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 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 stumbled 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 probably 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 reminded 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. 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, succeeding 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. 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 have straight, concave, or convex bases, indiscriminately. 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 cultures from Pelican Lake camped at those same sites and flintknapped nearly identical barbed, corner-notched projectile points except for a change in 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) summarized the summary when he wrote:

 

“Thus absorption, evolution, and displacement have all been called into the guessing game. The only alternative that hasn’t been mentioned is obliteration by newcomers. For the time being we just don't know what happened 

to the Avonlea complex. But time did march on and other 

complexes did, somehow, replace Besant and Avonlea."

The “Great Late Prehistoric Guessing Game" continues.

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.

1973 The Archaeology and Prehistory of Southern Alberta as Reflected by Ceramics. National Museum of Man Mercury Series, Archaeological Survey of Canada, Paper No. 14. Ottawa, Ontario.

Duke, P.G.

1988  Models of Cultural Process During the Avonlea Phase, in Avonlea Yesterday and Today: Archaeology and Prehistory, edited by Leslie B. Davis. Saskatchewan Archaeological Society. Saskatoon.

Fagan, Brian M.

1995  Ancient North America: The Archaeology of a Continent. Thames and Hudson Inc. New York.

Frison, G.C.

1988  Avonlea and Contemporaries in Wyoming, in Avonlea Yesterday and Today: Archaeology and Prehistory, edited by Leslie B. Davis. Saskatchewan Archaeological Society. Saskatoon.

1991  Prehistoric Hunters of the High Plains. Academic Press. New York.   

Greiser Sally T.

1994  Late Prehistoric Cultures on the Montana Plains, in Plains Indians A.D. 500-1500: The Archaeological Past of Historic Groups, edited by Karl H. Schlesier. University of Oklahoma. Norman.   

Husted, Wilfred M.

1969  Bighorn Canyon Archeology. Publications in Salvage Archaeology, Number 12. River Basin Surveys. Museum of Natural History. Smithsonian Institute. Washington D.C.

Kehoe, Thomas F.

1966  The Small Side-notched Point System of the Northern Plains. American Antiquity, 31 (6).

1973  The Gull Lake Site: A Prehistoric Bison Drive Site in Southwestern Saskatchewan. Milwaukee Public Museum. Publications in Anthropology and History No. 1.

1988  The Avonlea Point: A History of the Concept, in Avonlea Yesterday and Today: Archaeology and Prehistory, edited by Leslie B. Davis. Saskatchewan Archaeological Society. Saskatoon.

Kehoe, T.F., and B.A. McCorquodale
1961 The Avonlea Projectile Point in The Blue Jay 19(3): 137-139).

McCorquodale, B.A.

1985 Letter to Thomas F. Kehoe, in Avonlea Yesterday and Today: Archaeology and Prehistory, edited by Leslie B. Davis. Saskatchewan Archaeological Society. Saskatoon.

Meyer, David, and Scott Hamilton

1994    Neighbors to the North: Peoples of the Boreal Forest in Plains Indians A.D. 500-1500: The Archaeological Past of Historic Groups, edited by Karl H. Schlesier. University of Oklahoma. Norman.   

Morlan, Richard E.

1988  Avonlea and Radiocarbon Dating, in Avonlea Yesterday and Today: Archaeology and Prehistory, edited by Leslie B. Davis. Saskatchewan Archaeological Society. Saskatoon.

Reeves, Brian O.K.

1978  “Head-Smashed-In: 5500 Years of Bison Jumping in the Alberta Plains.” Plains Anthropologist Memoir 14, 23(82) pt.2:151-74.

1983  Cultural Change in the Northern Plains: 1000 B.C.–A.D. 1000. Archaeological Society of Alberta, occasional Paper No. 20.

1990  Communal Bison Hunters of the Northern Plains in Hunters of the Recent Past, edited by L.B. Davis and B.O.K Reeves. Unwin Hyman. Boston.

Vickers, J. Roderick

1994  Cultures of the Northwestern Plains: From the Boreal Edge to Milk River, in Plains Indians A.D. 500-1500: The Archaeological Past of Historic Groups, edited by Karl H. Schlesier. University of Oklahoma. Norman.

 

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.

 

 

THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY - A Besant Story

The One That Got Away

A Besant Story

by John Bradford Branney

 

Figure 1 - 2.1-inch-long Besant atlatl dart point or knife form found by the author in  
Goshen County, Wyoming, in the summer of 1972. The raw material is a cream-
colored jasper, most likely sourced from the Hartville Uplift. One might call
this point a Pelican Lake or Besant 'tweener'. More on 'tweeners' later.   

Fast Track

There was not a cloud in the powder-blue sky. At ground level, it was a different story. Blowing sand and snow pelted the landscape. In the distance, a man walked toward the morning sun along a wind-swept ridge. His back was to an intense, gale-force wind out of the northwest. Ten paces or so behind him, another man followed, and behind that man by a few paces was a third man. Below the ridge and running parallel to the men was a small river meandering across a wide floodplain. At that time of year, the river was small, but when the snowmelt arrived in the spring, the river would carry muddy water from one side of the floodplain to the other. A millennium and a half later, white settlers would name that river the Powder. Behind the men, snow-capped mountains in the distance reached for heaven. A millennium or so later, those blue mountains would be called the Bighorns.

Up on the ridge, the furious wind flung dirt and snow high into the air, creating ground blizzards and whiteouts. The men were hunting for bison, but they would settle for deer, elk, pronghorn, or practically anything that moved. The hunters were not starving; their tribe stockpiled enough food to last through much of the winter. But as winter plodded along, the hunters became restless just lying around their dwellings. You can only make so many projectile points and atlatl dart shafts before you become frightfully bored. The hunters craved physical activity to stave off the tedium. They just picked the wrong day.

The bitter cold found it difficult to penetrate the hunters’ garb. Over their inner clothes, the hunters wore buffalo robes fashioned into ankle-length coats. Elk hide was used to make their leggings. Sock-like boots with fur against the skin covered their moccasin-laden feet. Fur-lined caps rested on the hunters’ noggins. The leader’s long gray hair blew across his face as the wind pushed him across the ridge. His cap was made from the facial skin and fur of a badger. Empty animal eye sockets aimed forward and moved in unison with the leader's turning of the head.

The leader’s complexion was weathered and dark, and his face long and drawn. Deep wrinkles lined around his mouth and eyes. The leader’s nose was large and hooked, and a long pinkish-red scar ran diagonally across his right cheek. He squinted against the bright winter sun and the harsh wind. The rims of his eyes were red from an ice and sand assault. He was considered old, surviving that harsh environment for over forty winters. He was a survivor who had so far met any challenge nature threw at him. 

Several winters prior, the leader and his people left their village near a big river to the northeast. White settlers would someday call that big river the Missouri. The leader's tribe, which an archaeologist would name Besant, traveled southwest, following smaller river tributaries, sometimes by boat, while most of the time on foot. His people still traded with the kinfolk who remained camped along the big river. In fact, the brown semitranslucent rock used to make most of their projectile points came from trading with the people to the northeast.

The leader stopped at the edge of the ridge and braced himself against the gusty wind. He liked living along that small river; there was enough food to feed the village, and the water from the river was mostly good. Out of the corner of his eye, the leader spotted a broken atlatl shaft lying on the ground. At its tip was a corner-notched projectile point with two sharp barbs near its base. It belonged to a different people who spoke a strange tongue. Those people once camped along the river, but the leader and his people took the land away from them and pushed those strangers west into the mountains. Archaeologists would call those displaced people Pelican Lake.

The leader’s attention was on the river valley below. The ridge partially shielded the river valley from the wind. If there were any prey animals to find on that blustery day, they would be hunkered down in the valley below. The old man threaded his way down the steep slope of the ridge through a field of granite boulders. The other two men followed behind. The hunters’ spear throwers were ready, with spearshafts resting on their shoulders just in case they spooked out a beast or two from amongst the rocks. They would need to act quickly if they expected to make a kill.

They arrived at a place in the river valley where massive granite boulders formed a natural amphitheater. Between the granite boulders, the tribe had constructed a fence using cottonwood tree posts and rails. They then draped old bison hides over the rails. The corral's opening was to the north. Painted bison skulls adorned the tops of several fence posts. The leader stopped and peered into the corral. Bison bones littered the ground, many with patches of fur and stained blood still on them. The tribe successfully utilized that bison trap twice over the last two autumns.

After briefly reminiscing over past bison hunts, the three hunters turned and walked away. Suddenly, a jackrabbit jumped out from behind a bush and hightailed it across the floodplain. With tail tucked and ears pinned back, the rabbit flat-out skedaddled. The leader launched a dart from his spear thrower high into the air. A second hunter followed suit and flung an atlatl dart into the air. The darts met the nasty crosswind and fluttered off course, crashing into the ground a good distance away from the intended target. The jackrabbit never looked back.

The hunters had a good laugh over that. That was the stringy jackrabbit that got away. With that, they searched for their atlatl darts. Both darts needed repair. The hunters would have the rest of the monotonous winter to repair those darts. The three hunters headed upriver. By the end of the day, the hunters wished they had not missed the only game animal they spotted on that miserable day.

Figure 2 - The North Butte of Pumpkin Buttes near where my story took place.
Photo Courtesy of Wyoming Catholic Cowboys.  

Besant – People of the North      

A mile or so away from where my story took place lies a well-documented prehistoric bison kill known as the Ruby Site, located near Pumpkin Buttes south of Gillette, Wyoming (Figure 2). Frison (1991: 200-208) reported that the site was a sophisticated bison trap or pound with a primitive corral, drive lane, and ceremonial structure. The construction of the bison trap took advantage of the surrounding topography, and according to Frison, designing and building the various components of the trap took an elevated level of knowledge and resourcefulness from the Besant people who built it.

Frison reported that people from the Besant Complex migrated onto the northwestern plains around A.D. 100, and then sometime around A.D. 280, they built and utilized that bison pound. Frison believed that the Besant people introduced one of the most sophisticated bison procurement strategies known on the northern plains in pre-horse times. The Besant people expended a large amount of effort digging the postholes and constructing the corral fence and drive lane at the Ruby Site. They accomplished those tasks without the aid of modern digging tools, using instead wooden sticks and bison bones as picks and shovels to dig the postholes. Frison estimated that it would have taken a hunting party of twenty males between ten days and two weeks to construct the bison pound. Frison noted that the corral was built with enough skill and care to probably meet today’s ruggedness standards for bison enclosures.

Frison (2004: 100) reported the unpredictable and dangerous nature of bison. He reminded us that bison, unlike cattle, were undomesticated beasts and could quickly turn from placid to aggressive on a moment’s notice. By observing modern-day bison behavior, Frison noted that animals along a fenceline will push back against the animals crowding them. He stated that even a half-full corral of bison could break off fence posts, even in a well-constructed corral. The investigators found evidence at the Ruby site that the Besant people rebuilt the corral fence at least once on the downslope side. Herding the massive beasts on foot added more personal risk for the prehistoric hunters at Ruby. 

Patricia Lee (N.D.: 13) wrote about her bison ranching experience, “Bison are born with the instinct to charge…Open space is always the direction they will choose. Do not get between them and open space. When they feel trapped, they will try to find a way out…Their head is a fighting instrument. Any movement at the head and it is like pointing a gun in a duel. They will take up the challenge…Bison can “sense” or “smell” fear.”

Now, imagine what it was like for prehistoric hunters to round up and corral wild-eyed bison on foot with nothing to protect themselves except a primitive fence, atlatl darts, and thrusting spears. When the Besant people built the drive lane for funneling the bison into the corral at the Ruby Site, they took advantage of the surrounding topography by bending the drive lane so that the corral remained hidden from the bison for as long as possible. The hunters understood how the bison would react upon sensing or seeing the closed space of the corral. The Besant people understood bison behavior.

At the Ruby Site, investigators found projectile points along the drive lane where the corral became visible to the herd. To keep the herd moving, the Besant hunters launched atlatl dart points at the rearmost animals. The harassment by the hunters at the rear of the herd shoved the beasts at the front of the herd into the waiting pen. A few of the projectile points found along the drive lane at Ruby were large enough for use as thrusting spears, perhaps meaning that the prehistoric hunters were close enough to jab the rearmost beasts with long spears. 

The typology of the projectile points found at Ruby was an odd assortment, ranging from classically made Besant points to barbed corner-notched Pelican Lake points to even a point that looked like a Middle Archaic Oxbow (Frison 1971: 82). Did the Besant people salvage those other projectile point types and reuse them, or was the bison pound used by two separate cultures: Pelican Lake and Besant, or was there a cultural connection or communal hunting operation going on between the Besant and Pelican Lake people? The answers to those questions remain unanswered. 

At Ruby, investigators discovered an alleged ceremonial structure, or spirit lodge, twenty feet east of the pound and six feet away from the drive lane (Frison 1971: 85). The structure was ovoid in shape, thirty-nine feet long by fifteen feet wide, with a lengthwise orientation close to true north. Bison skulls and vertebrae were strategically buried or placed on the surface of the ground on the south end of the structure. There was no evidence of fire or workshop areas, which most likely ruled out its use as a habitation structure. The only human-made artifact found in the spirit lodge was a single end scraper.

Schlesier (1987: 144-149) credited shamanism as the reason for the construction of the spirit lodge at Ruby. Schlesier speculated that Eastern Besant people held both “game calling” and “sending off’ ceremonies at that spirit lodge. He claimed that the Eastern Besant people who built and used the bison pound were the ancestors of the Cheyenne Indians, a tribe well known from the Indian Wars of the 1800s. Schlesier speculated as to what might have happened at that spirit lodge after a successful bison hunt: “After the herd had been brought in, killed and butchered, and a portion of the meat taken to the camp on the stripped hides, the sending-off ceremonies would formally be held in the spirit lodge.” 

Around one hundred miles south of the Ruby site, investigators found another Besant bison kill site called Muddy Creek (Frison 1991: 208). Just like the Ruby site, there was a bison pound that took advantage of the surrounding rolling hills. The corral was built in a natural depression, which shielded the trap from the herd's view until the very last moment. The Besant people constructed the corral on sloping ground in an area where lodgepole and limber pine were available. The investigators speculated that a drive lane fence once existed, but they found no remains of it. Figure 3 shows examples of Besant projectile points found at Ruby and Muddy Creek (Frison 1991: 106). 

Figure 3 - Besant points from the Ruby and 
Muddy Creek bison kill sites (Frison 1991: 106). 

 At both sites, investigators found superb examples of Besant projectile points that the people made from excellent raw material. The Besant flintknappers placed side notches on the projectile points for attaching to the dart or spear shafts, and most of the projectile point bases were heavily ground or polished. The tips and edges of the projectile points were sharp, and the hafted ends were stout enough to withstand high-velocity impacts. 

The Besant projectile point was first documented and named by Wettlaufer (1955: 39) at the Mortlach Site in the Besant Valley of south-central Saskatchewan. Wettlaufer (1960: 108) later confirmed Besant at the Long Creek Site, also in Saskatchewan. Figure 4 shows sketches of the Besant projectile points found at the Mortlach and Long Creek Sites (Dyck 1983: 116). Note that the projectile point labeled "b" strongly resembled a Pelican Lake point with corner-notching and barbs. 

Figure 4 - Besant points (and a Pelican
Lake point?) Dyck 1983: 116 

Vickers (1994: 9) described the typical Besant projectile point as lanceolate in shape, with notches twice as wide as they were deep and placed close to the basal edges. In some cases, Vickers noted, the notches were so close to the projectile point base that the notches removed a portion of the base, giving the projectile point a corner-notched appearance. Vickers stated that the projectile point bases were often ground or polished. He described the range of workmanship on Besant projectile points from crude to well-controlled.

At the Walter Felt Site in Saskatchewan, Kehoe (1974) defined several varieties of Samantha projectile points stratigraphically above the Besant stratigraphic layer. He stated that while the Samantha projectile point type was part of the Besant Phase, Samantha projectile points were the bow-and-arrow version of the larger Besant atlatl points. Kehoe suggested that Besant atlatl points existed in the earlier part of the phase from about the time of Christ to around A.D. 400, and then transitioned to Samantha arrow points once the bow-and-arrow was introduced to the northwestern plains. Then, around A.D. 700, Kehoe declared that Samantha arrow points transitioned to Prairie Side-Notched arrow points.

Greiser (1994: 37) noted that Besant sites existed along most of the major drainages on the northwestern plains, including the Missouri and Milk Rivers in northern Montana and the headwaters in Saskatchewan. She stated that Besant sites were not common along the upper Yellowstone River in western Montana but occurred more frequently in eastern Montana and Wyoming along the Middle Missouri, Bell Fourche, and Powder Rivers. Surface finds of Besant projectile points have also shown up in collections around the Black Hills of South Dakota. Vickers (1994: 13) added that the western extent of Besant generally coincided with the Rocky Mountain Front Range, with a few Besant projectile points found associated with Pelican Lake points in the mountains.

Peck (2011: 282) added that investigators have also found Besant sites in southern Alberta, southwestern Manitoba, and southern Saskatchewan. He noted that a few investigators suggested that much of the Besant material in the Dakotas and Manitoba might be from a different culture that archaeologists call the Sonata Complex. I will not discuss the Sonata Complex for this article. 

Author’s note: I have personally found what I cataloged as classically made Besant and Samantha projectile points while surface hunting for artifacts in north, central, and southeast Wyoming, the panhandle of Nebraska, and northeast Colorado, including along the Rocky Mountain Front Range. I have noted that when I find Besant projectile points, I also find Pelican Lake projectile points. Since I discovered those projectile points outside the original archaeological context, I do not know whether there was any relationship between the peoples who made the Pelican Lake and Besant points. What I do know is that Pelican Lake and Besant oftentimes frequented the same sites. Figure 5 is a photograph of projectile point bases that I surface recovered from the area mentioned above. 

Figure 5 - Besant projectile point bases surface found by the author in Colorado and Wyoming.
The raw material comes from geographically wide sources, from the Alibates rock quarries 
in Texas to the Flattop Butte rock quarries in Colorado, and further north to the 
Hartville Uplift and Spanish Diggings rock quarries in east central Wyoming.
     

Reeves (1983: 141) proposed two theories for the origin of the Besant Phase and outlined the pros and cons of each theory. The first theory was that Besant was a sequent phase within his Tunaxa Cultural Tradition and that Besant evolved from the older Pelican Lake Phase or one of the Pelican Lake regional subphases. Reeves’ second theory was that the Besant Phase was unrelated to his Tunaxa Cultural Tradition and either originated from a separate Indigenous plains tradition or from an intrusive cultural tradition coming from another region. Reeves favored intrusive cultural tradition for Besant. He noted that Besant sites along the eastern fringe of the northern plains shared similarities with Woodland cultures in the Midwest of North America. Those similarities included Woodland-like pottery, burial mounds and practices, and examples of permanent habitation structures. Reeves contended that the Besant Phase was part of a cultural tradition that he called Napikwan, and it originated somewhere east and north of the northern plains. 

In disputing a cultural relationship between Besant and Pelican Lake, Reeves (1983: 96) suggested that the Besant and Pelican Lake Phases utilized different lithic sources. He stated that while the Besant Phase favored Knife River Flint out of North Dakota, the Pelican Lake Phase preferred obsidian from the Yellowstone Park area. As an example of Besant's bias toward Knife River Flint, Reeves pointed out that at the Richards and Muhlbach Besant Sites in Canada, the artifacts were mostly made from Knife River Flint, in fact, 96 percent and 84 percent, respectively. Both sites were far away from the Knife River quarries in North Dakota, which further highlighted the Besant people's inclination to transport and use that rock type. 

Author’s Note: Reeves must have been referring to his experience with Canadian sites for the assertion that Besant and Pelican Lake used different lithic sources. I have recovered Besant and Pelican Lake projectile points made from Knife River Flint in both Wyoming and Colorado. Pelican Lake people also liked Knife River Flint and either visited the quarries in North Dakota or traded for the material. We know Pelican Lake people frequented the Dakotas because we find their projectile points there, made from a wide variety of materials, including Knife River Flint. 

Of the hundreds of Pelican Lake and Besant projectile points I have found in Wyoming and Colorado, I have not noticed any obvious raw material preferences for Pelican Lake or Besant. I have examples of both projectile point types made from every available material possible. Based on my experience, both phases used locally sourced material much of the time. 

Not everyone agreed with Reeves and others regarding an Eastern Woodlands origin for Besant. Schlesier (1994: 318-320) advocated for the Mackenzie and Keewatin districts in the Northwest Territories as the origin for Besant. He claimed that there were no antecedents of Besant east in the Woodlands or northeast in the Boreal Forest. Greiser (1994: 36-37) countered that by stating that most researchers believed that Besant originated in the Eastern or Northern Woodlands.

If the Besant Phase originated to the east or north of the northern plains, did the Besant projectile point technology originate there as well? Reeves

Figure Six - Sandy Creek
projectile points. 
Dyck (1983: 108).  

(1983: 14) proposed a theory suggesting that Sandy Creek, a projectile point technology characterized by small, side-notched points, might be the missing link between Middle Archaic Oxbow projectile point technology and Besant projectile point technology. He based that theory on three common Sandy Creek attributes: squat forms, shallow side-notching, and offset V-shaped bases (Figure 6). Reeves reported that Sandy Creek projectile points persisted alongside the Pelican Lake Phase and emerged around the time of Christ as Besant projectile points. 

Author’s Note: I clearly see the similarity between Sandy Creek projectile points and Besant projectile points. I did not understand Reeves' reasoning behind attempting to connect Oxbow projectile point technology to Besant projectile point technology through Sandy Creek technology. If the Besant Phase originated in the Eastern or Northern Woodlands as Reeves proposed, it would seem more logical to connect Besant and Sandy Creek projectile point technology to the Eastern or Northern Woodlands, perhaps through the Middle Archaic Matanzas or Logan Creek projectile points. 

Since Sandy Creek projectile points could easily be mistaken for Besant projectile points, and the Sandy Creek Phase coexisted with the Pelican Lake Phase, it is assumed that Sandy Creek was pre-Besant. The relationship between Pelican Lake and Sandy Creek should be questioned and studied.   

What happened to Besant? It is reasonable to assume that the people of the Besant Phase evolved their weaponry and culture throughout time. Kehoe (1974: 104) suggested that Besant atlatl points existed in the earlier part of the phase, around the time of Christ to A.D. 400. When the bow-and-arrow became available, Besant atlatl points shrank in size and became what Kehoe called Samantha arrow points. Then, sometime around A.D. 700, the Samantha arrow points evolved into what we call Prairie Side-Notched arrow points. 

Schlesier (1994: 318-320) was an advocate for the Northwest Territories for the origin of the Besant Phase, noting that there were no direct antecedents of Besant in the Eastern Woodlands or to the northeast in the Boreal Forest. Based on linguistic research, Schlesier proclaimed that the Besant Phase had two subphases, one in the east and one in the west. Schlesier proposed that the western subphase of Besant became the Blackfoot Indian Tribe in later years, while the eastern subphase of Besant eventually ended up as the Cheyenne Indian Tribe. Schlesier backed that theory up with the linguistic differences between the Algonquian languages of the Blackfoot and Cheyenne tribes, which suggested different origins and histories for each tribe. As expected, that theory met with resistance, but Schlesier pointed out that no one came up with any data that contradicted his theory.

Figure 7 - Northern plains Besant projectile points from the author's collection. 
Raw materials include Knife River Flint, jasper, and Spanish Diggings (?) quartzite. 

Discussion and Conclusions

Reeves (1983: 76; 135) believed there were two distinct cultural traditions called Tunaxa and Napikwan, represented by the Pelican Lake Phase and the Besant Phase, respectively. According to Reeves, those two cultural traditions competed with each other for land and resources which left an impression to the reader that the relationship between the two phases was more contentious than cooperative. Reeves proposed that the Besant Phase entered the northern plains from either the northeast or east around the time of Christ. At that time, the Pelican Lake Phase was already occupying the northern plains for over a millennium. Reeves then proposed that over the next few centuries, the Besant Phase was powerful enough to displace and drive the Pelican Lake Phase westward into the mountains, and beyond (Reeves 1983: 189). 

A good archaeologist or researcher is like a modern-day Sherlock Holmes. They collect obscure and incomplete clues from scattered archaeological sites, connect the dots between the sites, and then create a narrative about what happened during that period in the past. Brian Reeves was one of the best. Without all the answers, archaeologists must fill in the blanks and a good story might become a part of the narrative. In my opinion, that is where the story with the Besant Phase stalled and is now waiting for more discovery to fill in the blanks. Even with the large number of archaeological site investigations from Alberta to Wyoming involving the Besant Phase, there remains a number of questions about Besant's cultural relationship to other phases, specifically Pelican Lake and Sandy Creek. What makes it more difficult is that Besant, Pelican Lake, and Sandy Creek's lifestyles were remarkably similar. The only things to differentiate the Besant Phase from the Pelican Lake Phase or the Sandy Creek Phase were age and projectile point typology. 

I found it interesting in my study of Besant that the Ruby bison trap projectile point assemblage contained not only classically made Besant atlatl points, but also projectile points that were identical to Pelican Lake (Frison 1971: Figure Four). The assemblage even contained what appeared to be a Middle Archaic Oxbow projectile point. When I saw the projectile point assemblage from Ruby, I could not help but wonder why Frison did not address or at least draw attention to that inconsistency. Did the Besant people salvage Pelican Lake projectile points on the ground and reuse them at Ruby? Was the bison trapping at Ruby a communal operation between the Besant and Pelican Lake people? Did the people who made Pelican Lake projectile points have an ancestral or cultural relationship with the people who made Besant projectile points? We also saw a classic Pelican Lake projectile point show up in a Besant level in the well defined stratigraphy at the Mortlach site. Wettlaufer (1955: 44; 96; Figure 4 above) claimed that the most likely scenario was that a Besant person picked up the Pelican Lake projectile point off the ground and reused it, and that was how that projectile point ended up in the Besant level. Perhaps, that was the same scenario at the Ruby Site, or perhaps there was more to it. The narrative would probably change if Besant projectile points were found in an older Pelican Lake assemblage.    

Based on anecdotal evidence from surface hunting fifty-plus surface sites in southeastern Wyoming and northeastern Colorado, Reeves' narrative about Pelican Lake and Besant did not convince me, not that it needed to. Questioning Reeves' narrative about the relationship between Pelican Lake and Besant is not an easy thing to do based on the fact that Reeves' entire career, starting with his Ph.D. dissertation, was researching prehistoric cultural changes on the northern plains. But I have to wonder how anyone could determine the cultural relationship between Pelican Lake and Besant without more information. What evidence excluded Pelican Lake and Besant from having a sequent or direct lineage relationship? 

Whenever I find Pelican Lake projectile points on the fifty-plus sites that I mentioned above, I nearly always find Besant projectile points. Of course, that does not prove anything except that the people who made Besant points frequented the same sites as the people who made Pelican Lake points. Or is that a hint of something more between them? I also find projectile point type 'tweeners' on those same sites. What is a 'tweener'? A tweener is a transitional projectile point or an intermediate form between two projectile point types. For example, a tweener could be a Pelican Lake projectile point with Besant features, such as side notching or basal grinding, or a tweener could be a Besant projectile point with Pelican Lake features, such as corner notching and shortened barbs. I have found enough of those Pelican Lake/Besant tweeners to at least imagine a technological step between the two projectile point types. Could that be the result of a relationship between the two phases, a coincidence, or a case of copycatting? While that does not prove any kind of cultural relationship it might indicate a level of cooperation (Figure 8).  

Figure 8 - A few 'tweeners' from my collection.
Besant points with Pelican Lake features.  

The thoughts in the previous paragraph were based on my artifact finds outside of their original archaeological or stratigraphical context. However, picking up two projectile point types at the same sites, time after time, at least proved that allegedly contentious populations visited and camped at the same sites. The Besant and Pelican Lake Phases also had very similar geographical ranges. Did the Besant people merely follow in the footsteps of Pelican Lake, or was it a coincidence, or was there more of a substantive relationship? 

There is still much to learn and debate about Pelican Lake and Besant. Currently, Reeves' widely cited and well-researched theories remain the go-to standard for the Pelican Lake and Besant Phases. His theories have so far held their own based on no new information. I will end my article with a positive quote about the Besant Phase from George Frison based on the work done at the Ruby and Muddy Creek bison kill sites. 

 “Besant represented a cultural peak—particularly regarding bison hunting—

that was never achieved again on the Northwestern Plains.”

                                                                 - George C. Frison (1978: 223).

That we can agree with... 

References Cited

Dyck, Ian

1983  “The Prehistory of Southern Saskatchewan” in Tracking Ancient Hunters: Prehistoric Archaeology in Saskatchewan, edited by Henry T. Epp and Ian Dyck, pp. 63-139. Saskatchewan Archaeological Society. Saskatoon.

Frison, George C.

1971 “The Buffalo Pound in Northwestern Plains Prehistory: Site 48 CA 302, Wyoming,” in American Antiquity, Vol. 36, No. 1, January 1971.

 

1978  Prehistoric Hunters of the High Plains. Academic Press, Inc., New York.

 

1991  Prehistoric Hunters of the High Plains. Second Edition. Academic Press, Inc., New York.

2004  Survival by Hunting. University of California Press. Berkeley.

Greiser, Sally T.

1994 “Late Prehistoric Cultures on the Montana Plains,” in Plains Indians, A.D. 500-1500, edited by Karl H. Schlesier. University of Oklahoma Press. Norman.

 

Kehoe, Thomas F.

1974  “The Large Corner-notched Point System of the Northern Plains and Adjacent Woodlands,” in Aspects of Upper Great Lakes Anthropology, Papers in Honor of Lloyd A. Wilford, edited by E. Johnson. Minnesota Historical Society. St. Paul.

 

Lee, Patricia Lee

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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 approximately 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.