For decades, archaeologists have linked Clovis stone points found beside mammoth, mastodon, and gomphothere bones with large game hunting. Those finds helped shape the idea that Clovis people hunted these giant animals and played a major part in their extinction near the end of the Late Pleistocene. A new study argues the evidence does not support such a firm conclusion.
The research, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, looked at 15 well-known North American sites where Clovis points appear with the remains of proboscideans, the group that includes mammoths, mastodons, and gomphotheres. Instead of asking whether Clovis people hunted these animals, the team asked a different question. Could some of those sites reflect scavenging instead?
The study brought together researchers from Kent State University, Southern Methodist University, the Smithsonian Institution, the University of Michigan, and the University of Utah. They reviewed evidence from archaeology, paleoanthropology, ethnography, and animal behavior to compare hunting with scavenging.
Their review found scavenging is common across nature. Many meat-eating and omnivorous animals feed from carcasses they did not kill. Human groups from different times and places also took advantage of dead animals when the chance arose. The researchers argue Clovis groups likely had many similar chances to gather meat from the bodies of mammoths and other large animals.
One problem is that hunting and scavenging often leave similar traces in the archaeological record. This issue, known as equifinality, makes different actions produce nearly the same physical evidence. As a result, a Clovis point lying beside mammoth bones does not prove hunters killed the animal.
The researchers reviewed proposed signs of both hunting and scavenging at Clovis sites. They conclude Clovis people likely did both. What current evidence does not do is separate one activity from the other with confidence. According to the team, archaeologists cannot yet determine how many of the known proboscidean sites represent hunting events and how many began with people finding an animal already dead.
The authors also point out that scavenging fits well with what is known about human behavior. Since many past and present societies scavenged when food became available, they argue Clovis groups would have had little reason to ignore such an easy source of meat. One author also noted that scavenging could help explain high nitrogen isotope values found in the famous Anzick child, suggesting the diet of the child’s mother might have included insect larvae feeding on carcasses rather than mammoth meat alone.
The findings carry wider meaning for the long-running debate over why North America’s giant mammals disappeared. Many studies have treated Clovis sites as evidence of repeated mammoth kills by humans. The new review argues those sites cannot yet serve as firm proof of regular hunting because scavenging produces similar archaeological patterns.
Until researchers find reliable ways to tell hunting from scavenging, the team says the existing Clovis record does not support claims that people routinely killed proboscideans. They also argue current evidence falls short of showing human hunting drove the extinction of mammoths, mastodons, and other giant relatives across North America. According to the authors, the archaeological record still lacks direct scientific proof linking Clovis people to the final loss of these animals.