Is the Wenas Creek Mammoth Site Anthropogenic?

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Wenas Creek Mammoth Site was excavated 2005-2010 near Selah, Washington, USA, yielding bones of mammoth and bison dating ~17 ka, and two lithics resembling chipped stone debitage. Prior publications have reported on some aspects of the project and this poster summarizes those as well as subsequent analyses. The bones were disarticulated and scattered within a stratum of gravelly silt loam colluvium on a hillside. The mammoth remains compose 68 elements, primarily vertebrae, limb elements and ribs, while the bison remains compose 21 elements, including lumbar vertebrae, sacrum, and left hindlimb elements. Neither mammoth nor bison remains show any evidence of human modification although some mammoth bones exhibit green fracture. The possible debitage includes one resembling a blade fragment made of lithic material visually distinctive from the site matrix and dating either ~17 ka (75 associated single grain IRSL dates) or ~5 ka (19 associated single grain IRSL dates). As with earlier reports, the site continues to provide an uncertain association of 17 ka paleontological materials and human activity.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36814.0