Mastodon Dig Turns to Lab for Answers

A look at the Nov. 9, 2014 mastodon dig.  It's likely that some or all of the mastodon bones were washed into the excavation site from upland drainage thousands of years ago.  (Photo by Don Comis)

You can see how cold it was on Nov. 9 by the winter clothing worn by volunteers.  (Photo by Don Comis)

As the search for mastodon bones on a soybean farm in Morrow County, Ohio, winds down before winter, the work shifts to a lab at Ashland University where the excavated materials will be analyzed to decide if it’s worth continuing the excavation in the spring.

Excavation leader, Dr. Nigel Brush-- Ashland University associate professor of geology--wrote in an e-mail answer to my questions, that the lab tests “will provide the final answer” as to whether the mastodon was killed and butchered by Paleo-Indians, as it appears.

Right Site?

Even if the answer is “yes”, the next question is whether the excavation site is the butchery site.  Brush wrote that, “Based on the geological work that is being done at the site, it is appearing more and more likely that the bones were brought to their present location by a debris flow from a site at a higher elevation. “  He added that an upland kill and butchery site doesn’t make as much sense as the current excavation site, which is right near the remnants of an ancient bog where the animal could have been trapped in the soft sediment by its weight.

The bog traces back to the Pleistocene era when it was a muddy glacial lake.

Students from Ohio’s Wooster College’s Climate Change class sank a probe more than 20 feet into the mud, gaining a record of environmental change over about the past 15,000 years.   Brush said, “They also found possible evidence for an old preglacial stream channel running through the bog."

Discovering the Ice Age

Students from Brush’  'Discovering the Ice Age” class are also among the volunteers on the dig.  

Since the skeleton parts found so far are very crushed and shattered, the focus of the excavation shifted after the first month, from recovering a complete skeleton for exhibit, to finding evidence of Paleo-Indians killing and butchering a mastodon.

Brush’s e-mail to me continued, “We have ample evidence from Ohio and surrounding states that Paleoindians were present during this time period.  Butchery sites are not as common, although their number is steadily growing (due to the work of Dan Fisher at the University of Michigan, and other archaeologists).

Paleo-Indian (also written as "Paleoindian") is the term for the first people to arrive in North America, about 16,000 years ago, near the end of the Ice Age.  The website www.Indians.org says that, “Their name, Paleo, actually comes from the Greek word “palaios,” meaning ancient.”

Tools, such as flint scrapers, used to possibly butcher the mastodon are being sent to another lab for DNA analysis to test for mastodon blood.  At the Ashland lab, bones and other materials are being power washed with water and examined for cut marks made by butchering tools.

Scavengers

Brush wrote, “There are a lot of gnaw and bite marks on the bone”, suggesting the possibility that the mastodon merely died of old age, its corpse eaten by scavenging animals.  But, it’s also possible that the scavengers were just mopping up what was left after the Paleo-Indians butchered it.

On Nov. 9, volunteers found another possible hammerstone, a large round stone used to as a hammer or maul to crush things.  Amateur “surface hunters” identify hammerstones by the pecks or pockmarks caused as the stones are pounded on things.   The latest hammerstone was found in the same plot where at least one other hammerstone was found.  Volunteers also found possible vertebrae on Nov. 9.

We also found more pieces of flint and fragments of bones, including small pieces of tusk.

Other items found since the dig began include possible leg bones, ankle bones, rib bones, jaw bones, wrist bones, and all four lower teeth of the mastodon.   And we found pieces of flint brought to the area by man from other parts of Ohio as well as pieces of charcoal that could have come from fires used to cook parts of the mastodon.  A possible fire pit was also found.

As far as I know, the only proven weapon found was a tiny projectile point (a “Merom Expanding Stemmed point “)—a Stone Age spear or arrow head—that belonged to Native Americans who arrived long after the mastodon was extinct.  While the mastodon dates back to beyond 8,000 B.C., the projectile “only” dates to between 1,600 B.C. to 810 B.C.

Mastodon On Its Last Legs

An analysis of the mastodon’s lower four teeth by volunteer Scott Donaldson showed that the mastodon had lived to a ripe old age that likely made it more vulnerable to predation by man or beast, as explained in my previous blog.  Donaldson led the work on restoring and preserving the teeth and served as one of the crew chiefs during the excavation.

In the fall of 2013, a soybean farmer found two of the teeth, two feet apart, after they were unearthed when a ditch was dug to lay drainage pipe.  This triggered the excavation which began Aug. 23, 2014.

The Nov. 9 dig was planned as the last dig before winter, but Brush later said that, weather permitting, he would schedule one more dig, after the weekend of Nov. 15-16.

Note:  I also have a website where I post information and photos on archaeology finds as well as all other aspects of natural history.  This blog and website began to catch the spillover from the monthly stories I write for the Apple Valley Cider Press, mainly a regular "Nature Article" feature.

Mastodon Dig Wrapping Up With Pile of Bones, Flint, Charcoal, and Four Teeth

Ohio History Connection Archaeology Blog's "Diorama showing mastodon being butchered by Clovis hunters". The Ohio History Connection, formerly the Ohio Historical Society, has a museum at its headquarters in Columbus, Ohio.

On Saturday, October 18, volunteers at the Cedar Creek Mastodon Site dig in Morrow County found a fourth mastodon tooth, which leaves only four more left to be found.  It was a tooth found by a farmer after drainage pipe was laid in his soybean field that prompted the excavation which began in August.  In addition to the teeth, volunteers have found parts of bones from legs, ribs, ankles, and tusks.

In his October 21 e-mail to volunteers, Ashland University’s Dr. Nigel Brush said, “Last Saturday, the volunteers who braved the cold made excellent progress on the excavation and also completed the excavation and removal of the fourth mastodon tooth from the site.  There are four teeth in the mandible and four in the maxillary. We have two front and two back teeth, but have not yet determined whether they are from the mandible or maxillary (or both).”

Brush said that there are only four units left to excavate, with one, Unit 15, almost done.  In his Oct. 14 e-mail Brush had  said that volunteers in Unit 15 are “still excavating a pile of rocks, bones, and flint flakes in the western 1/3 … Portions of two rib bones are visible in this unit.”

Goal:  Finish for Season by Nov. 8, More Work Next Year

The goal is to finish by November 8, weather permitting—but just for the winter.

In an article in the Sunday (Oct. 19) Columbus Dispatch newspaper 

Brush  said that the dig could go on for “as long as two years.”

By October 11, the volunteers  had finally reached  down to the layer containing most of the mastodon bones. 

The article explains the possible significance of finding the bones on piles of rock and gravel:  The Paleo-Indians may have butchered and cleaned the mastodon on those rocks.

Brush’s  Oct. 1 report to volunteers says  that “We are finally coming down on the layer containing the mastodon bones, although the long bones and ribs are broken into pieces…The bones are scattered about and lying on top of a gravel/cobble layer.  A few flint flakes are also being recovered from this layer.”

The flint flakes could be parts of weapons or tools  used by prehistoric Paleo-Indians to kill or butcher the mastodon.  The Dispatch article says that some of the pieces have been sent for testing for the presence of mastodon blood.

Charcoal found at the site could mean the Ice Age hunters cooked and maybe smoked some of the meat at the site.

Who Were First People in North America?

In his Oct. 12 column in the Columbus Dispatch , John Switzer talks about the controversy over who the first people who occupied North and South America were.   I first learned about the controversy while talking to a student at the Morrow County dig.   I had always thought that the first people were Paleo-Indians who arrived about 13,000 years ago.  They were called Clovis people, based on the fluted style of their projectiles, some of which have been found in Ohio, Switzer said, and some embedded in mastodon bones.   Now some archaeologists believe the Clovis people were preceded by 3,000 years by a different group of Paleo-Indians.

It still amazes me that people did not arrive in the Americas until 16,000 years ago, I guess blocked by the Ice Age!

In his October 2 report, Dr. Brush also asked for volunteers during the week to help with the lab work at Ashland University, saying that, “In addition to our Saturday excavations….there is a significant amount of work to do back in the lab at Ashland University in order to clean, sort, catalogue, and store the materials we are recovering from the site. “

I missed the past three digs (Sept. 27, Oct. 4, and Oct. 11), but hope to make the Oct. 25 dig, and the remaining digs, and maybe work at least one day at the University lab.

Making Ice Age Weapons on a 3-D Printer!

In an interesting post on the Ohio History Connection blog, Brad Lepper  shows a replica of the fluted spear style that marks the Clovis people, made by a laser scan. 

 He says they can “create near perfect 3D digital models of the objects.  These digital models can be reproduced in plastic using a 3D printer allowing us to generate as many copies as we want from a digital ‘mold’ that will never wear out. These reproductions can be used as hands-on educational resources or sales items for the museum shop.”

Lepper also has a great “Diorama showing a mastodon being butchered by Clovis hunters”,  that gives probably a fairly realistic idea of how it was done.  It shows Paleo-Indians hanging the meat on a  rack, which I would  think could have been for smoking the meat as well as for cooking it. 

Did Ice Age Hunters Hunt More Rabbits Than Mastodons?

Lepper also has a link to a 2008 column he wrote for the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch newspaper  in which he discusses a finding that of eight Clovis knives examined, half had the blood or rabbits.  The other four knives, Lepper reports,“ were stained with the blood of a variety of relatively large mammals, including both cervid (caribou, deer or elk) and bison blood on one [knife], bison blood on another, bear blood on a third, and white-tailed deer blood on the fourth.

As further proof that the Clovis hunters were not the macho big-game hunters usually depicted, Lepper cites a Cree Indian from northern Ontario telling an anthropologist that he lived on rabbit all one winter.

As an amateur who has only the experience of living with a group of Cree Indians in far northern Saskatchewan decades ago, I can say that they just about only hunted moose.  They supplemented their diet  by catching fish in large nets year-round and with beaver meat, from the animals they trapped for fur.  But I never saw them with a dead rabbit.

We, on the other as rank amateurs depended on snaring rabbits.  The trapper who was the main hunter for the group agreed we could stay in one of his cabins as long as we only trapped animals like squirrels and rabbits, which he did not trap for fur.  We lived off squirrels and rabbits and fish, beaver, and moose provided by this hunter/trapper.   He taught us to smoke our fish in a tee-pee style rack.

Giant Rabbits?

The story of living off rabbit reminds me of a man from a company trying to convince the Crees and other Canadians to allow a pulp mill near Saksatchewan’s La Ronge.  He told us that even if there were no moose because the woods was clear cut, the Crees could live on the rabbits, which would be much bigger because they’d have more shrubs to browse on!  Also, rabbit populations rise and fall in a cycle, which would make them a less dependable—not to mention smaller—source of food.

I’ll grant Lepper one point though, as shown by his diorama, women may have done most of the butchering work, not to mention cooking!

Handling Smithsonian Museum Pieces by Computer

Lepper’s description of the spearpoint replicas reminds me of the scans of a mastodon skeleton made by the University of Michigan’s  Museum of Paleontology, which I wrote about on September 24.  

And Lepper gives a link to the Smithsonian’s “X3D Beta” work with a whale skeleton, a wooly mammoth skeleton, and other museum specimens that are fun (as well as educational) to maneuver!

The difference is that the Smithsonian and Michigan Museums are putting their collection online for examination in 3-D from all angles, as though handling the artifacts, while the Ohio History Connection museum is giving people copies to handle or keep.

Morrow County Mastodon Site May Yield Rare Evidence of Paleo-Indian Involvement

Big mastodon bones being uncovered last Saturday, observed by Dr. Brush.  (Photo by Don Comis)

For a change, there were too many volunteers last Saturday, but it was a productive day with finding of possible flint tools near bones with possible cut marks, changing the dig's working hypothesis to a Paleo-Indian mastodon kill and/or butchering site.  (Photo by Don Comis)

In his September 24 e-mail report on the results of the Cedar Creek Mastodon site excavation in Morrow County, Ohio, on September 20, Ashland University’s Dr. Nigel Brush said, “The discovery of clusters of bones in association with some large flint flakes last Saturday, as well as possible cut marks on one of the bones…”  leads to “our present working hypothesis… that this site may be a Paleoindian [Also spelled "Paleo-Indian"] kill and/or butchery site.  This changes the goal of our excavation.  Instead of   trying to recover large bones from the mastodon skeleton, we will primarily focus on recovering evidence to validate our hypothesis that this is a human kill/butchery site.  Many mastodon sites have been found in Ohio and surrounding states, but only a few have good evidence for human interaction.   Therefore, we must change our excavation methodology….Our site has the potential to be rather significant, if we follow proper scientific procedures and are careful in our work.”

The changes include:

·         “Since we want to show the association between bones and possible flint tools, we must leave the bones and flint flakes/tools in place when we find them in undisturbed soils…” ;

·         Not touching flint flakes or tools “since we will be sending these off for blood residue analysis and oils on your skin may negate the analysis…”;

·         “Since we will be looking for additional cut marks on the bone, we must be very careful not to scratch the bones when exposing them.”

·         “Floors of excavation units must be kept flat so we can see what materials are in association at each level. Take each 10 cm level down in 5 cm (2 inch) stages.  In other words, take the whole unit down 5 cm. see what is showing up and record if necessary, then go down the other 5 cm.”

·         “…the final removal of bones, flint flakes/tools, and charcoal samples from excavated levels” will be supervised “to insure that they are properly handled, labeled, and stored.  Materials removed from these assemblages will be stored in separate containers from the regular excavation and screening bags…”.

The reason for these changes is that the new working hypothesis makes it important to document what materials are found near each other, as evidence they are related.   Flint flakes or tools  found near bones can be evidence that Paleo-Indians killed the mastodon at this spot and/or butchered it there.   Charcoal nearby could indicate a fire built by the Paleo-Indian hunters.

Paleo-Indians are prehistoric Native Americans that are generally thought to have arrived in North America from Asia at the end of the last Ice Age by crossing a vast ice and land bridge over the Bering Strait.   They were in Ohio during the time the mastodon being excavated probably died, about 13,000 years ago.  Some have blamed these hunters and a warmer climate for the extinction of mastodons.

Dr. Brush also said that, “When we first began excavating this site, we thought most of the mastodon skeleton might remain undisturbed, except for the damage caused by the backhoe during the digging of the drainage ditch.  That scenario is now much less likely since we are recovering fragmented mastodon bones from various parts of the body.  The skeleton could have become disarticulated by the activities of Ice Age predators, or by human hunters. “

But the discovery last Saturday of the large flint flakes near bones with possible cut marks led him to focus on the human hunters, at least for now.

"Discovering the Ice Age" Students Volunteer

Last Saturday’s excavation was in the fourth week of the mastodon dig and we had 62 volunteers, including 8 students from Dr. Brush’s  “Discovering the Ice Age” class, 12 students from Ashland’s  Geology Club and the club advisor, and 7 students from the University of Toledo. 

There were so many volunteers that I couldn’t find a spot to dig so I ended up sifting dirt all day, which was fine with me.  I shared a sifting screen with two novice students and another novice, the wife of an experienced volunteer.

Boy, did I feel great after finding two small pieces of the mastodon’s ivory tusk, before the other volunteers joined me.  I had learned the previous week to identify bones.  This week I learned to identify many tusk pieces because they tend to look like part of a wooden matchstick.

I had brought one to an experienced volunteer and he identified it as a piece of tusk.  When I found a similar piece I identified it as a piece of tusk.  It made me feel like an expert.  And when the complete novices joined me, they were asking me to confirm "bone or no bone" on their finds.  Soon they were finding bone after bone as well.  It was probably because the soil we were sifting had a lot of bone fragments, but it felt nice for them to say I was a good teacher when I complimented them on their finds.

A 300-million-year-old brachiopod fossil was a mere distraction during the mastodon excavation last Saturday.  (Photo by Don Comis)

  

One found a fossil and took it to her geology club advisor and he identified it as a 300-million-year old brachiopod.  It was exciting for us but of no interest to the mastodon diggers because they are only looking for bones or other things are about 13,000 years old, about the time the mastodon lived.

More big bones were emerging in Unit 14, which has been excavated to the 12- to 16-inch depth.  A new set of bones could be a wrist of the mastodon, but it hasn’t been completely unearthed yet.

The work continues this Saturday, September 27, but I’ll probably miss it because I had an earlier commitment to collect prairie seed at Guy Denny’s prairie in Fredericktown.

As a sidenote, Dr. Brush added that the University of Michigan has developed a 3-D image of a mastodon that we can use to identify the bones as we find them .  It can be seen here.   It is great, allowing you to rotate the skeleton in any direction, including upside down to see inside the rib cage. And  by clicking just right on a particular bone, you can examine the actual bone close-up and rotate it too!

The story behind the creation of this image by using new technology and scanned images of mastodon bones in the collection of the University’s  Museum of Paleontology is here.  It includes a nice video.

Dr. Brush also said that Brian Redman from the Cleveland Museum of Natural History will be visiting the site on Saturday, as well as a reporter from the Columbus Dispatch.

Note:  I'll try to add more of last Saturday's photographs to my "Mastodon Dig" slideshow on my website.

Mastodon Found in Ohio Soybean Field

 Illustration from "Ohio's Prehistoric Peoples" depicting Paleo-Indians attacking a mastadon.  Makes me wonder why they didn't use atlatls or throwing sticks to kill from afar.  See my earlier  blog on atlatls.

At my local archaeology club annual potluck and auction on August 21, I picked up a flyer looking for volunteers for excavating a buried mastodon near the Richland/Morrow County line in Ohio, starting Saturday, August 23. 

The flyer explained that a backhoe digging a drainage ditch last year uncovered a mastodon tooth, bits of bone, and tusk fragments.  It may also have hit the mastodon’s skull.  The ditch drains water from a soybean field to a pond.    The man who farms that field discovered the tooth and bone fragments after the ditch was dug.

If the rest of the mastodon is found, the archaeologists will be digging every Saturday through at least September.

The group doing the dig last uncovered a mastodon 21 years ago.

In a book I bought at the auction, “Ohio’s Prehistoric Peoples”, the author, Martha Potter, says that mastodons, mammoths, giant elks, giant beavers, musk oxen, horses, and tapirs moved into what is now Ohio after the Wisconsin glacier began retreating, about 12,000 B.C.  “Practically all of these animals, however, had become extinct by about 3,000 B.C.,” she wrote in the book published by The Ohio Historical Society in 1968.

Potter, who was at the auction and signed my copy of the book, also mentions a mastodon skeleton found in Madison County and the remains of a giant beaver found in Franklin County, near Columbus, Ohio.  She says that, “Radiocarbon dates indicated that the giant beaver was here almost 10,000 years ago and the mastodon about 8,000 years ago.  Although none of these Ohio Pleistocene mammals have been found together with human skeletons or with man-made tools, it is highly possible that man was actually living here 11,000 years ago.  Ohio’s first human inhabitants, the Palaeo-Indians [also spelled "Paleo-Indians"], followed the movements of the animals and the retreating ice.”

The flyer says that one possibility is that the Paleo-Indians may have driven the mastodon into a nearby bog “to trap, kill, and butcher it, so we will also be looking for flint tools or evidence of cut-marks on the bones.”

More information on this find can be found on this website page of the Ohio History Connection Archaeology Blog. 

I hope to get on the waiting list for volunteers on this dig, so stay tuned!