Mammoth Chore

Learning what I can on the appearance and behavior of the woolly mammoth. On one hand this is easier than you'd think as they are better documented than practically any other pleistocene animal. Even cave painters liked them, making them the third-most favorite subject. And as creatures of the snowier landscapes, they've had the luck of getting frozen and preserved in rather amazing numbers. Name another prehistoric animal that we can tell you the exact color (rather, range of colors) of their fur.

The downside is that the popular references are interested in woolly mammoths in general, not in the specifics of what they looked like in the late pleistocene and down in the Americas. So far I gather they were smaller, quite a bit smaller. But otherwise?

Same for a lot of other references. Mammoth hunters, paleolithic material cultures? Easy to find. The same for North America?

And this is where I hit the other barrier. This is like when you have a technical question and take it to Stack Exchange, only to find out you've stumbled on a long-running internet flame war. Well, this is an archaeological war; people who have absolutely bought into pre-Clovis to the extent that they don't want to recognize any practical limit to the date range, and people who ask that the evidence be solid. Which the pro-pre-Clovis respond to by calling their reaction knee-jerk conservatism.

Well, call me a conservative. Not that I know this stuff, but even as an outsider -- and even as someone who is mostly looking at the popular science outlets ( who falling over each other to support pre-Clovis) -- the very behavior of the pre-Clovis evangelists are making me suspicious.

There's that strange focus on the relatively solid, like dating, and what sometimes feels like great dodges around questions like stratigraphy. There's the blithe "...and many more examples" -- Stengler is particularly bad at this and her name keeps showing up in my reading. Look, defend your own site and work, don't be leaning on "But Monte Verde is even older!" Yeah, and Monte Verde ain't unimpeachable either.

This -- and the way so much of this is an argument made to the onlookers, that is in glowing articles in the popular press that paint a much more detailed picture than even the most ardent supporters would agree is supported by evidence -- means I'm having a lot of trouble pulling up a good understanding of what the available archaeology can actually show for a hypothesized pre-Clovis site.

Well, the good. As far as I can tell, mammoth-bone shelters aren't a thing in that period in North America. The travois may be (and, sorry, this one...which is the same Bennet et al of the 2021 trackways paper, and the same site...feels like such a reach. Hell, I'd want someone a lot more experienced than me to rule out a tail-drag by a giant sloth!) And I have a name for typical lithics, even if that is from the Gault site in Texas.

(The 2023 paper, which I've not yet read in full, seems rather cranky about the lack of material culture noted even in the 2021 APN "A Life in Ruins" podcast. Summarized as; paleolithic cultures worked more with perishable materials so this mark in the mud we're calling a travois totally makes up for not finding any flakes!)

I still need to look at flora...I really want to slip the ruppia cirrhosa in there for the astute reader...and a couple other megafauna, and finish my mammoths, and nail down everything I can about clothing, baskets (possibly plaited, says one ref), any adornment. I did get to the supplementary of the 2021 Bennet et al paper, which has a brief but very useful bit of timing on when the trenches were dug, and on a re-read I managed to finally remember that the solo mammoth crossed that of the "adolescent, female, or both" trackway I'm basing my little scene on, between her trip out and her trip back.

The dispersion and frequency of the various tracks over the roughly 2,000 year span they seem to have identified (if nothing else, by pollen layers) suggest she was part of a gathering party and not on her own. Which is also worth considering.

But of lesser importance than nailing down some of the less than helpful timing of the original dig and deciding what I want Penny to see on her visit. Pretty sure I'm going straight through the park and skipping the Daisy Track for this part. For that I need to hit all the linked material from the national park's website -- I think there were some videos there that taken during the dig that were recently made public. And I bought a book at the park that may have a few things to say.

The next chapter will be lighter. That's a brief trip into town for a burger and ending her busy day at the Satellite motel right there on I-70. (And another research question; everyone calls their highways different. Is the "I-70" or the "70" or even "highway 70?")

For the chapter after that, I need to learn a bit about Holloman AFB. I'm still hoping to have completed draft in 4 mos with only light editing after that...but it's gonna be a push.