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Kennewick Man

The Scientific Investigation of an Ancient American Skeleton

Texas A&M University Press

The People Who Peopled America

Bradley T. Lepper

The story of the peopling of the Americas is about humans discovering and settling a truly New World. Curiously, archaeologists sometimes lose sight of the actual people involved, presumably because they so seldom encounter their physical remains. For example, Dillehay (2000:227) claimed that North and South America are "the only continents on the planet where our knowledge of an early human presence comes almost exclusively from traces of artifacts and not from human skeletal remains." Not surprisingly, perhaps, archaeologists tend to become obsessed with the elegant flint spear points and the bones of mammoth and giant bison among which they are sometimes found in lethal association. Yet, without diminishing the importance of the stones and animal bones upon which the understanding of the first Americans largely has been based (Adovasio 2003; Bonnichsen and Turnmire 1999; Dillehay 2000; Ubelaker 2006), it must be recognized that without the remains of the people themselves and the information contained in their bones, graves, and funerary offerings, the view is of a stage littered with fragments of scenery and discarded props, but with no actors.

Human skeletal remains of great antiquity are infrequently found in the Americas, but "frequency" is relative, and Dillehay (2000) has overstated the disparity between North America and the rest of the Paleolithic world. One survey of human remains from late Paleolithic Europe listed 56 individuals from the period between 15,000 and 10,000 years ago (Holt and Formicola 2008). Information is known on 74 sets of human remains from the same period in North America (Table 1.1). Europe has an area over 10 million square kilometers, whereas North America, including Canada, the United States, and Mexico, encompass about 22 million square kilometers. Therefore, in Europe there are about 5.6 documented sets of late Upper Paleolithic human remains per million square kilometers, and in North America there are about 3.4.

Clearly, the density of documented human remains is lower in North America, but since the documented European Upper Paleolithic human paleontological record encompasses about 2,000 more years than the equivalent record in North America, some of the discrepancy can be attributed to the accumulation of burials over those additional centuries. Moreover, the vastly greater extent of the late Pleistocene glaciation in North America relative to Europe meant that a greater proportion of its landmass would have been inaccessible to human occupation for much of this period. Finally, modern humans had entered Europe by perhaps 40,000 years ago, which means that by 15,000 years ago populations in many parts of Europe likely approached carrying capacity. In contrast, humans either were not yet present in the Americas, or had only recently arrived by 15,000 years ago, and it would be many centuries before population levels reached a density equivalent to that which characterized Europe at the beginning of this period. All of this suggests that human remains are not anomalously rare in the western hemisphere and that understanding of the earliest Americans is being hampered by the perception that such discoveries are rarer than they actually are.

Of course, none of this should be taken to suggest that Paleoamerican human remains are commonplace discoveries. On the contrary, human remains dating to this early period are, in absolute terms, quite rare. Although Table 1.1 lists a total of 324 possible burials, only 152 skeletons are sufficiently well preserved, complete, and adequately reported, even to be identified reliably as male or female. Many are so fragmented and incomplete that they fit comfortably in cupped hands.

One reason for the absolute, if not relative, rarity of ancient human remains is the long span of time over which the remains have been subjected to the variously destructive chemical and geological processes of decomposition and weathering. Moreover, deep burial under millennia of waterborne or windblown sediment will have rendered many others inaccessible. Another reason so few Paleoamericans have been recovered is the vastness of the American landscape in comparison to the relatively small numbers of people in these early populations. There also are cultural factors that may be involved, such as mortuary practices that lower the probability of bone preservation. Finally, as Dillehay (2000) suggests, strategies for finding ancient mortuary sites may be flawed.

Regardless of the explanation, the fact of the absolute rarity of documented ancient human remains in America means that each new discovery represents a vitally important addition to knowledge of the lives and deaths of the first Americans. The accidental discovery in 1996 of Kennewick Man, or the Ancient One as he is known to many American Indians, represented an opportunity to learn from the physical remains of a man who, while not in the vanguard of exploration, still is among the most ancient human remains discovered in America. The extraordinary completeness of the skeleton and the high degree of preservation make this discovery exceptional and one of the most potentially informative sets of human remains ever recovered in North America.

RECOVERED HUMAN REMAINS

The remains of human bodies encompass much of the individual's life story, from nearly the beginning to the end—and beyond. When the remains have been intentionally buried, or otherwise processed postmortem, the mortuary facilities and funerary offerings (if any) may reveal how the group to which he or she belonged responded to that death.

The intensive focus on particular individuals is unusual for archaeology, although the postprocessual critique has challenged the discipline to seek methods for telling the stories of individuals (Hodder 2000). Human remains provide the ultimate means for fulfilling this goal.

Paleoamericans are people who lived during the period from the earliest reliably documented evidence of a human presence in the western hemisphere, around 15,000 radiocarbon years before the present, up to the somewhat arbitrary date of 8,000 years ago. (The exception to this rule is the inclusion of the Pelican Rapids skeleton, Minnesota Woman, which is dated to 7,850 ± 50 years ago, because of her historical importance for Paleoamerican studies.) This designation encompasses material that traditionally would be separated into the more familiar Early and Late Paleoindian as well as Early Archaic periods. The intent is to emphasize the extreme antiquity and, often, the biological distinctiveness of these early populations, not to assert by nomenclatory fiat that these ancient people cannot be ancestral to modern American Indians (Owsley and Jantz 2001; cf. Hamilton 2008).

Paleoamericans in the literature include 324 individuals from 54 sites (Table 1.1). In addition, five sites contain 18 features inferred to be individual graves but without preserved osteological remains (Table 1.2). When these are included, the total number of reported Paleoamericans is 342 from 59 sites. Given the area involved and the time span of about 350 human generations, it is a desperately small sample on which to base conclusions about the character of the populations from which these individuals are drawn.

There is an even greater dearth of human remains from Eastern Asia, the presumed homeland of the Paleoamericans. For example, only one Paleolithic burial is documented in all of Siberia (Alekseev 1998): a double burial of a 3&ndas;4-year-old and a 1-year-old from a burial pit in the floor of a dwelling at the Mal'ta site (Goebel 2001b). Late Pleistocene human remains have been recovered from the sites of Afontova Gora II and Novoselovo VI, but the fragmentary remains are from uncertain contexts (Goebel 2001a).

The samples of Paleoamerican and Paleosiberian burials certainly are heavily biased by factors of preservation and discovery. For example, 56 per cent (183) of Paleoamerican human remains are from Florida. Indeed, 52 per cent (168) are from the Windover site alone. Another 9 per cent (30) are from the Sloan cemetery in Arkansas. The rest are scattered unevenly over 21 other American States, Canada, and Mexico. Similar biases attend the samples of human remains from Paleolithic Europe. Of the 56 late Upper Paleolithic human remains documented, 66 per cent (37) are from Italy, a country of barely 300,000 square kilometers (Holt and Formicola 2008).

Several American localities, including Bull Brook, Gorto, Hawkins, Deadman Slough, and Pope, are inferred to include burials but lack preserved skeletal remains (Table 1.2). This illustrates the taphonomic challenges involved with making generalizations about Paleoamerican burial practices. A large proportion of the documented burials include either no nonperishable funerary offerings or only a small number of objects that, if not found with human remains, would provide no clear indication that a burial had been present (Table 1.1). Therefore, many burial locations will have left virtually no readily identifiable traces.

Of interest in this regard are the impressive deposits, or caches, of Clovis artifacts, such as those found at Anzick and East Wenatchee. These have been variously interpreted as mortuary offerings, or as true "caches" of material intended for future use (Lepper 1999; Meltzer 2002), or as ceremonial offerings unrelated to mortuary practices (Gillespie 2007; Lepper and Funk 2002). Anzick is the only major deposit to be found that appears to have been associated directly with human remains, but the unprofessional manner in which the artifacts and human remains were removed limits interpretation.

Another important issue is that some proportion of the human remains does not derive from formal burials at all. Some sites may represent places where humans died without culturally appropriate mortuary treatment. These may be sites of accidental death (including, possibly, Arlington Springs, Warm Mineral Springs, Little Salt Spring, Midland, On Your Knees Cave, and Cutler Ridge) or places where people died as a result of interpersonal violence (possibly Marmes Rockshelter).

The sample also is heavily biased toward the more recent end of the Paleoamerican timeline. There are, at most, two sets of human remains that are older than 12,000 years, or less than one-half of one per cent of the total sample. Human remains that are between 12,000 and 10,000 years old include 15 individuals, or 5 percent of the total. Finally, the individuals 10,000 years or younger include 307 individuals, or 95 per cent of the total. For those rare sites that have been preserved, discovered, and reported, there is the issue of the uneven quality of the data in the reports. Doran (2002:26) observed that for many early skeletons, "neither the site nor the skeletal material has been adequately described and information is limited. Only a handful of these samples have been analyzed in a manner minimally acceptable to the osteological community." Swedlund and Anderson (1999:569) pointed out that the Gordon Creek Woman, "one of the earliest reported and best-documented Paleoindian burial sites," has been cited infrequently and often is omitted entirely from discussions of the first Americans. They interpret "some of the lack of interest to the fact that she is female" and so lacked both the more strongly developed diagnostic skeletal features sought by physical anthropologists, as well as funerary offerings in the form of the projectile points so admired by archaeologists specializing in Paleoamerican studies (Swedlund and Anderson 1999:570). Owsley and Jantz (2001:566), on the other hand, assert that this report has been neglected because it provides "little usable osteological data" and because the "reigning paradigm ... identified ancient Americans as being just like recent Native Americans and they were, therefore, not of unusual research interest." I think Owsley and Jantz are correct, but there is more to the story. I suggest that the inattention to Paleoamerican skeletal remains, both male and female, by archaeologists, especially recently, relates to the social context in which this research takes place and in which the study of American Indian, or First Nations, human remains has become highly contentious (e.g., Killion 2008; Weiss 2008). Why else would archaeologists ignore such a rich source of data on Paleoamerican biology, social organization, and ceremonial life?

In spite of these issues, there is much vital information about the lives and deaths of Paleoamericans in these reports. Generalizations derived from the cumulative circumstances of each individual death, while lacking in statistical validity, can provide a place to begin to comprehend broad biological and cultural relationships across time and space.

Burial Type

The majority of Paleoamerican burials in the current sample are flexed or semiflexed interments, but of the 183 examples, 160 are from the single site of Windover. If these are excluded, then extended burials predominate with 35 occurrences. There are 21 documented examples of cremation burials, presuming the Marmes remains are correctly identified as cremated. Additionally, there are rare examples of secondary burials, remains that may have been left exposed deliberately on the ground surface within caves or rockshelters, and one woman who may have been buried deliberately in a tar pit. Obviously, the extent to which deliberate exposure was a preferred method of mortuary treatment will be nearly impossible to evaluate given the odds against the preservation of human remains left exposed to the elements, coupled with the difficulties in distinguishing such remains from an accidental death.

Age, Sex, and Status

For 80 (25 per cent) individuals, neither age nor sex can be identified from the available literature (Table 1.1). Of the remaining 243, 159 are listed as adults and 85 as subadults (younger than 17 years old). The sex ratio is approximately equal with 72 males and 80 females. Females are more heavily represented in subadult burials (5:1); otherwise, given the vagaries of very small sample sizes, both sexes seem equally represented in other age groups.

Frequently, variability in both funerary offerings and in the effort involved creating the grave is used as an index of social status (O'Shea 1984). Based on the documented burials it seems, not surprisingly, that these people lived in egalitarian groups in which there was little status differentiation on the basis of either age or sex. There are burials with extraordinary funerary offerings, but there is no clear patterning in the data to indicate any consistent age or gender-specific ranking.

At the Windover site, which encompasses the largest single collection of Paleoamerican human interments, the excavators observed no significant age- or sex-based cultural differences (Dickel 2002). Adults generally were more likely to be buried with offerings (Dickel 2002), and there were a few gender-specific artifact associations. Females exclusively were buried with bone pins, antler punches, and bird-bone tubes (Dickel 2002:84), while adult males tended to have a "greater number of bone and antler artifacts." Canid teeth, sometimes hafted onto wooden handles for use as scrapers, were found only with males (Dickel 2002).

At the Sloan site, the earliest recognized cemetery in the Americas, the evidence indicated "minimal social differentiation" (Morse 1997:93). Although the meager and poorly preserved skeletal material did not allow determination of age or sex, "the composition of the inferred artifact clusters does not suggest the presence of functionally differentiated tool kits" (Morse 1997:92).

In the broader sample, the majority of the deceased were buried without any preserved funerary offerings. In contrast, two of the most lavish assemblages of grave goods were buried with subadults.

At the Anzick site in Montana, an nine-month-old child appears to have been buried with a set of remarkable Clovis artifacts, including 112 ochre-covered bifaces and 11 bone rods, which may have served as foreshafts or points. The bifaces included eight Clovis projectile points and several large, bifacial cores (Lahren and Bonnichsen 1974; Morrow et al. 2006; Owsley and Hunt 2001; Wilke et al. 1991).

At Windover, an 11-year-old female was buried with the "highest counts and greatest diversities" of offerings of any grave at the site (Dickel 2002:95). This girl was buried with 22 formal artifacts, including a bone shaft wrench, a stemmed projectile point, a barbed antler point, a shark tooth hafted in a wooden handle, awls, and a "seed cache" (Dickel 2002:94–95, 110). She was accompanied by a neonate in a globular woven bag (Dickel 2002).

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Excerpted from Kennewick Man by Douglas W. Owsley, Richard L. Jantz. Copyright © 2014 Smithsonian Institution. Excerpted by permission of Texas A&M University Press.
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