In the Absence of Material Culture: An Archaeological Perspective on the Ancient Human Footprints From White Sands National Park, New Mexico

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Footprints and Footwear" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Fossilized human footprints at White Sands, dated to between 23,000 and 21,000 years BP, have attracted scientists from various disciplines since their discovery. The tracks have been dated, biometric inferences from specific tracks have been made, and trackway kinematics explored. So far, no material culture has been found or associated with this ichnological trackway and, likewise, no material culture is known from that time-period because of the lack of equally old sites in the US. This poses a major challenge in understanding the people behind the fossilized footprints at White Sands. This talk aims to present the inferences on material culture that we dare to make despite the very absence of it. This is possible through ethnographic comparisons and the presence of features in the ichnological record other than footprints. Part of this discussion will be the interpretation of linear features associated with human footprints as well as the possible presence of ancient footwear. The research presented in this talk is part of the AHRC project “Peopling of the Tularosa Basin”, based at Bournemouth University, with Matthew Bennett and Sally Reynolds as PIs.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• Footprints and Footwear

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 50665