Bluefish Caves I, II, III: Taphonomic Analysis of the Mammal and Bird Bone Assemblages

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Following its discovery and excavation in the 1970-1980’s, the Bluefish Caves site (northern Yukon Territory, Canada) yielded a small number of stone artifacts and thousands of vertebrate remains buried in late Pleistocene loess. Preliminary taphonomic observations suggested that modern humans visited the caves about 30,000 years ago, raising considerable debate within the scientific community. More recently, a rigorous and systematic taphonomic analysis of the mammal bone assemblages from Bluefish Caves I and II showed that humans hunted horse and caribou as early as 23,500 cal BP. Here we extend the taphonomic analysis to the mammal bones from Cave III and to the bird remains from all three caves. Butchery marks were identified on a Snow Goose scapula from Cave II, and potential human bone modifications were observed on ptarmigan remains. We observed no sign of human activity in Cave III and hypothesize that it may have been ignored by humans in favor of the other two caves that offered better shelters and views of the adjacent lake. Compared with other late Pleistocene-early Holocene karstic sites in Alaska, we suggest that caves and rockshelters were only visited by humans on a sporadic, seasonal basis for hunting.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38493.0