New Excavations at Fell Cave, South Patagonia, Chile

Summary

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

The work of Junius Bird at Fell Cave played a crucial role in the acceptance of the association between early human populations and megafauna in South America. The evidence for behavioral association of cut-marked bones of american horse, camelids and ground sloth with hearths, stone and bone tools is still considered among the stronger proofs of Late Pleistocene arrival to the Magellan Strait area. We recently initiated new excavations at the site as part of a larger geoarchaeological and paleoecological project. This excavation is researching the possibility of previous human settlement at the cave, and is concentrated on strata located below the lower occupations identified by Bird. Megafauna bones and a thick layer of a tephra, probably from Reclús Volcano dated ca. 12,600 BP were recovered. This possibility is reinforced because a certified tephra from that volcano was recovered on the alluvial plain of the Chico River in front of the cave. The geoarchaeological study of the deposits recovered at the cave together with the description of the local environment during the end of the Pleistocene will produce a new baseline to discuss the human use of the area.

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): 39452.0