Re-evaluating Butchery Marks from a Mastodon Assemblage Using 3D Geometric Morphometrics and Experimental Archaeology

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Geometric Morphometrics in Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

At the end of the Pleistocene, North America experienced a mass extinction of megafauna, including proboscideans—mammoths and mastodons. Archaeologists and other scientists continue to debate the role of human predation in these extinctions. Some point to traces of human butchery, such as cut marks and other bone surface modifications (BSM), as evidence of human predation on proboscideans. Others, however, challenge the validity of the butchery evidence observed on several proboscidean assemblages. This is primarily due to the imprecision of qualitatively determining the agent responsible for creating BSM. This study employs novel 3D imaging and 3D geometric morphometrics to assess the BSM’s origin on the Bowser Road mastodon (BR), excavated in Middletown, New York. These procedures accurately distinguish different types of BSM. To better characterize BSM on the BR, we compared them quantitatively to experimentally generated chop and plow marks. Experiments produced chop marks on bones using a motorized force-calibrated lever arm wielding replicated stone choppers. We created experimental plow marks using modern agricultural equipment. Results indicate that BSM on the BR are inconsistent with our experimental butchery marks. These conclusions are preliminary but contribute to the dialogue surrounding humans’ role in the extinction of North American megafauna.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• Geometric Morphometrics in Archaeology

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 33454