THE EARLIEST BEAD MANUFACTURE IN THE AMERICAS AT THE PALEO-INDIAN JONES-MILLER SITE, WRAY, COLORADO
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THE EARLIEST BEAD MANUFACTURE IN THE AMERICAS AT THE PALEO-INDIAN JONES-MILLER SITE, WRAY, COLORADO Pamela Vandiver* and Amy Vandiver Gruhl** *Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721 USA **Scientific Solutions, Nashua, NH USA ABSTRACT Analysis of the composition and microstructure of a Paleo-Indian micro-bead fragment from the Jones-Miller bison-kill site in Wray, Colorado, USE, and dated by radiocarbon testing to 10,200 years ago, showed that fine-motor movements were used to execute a sequence of manufacture on a singular bead. The process involved cleaving a soft, bedded oil shale, diagonally scraping a tubular surface and double-drilling a hole. The last operation caused the bead to fracture, after which it was deposited in a hearth. The raw material consists of bedded clay, silt, opal and quartz particles cemented with carbonaceous material. The presence of similar locally available oil shale with opal inclusions indicates that the raw material was acquired near the Jones-Miller site. Because of high cultural value and small size, only non-destructive analytical techniques were used to characterize the bead, including optical microscopy, UV-VIS, PIXE and XRD. Some 50-micron, previously detached particles were tested by SEM-EDS and compared to local clayey materials, both heat-treated and non-heat-treated, to show that no heat treatment sufficient to cause sintering had occurred. A resource survey in the area around the site and 50 miles to the south produced several comparative materials that were tested by the same methods given above as well as the added methods of DTA and refiring tests. INTRODUCTION The Jones-Miller site, dating to 10,200 B.P. is a Paleo-Indian site in near Wray in northwestern Colorado [1]. Janice and Robert B. Jones, Jr., discovered the bison kill site in 1972 when they were installing an irrigation system on their ranch. On the edge of a plateau and along a small canyon leading to the river below, the remains of a Hell-Gap style antique bison (Bison antiquus) pound were excavated between 1973 and 1975 by an archaeological team led by Dennis Stanford with support from the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History and the National Geographic Society [2]. The finds amounted to 41,000 buffalo bones (Bison antiquus) representing nearly 300 individual animals, 248 stone artifacts and tools most used in butchering, and many thousands of other small animal bones, snails and other related materials and hearths. The site provides evidence for a communal bison kill in which a hunter-gatherer band of perhaps fifty to seventy-five people drove a herd of bison into a brush corral and prepared various materials from the animals for feasting and later use. Skeletal remains of both wolf and what have been tentatively identified as domestic dog were found in the vicinity
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