Sandia Cave, New Mexico: Is There Evidence for a Late Pleistocene Peopling of the Americas?

The peopling of the Americas has been an exciting field of investigation over the last decade. From the discovery or rediscovery of ancient indigenous Native American skeletons such as the Kennewick Man, Spirit Cave Mummy, Gordon Creek Woman, Daisy Cave Woman, and others to the emerging evidence of an earlier peopling based on mtDNA and Y Chromosome human genetic evidence, our understanding of the early peopling of the Americas has drastically changed. The historically favored Clovis-first hypothesis has been replaced by a different model – one arguing for several waves of people migrating from Asia into North America along the Northwest Coast some 20,000 to 15,000 years before present.

In adjusting our understanding of this historic peopling event, many of the early and first discovered sites – which were initially discredited – are being reexamined. Using new technology scientists are asking whether these sites representative of this early peopling, or whether they reflect occupation episodes after the initial peopling of North America? One of the first sites discovered that was championed as evidence of a late Pleistocene Native American occupation was Sandia Cave, located in central New Mexico. Discovered in 1935 by a student from the University of New Mexico (UNM) and was excavated by UNM archaeologist Frank Hibben and his field crews from 1936 to 1940, the cave was historically one of only a few sites in North America in which evidence of human occupation was associated with the remains of extinct Pleistocene fauna (e.g., mammoth, mastodon, horse, camel). Prior to the formal acceptance of radiocarbon dating in 1951, dating of archaeological sites such as Sandia Cave was extremely difficult and relied mainly on associated geological, paleoclimatic, and paleontological evidence. As such, the extinct fauna identified from Sandia Cave were therefore particularly significant when first discovered because they provided a way to estimate the age of early Native American habitation in North America.

Almost from the moment that the site was first publicized it has been embroiled in controversy. Much of the controversy surrounds the artifacts, Pleistocene fauna, and their correct affiliation. That is, because the ancient Native American artifacts and Pleistocene faunal bones were recovered in mixed and poorly identifiable stratographic layers, this correlation and dating of the artifacts was inconclusive. Recently, Thompson and colleagues (Thompson, Sugiyama, and Morgan 2008) conducted a comprehensive taxonomic and taphonomic analysis of the Pleistocene fauna, going beyond the simple taxonomic list provided by Gazin and Schultz (in Hibben 1941:33), in order to see if there was any evidence of human modification on the bones themselves.

They discovered that only two percent of the assemblage contained possible traces of human modification, and that of this percentage none were determined to be of high confidence. Those that were identified as possible cut or percussion marks could easily be cut mark mimics from trampling or very tiny rodent gnaw marks. In the instance that some marks were the result of human activity, the proportion was small enough to rule out humans as a major accumulator of all the small mammals at the site. This specifically includes extralimital species, such as the yellow-bellied marmot (Marmota flaviventris), which could have been used to argue for a Pleistocene human occupation of Sandia Cave.

As such, the taphonomic analysis by Thompson and colleagues provides a revised interpretation of how and when humans used Sandia Cave, and what their involvement was with the large and small mammals found at the site. On the whole, most of the Pleistocene fossil fauna, including extinct species, were accumulated by carnivores and deposited in the cave. In doing so, they left large quantities of tooth marks and gastrically etched fragments, and also consumed most of the spongy bone present in long bone ends and axial elements. Resident rodents then further modified the bones by gnawing. There are some infrequent traces of human involvement with the Pleistocene fauna, including two bone tools. However, no human modification was discovered on any fragments that could be positively identified as an extinct or extralimital species. Thus, the study lends no support to Hibben’s (1941) assertion that the stone tools and large mammal fauna were behaviorally linked, or that Sandia Cave was utilized during the initial peopling of North America.

References

Hibben, Frank C. 1941. Evidences of Early Occupation in Sandia Cave, New Mexico, and other Sites in the Sandia-Manzano Region. Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections Vol. 99, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.

Thompson, Jessica C.; Sugiyama, Nawa; and Morgan, Gary S. 2008. Taphonomic Analysis of the Mammalian Fauna from Sandia Cave, New Mexico, and the "Sandia Man" Controversy. American Antiquity 73(2): 337-360.

Further Reading

Dillehay, Thomas D. 2001. The Settlement of the Americas: A New Prehistory. Basic Books.

Jablonski, Nina G., ed. 2002. The First Americans: The Pleistocene Colonization of the New World. University of California Press.

Justice, Noel D. 2002. Stone Age Spear and Arrow Points of the Southwestern United States. Indiana University Press.

Morrow, Juliet E., ed. 2007. Paleoindian Archaeology: A Hemispheric Perspective. University Press of Florida.