunting.
The claim that our measurements of some of the large points from East Wenatchee are wrong is incorrect. The measurements in question are accurate. We suspect the source of the confusion is the fact that the measurements are presented in logarithmic form in the relevant histogram. The rationale for transforming the measurements in this manner is outlined in the Materials and Methods section of our paper.
Regarding the placement of the largest points away from the rest of the cache, we agree that this is potentially meaningful. However, even if it is, it does not contradict our conclusions. The distinction between intended function and actual use is critical here. Our study focused on the intended function of cached Clovis points (i.e. what the knappers had in mind as the points’ function when they made them) not on the way the points were used. As we pointed out, our results are consistent with the predictions of the hypothesis that cached Clovis points were intended to arm hunting weapons but not with the predictions of the other hypotheses of intended function that have been put forward, including the hypothesis that cached Clovis points were produced for use in rituals. We did not claim that our results are inconsistent with the idea that some of the points were deposited in the context of ritual behavior. Indeed, we explicitly stated that we could not discount the possibility put forward by Wilke et al. [1] and Kilby [2] that certain cached Clovis points were created for use in hunting but were deposited ritually instead.
"'Paragraph 3 (“Second, even if my musings…other meanings in Paleoindian society.”)"'
In this paragraph, Ellis argues that our conclusions are flawed because we assumed that tools were made with discrete functional roles in mind. Ellis contends that the makers of Clovis points would not have placed tools into discrete technological, social, or ideological categories. Instead, they would have conceptualized tools as serving different roles in multiple spheres of life.
Obviously, we do not deny that Clovis points could have been designed for multiple purposes. However, we do not agree that researchers should assume that such was the case. A multiple-intended-functions hypothesis is less parsimonious than a single-intended-function hypothesis. Thus, we suggest the way to proceed is to test the single-intended-function hypotheses that have been put forward for cached Clovis points, and only entertain the multiple-intended-functions hypothesis if the data do not support any of the single-intended-function hypotheses. At the moment, the available data are consistent with the hypothesis that cached Clovis points were intended to arm hunting weapons. Consequently, there is no reason to accept the hypothesis that they were intended to have multiple functions.
"'Paragraph 4 (“For example, I was involved in…a weapon tip or other function.”)"'
In this paragraph, Ellis outlines a putative example of the ritual caching of stone tools. The cache in question comes from Ontario and dates to the late Paleoindian period. Ellis argues that the stone tools in the cache “ served in some social and ideational context and had symbolic meanings that went beyond their mere utilitarian functional role. ” Ellis ascribes symbolic meaning to the artifacts based on the evidence of burning and the disuse of the particular type of tool for thousands of years in the same region.
We are not convinced that burning of artifacts and the changing of types over time is an adequate basis to infer ritual use, but that is neither here nor there. The discovery of a cache of stone tools in Ontario that was deposited ritually would not undermine our conclusions. The reason for this is that, as we pointed out earlier, our study focused on intended function and not on actual use. Ellis’ example actually illustrates this distinction. Ellis describes the stone tools in the Ontario cache as “ everyday items ” that were subsequently used in a ritual. This is exactly the scenario that Wilke et al. [1] and Kilby [2] propose for some of the Clovis caches in our sample, and that we explained we could not discount on the basis of our results.
"'Paragraph 5 (“With these ideas in mind…used very few times in human history [9].)"'
In this paragraph, Ellis again questions the idea that the large points from East Wenatchee were intended to arm hunting weapons. He argues that they are too large to be useful for this purpose. He then suggests that because the points in question are made of raw materials transported from hundreds of kilometers away they are more likely to have been designed for ritual purposes. Lastly, Ellis argues that if such large bifaces were useful for hunting they would have been repeatedly reinvented throughout prehistory. That this did not happen is evidence that the large bifaces from East Wenatchee were produced for ritual purposes, according to Ellis.
To begin with, the large East Wenatchee points are big but they are not as big as Ellis suggests. The largest points at the site are 20 cm in maximum length, not 23 cm as Ellis claims.
The claim that the large East Wenatchee points are not useful for hunting because they are too big is undercut by the fact that the size of the points in question is within the range of variation of historically and ethnographically documented spear points [3].
The assertion that the East Wenatchee points are likely to have been produced for ritual purposes because they made from stone brought from hundreds of kilometers away does not hold water either. One reason for this is that the source of the raw materials used to make the East Wenatchee points is unknown [2]. More problematically still for Ellis’ argument, Clovis points from habitation and kill sites as well as caches are often made from raw materials whose geologic sources are hundreds of kilometers from the sites where they are recovered [4,5,6,7]. So, even if the East Wenatchee points had been successfully sourced, and the source was a long distance from the site, the East Wenatchee points would still not be different from many Clovis points found at kill and camp sites across North America. Accordingly, exoticness is not a criterion that can be used to distinguish Clovis points that were intended to be used to arm hunting weapons from Clovis points that were intended to be used in rituals.
Regarding the last point in the paragraph, there are a number of other reasons why large points might not show up in other time periods. Perhaps the most obvious of these is the adoption of technologies that do not require large points, namely the atlatl and dart and the bow and arrow. Thus, absence of reinvention is also not a criterion that can be used to distinguish Clovis points that were intended to be used to arm hunting weapons from Clovis points that were intended to be used in rituals.
"'Paragraph 6 (“ As with the Great Lakes assemblages…meaning beyond a utilitarian one.") "'
In this paragraph, Ellis again argues that we should have used contextual data to shed light on the function of the cached Clovis points in our sample. Ellis also asserts that the occurrence of red ochre on the bifaces found at Simon and Anzick, and on the largest bifaces at East Wenatchee constitutes evidence for ritual use.
We agree that context can be important, and we did not suggest otherwise in our paper. However, contextual information associated with Clovis caches is rare. In fact, only one of the caches (East Wenatchee) included in our sample was excavated by professional archaeologists, and even that site was not excavated completely. This is why we focused on the points themselves.
With regard to the use of red ochre, this substance appears in a variety of early Paleoindian contexts, including on tools in kill and camp sites [8]. In addition, ochre has been hypothesized to have been used in the process of hafting points in other parts of the world [9]. Thus, the presence of red ochre cannot be regarded as an unambiguous indicator of ritual behavior.
"'Paragraph 7 (“Of course, as noted above…was an appropriate place to inter the child”) "'
In this paragraph, Ellis suggests that by raising doubts about the association of the skeletal remains and artifacts at Anzick we were trying to provide stronger support for the hunting-equipment hypothesis.
This is not the case. The context or function ascribed to a cache had no bearing on the outcome of our analyses. This is because, as we have explained several times already, our study focused on the intended function of cached Clovis points not on the way in which they were used. If subsequent research shows that the Anzick cache was part of a burial, it would not affect our conclusions. It would simply mean that the points in the cache were designed to be attached to hunting weapons but were ultimately used in a burial ritual.
"'Paragraph 8 (“To sum up…why people did things as they did [1].”)"'
In the final paragraph of his piece, Ellis argues that determining the intended function of cached Clovis points does not shed light on the broader role points played in Clovis life. He argues that Clovis points must have been used in multiple roles in Clovis life.
We agree with Ellis’ first statement. As we have pointed out repeatedly in this reply, intended function and actual use are not necessarily the same thing. We are less convinced by the idea that Clovis points must have played multiple roles in Clovis life. It is certainly possible that Clovis points played multiple roles in Clovis life, but it is also possible that they had a single role in Clovis life. We prefer to approach this issue in the manner we suggested approaching the issue of multiple intended functions versus single intended function—with reference to the principle of parsimony. A multiple roles hypothesis is less parsimonious than a single role hypothesis. Thus, the starting hypothesis should be that Clovis points had a single role in Clovis life, and that should only be abandoned once we have data in hand that are unambiguously inconsistent with it. At the moment, we are not aware of any evidence that qualifies as unambiguously inconsistent with the single role hypothesis, so we are not willing to adopt the multiple role hypothesis.
"'Concluding remarks"'
It should be obvious from the foregoing that the main thing we and Ellis disagree about is the intended function of the largest points from the East Wentachee Clovis cache. He accepts that the majority of cached Clovis points were intended to be parts of hunting weapons but thinks that the large points from East Wentachee were specifically created for use in rituals, whereas we think the most parsimonious interpretation of the available evidence is that all cached Clovis points, including the large points from East Wenatchee, were intended to be parts of hunting weapons, even if some of them ended up being used in rituals. Given the results of our study and the rarity of contextual information for Clovis caches, the next step has to be to try to identify some qualitative morphological traits that distinguish the large East Wenatchee points from other Clovis points. If a systematic review of the presence/absence of such traits on Clovis points were to reveal that they occur on the large points from East Wenatchee significantly more frequently than on other Clovis points, there would be grounds for thinking the large points from East Wenatchee were not intended to arm hunting weapons. Ritual would not necessarily be the only alternative explanation [2,10,11]. But establishing that the large East Wenatchee points differ from other Clovis points in relation to a set of qualitative morphological traits would certainly strengthen the case for the hypothesis that the large East Wenatchee points were produced for use in rituals.
"'References"'
1. Wilke PJ, Flenniken JJ, Ozbun TL (1991) Clovis technology at the Anzick site, Montana. Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology 13: 242–272.
2. Kilby JD (2008) An Investigation of Clovis Caches: Content, Function, and Technological Organization. PhD Dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque.
3. Blackmore HL (2000) Hunting Weapons from the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century. Dover, Mineola.
4. Ellis C (2011) Evidence for changing toolstone source use and range mobility during the Paleoindian occupation of the Great Lakes/Northeast. Current Research in the Pleistocene 28:32-34.
5. Haynes CV, Jr. (1980) The Clovis culture. Canadian Journal of Anthropology 1:115-121.
6. Haynes CV, Jr. (1982) Were Clovis progenitors in Beringia? In: Hopkins DM, Matthews JV, Schweger CE, Young SB, editors. Paleoecology of Beringia. New York: Academic Press. pp. 383-398.
7. Kelly RL, Todd LC (1988) Coming into the country: early Paleoindian hunting and mobility. American Antiquity 53:231-244.
8. Roper DC (1991) A comparison of contexts of red ochre use in Paleoindian and Upper Paleolithic sites. North American Archaeologist 12:289-301.
9. Lombard M (2007) The gripping nature of ochre: the association of ochre with Howiesons Poort adhesives and Later Stone Age mastics from South Africa. Journal of Human Evolution 53:406-419.
10. Buchanan B (2005) Cultural Transmission and Stone Tools: A Study of Early Paleoindian Technology in North America. PhD Dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque.
11. Lyman RL, O'Brien MJ, Hayes V (1998) A mechanical and functional study of bone rods from the Richey-Roberts Clovis cache, Washington, U.S.A. Journal of Archaeological Science 25: 887–906.
RE: RE: Clovis points more than simply weapon tips?
crimedoctor replied to mark_collard on 13 Jul 2012 at 17:31 GMT
I thank Briggs Buchannan et al. (2012) for taking the time to respond to my comments on their paper and for clarifying some issues with their analyses. I admit that my comments were done somewhat “tongue-in-cheek.” My main explicit concern was two issues: 1) to point out that I had argued some larger points from East Wenatchee were not intended as weapon tips rather than all large Clovis bifaces as they implied and 2) that I thought they were treating the data from the Anzick site in a rather cavalier manner. Nonetheless, it should be clear that my comments at the same time stem from my basic growing dissatisfaction with approaches and analyses that tend to see Clovis and other Paleoindian archaeological records as people-less [e.g. 1] -- although I do not hesitate to add that I am all in favour of attempts to rigorously test ideas about Paleoindian peoples as in this paper and in several others written by the authors and agree at some level with some of their conclusions. I do think many larger points from Clovis caches were designed for use as weapon tips as they argue and I also like the emphasis on shape changes rather than simply size in their analyses. I just do not think that is the whole story and that, deliberately or not, the authors had a tendency to downplay the humanistic aspects of Clovis peoples that would allow us to understand a wider range of Clovis peoples’ behaviour.
I sincerely apologize for the error in not picking up on the fact a logarithmic scale was being used for length and that that transformation was used in the histogram plot. It is my natural bias to like to see original as well as transformed data. In fact, I wonder why in an online journal one could not have included all the original data that would then easily permit a reader to evaluate the arguments and recreate the analyses if need be, which, as my comments will make clear, could be very useful in interpreting the results. Regardless, I still have what I think are unanswered questions about some of their analyses, I do not find some of their claims particularly convincing and I think they have misunderstood, perhaps because of unclear wording on my part, some of my arguments, so rather than simply not responding, I do think another set of comments is on order. For the sake of brevity I focus on four, often interrelated, issues here:
1) Irrespective of whether the plots are on a logarithmic scale or not, the size measurements by point area or length suggest there may be a slight bimodal distribution due to the presence of a few ultra large points, at least some of which are admitted by the authors in their reply to be from the East Wenatchee site. As I noted in my original comment: “this “additional peak” in those distributions might indicate there are some Clovis bifaces produced more for ritual or display purposes but they are swamped out by simply treating the whole set of cache assemblages as representing exactly the same kinds of behaviour.” However, the ideas is rejected by the authors because: “analyses show that they do not differ in allometric trajectory from other cached points or from points recovered from Clovis kill and camp sites.” I still believe it would be difficult to detect a difference in allometric trajectory given the small number of ultra large points from East Wenatchee (about half that sample in my view) compared to other sites so will continue to remain skeptical in this regard. Of course, the authors do, later in their paper compare directly the East Wenatchee sample with that from all the other sites and also do not see differences. However, in doing so they assume all the fluted bifaces from East Wenatchee fit the same homogeneous population whereas I was careful to mention in my comment that I was concerned with not all of the East Wenatchee bifaces but rather the super-sized items that “seem to have been placed in pairs of two or three items at the margins of the main concentration of other objects found at that site.” So they have not really directly tested the ultra large points that are my focus in comparison to the other fluted bifaces at that site and others.
I am assuming here that the authors included measurements from all 14 of the fluted bifaces at East Wenatchee that are reported by Gramly [2]. They have a sample size of 14 not only in this paper but in another more recent analyses of Clovis haft area variability published in PloS One [3: Table 1]. However, this is where it would be very useful to publish the original data measurements the authors employed. My uncertainty results from a comment Buchannan et al. offer in their reply: “To begin with, the large East Wenatchee points are big but they are not as big as Ellis suggests. The largest points at the site are 20 cm in maximum length, not 23 cm as Ellis claims.” My comments on the length range of the East Wenatchee bifaces is based on the fact that an actual investigator of the site, Michael Gramly [2], provides length measurement for all 14 of the fluted bifaces along with the illustrations in his report and the first five illustrations (pages 29-31) are of fluted bifaces that Gramly clearly states range from 215-232.5 mm long and he refers to each as a “large fluted point (knife).” I cannot believe Gramly could be out in his measurements by as much as 30 mm (and a cast of the one of the largest points I measured from Anzick that I had access to matches almost exactly Gramly’s size report). I do think some of these items, with prepared, lateral, isolated platforms, may be preforms rather than knives (or saws) so their large size is over-emphasized and one can exclude them as perhaps biasing the sample (although if they included these items in their sample these unfinished tools fit an “allometric trajectory”) but at least two appear to be finished points or nearly so based on their refined edge retouch (illustrated pages 28 and 30 in [2]) and these are 215 and 230 mm long.
So the authors need to clarify and justify why their measures differ from Gramly’s. If they omitted such examples, they may have predetermined somewhat the conclusions of their paper in terms of allometry and not just length and area. Of course, it also would have a bearing on their whole specific discussion section focused in on whether or not the East Wenatchee items were intended for use in displays or as saws. If they did not omit any items, as seems to be the case, then this raises the possibility that there is something wrong with their digitization or recording methods. Clarification is certainly needed.
If I accept Gramly’s [2] measurements as accurate, and excluding one apparently heavily resharpened point that is only 105 mm long and one (141+ mm) that is missing a significant tip segment, it is only fair to note that they actually do seem to have a somewhat bimodal distribution with 6 items (and I think also the one missing a tip) within a 140-163 mm range and six others that range from 191 to 232.5 mm – there is an almost 30 mm gap between the two sets of bifaces. Superficially this result suggests to me it is not a homogeneous population. It would be good in a future study to see if the East Wenatchee items are more variable from than those at other Clovis sites but the potential inclusion of preforms could mess up the comparisons.
2) Let us assume however, that the authors are correct and that smaller kill/camp points are simply reduced versions of the very large ones seen in caches, including the super-sized East Wenatchee items – that they are all items initially designed to serve the same use(s). With that in mind the authors state that in paragraph 5: “Ellis again questions the idea that the large points from East Wenatchee were intended to arm hunting weapons. He argues that they are too large to be useful for this purpose...The claim that the large East Wenatchee points are not useful for hunting because they are too big is undercut by the fact that the size of the points in question is within the range of variation of historically and ethnographically documented spear points.” I never said that generally people could not use large spear tips or used that specific argument to question the author’s interpretation. What I said was that prehistorically few groups produced large stone bifaces (not non-lithic ones) and when they did they were intended for functions other than as weapon tips as in Sloan Daltons and Benton points (for that matter there are historically known groups as in California and adjacent areas who also produced large lithic items of regularly 30-90 cm long but these “treasures” were produced for display and not actually used [4: 242, 5: 156, 6: 214]). While he mentions earlier stone items seen in the odd literary or art history source, Blackmore’s [7] main concern in his book is with points that date from the Middle Ages on, and importantly, based on my reading of his work, none of the larger ones anywhere in the book are on stone, which is our concern here. If the authors know of any ethnographic groups making 175-200+ mm long bifacial stone points for use as actual functioning spear tips then bring that evidence forward.
The question remains: why would Clovis people make such large stone bifaces for weapons to begin with when virtually no one else did in the dim dark past or in recent history and which, when they did, were clearly used in ritual or display contexts? To their credit the authors recognize this problem and attempt to deal with this question in their reply by stating: “archaeologically there are a number of other reasons why large points might not show up in other time periods.” However, they do not mention what these “number” of reasons are and only mention that “the most obvious of these is the adoption of technologies that do not require large points, namely the atlatl and dart and the bow and arrow.” However, ataltl hooks from Late Pleistocene contexts [8] and other data [9] contradict the idea that Clovis peoples lacked that weapon and this suggestion comes off as simply an ad hoc hypothesis.
Nonetheless, I would suggest there is an even better reason why groups did not often make large stone weapon tips, whether they were used with or without an atalatl. It may be that the authors do not consider this possibility because it could potentially contradict their hypothesis. It is realtively easy to produce larger spearpoints on materials like metal or wood because they can be more easily shaped to greater tolerances to meet use constraints (hence the large examples of non-lithic points that are found in citation [7]) whereas making very large stone tips that have the symmetry, cross-section and balance to perform well is a much different undertaking. In addition, large stone points obviously make for excessively heavy tips, which greatly lessen the contexts of their usefulness/functionality versus say wooden or other organic alternatives. (I use a cast of one of the large East Wenatchee items in my teaching and jokingly state that it must have been hafted on a “telephone pole”). Next, it is much more difficult to make large stone points without a higher rate of breakage in manufacture than is incurred in making metal or wooden ones and stone weapon tips in general are also much more prone to break in use and transport [10]; larger ones would be even more difficult to make and protect. Finally, if large items are broken there is a considerable waste of raw material unless they can be reworked and rehafted. To do so might require having to make and use even smaller shafts or foreshafts that also have to be carried around, which could be seen as a disadvantage. The authors [3] have demonstrated elsewhere that Clovis point bases vary considerably in width and, although it will require much more research and testing, this seems to contrast with other fluted point forms where basal width seems much more constrained [e.g. 11] and does suggest hafts of various sizes (of course, the wide range of potential basal widths, and one infers haft sizes, could also indicate Clovis points were designed for a range of uses and had no single function).
Therefore, I would suggest the reason large points are rare is that there are many drawbacks to trying to consistently produce, haft and transport well-functioning, huge, stone, weapon tips and I would suggest this is why there are very few potential examples not only archaeologically (as I noted in my original comment) but also ethnographically/historically. But admitting they might be rare because they are inefficient or difficult to produce/use in many ways raises the spectre of why a group would use them at all or go to the trouble of making large stone weapon tips unless they had some other ulterior motives beyond utilitarian function. Of course, my response is that Clovis peoples saw these items as simply more than weapon tips and at least I am sure they deliberately made them large to begin with to imbue the items with many social and ideological meanings so they could serve in displays, reinforce social identities in the context of sacred rituals, etc. In sum, “what the knappers had in mind as the points’ function when they made them,” to quote the authors in their response, involved designing them to serve in multiple contexts and not just in one. Their resulting form, manufacturing strategy and large size is a compromise solution to the problem of weapon tip, display and other functions. Hence my citation that their paper assumptions were reminiscent of Binford’s [12] technomic, sociotechnic and ideotechnic, distinctions, which I find exceedingly problematic – it may be a parsimonious assumption (see below) but that does not mean it is realistic and that one can easily parse out or test for a single function. I can see no other way to explain why Clovis peoples often made their points on almost semi-precious stones, perfected and used difficult to master manufacturing techniques like fluting and stylized overshot biface thinning, and made huge points overall, never mind just at East Wenatchee. I do not think they simply initially designed these items only as weapon tips and suddenly decided later: oh, we can use these in offerings and such and cover them with red ochre.
3) the authors do not like the suggestion that Clovis points had many intended functions/roles rather than just one because it is less “parsimonious.” I agree parsimony is a viable criterion to use to design and evaluate experiments and explanations but only under certain conditions. One is if there is no reason to question that a criterion of parsimony holds. If there is doubt that parsimony is the only valid criterion then one should admit it does not work and rely on the other contradictory data. Related to this idea, parsimony only really seems valid to me (and I admit I am no philosopher of science) when the difficulty is in choosing between two equally viable explanations and not as the primary criterion one could universally apply. They are also other criteria that are equally valid in evaluating explanations and one of these is the range of data a particular explanation happens to make understandable – a criterion I find more useful in this case. I think an alternative viewpoint, that Clovis points were more than simply weapon tips to Clovis peoples and played multiple roles in Clovis society or had multiple designed “functions,” is a better explanation: it explains, even if they were used as spear points, why they were large in the first place, why they were made with great skill, why extremely nice raw materials were employed to make them, why they were covered with red ochre, why they were placed with burials, why fragments of the large ones do not occur in kill sites (including even amongst animals that were attacked but apparently escaped) and even why basal width varies so much. These are all aspects, which essentially the authors’ parsimonious, intended, weapon tip function cannot explain at all. At the same time, all these other aspects show we have good reason to doubt the parsimonious explanation the authors offer is the end point of discussions of use – but I am sure they would agree we need more studies.
It is obvious that by relying on parsimony they are ignoring the archaeological context of these finds in interpretation. As they explicitly note: “The context or function ascribed to a cache had no bearing on the outcome of our analyses. This is because, as we have explained several times already, our study focused on the intended function of cached Clovis points not on the way in which they were used. If subsequent research shows that the Anzick cache was part of a burial, it would not affect our conclusions. It would simply mean that the points in the cache were designed to be attached to hunting weapons but were ultimately used in a burial ritual.” I am loath to ignore context that as it strikes at my archaeological core. Indeed, my discussion of the Crowfield site is dismissed by the authors as not being germane to the arguments as it is late Paleoindian and from Ontario – but they actually miss my aim in bringing that site into the discussion. I could have included a detailed review of the contexts of Sloan points or Benton points instead of Crowfield as my goal was simply not to use the Crowfield example to show the authors were wrong, or simply telling only part of the story, but simply to illustrate that context is important to discovering the meaning and use of artifacts. If these large bifacial objects occur in Clovis caches covered in red ochre but do not occur in say Clovis kill sites where one might expect the odd, even fragmentary example of a large point, that is a valid argument against the authors’ position -- to ignore or downplay context totally in favour of parsimony or allometric trajectories seems very strange to me. Contextual data and especially refined contextual data may be rare but nonetheless it exists and not just from Clovis caches. I may agree with the fact their analyses show many large Clovis points could have been intended for use as weapons, among other things, but I think they read too much into their conclusions. I get the distinct impression that at the very least, have a decided bias against more sociological/ideological interpretations and that these are somehow second class explanations.
In any case, I believe context is important to determining the intended use of objects. For example, as I suggested in my original comment, Paleoindians regularly, not just in Clovis, seem to have consistently used stone tools as offerings whereas many subsequent groups did not. Why is this? I suggest these items were distinctively made and consistently used in rituals because they had meanings or regularly intended functions that went beyond a utilitarian weapon tip whereas later groups had no such associations and this is why the contexts differ between the two and why Clovis points can be super-sized regardless of whether they were used as weapon tips.
4) I finally have to reply to their response about red ochre associations. Buchanan et al. note: “With regard to the use of red ochre, this substance appears in a variety of early Paleoindian contexts, including on tools in kill and camp sites. In addition, ochre has been hypothesized to have been used in the process of hafting points in other parts of the world. Thus, the presence of red ochre cannot be regarded as an unambiguous indicator of ritual behavior.” Of course, if context is unimportant why care about my objection in this regard? Leaving that aside, accepting that contextual questions are relevant, their comment that red ochre is used in hafting is irrelevant. Clearly the huge number of artifacts, all covered with red ochre at Anzick or Simon cannot be explained by hafting; and what would be the everyday function of the practice of burying large numbers of artifacts, including unhafted items covered with piles of red ochre? Moreover, one of the large East Wenatchee bifaces is pictured in colour on the cover of Gramly’s [2] book on that site. It has ochre right to the tip on one face so clearly it was not restricted to a haft area (also, that biface has isolated platforms suggesting it was a preform and never hafted – if it was hafted as might be suggested by, for example, examination for lateral basal grinding, but at the same time was not finished in the fore-section area, that would suggest it was never intended to be used).
Let me stress in conclusion that I most certainly think we need even more detailed, factual based studies of Paleoindian projectile points and other tools such as are attempted by Buchannan et al in this paper and many other very good ones Buchannan and Collard have co-published in the last few years. I find the use of allometric data in their paper to parse out the effect of resharpening, what Clovis peoples saw as attributes essential to using the tools and so on to be very insightful and potentially very informative. Nonetheless, for me it is not enough. I prefer a perspective that sees Clovis people not just as entities coping with their environment but as also coping with their social and ideological “worlds” -- consideration of context is very important to meeting that end and for a comprehensive understanding. I would hope that other readers would feel the same but I am surprised that no one else has taken the time to comment on this paper or my comment either pro or con and especially people who, unlike me, have worked directly with Clovis assemblages. I suspect that on-line comments do not account for much in things like promotion and tenure decisions even though they can take considerable time to put together in a cogent fashion. I am not a big fan of strictly online publications but having an ability to comment, as is the case with a “paper” journal like Current Anthropology, is a big plus, regardless if one agrees or disagrees with the perspectives offered.
REFERENCES
1. Ellis CJ (2009) The Crowfield and Caradoc sites, Ontario: glimpses of Palaeo-Indian sacred ritual and world view. In: Keenlyside DL, Pilon JL, editors. Painting the Past with a Broad Brush: Papers in Honour of James Valliere Wright. Mercury Series Archaeology Paper 170. Gatineau: Canadian Museum of Civilization. pp. 319–352.
2. Gramly RM (1993) The Richey Clovis cache. New York: Persimmon.
3. Buchanan B, O'Brien MJ, Kilby JD, Huckell BB, Collard, M (2012) An assessment of the impact of hafting on Paleoindian point variability. PLoS ONE 7(5): e36364. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0036364
4. Drucker, H (1940) The Tolowa and their Southwest Oregon kin. University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology 36(2): 221-299.
5. Nomland, GA (1940) Sinkyone notes. University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology 36(2): 149-178.
6. Elmendorf WW, AL Kroeber (1992) The Structure of Twana Culture with Comparative Notes on Yurok Culture. Pullman, Washington State University Press.
7. Blackmore, HL (2000) Hunting Weapons from the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century. Mineola: Dover.
8. Bradley BA, MB Collins, A Hemmings (2010) Clovis Technology. Ann Arbor: International Monographs in Prehistory, Archaeological Series 17.
9. Hutchings, WK (1997) The Paleoindian Fluted Point: Dart or Spear Armature? The Identification of Paleoindian Delivery Technology Through the Analysis of Lithic Fracture Velocity. Unpublished PhD dissertation, Simon Fraser University.
10. Ellis CJ (1997) Factors influencing the use of stone projectile tips: an ethnographic perspective. In Heidi Knecht, editor, Projectile Technology, Plenum Press, N.Y., pp. 37-74.
11. Ellis CJ (2005) Understanding “Clovis” fluted point variability in the Northeast: a perspective from the Debert site, Nova Scotia. Canadian Journal of Archaeology 28: 205-253.
12. Binford LR (1962) Archaeology as anthropology. American Antiquity 28: 217-225.
Christopher Ellis,
Department of Anthropology,
Social Science Centre,
Western University,
London, Ontario, Canada N6A 5C2