Project Summary

ABSTRACT:
Correspondence between glacial lake landforms and Paleo Indian occupation is an accepted part of the eastern North American archaeological record. This relationship combined with evidence of paleo boat-building on the Pacific coast makes it logical to look for paleo maritime technology across the United States. Discovery of a polyhedral microblade core and a prismatic blade in association with wood working tools at Fort Drum, New York, and evidence of paleo boat-building at San Clemente Island, California, indicates that there exists a highly significant new category of sites that may have been previously overlooked on military installations throughout the United States.

BACKGROUND:
The potential for paleo maritime culture is one of the most important areas of research in North American prehistoric archaeology. The fact that sites that may represent this context are being documented in disproportionate numbers on DOD properties is a reflection of the potential for preservation and the DOD’s commitment to archaeological survey and site evaluation. In addition, DOD archaeologists are becoming increasingly aware that bias toward biface tool technology in previous lithic analyses may have caused past studies to overlook paleo objects that may be present in installation collections, but classified as debitage. Two locations with potential for documentation of paleo boat-building are both DOD properties. The first is San Clemente Island Naval Auxiliary Landing Field (NALF), California, from Navy Region Southwest where Cassidy et al. (2004) have made a strong case for boat-building in Paleo Indian contexts. The second is Fort Drum, New York, where two prismatic blades, a Clovis point, and a polyhedral microblade core have been recovered from Pleistocene shoreline and insular properties.

Microblade technology originated in northeast Asia during the terminal Pleistocene and spread to the North American west coast by the early Holocene. Therefore, documented discovery of a polyhedral microblade core in northern New York State should prompt a re-examination of DOD collections from Alaska to Maine. Pre-Clovis sites in Utah, Nevada, and Washington may be yielding tools with paleo maritime associations. If these discoveries were to be confirmed, there would be implications for DOD installations throughout the United States. Further evidence in support of a paleo aquatic or maritime adaptation hypothesis would require re-examination of glacial lake shorelines nationwide with implications for manifestations on interior installations. Archaeologists working for the DOD have a unique opportunity to pull together clues and information from across North America to address this highly significant topic in a comprehensive way.

APPROACH:
This project has been implemented through the Fort Drum Cultural Resources Program using a cooperative agreement currently in place with the Center for Environmental Management of Military Lands (CEMML), Colorado State University. It involves collaboration between Dr. Laurie Rush, project Principal Investigator (PI), and Associate Investigator Dr. James Cassidy (Staff Archaeologist, Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, Twenty-nine Palms, CA), in the development of a map of North America that reflects how existing bodies of water, drainages, and shorelines would have appeared in the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene. This map would be used as the basis for a sensitivity model to establish potential areas that paleo boat builders could have occupied. These areas would be overlain and compared with DOD land holdings. Collections at selected installations with paleo maritime potential could then be inventoried and examined for potential paleo woodworking tools or other evidence of boat building.

Three installations were selected for preliminary comparisons. These include:

• Dugway Proving Ground, Utah;
• The Utah Test and Training Range (UTTR) at Hill AFB, Utah; and
• The Yakima Training Center, Washington..

The intent of the present website is to disseminate the results of this project to installation personnel and the general public as new information becomes available and to encourage partnership and exchange of information between DOD archaeologists and the academy.

BENEFITS TO DoD:
Detailed site evaluation and analysis of paleo material at Fort Drum, New York, and San Clemente Island, California, and the associated model building for site location can be readily applied to other military installations where the potential for paleo maritime culture exists. These installations occur throughout the Great Lakes Region, along the Pacific Coast, and possibly in the Chesapeake and Gulf Coast Regions as well. The products from this Legacy study could prevent inadvertent destruction or damage to such sites through lack of discovery or uninformed analysis. Moreover, given that paleo maritime occupations—marine or lake—would occur on some of the most intensively developed real estate in the country, DOD land holdings are islands of preservation that merit special attention. An opportunity for the Cultural Resource Managers of all the DOD installations that may have sites representing this context to work together would enable accurate evaluation of each individual site at a far reduced cost. This strategy also provides the capability to select sites for data recovery or long term preservation from a DOD-wide rather than an installation-specific inventory.

Return to Top of Page