Archaeology | Paleo-Indian site might demonstrate early ritual

One hallmark of humanity is the rich world of symbols we have constructed to give meaning to our lives.

And when we die, our loved ones mark our passing with symbols of honor and commemoration appropriate to our status and beliefs.

At what point in our evolutionary journey did we become attuned to the potential symbolic significance of objects? When did our imaginations open to the possibility that a drinking cup could be a sacred chalice?

Ultimately, archaeology is the discipline that must provide the answer to these questions. However, distinguishing symbols from merely utilitarian objects represents one of our greatest challenges.

Without guidance from written records or oral traditions, how can you know that a hammer was a judge’s gavel?

The earthen mounds of eastern North America are rich with symbolic meaning, but glimpses of the ceremonial lives of more-ancient peoples who lived lighter on the land and built no enduring monuments are much harder to catch.

Canadian archaeologists Brian Deller and Christopher Ellis have been studying the Crowfield site in southwestern Ontario since the 1980s. In a recently published report, the researchers make the bold claim that the area is “one of the most important Paleo-Indian sites ever reported.”

The reason for its importance, they say, is the light it casts on the symbolic aspects of ancient lives.

The Crowfield site is on a sandy knoll near the town of Strathroy. The principal feature is a shallow pit that contains the burned fragments of more than 180 flint tools, including 17 spear points of a type known to have been used by some of the earliest people to inhabit the region — the so-called Paleo-Indians.

Deller and Ellis say the pit represents the cremation burial of a Paleo-Indian, but they argue that any ancient bones that might have been present there have completely decomposed over the millennia.

With no human remains to go by, why do they say it was a cremation?

Deller and Ellis painstakingly demonstrated that the artifacts were tools that had been used, but not used up. Second, the tools had been burned where they were found. Moreover, the burning had been deliberate.

Deller and Ellis argue that this collection of artifacts constituted the basic tool kit of an individual Paleo-Indian.

Since it’s unlikely that someone would deliberately destroy all of his or her tools, which were in good working order, the simplest explanation was that the person had died and the tools had been cremated along with the body.

Whether the group believed the deceased would need those tools in the afterlife or feared the spirit of the departed would be dangerously attached to them, this deposit of flint artifacts had become more than mere tools.

Their destruction represented the loss of valuable objects to the band and might have satisfied some sacred ritual obligation.

Deller’s and Ellis’ work at Crowfield is a landmark in Great Lakes archaeology because of what it adds to our knowledge of Paleo-Indian ritual and how it shows that archaeology can glean this knowledge from bits of broken flint.

Bradley T. Lepper is curator of archaeology at the Ohio Historical Society.
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/science/2012/04/15/paleo-indian-site-might-demonstrate-early-ritual.html