Anarchaeology.com

[DavidCampbell]

Tim Jones has a recent blog which includes comments from Clark Wernecke, the Gault site director which add some fascinating new details to this ongoing rewrite of Texas prehistory.
http://remotecentral.blogspot.com/2007/08/gault-site-update.html

Here is one excerpt which especially caught my eye, as it is a tacit admission of things formerly discussed only among us Fringe Dwellers.
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"Besides the diet issues we also have other evidence for more sedentary behaviour. We have a stone floor ten cm. thick and just a little over two meters square - right hand corners in the middle of a gravelless clay stratigraphy with Clovis tools and debris scattered on and around it. It serves a purpose similar to a tent's ground sheet - getting them up off the rising damp from the clay - and may have been simply a platform or could have been the floor of a structure. Either way it's not the kind of thing you build if you're just passing through.

I now have 108 incised stones from Gault spanning almost all time periods represented there including 14 with strong Clovis provenience. These are not simply stones with incised lines but mostly intricate designs similar to those found worldwide back at least 75,000 years. Paired parallel lines, paired zigzags and intricate herringbone patterns are found on both small pieces of limestone but also (1/3 of them) on chert cortex where the nodule was later broken up. You actually have similar items in Britain."

Artificial stone floors, or platforms have a surprisingly long, albeit intermittent and scarce, presence in the archaeological record, including Wolf's Cave in Finland, a possible Neanderthal site, at La Ferassie, in France, as well as Dahe, in China, all exhibiting Mousterian-type lithic assemblages. In all cases, the installation of artificial flooring could indicate a sustained or ongoing presence of humans, though for exactly what purposes they were constructed is as yet unknown. As far as I know, this stone platform at Gault is about the oldest known in the Americas, and whether it comprised part of a shelter or other structure remains unknown, although there is presumably the possibility that more such artifacts might be unearthed.

And the detail regarding the incised stones is especially interesting, not just because there are so many, but because they are not restricted to one single span of time at Gault, but across the broad spectrum. And the fact that these incisions had a degree of complexity matched elsewhere across the Old World begs the question as to whether this was a cultural tradition imported from the Old World, or whether it sprang up independently in the New World at these later dates.

Whether the subsequent breaking of the nodules was a deliberate act, or in some way similar to later practices of breaking precious objects, prior to throwing them into pools, ponds etc., as evidenced by numerous finds in Britain and elsewhere in Europe dating up until Roman times, I don't know, but it's interesting nevertheless to find this unexpected, potential cultural connection between Old World and New. I can't find much as yet which discusses examples of these from ancient Britain, but I'll keep an eye out for further information.
_________________
David Campbell
"The going's getting weird, so I'm turning pro."

[Charlie Hatchett]

Nice snag, David.

I love this part:

[DavidCampbell]

The signs are getting thicker that the paradigm is shifting at a faster rate each day. Since I'm a faith based drivelista, I have no doubts that your artifacts will one day be vindicated by mainstream science and your name will take a place beside George McJunkin's. Remember that McJunkin was self educated but had the sense to recognize what he was looking at. Here's another site I happened across with a concise chronology of Paleoindian archaeology up to the Santa Fe Clovis and Beyond Conference. It contains some interesting links to sites I'd never heard of before and a reference to Julian Hayden, whom Chris Hardaker had the privilege to know and consult.
http://www.cdarc.org/pages/library/peo_century.php
_________________
David Campbell
"The going's getting weird, so I'm turning pro."

[Charlie Hatchett]