CLOVIS AND THE AMERICAN MASTODON AT BIG BONE LICK, KENTUCKY Academic Article

abstract

• Contemporaneity of people and the American mastodon (Mammut americanum) at Big Bone Lick, Kentucky, has been extensively debated for more than two hundred years. Newly interpreted stratigraphic excavations and direct AMS C measurements on mastodon bones from Big Bone Lick, Kentucky, indicate that the megafauna are a palimpsest of fossils spanning at least 1,200 calendar years (11,020 30 to 12,210 35 RC yr B.P.). The radiocarbon evidence indicates that mastodons and Clovis people overlapped in time; however, other than one fossil with a possible cut mark and Clovis artifacts that are physically associated with but dispersed within the bone-bearing deposits, there is no incontrovertible evidence that humans hunted Mammut americanum at the site.

authors

• Waters, Michael

published proceedings

• AMERICAN ANTIQUITY

altmetric score

• 3

author list (cited authors)

• Tankersley, K. B., Waters, M. R., & Stafford, T.

citation count

• 12

complete list of authors

• Tankersley, Kenneth B||Waters, Michael R||Stafford, Thomas W Jr

publication date

• July 2009

publisher

• Cambridge University Press (CUP)  Publisher

published in

• American Antiquity  Journal

keywords

• 43 History, Heritage And Archaeology
• 4301 Archaeology

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

• 10.1017/S0002731600048757

start page

• 558

end page

• 567

volume

• 74

issue

• 3

URL

• http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0002731600048757