New Investigations at Bonfire Shelter: A Consideration of Bison Jumps and Their Implications for Paleoindian Social Organization

Summary

Bonfire Shelter (41VV218) is a nationally significant site in the Lower Pecos region of the West Texas borderlands that preserves evidence of what may be the oldest and southernmost "bison jump" in North America. At least two major episodes of bison hunting are evident at Bonfire Shelter, one associated with Paleoindian Plainview and Folsom projectile points, and another associated with Late Archaic Castroville and Montell points. The approximately 12,000-year-old layers comprising Bonebed 2 appear to represent a singular example of this hunting technique in these early time periods, and are the subject of recent debate. There is disagreement as to whether one or as many as three hunting events are represented in Bonebed 2, and as to whether or not they truly represent bison jumps. This paper reports the results of renewed field investigations into the timing, context, and cultural associations of both bone beds at Bonfire Shelter carried out by the Ancient Southwest Texas Project at Texas State University. The paper then considers the interpretation of these archaeofaunal deposits as bison jumps, and the implications of those interpretations for Late Pleistocene hunter-gatherer social organization in the Lower Pecos and the larger Southern Plains region.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 20934