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Comments on Spaulding's report on overkill
QUATERNARY
RESEARCH
22, 140-141
Comments
(1984)
on Spaulding’s
W. Geoffrey Spaulding’s short report, “The Overkill Hypothesis As a Plausible Explanation for the Extinction of Late Wisconsin Megafauna,” in Quaternary Research (Spaulding, 1983), is most interesting and somewhat amusing. Faced with the failure of the archaeological community to accept his overkill hypothesis, he here resorts to psychology and the ingenious proposal that archaeologists are subconsciously influenced by Rousseau! They, he says, cannot conceive that the “noble savage” could have been so cruel and bloodthirsty as to have exterminated, for instance, the equally noble mammoth. He is, of course, up against the ingrained conservatism of the entrenched academic archaeologists, which for so long resisted the concept of Folsom man, and which also stubbornly resists the hypothesis that man was in the New World prior to 11,000 yr B.P. Here Spaulding is hoist by his own petard, in his final paragraph in which he states categorically that “archaeologists who accept the thesis that late Pleistocene man was present in North America must perforce reject the overkill hypothesis since, integral to it, is the proposition that humans first entered the unglaciated Western Hemisphere at about 11,000 yr ago.” This statement is as conservative and “stonewall” as the position of those conservatives whom he so eloquently criticizes. As one who has been, and still is, up against the resistance of some archaeologists to consider the possibility of man’s presence in our southwest deserts prior to 11,000 yr B.P. or so, I sympathize with Spaulding. I have worked in the unique archaeological laboratory of the Sierra Pina$3.00
Copyright 8 1984 by the University of Washington. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.
on Overkill
cate, in northwest Sonora, for some 25 yr, and the evidence accumulated there leads me inexorably to the hypothesis that man has been there for more than 40,000 yr and probably since the last high sea stand of an interglacial period. This hypothesis is based on geomorphological and technological grounds, supported by 14C ages of food shell from aeolian dunes flanking long-extinct estuaries of the Bay of Adair, west of Pinacate, and lately by the promisingly powerful new tool of cation-ratio dating of desert varnish (Dorn, 1983). I have published a series of papers on this subject (Hayden, 1967, 1976, 1981, 1982), yet the conservatives insist, in effect, that only a well-preserved skull with an imperishable tantalum dog tag clenched between its teeth and the excavation supervised and approved by a team of recognized (read conservative) archaeologists, will resolve the impasse. So much for that. I see no conflict whatsoever between man’s occupation of the New World prior to 11,000 yr B.P. and Spaulding’s hypothesis of Clovis-caused extinction of the megafauna. Earlier occupation of the New World, by hunters and gatherers without stone projectile points, to me corresponds to the pre-Anglo presence of the peoples of Africa, where big game flourished until the English came with their repeating rifles and the subsequent distribution of these effective killing devices to the native population. The Clovis spearpoint clearly was an innovation corresponding to the rifle, with the attendant technology of its use, and may well have caused the wiping out of the now extinct genera, many of which were slow in reproducing. To carry this analogy further, like the English in Africa, the Clovis hunters 140
0033-5894/84
Report
LETTERS
141
TO THE EDITOR
seem to have come on safari to southern Arizona and northwest Mexico, staying only a few hundred years at the most, leaving their characteristic spear-points, and having little influence if any upon the indigenes. I would recommend as a slight comfort to Dr. Spaulding that he consider this thought: the man who in a moment of Einsteinian genius conceived and produced the Clovis point (obviously an exaggeration) undoubtedly faced the same opposition from the old men of his band, on religious, ethical, and moral grounds, and because of his departure from the wisdom imparted by Grandpa around the campfires in the evenings, that such heretical notions as overkill and early man arouse today. I suggest that our early genius had as much trouble making his point as Spaulding has in making his. And, of course, had the Clovis point been a failure, we would have heard no more of it. The same is true of the theses here discussed.
REFERENCES Dom, R. I. (1983). Cation-ratio dating: A new rock varnish age determination technique. Quaternary Research 20, 49-73. Hayden, J. D. (1967). A summary prehistory and history of the Sierra Pinacate, Sonora, Mexico. American Antiquity 32, 335-344. Hayden, J. D. (1976). Pre-altithermal archeology in the Sierra Pinacate, Sonora, Mexico. American Antiquity 41, 274-289. Hayden, J. D. (1981). In Current Research. American Antiquity 46, 933. Hayden, J. D. (1982). Ground figures of the Sierra Pinacate. In “Hohokam and Patayan: Prehistory of Southwest Arizona” (R. H. McGuire and M. B. Schiffer, Eds.), Appendix I, pp. 581-588. Academic Press, New York. Spaulding, W. G. (1983). The overkill hypothesis as a plausible explanation for the extinctions of late Wisconsin megafauna. Quaternary Research 20, 110112. JULIAN
D. HAYDEN
4239 Bellevue Avenue Tucson, Arizona 85712
RESEARCH
22, 140-141
Comments
(1984)
on Spaulding’s
W. Geoffrey Spaulding’s short report, “The Overkill Hypothesis As a Plausible Explanation for the Extinction of Late Wisconsin Megafauna,” in Quaternary Research (Spaulding, 1983), is most interesting and somewhat amusing. Faced with the failure of the archaeological community to accept his overkill hypothesis, he here resorts to psychology and the ingenious proposal that archaeologists are subconsciously influenced by Rousseau! They, he says, cannot conceive that the “noble savage” could have been so cruel and bloodthirsty as to have exterminated, for instance, the equally noble mammoth. He is, of course, up against the ingrained conservatism of the entrenched academic archaeologists, which for so long resisted the concept of Folsom man, and which also stubbornly resists the hypothesis that man was in the New World prior to 11,000 yr B.P. Here Spaulding is hoist by his own petard, in his final paragraph in which he states categorically that “archaeologists who accept the thesis that late Pleistocene man was present in North America must perforce reject the overkill hypothesis since, integral to it, is the proposition that humans first entered the unglaciated Western Hemisphere at about 11,000 yr ago.” This statement is as conservative and “stonewall” as the position of those conservatives whom he so eloquently criticizes. As one who has been, and still is, up against the resistance of some archaeologists to consider the possibility of man’s presence in our southwest deserts prior to 11,000 yr B.P. or so, I sympathize with Spaulding. I have worked in the unique archaeological laboratory of the Sierra Pina$3.00
Copyright 8 1984 by the University of Washington. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.
on Overkill
cate, in northwest Sonora, for some 25 yr, and the evidence accumulated there leads me inexorably to the hypothesis that man has been there for more than 40,000 yr and probably since the last high sea stand of an interglacial period. This hypothesis is based on geomorphological and technological grounds, supported by 14C ages of food shell from aeolian dunes flanking long-extinct estuaries of the Bay of Adair, west of Pinacate, and lately by the promisingly powerful new tool of cation-ratio dating of desert varnish (Dorn, 1983). I have published a series of papers on this subject (Hayden, 1967, 1976, 1981, 1982), yet the conservatives insist, in effect, that only a well-preserved skull with an imperishable tantalum dog tag clenched between its teeth and the excavation supervised and approved by a team of recognized (read conservative) archaeologists, will resolve the impasse. So much for that. I see no conflict whatsoever between man’s occupation of the New World prior to 11,000 yr B.P. and Spaulding’s hypothesis of Clovis-caused extinction of the megafauna. Earlier occupation of the New World, by hunters and gatherers without stone projectile points, to me corresponds to the pre-Anglo presence of the peoples of Africa, where big game flourished until the English came with their repeating rifles and the subsequent distribution of these effective killing devices to the native population. The Clovis spearpoint clearly was an innovation corresponding to the rifle, with the attendant technology of its use, and may well have caused the wiping out of the now extinct genera, many of which were slow in reproducing. To carry this analogy further, like the English in Africa, the Clovis hunters 140
0033-5894/84
Report
LETTERS
141
TO THE EDITOR
seem to have come on safari to southern Arizona and northwest Mexico, staying only a few hundred years at the most, leaving their characteristic spear-points, and having little influence if any upon the indigenes. I would recommend as a slight comfort to Dr. Spaulding that he consider this thought: the man who in a moment of Einsteinian genius conceived and produced the Clovis point (obviously an exaggeration) undoubtedly faced the same opposition from the old men of his band, on religious, ethical, and moral grounds, and because of his departure from the wisdom imparted by Grandpa around the campfires in the evenings, that such heretical notions as overkill and early man arouse today. I suggest that our early genius had as much trouble making his point as Spaulding has in making his. And, of course, had the Clovis point been a failure, we would have heard no more of it. The same is true of the theses here discussed.
REFERENCES Dom, R. I. (1983). Cation-ratio dating: A new rock varnish age determination technique. Quaternary Research 20, 49-73. Hayden, J. D. (1967). A summary prehistory and history of the Sierra Pinacate, Sonora, Mexico. American Antiquity 32, 335-344. Hayden, J. D. (1976). Pre-altithermal archeology in the Sierra Pinacate, Sonora, Mexico. American Antiquity 41, 274-289. Hayden, J. D. (1981). In Current Research. American Antiquity 46, 933. Hayden, J. D. (1982). Ground figures of the Sierra Pinacate. In “Hohokam and Patayan: Prehistory of Southwest Arizona” (R. H. McGuire and M. B. Schiffer, Eds.), Appendix I, pp. 581-588. Academic Press, New York. Spaulding, W. G. (1983). The overkill hypothesis as a plausible explanation for the extinctions of late Wisconsin megafauna. Quaternary Research 20, 110112. JULIAN
D. HAYDEN
4239 Bellevue Avenue Tucson, Arizona 85712