Among heavily eroded mesas, buttes, and hoodoos, a large thigh bone from an enormous (shall we say mammoth) creature erodes from the base of a towering butte. Not far away in an adjacent butte, the tip of a spearpoint protrudes, evidence of an epic battle between man and beast. This setting could be a scene in J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings or perhaps on the planet Tatooine from the Star Wars movies. Instead, it is the findspot in the western South Dakota Badlands of the Lange/Ferguson site. The stark landscape of today is nothing like the landscape of ~11,000 years ago, when a pair of mammoths was brought down in the muddy shallows of a spring-fed pond and Clovis hunters dispatched and butchered the mother/calf duo.
The story of the discovery and investigation of the Lange/Ferguson site is chronicled in 13 chapters assembled in four parts. The initial find of the mammoth femur occurred in 1960, followed by its rediscovery in 1980 when the bone was shown to L. Adrien Hannus, who in subsequent visits to the location planned and conducted excavations. The description of the excavation is provided in Chapter 1 of Part I. The methods employed included the mechanical removal of overburden, taking particular care not to place machinery atop intact deposits and building ramps adjacent to the butte. In this fashion, mechanical stripping avoided applying pressures that might have damaged bones buried in the deposits. Excavation followed exacting measures, including piece-plotting all excavated in situ materials and water-screening all sediment to recover small artifacts and bone fragments.
Part II presents the multidisciplinary reconstruction of the late Pleistocene climate and stratigraphy at the site. Chapter 2 discusses the results of pollen and phytolith analyses; Chapter 3, the geochronology of the site; Chapter 4, the paleoecology based on diatoms and ostracodes; and Chapter 5, the analysis of fossil mollusks.
With the prehistoric setting of the site securely in place, the book moves into Part III, where the artifactual materials and butchering patterns are described. But first, as is common for kill/butchery site investigations, bone structure and taphonomy are evaluated (Chapters 6 and 7); and bone fracture patterns, technology, and use-wear are identified (Chapter 8) and compared with known natural and cultural patterns (Chapter 9). Chapter 10 reconstructs the butchering sequence; Chapter 11 presents a detailed description of the bone and stone artifacts recovered from the site; and Chapter 12 presents the results of use-wear analysis of the meager stone tool assemblage, composed of three Clovis projectile points and one chalcedony flake.
Chapter 13, the sole chapter in Part IV, summarizes the multidisciplinary investigation of the Lange/Ferguson site and the conclusion that Clovis hunters employed expediently made bone implements to butcher two mammoths. Of particular note is the discovery that the upper legs and torso of the older individual were butchered utilizing sharp bone implements expediently produced during and following the butchery of the younger animal. The bone tool assemblage from the Lange/Ferguson site is the definitive case that Clovis hunters had a bone technology based on the sequential reduction of mammoth cortical bone into cutting, scraping, and piercing tools. The analysis of more than 100 spirally fractured bone pieces yielded dozens that displayed the exacting criteria applied in the identification of bone tools. The detailed analysis of the bone technology and application of strict criteria in identifying bone tools led to the conclusion that the helically fractured bone pieces were created during the purposeful reduction of mammoth skeletal elements by Clovis hunters/butchers and not the result of heavy machinery used to remove overburden during excavation.
Often the publication of a site excavated and analyzed decades ago suffers from presenting out-of-date ideas and results that are no longer cutting-edge contributions. Such is not the case with this new book about “old” excavation finds at the Lange/Ferguson site. If anything, the re-presentation of the expedient bone tool assemblage and the technology it represents is timely, in light of new discoveries feeding discussions about hunting and scavenging megafauna in the New World. This book is a must-read for all avid mammoth hunters and Paleoindian specialists.
