The La Prele Mammoth Site: A Clovis Mammoth Site with an Associated Campsite, Converse County, Wyoming

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Human Interactions with Extinct Fauna" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

One of the biggest sticking points in the ongoing debate about Clovis subsistence is the small sample size of human killed extinct megafauna. While just over a dozen terminal Pleistocene megafauna kill sites have been identified in North America, there are only two cases where campsites have been found in association with butchered extinct megafauna remains. The La Prele Mammoth site (48CO1401) is an approximately 13,000 year old Clovis site which contains the remains of a single Columbian mammoth (Mammuthus columbi). Recent excavations at the site have identified at least two hearth-centered areas associated with the mammoth processing area. These associated activity areas are consistent with domestic spaces as they contain a diverse tool assemblage, butchered bison remains, ocher, a bone bead, and bone needles. In the New World, domestic spaces have never been found in such close proximity to extinct megafauna remains. The identification of a campsite associated with proboscidean remains has implications for understanding cooperation and other activities which took place during megafauna butchery at the end of the last Ice Age.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Human Interactions with Extinct Fauna   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25279