WHISPERS IN THE WIND - An Avonlea Story

WHISPERS in the WIND

Avonlea of the Great Late Prehistoric Guessing Game

by John Bradford Branney

Figure One - A piskun, a steep cliff used by prehistoric and historic
Native Americans used it as a jump-off point for herds of bison.   

Piskun

The billowing clouds of yellow dust were thick and stifling. The snorts and bleats from the beasts were deafening. Through the opaque dust cloud, a dark-colored mass could be seen under the shadow of a sandstone escarpment. Another sound, barely above a whisper, was also heard: the twanging of bow strings as dozens of arrows sped through the air, mimicking whispers in the wind.

The base of the escarpment was surrounded by a crude rail fence made from posts and cross members cut from poplar trees. The fence rails were taller than the prehistoric hunters who hid behind them, firing arrows at the dark mass moving in front of them. Angled logs braced the outside of the corral, and sharpened poles, around the height of a full-grown bison’s beard, pointed into the corral. If somehow the beasts survived the fall from the cliff, the spikes were meant to impale any beasts that tried to ram the corral's fence. 

Behind the protection of the fence, prehistoric hunters stood and fired arrow after arrow. Each arrow was tipped with thin, needle-sharp stone projectile points, similarly made and crafted with high-quality stone by the finest flintknappers within the tribes. Once the air cleared of dust and debris, it became clear that the dark-colored mound was a tangled mess of bison. Some bison were already dead, while others were wounded and still thrashing about. The occasional bellow from a disabled bison was met with a slew of arrows until the sound ended. 

A faint rumble of thunder above the escarpment interrupted the short-lived quietness. Shouting hunters waving blankets and shooting arrows somehow turned the rest of the panicked bison herd back toward the escarpment edge. Bison skulls and shoulder humps bobbed up and down as the bison galloped toward the precipice. The resonance grew louder until it became the thundering hooves and guttural roars from the beasts. 

Figure Two. 

The archers behind their protective fence watched the top of the cliff intently. Bison appeared and tried to turn away from the precipice, but were pushed over the edge by the rest of the herd. Launched into space, airborne bison pawed desperately at the sky, seeking solid ground from thin air. A few bison leapt from the cliff as if that could save them, while others clung desperately to the edge of the escarpment. Bison poured over the edge of the cliff like a living waterfall, and then crashed into the ground, raising a thick, choking cloud of dust. Grunts, air escaping lungs, and the repugnant sound of snapping bones resonated from the natural amphitheater alongside the escarpment. Drawstrings from bows shuddered as swift arrows penetrated the bodies of the bison. Eventually, there were no more bison left to fall.

 The dust eventually settled at the base of the cliff. The whispering of arrows ceased. The hunters cautiously moved into the same corral with the fallen bison. Bowstrings remained taut against readied arrows. There was nothing more dangerous than a wounded bison thrashing about with its deadly hooves. As the hunters crept through the carnage, sound or movement was met with arrows. When the hunters saw that the corral was secured, they yelled and waved their arms in the air. The killing field soon swarmed with a hundred or so men, women, and children, laughing and celebrating the good fortune.  

For generations, small bands of humans came together at that spot every third or fourth autumn to trap and butcher bison at the bottom of that escarpment. Some hunts were better than others; that one turned out to be one of the better ones. Trapping bison was a dangerous business, and fortunately, no tribe members were killed that day, at least not yet. As quickly as the celebration began, it ended. There was backbreaking work that needed to be done. Even after death, stomach acids in the bison carcasses produced heat, and the autumn day was warming up. The butchers needed to disembowel the beasts as soon as possible to relieve the carcasses of that trapped heat. If the butchers waited too long, the meat would spoil, and the hides would become too tough to remove with stone knives. Every person in the tribes knew their role. Looking down from a passing cloud, the hustling people looked like ants cleaning up an anthill after a heavy rainstorm. Women and children fetched firewood for roasting pits while the men untangled the big mess of dead bison. One by one, the men dragged the carcasses from the heap to more level ground for butchering.

Once the carcasses were separated from the pile, the butchers disemboweled the beasts. While doing that, the ravenous people snacked on such nutritious delicacies as raw kidneys (those spoiled first), livers, hearts, lungs, stomachs, and gall bladders. The butchers then repositioned each bison carcass mostly onto its belly with legs sprawled as much as possible. Two butchers per carcass went to work. To extract residual heat from the carcasses, the butchers removed the thick, insulated hide by first making a deep incision down the backbone of the beast. Then, they ripped and tugged, pulling each hide down to the ground on both sides of the beast. That allowed the carcasses to cool off, and the hide made an excellent mat for protecting the butchered meat from the ground. 

While one butcher held and positioned the carcass, the other butcher went to work chopping, sawing, and cutting. The tender cuts of meat on the back were extracted first, followed by the forelegs, shoulders, hump meat, and rib cages. With hammerstones, choppers, and stone knives, the butchers harvested the hindquarters, hind legs, neck, and skull. As the meat was stripped from the carcasses, women cut it into strips and hung it on the fenceline and on sage to dry. At the end of the day, the women would collect the dried meat for making pemmican later. From the bison skulls, the women extracted two more delicacies: the brain and the tongue. The children played an important role by carrying meat back to the main camp. Boys and girls also hustled to replace the dull, greasy stone knives the butchers were using with freshly sharpened ones. Trapped by the stuffy environment under the escarpment, the pungent smell of spilled blood and musky hides permeated the air as the unattended carcasses already began to rot.  

After hours of intensive work, the butchers were well beyond exhausted and covered from head to toe in grease and blood. Sore muscles and full bellies would help them sleep well that night. The rest of the people were exhausted as well. That was hard work carrying large chunks of bison limbs, rib sections, briskets, croups, and backbones back to the nearby camp where the meat could be processed further. The last chore for the people was collecting anything that would burn - combustible wood, sage, and even dried bison chips - and then throwing it on the unbutchered carcasses. By early evening, the people's work was done. Their last action was to set fire to the site and burn what remained.

That night, against the bright light of a bonfire, the people celebrated their good fortune and thanked their gods and the spirits of the bison that died so that they could survive.   

References

Brink, Jack W.

2010  Imagining Head-Smashed-In - Aboriginal Buffalo Hunting on the Northern Plains. Athabasca University Press. Edmonton.

Wheat, Joe Ben

1967  “A Paleo-Indian Kill Site.” In Early Man in America, Scientific American. W.H. Freeman and Company. San Francisco.

 

 

Avonlea – People of the North

 

According to Frison (1991:111), the Late Prehistoric Period on the high plains was arbitrarily assigned to a starting date of around A.D. 500. That time period was established based on an overall trend toward smaller projectile points. Most archaeologists and researchers attribute the smaller size of projectile points to the introduction of the bow and arrow, a new weapon system that would ultimately replace the atlatl or spear thrower.

The introduction of the bow and arrow provided its early adopters with a key competitive advantage over users of the atlatl. While the atlatl performed more like a lever, the bow operated more like a spring. The atlatl weapon system possessed an advantage over the bow in momentum and kinetic energy; however, the bow excelled in rapid firing, longer range, and accuracy. The bow and arrow provided a more efficient and effective means to kill bison and other prey animals. Reeves (1990:170) proclaimed that the bow and arrow shifted some of the focus away from large communal bison hunts over to an activity where individuals and smaller groups could be successful.

In October 1956, Bruce McCorquodale and Albert E. Swanston from the Saskatchewan Museum of Natural History visited a site in a valley in south-central Saskatchewan they called Avonlea (ă vŭn΄ lē). They found several tiny and delicate projectile points and a ceramic vessel on the ground surface. After excavating two test pits, McCorquodale and Swanston obtained a radiocarbon date of approximately A.D. 450. Kehoe and McCorquodale (1961:137) reported that the tiny, delicate arrowpoints were evidence of bow use at the Avonlea site. 

Figure Three. Avonlea arrowpoints surrounding an elk ivory pendant. 
All found in Montana by John Byrd. John Bradford Branney Collection. 

Earlier in 1953, at a bison drive site in southwestern Saskatchewan called Gull Lake, archaeologist Boyd Wettlaufer reported the same tiny, delicate arrowpoints that Kehoe and McCorquodale would later name Avonlea. Between 1953 and 1960, diggers vandalized portions of the Gull Lake site, and it was not until 1960 that Thomas Kehoe began a formal archaeological investigation (Kehoe 1973:15).

The investigation at Gull Lake determined that prehistoric hunters herded bison north across the glacial plains and into a deep ravine, where they plummeted down into a natural corral. There, the bison were ambushed by hunters and ultimately dispatched with hundreds of arrowtips. At Gull Lake, Kehoe excavated twenty feet of dense bone concentrations below the modern ground surface. Six individual bone layers demonstrated that the people who made Avonlea arrowpoints first visited Gull Lake around the first century A.D. and returned to the bison trap periodically through the seventh century A.D (Fagan 1995:138). In the area surrounding Gull Lake, investigators found evidence of campsites and tipi rings. That suggested that the people processed the bison nearby, and that the process was most likely a community affair. 

During Kehoe’s investigation at Gull Lake, he and his team identified three projectile point types with several varieties (Kehoe 1973:51-56). The three projectile point types from the oldest to youngest were Avonlea, Prairie Side-Notched, and Plains Side-Notched. Within the Avonlea projectile point type, Kehoe identified three varieties: Gull Lake or Classic, Carmichael Wide-Eared, and Timber Ridge Sharp-Eared. Figure Four was a sketch Kehoe published from his work at Gull Lake. Archaeological crews uncovered 676 total projectile points at Gull Lake, and of those, 333 projectile points were typed as Avonlea. Seventy-two percent of the Avonlea arrowpoints were the Gull Lake variety, which were dated around A.D. 200, with the other two varieties showing up at a later date. 

Figure Four. Gull Lake bison drive site arrowpoint variety 
(Kehoe 1973:50).  

Kehoe (1966:829) described Avonlea projectile points as small, side-notched arrowpoints with triangular blades, straight to slightly convex sides, V-shaped to U-shaped side notches placed low on the blade, and wide concave basal edges with barbs at the corners. The typical Avonlea arrowpoint was exceptionally thin with well-controlled flaking and outstanding workmanship. Avonlea arrowpoints stood out amongst projectile point types at the time. Kehoe (1973:199) wrote:  

“…the Avonlea people made the most effective projectile point type for bison killing: tiny, needle sharp, perfectly symmetrical, broad, and extremely thin. Nothing could stop it from deep penetration.”

Finding ceramics on Avonlea sites was also common (Vickers 1994:15). The pottery exhibited a wide range of forms from coconut-shaped to conoidal. The surface finish included impressed with fabric or nets, parallel grooved, or smooth. Decoration was simple with a row or rows of punctuates below the rim (Figure Five). However, the key index or diagnostic artifact of the Avonlea phase remains its distinctive projectile point.

 

Figure Five. Artist's conception of a reconstructed 
ceramic vessel from south-central Saskatchewan 
(Meyer and Hamilton 1994:109) 

Since those earlier discoveries, many other sites with Avonlea arrowpoints have been found and excavated. Most Avonlea sites were bison kills or sites of habitation and bison processing. Avonlea sites have now been reported in Saskatchewan, Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, Montana, the Dakotas, and Wyoming. In Montana, the sites were concentrated along the Missouri and Milk Rivers in the north-central part of the state. It did not appear that Avonlea ever reached as wide a geographical range as its contemporaries: Pelican Lake and Besant. Avonlea arrowpoints first showed up on the northern plains in Saskatchewan or Alberta with radiocarbon dates between 1860 and 1000 years ago at the Head-Smashed-In bison jump site in Alberta (Reeves 1978), and 1740 years ago at the Gull Lake bison drive site in southwestern Saskatchewan (Kehoe 1973). 

Based on an advanced weapon system, communal bison hunting, and extreme uniformity in projectile points, Reeves (1990:187) opined that Avonlea was a very tightly knit tradition in terms of technology. The consistency and exceptional workmanship of the projectile points suggested the possibility that highly specialized individuals or groups manufactured the projectile points and then traded them for other services within the society. That theory would explain the sheer volume of high-quality, similarly made Avonlea arrowpoints found at bison kill sites. Reeves (1990:187) wrote:

"Technically, Avonlea flintknapping is the finest since Paleoindian times. Many points are aesthetically beautifully made and finely finished, a pattern that characterizes other small tools in their assemblage.”

 

Brumley and Dau (1988:47) hypothesized that the Avonlea people's tight social and religious control could have kept proprietary knowledge about the bow weapon system away from their contemporaries, thus stalling the diffusion of the technology across the northern plains. That would explain why the Pelican Lake and Besant people retained the outdated atlatl weapon system long after Avonlea introduced the bow. The authors cited an example where that occurred in the Protohistoric/Historic Period. To control both the diffusion and use of horses, the horse-medicine cults of the Plains Indians used secrecy, fear, the supernatural, and elaborate rituals. 

At what appeared to be close to Avonlea’s southern reach, Frison (1973) reported a bison kill and processing site called Wardell in the Green River Basin of southwestern Wyoming. The radiocarbon date at the oldest level at Wardell indicated an age of 1580 years, falling within the range of other Avonlea sites. Even though only a small portion of the bison kill and corral was excavated, there were still 436 projectile points collected at Wardell (Frison 1988:155). The arrowpoints recovered showed a wide variation in size, workmanship, basal form, and location of notches. Frison wrote that only a few of the projectile points at Wardell could be regarded as identical or diagnostic to Avonlea as originally described by Kehoe and McCorquodale (1961).

At Wardell, there were enough potsherds to partially reconstruct a pointed-bottom vessel. Frison (1988:156) stated that the ceramic vessel and other potsherds were markedly different than the Intermountain Tradition ceramics that were usually found in the area.

Frison (1988) reported the existence of several Avonlea or Avonlea-like sites dispersed across Wyoming and south-central Montana. The sites included two burials, three rock shelters, and several open campsites. Frison (1988:168) stated that the Avonlea sites in Wyoming were easily distinguishable from non-Avonlea sites of similar age. He noted that Avonlea radiocarbon dates in his investigative area peaked around 1800 years ago and precipitously dropped at around one thousand years ago. Frison proposed no theory as to why Avonlea occurrences disappeared. He also could not explain why some Avonlea sites contained ceramics while others did not, and the source or sources of the ceramics remained unknown. Frison suggested that the connection between Avonlea in Wyoming and the Athabaskan migration to the Southwest should be investigated in the future.

Greiser (1994:40) wrote that Avonlea arrowpoints had been reported as far south as northeastern Colorado, but she warned that those claims should be viewed with caution.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: I have skepticism about any claim of Avonlea arrowpoints found in Colorado. I base my comment on four decades of surface-hunting for artifacts in northern Colorado. During that period, I have recovered several thousand culturally diagnostic projectile points and bases. Of those thousands of projectile points and bases, I might call three or four Avonlea arrowpoints, maybe. I am unaware of any surface collections, sites, or collectors in northern Colorado with Avonlea arrowpoints. There could be collectors or collections with Avonlea arrowpoints found in Colorado, but I am unaware of them. I have seen a few examples of what collectors call Avonlea, and I was not convinced that they were Avonlea. If the occasional Avonlea arrowpoint did appear in a collection in Colorado, it could have gotten there through the recycling efforts of a prehistoric person migrating south from Avonlea country.

My comment above reminds me of what one of the cofounders of the Avonlea site, Bruce McCorquodale (1985), wrote to Thomas F. Kehoe (1988:9) regarding the common problem of non-Avonlea arrowpoints being overidentified or misidentified as Avonlea arrowpoints:

 

“It seems to me some authors may erroneously identify some points as Avonlea, especially Classic Avonlea…If such errors are occurring, perhaps it could be pointed out that in dealing with Avonlea, it is not wise to base identification solely on published illustrations and descriptions which cannot fully distinguish two very important diagnostic features, namely the extremely delicate nature of the flaking and the pronounced thinness of the blade. As with all aristocrats, the Avonlea best reveals its poise and sophistication and therefore its identity, by personal contact.”

Figure Six. Avonlea arrowpoints from 
northern Wyoming and southern Montana. 
John Bradford Branney Collection. 

Where did the makers of Avonlea arrowpoints come from? What was their relationship to their contemporaries, the Pelican Lake and Besant people? Vickers (1994:10) published a graph showing various theories compiled by investigators and researchers trying to explain the relationships between Avonlea, Pelican Lake, Besant, and others (Figure Seven). Vickers appropriately called the graph the “Great Late Prehistoric Guessing Game.”  

Figure Seven. "The Great Late Prehistoric Guessing Game"
(Vickers 1994:10).  

Reeves (1983:39-40) organized the last three millennia of prehistory on the northern plains under two cultural traditions he called Tunaxa and Napikwan. He defined tradition as a “persistent configuration in several cultural systems which interact to produce an archaeological unit distinct from all other archaeological units conceived on the same criteria.” A tradition in the archaeological sense represented long-term and widespread cultural continuity. Reeves then divided his two cultural traditions into phases that were mostly based on changes in projectile point types. He defined a phase as “an archaeological unit possessing traits sufficiently characteristic to distinguish it from all other units similarly conceived, whether of the same or other cultures.” A phase was shorter-term and more localized than a tradition. Reeves understood that the projectile point types by themselves did not define each phase and that he required other criteria, such as age, lithic sources, tool types, ceramics, hunting habits, geography, and settlement/burial type. 

Reeves based his Tunaxa cultural tradition on his investigation at Head-Smashed-In, a deeply stratified bison jump site in Alberta (Figure XX). There, investigators found Avonlea projectile points overlying Pelican Lake projectile points and underlying Old Women’s projectile points. At the Head-Smashed-In site, Reeves and his team discovered corner-notched projectile points that were morphologically similar to Pelican Lake points but manufactured similarly to Avonlea points. Reeves assigned the Avonlea phase to his Tunaxa cultural tradition, coming after the Hanna and Pelican Lake phases.

As evidence of his Tunaxa cultural tradition, Reeves (1983:102) noted the continuity in lithic quarry preferences and settlement patterns between the Pelican Lake phase and the Avonlea phase. He stated that the transition between Pelican Lake and Avonlea occurred in Alberta and Saskatchewan sometime between A.D. 150 and A.D. 250. Reeves claimed that the Besant phase of his Napikwan cultural tradition then displaced the Avonlea phase around A.D. 700. He asserted that the Avonlea phase spread south from Saskatchewan and Alberta, arriving in northern Montana between A.D. 400 and 500, and in southern Montana between A.D. 500 and 600. Reeves proposed that by A.D. 900, the Avonlea phase disappeared from Montana. Reeves (1983:164) kept his options open by stating that if Avonlea was not an intrusive cultural tradition that migrated onto the northern plains, then it was part of the Pelican Lake phase of the Tunaxa cultural tradition or the Besant phase of the Napikwan cultural tradition. 

AUTHOR'S NOTE: A common projectile point type that I recover when hunting for artifacts in southern Wyoming and northern Colorado is barbed, corner-notched Pelican Lake atlatl dart points and knife forms. I have never found an Avonlea arrowpoint on the same sites where I find Pelican Lake projectile points, or at least that I am aware of. If Reeves’ theory about the Avonlea phase succeeding the Pelican Lake phase was correct, wouldn’t I find Avonlea arrowpoints on sites where I routinely find Pelican Lake projectile points? What I do discover on those sites are lots of corner-notched, occasionally barbed arrowpoints and bird points that resemble Pelican Lake atlatl dart points, but on a smaller scale.

Reeves’ Tunaxa theory drew fire from its share of critics. Brumley and Dau (1988:44) agreed that continuity in lithic sources was an excellent piece of evidence to prove Reeves’ Pelican Lake to Avonlea theory. However, Brumley and Dau’s investigations of foothill sites in Alberta and Saskatchewan did not yield the same results as Reeves did. They found that Pelican Lake and Avonlea used different lithic sources. Brumley and Dau also noted that at Mummy Cave in northern Wyoming, Pelican Lake atlatl points transitioned to stemmed and corner-notched arrowpoints instead of Avonlea or Head-Smashed-In Corner Notched arrowpoints.

Brumley and Dau proposed their own theory. They contended that two separate cultures made Pelican Lake projectile points in the core area of southcentral Saskatchewan, southeastern Alberta, and northern Montana. While one culture made Pelican Lake projectile points with convex bases, the other culture made Pelican Lake projectile points with straight bases. They argued that the culture that made straight-based Pelican Lake projectile points began using the bow and arrow as a secondary weapon as early as 1500 B.C. Then, around A.D. 200, straight-based Pelican Lake arrowpoints evolved into Avonlea arrowpoints in southcentral Saskatchewan, and from there, Avonlea technology expanded geographically. 

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I need to throw a bit of water on Brumley and Dau’s theory based on my artifact hunting experience south of their core area. When I find barbed, corner-notched Pelican Lake projectile points on sites in northern Colorado and southern Wyoming, they can indiscriminately have straight, concave, or convex bases. I have found all three basal types on the same sites. That suggests to me that the same Pelican Lake culture camped at the sites and made all three basal types. I find it hard to believe that different Pelican Lake cultures camped at those and flintknapped nearly identical barbed, corner-notched projectile points, with the only difference being the basal type. I must ask the question, "If straight-based Pelican Lake projectile points led to Avonlea arrowpoints, why haven't I found Avonlea arrowpoints on the same sites where I find straight-based Pelican Lake projectile points?”

Schlesier (1994:312) also disagreed with Reeves' Tunaxa theory. He proposed that Avonlea was a distinct culture entering the Saskatchewan basins from the mountains to the west and northwest during the first and second centuries A.D. He contended that the Avonlea people brought bow weapon technology with them. He suggested that the Pelican Lake people adopted the bow and arrow weapon system after encountering Avonlea groups in the mountains of Alberta. Pelican Lake then passed along that knowledge to affiliated groups to the south. Schlesier argued that Pelican Lake flourished in the highlands until A.D. 800-1000, while Avonlea inhabited the northern plains until A.D. 1200-1400. Therefore, he concluded, Avonlea was not sequent to Pelican Lake in the Tunaxa cultural tradition but contemporaries living side by side for around a thousand years.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: The study reviewed below by Morlan (1988) determined that Pelican Lake and Avonlea were contemporaries, but for a much shorter time than the thousand years proposed by Schlesier. In Morlan’s analysis, the temporal overlap between Pelican Lake and Avonlea was closer to three hundred years.

Kehoe (1966;1973) also interpreted Avonlea as a third cultural tradition, independent of Reeves’ Tunaxa and Napikwan cultural traditions. He proposed that the Avonlea people were Athabaskans migrating south from the boreal forests of northwestern Canada and Alaska. Once the Athabaskans reached the northern plains, Kehoe suggested the Athabaskans split into two groups around 1300 years ago, about the same time he determined the Avonlea sequence at the Gull Lake site ended (A.D. 660 ± 60). According to Kehoe's theory, one of the Athabaskan groups remained on the northern plains while the other one headed south, eventually settling in the American Southwest as the Navajo and Apache Indian tribes. Kehoe based his theory on the similarity between Avonlea arrowpoints and arrowpoints of the American Southwest. He also cited an Avonlea site along the border between Montana and Wyoming, where investigators dated the Avonlea sequence at around A.D. 880. Kehoe saw that as more evidence for the southern migration of the Athabaskans. Kehoe also proposed that the Athabaskan people brought large-scale communal hunting to the northern plains. He based that on the Athabaskans'  experience with large-scale caribou and reindeer drives in the boreal forest. 

 A criticism of Kehoe’s hypothesis was that the Avonlea phase was not the first large-scale communal bison hunting on the northern plains. Both Besant and Pelican Lake practiced that hunting tactic earlier in time. A second problem with Kehoe's hypothesis was that if the Avonlea phase originated in the northern boreal forest, wouldn't the older radiocarbon dates for Avonlea be to the north? 

Reeves (1983:163) brought up that second problem with Kehoe’s theory, and brought up another problem; there was no evidence for a technological ancestor of Avonlea in the boreal forest. Instead, Reeves supported a British Columbia or western Arctic technological origin for Avonlea arrowpoints, citing stemmed arrowpoints in the Fraser Canyon area as early as 1000 B.C. and the Western Arctic as early as 1800 B.C.

Figure Eight. Which is Which? 

Can you find the Avonlea arrowpoints?

John Bradford Branney Collection.

Morlan (1988:291) approached the “Great Late Prehistoric Guessing Game” from a different angle. He gathered all the available radiocarbon dates from Avonlea sites in the Upper, Middle, and Lower Saskatchewan Basins, the Assiniboine Basin, the Missouri Basin, the Kootenai Basin, Western Montana, and Beehive components in Wyoming, Montana, and South Dakota. He then calibrated the raw radiocarbon dates using a consistent, standardized approach. Morlan noted that while calibration only had a minor effect on the calendar age of Besant, it made Avonlea dates younger and many of the Old Women’s dates older. Morlan suggested that to have any discussion in calendar years, calibration of radiocarbon dates was an absolute must.

In his examination of radiocarbon dates for Avonlea and the other phases, Morlan (1988:298) noted concerns about how radiocarbon dates had been collected, sampled, calibrated, and reported. He declared that many of the radiocarbon dates in the United States lacked detailed evaluations and were sometimes cited from unpublished results and reports. His study also set the record straight for Wyoming’s answer to the Avonlea phase, the Beehive phase, and found they were contemporaneous. In the article, Morlan (1988:307) made recommendations and established ground rules for improving radiocarbon dating.

Figure Nine. Frequency histogram using radiocarbon dates from
Assiniboine, Upper, and Middle Saskatchewan basins in zones
containing the different phases (Morlan 1988:306). 

Morlan (1988:306) created one of the more visually appealing time-based analyses on the Late Prehistoric archaeological components in the Assiniboine and Upper and Middle Saskatchewan Basins. (Figure Nine). He used Reeves’ Tunaxa and Napikwan cultural traditions and phases as a basis for dividing radiocarbon dates for Avonlea, Pelican Lake, Besant, and others. His result was a frequency histogram based on radiocarbon dates, showing the peaks and valleys of each phase through time. Alongside the frequency histogram, Morlan presented separate columns for Reeves’ 1970 and 1983 theories, along with his own analysis in the right-hand column. Lastly, Morlan plotted the climate periods associated with the different phases. The key points I took away from Morlan’s analysis:

1) The data for the Pelican Lake and Avonlea phases showed what seemed to be a non-disruptive transition. While Pelican Lake radiocarbon dates were declining, Avonlea radiocarbon dates were increasing. There appeared to be a lull in both Pelican Lake and Avonlea around A.D. 0. The Pelican Lake people arrived around 800 B.C., reached their peak around 400 B.C., and disappeared around A.D. 200. The atlatl-toting Pelican Lake people and the bow-carrying Avonlea people overlapped for approximately three hundred years. That was more than enough time for Pelican Lake to abandon the atlatl weapon system and take up the bow weapon system. That still did not answer where the bow weapon system came from or whether Avonlea succeeded Pelican Lake, or was a separate tradition altogether. 

2) Reeves' Napikwan cultural tradition was represented by Sandy Creek and Besant, and they were contemporaneous with Pelican Lake and Avonlea. Besant peaked around A.D. 600 and then rapidly declined, disappearing completely from the archaeological record by A.D. 1000. One assumption might be that the Besant people did not disappear at all, but adopted the bow weapon system around A.D. 600, and began showing up in the archaeological record as the Old Women’s phase.

3) The Avonlea phase arrived a little bit before the time of Christ in the core area of Morlan’s study, then peaked around A.D. 700, and disappeared from the archaeological record around A.D. 1200. When the Avonlea phase reached its peak, the Besant phase was in rapid decline. It was possible that both the Avonlea and Besant phases became the Old Women’s phase.

4) The Avonlea Phase showed up during the Sub-Atlantic climate episode, a period of increased precipitation and milder temperatures. Duke (1988:268) suggested that increased precipitation and milder temperatures could result in an expansion of biota populations (bison and other species). That expansion of biota would attract more humans through either tribal growth or migration into the area. Duke proposed that in the following Scandic climate episode, there was decreased precipitation and higher temperatures. During the Scandic, the Avonlea phase reached its peak while the Besant phase was in decline. Did the bow weapon system provide the Avonlea people a competitive advantage over the atlatl-toting Besant people during the hotter and drier Scandic climate episode? Were the Sub-Atlantic and Scandic climate episodes significant enough to impact the massive herds of bison that roamed the northern plains? Upon reviewing Morlan's analysis, no correlation was apparent between the peaks and valleys of the phases and the climate episodes. 

5) While Morlan’s radiocarbon dating analysis did confirm the expansion and contraction of the different phases, none of the analyses determined the origin or the fate of the Avonlea phase.

Conclusions

It was difficult to write a conclusion when there were no conclusions. Morlan's analysis using radiocarbon dates confirmed much of Reeves' updated theory from 1983, at least from the perspective of the comings and goings of the different phases. However, we still do not know the origins and fates of the separate phases, especially Avonlea.   

Vickers (1994:19) summarized it best: 

“In the end archaeologists must plead ignorance in understanding the appearance of Avonlea on the Northern Plains. It seems we can state that Avonlea is a culture of the western Saskatchewan River basin and that it expanded southward into central Montana, westward over the Rocky Mountains, and northeastward into the forest margins.”  

While Vicker's statement addressed the origin of the Avonlea phase, what about its fate? There were several theories on that as well. Reeves (1983:47) proposed that Besant and Avonlea coexisted for over five hundred years, and while Besant developed into Old Women’s, Avonlea was removed or displaced from the Saskatchewan basins altogether. Husted (1969:93) argued that Avonlea migrated south through Montana, spread into Wyoming and South Dakota, and ultimately became the Shoshone Indians. Bryne (1973) speculated that Avonlea absorbed Besant, and together they became the later complexes on the northern plains. Dyck (1983:125) wrote:

 

“Thus absorption, evolution, and displacement have all been called the guessing game. The only alternative that hasn’t been mentioned [for Avonlea] is obliteration by newcomers.”

And thus we play the “Great Late Prehistoric Guessing Game."

References Cited 

Brumley, John H. and Barry J. Dau
1988  Historical Resource Investigations within the Forty Mile Coulee Reservoir.                            Occasional Paper No. 13. Archaeological Survey of Alberta. Edmonton.

Byrne, W. J.

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About the Author

 

John Bradford Branney was born and raised in Wyoming and became interested in Prehistoric America through his grandfather's artifact collection. From the time he could walk, Branney went hog wild collecting and documenting prehistoric artifacts and sites along the High Plains. 

Branney has written fourteen books and more than one hundred articles on archaeology and geology. He holds a B.S. degree in geology from the University of Wyoming and an M.B.A. in finance from the University of Colorado. He lives in the Colorado mountains with his family.