CHAPTER 1

ON THE NEOLITHIC IN NORTH AMERICA

Maritime Cultures and Mastodon Manipulation

What did the “Stone Age” in Neolithic America mean to those who were here? Midwestern, southwestern, Mexican, Central American, and South American cultures built in stone and aligned their lithic constructions to the heavens. That Northeast Native culture is denied similar credit is a terrible disservice that undermines the sophistication, ingenuity, and abilities of ancient northeastern Native populations.

When we think of the Stone Age in ancient America what comes to mind are groups of hunter-gatherers wandering the landscape, clad in animal skins, struggling against the elements to survive.

The first humans to appear in the Western Hemisphere, perhaps some twenty-five thousand years ago or longer, came from other areas on Earth where human development had been taking place for many millennia. In Across the Atlantic Ice, Dennis Stanford and Bruce Bradley’s Solutrean hypothesis puts sophisticated and advanced maritime-centered humans crossing the Atlantic in early transoceanic voyages in an early wave of migration and in the peopling of America.

The East Coast’s Red Paint culture and West Coast and maritime region’s Paleolithic cultures also speak to the sophistication and high level of civilization attained by ancient North American populations.

If the 5,300-year-old Tyrolean iceman found in 1991 in the Italian Alps is any indication of the sophistication of early man, by that time it seems the elements had been tamed by individuals who had an array of tools available that made it possible to travel through harsh environments with assured confidence.

From the coasts of America, up the river systems, by 10,000 BCE, we should not be surprised to see population centers established in proximity to vast, renewable resources, allowing sustainability and giving rise to the Adena, Hopewell, and Mississippian cultures in the Midwest and the eastern woodlands.

Today, the best surviving features of the Hopewell tradition era are mounds built for uncertain purposes. Great geometric earthworks are some of the most impressive Native American monuments from American prehistory. Eastern woodland mounds have various geometric shapes and rise to impressive heights. The function of the mounds is still under debate. Due to considerable evidence and surveys, plus the good survival condition of the largest mounds, more information can be obtained.

Several scientists, including Bradley T. Lepper, curator of archaeology for the Ohio Historical Society, hypothesize that the Octagon Earthwork, which is part of the Newark Earthworks at Newark, Ohio, was a lunar observatory oriented to the 18.6-year cycle of minimum and maximum lunar risings and settings on the local horizon. John Eddy, Ph.D., completed an unpublished survey in 1978 and proposed a lunar major alignment for the Octagon. Ray Hively and Robert Horn of Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, were the first researchers to analyze numerous lunar sightlines at the Newark Earthworks (1982) and the High Banks Works (1984) in Chillicothe, Ohio (Hively and Horn 2008). Christopher Turner noted that the Fairground Circle in Newark, Ohio, aligns to the sunrise on May 4; that is, that it marks the May cross-quarter sunrise (Turner 1982). In 1983, Turner demonstrated that the Hopeton Earthworks encode various sunrise and moonrise patterns, including the winter and summer solstices, the equinoxes, the cross-quarter days, the lunar maximum events, and the lunar minimum events (Turner 1983).

William F. Romain, Ph.D., of Ohio State University has written an article on the subject of “astronomers, geometers, and magicians” at the earthworks (Romain 2005).

Many of the mounds also contain various types of burials.

Although the origins of the Hopewell culture are still under discussion, there is probably not a lot that we can know or reasonably find out.

Hopewell populations seem to have originated in western New York and moved south into Ohio, where they built on the local Adena mortuary tradition. Or the Hopewell culture was said to have originated in western Illinois and spread by diffusion to southern Ohio. Similarly, the Havana Hopewell tradition was thought to have spread up the Illinois River and into southwestern Michigan, spawning Goodall Hopewell (Dancey and Pacheco 1997).

The name Hopewell was applied by Warren K. Moorehead after his explorations of the Hopewell Mound Group in Ross County, Ohio, in 1891 and 1892. The mound group itself was named for the family that owned the earthworks at the time. It is unknown what any of the various groups now defined as Hopewellian called themselves (Turner 1983, Romain 2005).

A case can be made for a far more sophisticated and well-developed culture with a complicated belief system and worldview. “City” centers, religious ceremonial activities, observation astronomy, and artistic pursuits were all elements of this high culture.

CALIFORNIA’S ANCIENT MARITIME HERITAGE

Although formal exploration has only recently begun, two basic types of cultural sites have been located in the underwater environment of California. They are Native American archaeological sites (and objects), and historic-era shipwrecks, cargo spills, or landing sites. California has a rich and varied maritime history. Native California peoples lived in large, settled villages along the Pacific coastline for many centuries before European contact. In some areas, such as along the Santa Barbara Channel and San Francisco Bay, these villages developed highly sophisticated technology for the time, with widespread trade using Native watercraft. Boat construction reached its highest development in California among the Chumash. Their plank canoe, called a tomol, impressed early European explorers of the California coast for its versatility and seaworthiness. Recent dating of middens on San Clemente Island (some sixty miles offshore) has documented an ancient maritime culture dating back some eight thousand years, perhaps earlier. Trading expeditions from the mainland to the Channel Islands to obtain steatite for soapstone bowls and effigy figurines were common. The remains of this prehistoric seafaring are being recorded by underwater archaeologists in quantities of artifacts recovered and preserved from the offshore areas. At least twenty-five individual sites have been reported between Ventura Beach and Point Conception. A recent exploration of Goleta State Beach yielded six stone bowls in one dive. Many other similar sites no doubt await discovery.

The lakes and rivers of California also contain valuable prehistoric sites. Fish traps at Ahjumawi Lava Springs State Park demonstrate the systematic management and harvest of suckers by Native people. Submerged bedrock mortars in Emerald Bay await dating and interpretation. Other submerged sites and preserved prehistoric watercraft have been reported in rivers and lakes.

The rise in sea level over the past ten thousand years has resulted in the submergence of many archaeological sites. One well-known area at the edge of the La Jolla submarine canyon has yielded more than two thousand stone bowls, from depths ranging up to eighty feet. This site is a submerged village, dated by archaeologists at four thousand to five thousand years old. A great deal of information on sea-level changes and the ancient cultures that first colonized California can be learned at such sites. John W. Foster, senior California state archaeologist, says that he has no doubt that the greatest archaeological finds of the next few decades and centuries will lie in discoveries located beneath the surface of the world’s oceans.

Fig. 1.1. These bowls are from a submerged archaeology site and speak to the sophistication and skill of the people who made them.

Along the eastern seaboard of North America, until the Younger Dryas period began around 11,500 BCE, fauna flourished in the woods, meadows, and swampy marshes. Evidence of this comes from the many remains of long-extinct species found throughout the region. In upstate New York’s Orange County alone, sixty-six sets of mastodon remains have been discovered. The earliest, discovered in the late 1700s, was visited by Thomas Jefferson, who had the skeleton put on display in Philadelphia.

In the fall of 2014 and late spring of 2015, the most recent of these discoveries was excavated by archaeologist Richard Michael Gramly, organizer of the American Society for Amateur Archaeology. It seems a farmer plowing his field north of Middletown, New York, struck something, which, upon investigation, was found to be mastodon bones. That lucky farmer then auctioned off the rights to excavate the find on his property. Gramly was hired by the highest bidder, after having been outbid himself. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to work for a short time alongside Gramly and his team on this project, in the fall and spring, and can report this old bull male most likely died of natural causes (old age) and was then scavenged by humans who came along later. An intact six-foot ivory tusk was excavated along with the rest of the remains, including the scapula, shown in figures 1.2–1.5. What was most interesting about this discovery was the fact that the carcass was disarticulated, and worn, discarded bone and ivory tools were discovered associated with the remains. According to Gramly, this is the first set of mastodon remains found in North America that has evidence of human interaction. Besides being disarticulated, there was also clear evidence of “chop” marks, made by the tool used to dismantle the carcass, found near the upper joint of the scapula where it meets the shoulder blade. New materials were taken to replace the older, worn implements. The animal’s remains were found in “black dirt” typical of what was once the floor of an ancient glacial lake. It died there around 13,600 BCE, according to carbon dating.

Fig. 1.2. Richard Michael Gramly observing the scapula in situ

Many of the mastodon sites in Orange County are located very near the Dutchess Quarry Cave, an archaeological site of extreme importance and age, which holds evidence at its deepest levels of some of the earliest human occupation on the North American continent, dating to 10,000 BCE or earlier, according to Gramly and others.

In the Hudson River valley and the surrounding hills and mountains, but especially near the rivers and streams, continuous habitation zones arose where resources were plentiful and renewable. Areas along the Hudson River, where major creeks and tributaries converged and were met by land travel corridors following streams and valleys and through mountain passes and watersheds, were ripe for sustained settlement. Such areas include present-day Poughkeepsie, Wappingers Falls, Catskill, and Kingston, where the Wallkill River (which flows into the Rondout Creek), the Rondout Creek, and the Esopus Creek (all navigable waterways for small craft) empty into the Hudson. Lithic industrial production and agricultural centers arose and were continuously inhabited for as long as humans have been in the area, well over twelve thousand years. This would have been more than enough time for “civilization” to develop, with its sophisticated set of beliefs and ceremonial practices, including sky watching.

Fig. 1.3. Close-up of mastodon scapula in situ

Fig. 1.4. Richard Michael Gramly holding the mastodon scapula

Fig. 1.5. Mastodon scapula showed evident “chop” marks.

Could these Stone Age Neolithic hunters have had a hand in constructing some of the stone mounds and purposeful piles and walls found along the mountainsides and hilltops of the region? Could building in stone have been part of their belief system and practiced as an expression of those beliefs? Could evidence still exist and be found to support such thoughts? These are not unreasonable questions to pose and look into. In E. M. Ruttenber’s book Indian Tribes of Hudson’s River, a quick word search for “stone piles” or “stone mounds” finds more than thirty references to such constructions, as used by Native tribes of the region for various purposes, including trail marking, marking a special event (such as a battle), or as grave markers. Ruttenber also affirms that it was the women of the tribes who were the sky watchers and planting planners (Ruttenber 1872).

Finally, a team of astronomers is exploring what might be described as the first astronomical observing tool, potentially used by prehistoric humans six thousand years ago. Researchers from the University of Wales and Nottingham Trent University, including astronomers Fabio Silva and Daniel Brown suggest that the long, narrow entrance passages to ancient stone, or “megalithic,” tombs may have enhanced what early human cultures could see in the night sky, an effect that could have been interpreted as the ancestors granting special power to the initiated.

The team presented their study at the National Astronomy Meeting, held June 2016 in Nottingham, England.

The team plans further research to investigate how a simple aperture, for example, an opening or doorway, affects the observation of slightly fainter stars. They will focus this study on passage graves, which are a type of megalithic tomb composed of a chamber of large interlocking stones and a long, narrow entrance. These spaces are thought to have been sacred, and the sites may have been used for rites of passage where the initiate would spend the night inside the tomb with no natural light apart from that shining down the narrow entrance lined with the remains of the tribe’s ancestors.

These structures could therefore have been the first astronomical tools to support the watching of the skies, millennia before telescopes were invented. Kieran Simcox, a student at Nottingham Trent University, who is leading the project, commented, “It is quite a surprise that no one has thoroughly investigated how for example the color of the night sky impacts on what can be seen with the naked eye.” The first sighting in the year of a star after its long absence from the night sky might have been used as a seasonal marker and could indicate, for example, the start of a migration to summer grazing grounds. The timing of this could have been seen as secret knowledge or foresight, only obtained after a night spent in contact with the ancestors in the depths of a passage grave, since the star may not have been observable from outside. However, the team suggests it could actually have been the result of the ability of the human eye to spot stars in such twilight conditions, given the small entrance passages of the tombs.

The yearly National Astronomy Meetings have always had some aspects of cultural astronomy present in their schedules. For the third year running, the 2016 meeting included a designated session exploring the connection between the sky, societies, cultures, and people throughout time. The session organizer over the past three years, Daniel Brown, Ph.D., of Nottingham Trent University, said, “It highlights the cultural agenda within astronomy, also recognized by the inclusion of aspects of ancient astronomy within the GCSE [general certificate of secondary education] astronomy curriculum.”