Discard, Stockpile, or Commemorative Cairn: Interpreting the Bison Skull Pile at the Ravenscroft Late Paleoindian Bison Kill, Oklahoma Panhandle

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Bison crania without mandibles form a vertical cluster in the earliest of two arroyos at the ~10,400 year old Ravenscroft bison kill site in the Oklahoma panhandle. The skulls were stacked on the arroyo floor, eventually forcing subsequent kills to relocate to an adjacent arroyo. A combined total of five winter kill events have been documented in the two arroyos. Skulls representing four of five events, including at least one skull from a kill in the adjacent arroyo, populate the accumulation. Reasons for stacking the skulls are considered, including discard, deliberate stockpiling for future retrieval, persistent cairn building to commemorate multiple successful bison hunts, and "bison calling" to ensure future successes. Archaeological, ethnographical, and historical examples from around the world fuel the discussion.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 22969