Early Hunter-Gatherer Tool Use and Animal Exploitation: Protein and Microwear Evidence from the Central Savannah River Valley
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Results of protein residue and lithic microwear analyses are reported for Paleoindian and Early Archaic stone tools from a Carolina bay sand rim on the Aiken Plateau of South Carolina, USA. Protein residue analysis is performed using crossover Immunoelectrophoresis (CIEP), and indicates positive results for Bovidae, Cervidae, Galliformes, and Meleagris gallopavo. These results are complemented by a larger immunological study of 135 diagnostic hafted bifaces from South Carolina and Georgia. Among other species identified, bovid residue was found on multiple Paleoindian hafted bifaces, an Early Archaic hafted biface, and a Middle Archaic hafted biface. Results suggest continuity of species selection and availability across the Pleistocene/Holocene boundary and provide no support for the exploitation of extinct fauna. The data do provide compelling evidence for a demographic shift and/or regional extirpation of Bovidae possibly as late as the early mid-Holocene in the Southeast. In addition, microwear analysis of artifacts from Flamingo Bay indicate intensive hide scraping, antler boring, bone graving/planing/pointing, wood whittling, and hafting traces. Microwear data suggest intentional snap-fracture or bipolarization of exhausted or broken Clovis points for reuse as hide scrapers, and use of large bifacial knives and unifacial scrapers in intensive defleshing activities consistent with large animal butchery.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.032 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".