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Geoarchaeological and Paleohydrological Evidence for a Clovis-Age Drought in North America and Its Bearing on Extinction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

C. Vance Haynes Jr.
C. Vance Haynes Jr.*
Affiliation:
Departments of Anthropology and Geosciences, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona 85721
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Abstract

At the Murray Springs Clovis site in southeastern Arizona, stratigraphic and geomorphic evidence indicates that an abnormally low water table 10,900 yr B.P. was followed soon thereafter by a water-table rise accompanied by the deposition of an algal mat (the “black mat”) that buried mammoth tracks, Clovis artifacts, and a well. This water-table fluctuation correlates with pluvial lake fluctuations in the Great Basin during and immediately following Clovis occupation of that region. Many elements of Pleistocene megafauna in North America became extinct during the dry period. Oxygen isotope records show a marked decrease in δ18O correlated with the Younger Dryas cold-dry event of northern Europe which ended 10,750 yr B.P., essentially the same time as the water table began to rise in southeastern Arizona. Clovis hunters may have found large game animals easier prey when concentrated at water holes and under stress. If so, both climate and human predation contributed to Pleistocene extinction in America.

Type
Research Article
Information
Quaternary Research , Volume 35 , Issue 3-Part1 , May 1991 , pp. 438 - 450
Copyright
University of Washington

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