WINTER PNWAS,
Thursday, February 13th, 2025
Thursday, February 13th, 2025
New Insights into the Diet of
America’s First Peoples
By Dr. James C. Chatters,
Applied Paleosciences
America’s First Peoples
By Dr. James C. Chatters,
Applied Paleosciences
Dr. Chatter’s recent research shows that mammoth meats
played a major role in diets of First Americans (see below and
CNN web-site story:
https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/06/science/north-americamammoths-
diet-intl-scli/index.html ); Mark Marcuson mural.
PNWAS ZOOM Meeting
Thursday February 13th 2025
starting at 6:30 PM
To join the ZOOM Meeting and see the presentation
please become a member today!
Thursday February 13th 2025
starting at 6:30 PM
To join the ZOOM Meeting and see the presentation
please become a member today!
Cover of recent Science Advances where James Chatter is lead author of groundbreaking new article titled: "Mammoth Featured Heavily in Western Clovis Diet".
Their cover illustration is described by Eric Carlson (Desert Archaeology, Inc.) as:
A reconstruction of complex behaviors of the Clovis culture approximately 13,000 years ago. The foreground shows the Anzick-1 infant and his mother, the latter consuming mammoth meat around a hearth activity area a few meters away from a mammoth butchery area. The man in the foreground works on Clovis tools, including dart projectile points and attached fore-shafts and dart shafts and atlatl (spear thrower). Food is dried for later consumption. The overall layout is based in part on the mammoth butchery and camp site at La Prele, in Wyoming while the background is based on the Anzick site near Wilsall, Montana. The lifeways of Native American ancestors crossing from Asia into the Americas have long been debated, particularly their diets (e.g., megafaunal specialists or generalists incorporating small game). Chatters et al. present stable isotope analyses
of the Anzick child, representative of the earliest (and only) continentwide archaeological culture, providing direct and quantitative measures of diet. They found heavy reliance on megafauna, particularly mammoth. These discoveries suggest rapid expansion across North America by means of high mobility and megaherbivore specialization and imply humans may have played a role in late Pleistocene megafauna extinctions.
Their cover illustration is described by Eric Carlson (Desert Archaeology, Inc.) as:
A reconstruction of complex behaviors of the Clovis culture approximately 13,000 years ago. The foreground shows the Anzick-1 infant and his mother, the latter consuming mammoth meat around a hearth activity area a few meters away from a mammoth butchery area. The man in the foreground works on Clovis tools, including dart projectile points and attached fore-shafts and dart shafts and atlatl (spear thrower). Food is dried for later consumption. The overall layout is based in part on the mammoth butchery and camp site at La Prele, in Wyoming while the background is based on the Anzick site near Wilsall, Montana. The lifeways of Native American ancestors crossing from Asia into the Americas have long been debated, particularly their diets (e.g., megafaunal specialists or generalists incorporating small game). Chatters et al. present stable isotope analyses
of the Anzick child, representative of the earliest (and only) continentwide archaeological culture, providing direct and quantitative measures of diet. They found heavy reliance on megafauna, particularly mammoth. These discoveries suggest rapid expansion across North America by means of high mobility and megaherbivore specialization and imply humans may have played a role in late Pleistocene megafauna extinctions.
In recent decades archaeologists have actively, often acrimoniously debated the migration route and ecological adaptation of the earliest Americans. You have the Kelp Highway hypothesis, that argues for a maritime adaptation versus the inland migration hypothesis that envisions of terrestrial foragers. Then, for Clovis, the first and only continent-wide cultural pattern, we have those who see big-game focused adaptation versus backers of the “broad spectrum forager” hypothesis. Recent studies of two of the most ancient human skeletons, the Anzick boy and Naia of Hoyo Negro contribute actual, direct evidence to these debates (see maps below). Each allows us to approach the question from a different perspective. The Anzick boy’s bone proteins were well preserved, so it was possible to conduct a stable isotope analysis to the determine most likely diet of this nursing toddler’s mother. Naia’s bones lacked protein but were nearly complete, enabling an analysis of her growth patterns, supported by isotopes in her bone minerals.
Clovis sites, featuring the Anzick Site here.
Location of
Naia of Hoyo
Negro site,
Yucatan
Pennisula,
Mexico
Recovering Naia
from doomed pit
at the Hoyo
Negro site
Both sets of results identify megafauna as central to the diet of these earliest Americans. They present these early immigrants to our hemisphere as highly sophisticated mobile who subsisted by following the most mobile, wide-ranging prey. That, in turn, light on Clovis culture could have spread so rapidly throughout North and South America and could have contributed to the extinction of native megafauna.
