Before I checked this video out, I never knew there was a Dust Cave. I've been learning a lot from UA-cam channels like this one, and I want to thank you for posting these videos.
it tells me that as much as we like to think we are the be-all, end-all, and that what we are, have made and live with, is as good as it has ever been or is going to get, is false pride. "Ancient" peoples were just as smart as we are, and probably more inventive on a general and individual basis than any one of us. We would be hard pressed to live their lives.
Hey Nathanael, Old blind and toothless here. Thank you so much for what you are doing. It is a breath of fresh air compared to most of the bs on line anymore. I grew up in the Poteau river bottoms of se Oklahoma (Hontubby) and have always had a keen interest in our local history and after losing most of my vision a few years ago reading is difficult and listening to you is brightening my day thank you again
💖Thank you and your colleagues for helping to save our past! It is sad that so much was destroyed before it could be understood, documented or pasted down orally.
It fascinates me to no end the things that might be hidden in the earth. It got me into metal detecting and that got me into archaeology and anthropology.
Very informative. I live in south central TN and this area continues to have varied and abundant food sources like those that sustained prehistory people. Thank you.
Over time I have worked stone for points, a blade is a useful tool for butchering making leather items, cutting sinew for wrapping and trimming feathers for arrow/dart fetching. You can use flakes for the same things but blades are more useful. Sometimes it seems that earlier stone tools are more sophisticated than later designs. An example .. making the hafting flutes of a Clovis style point. Good videos, there is a lot more history in America than we were taught in school.
A friend of mine has a piece of land 50-60 miles from dust cave and 75 miles from what i read as being "a cradle of civilization for native americans" as well as the "magic valley" and i believe ive found a plethora of stone tools at the base of a spring from a hillside and at the base of a bluff and adjacent to beautiful platforms halfway up the bluff. Its a tributary of "Indian Creek" and from there the Tennessee River. It may be an initial base for tool makin. Im hoping to get in touch with a professional eye so i can share some pics of the 100s of specimens ive found in this short stretch of creek bed. Especially before the layers are any more disturbed than theyve already been..i was never an artifact hunter of any sort but my eye peeked on a few rocks last year or two and its just exploded with possibilities since..i hope to hear from you or a local archaeologist 😀
very good sir, I live less than 100 miles from this site, I was a artifact hunter locally until I could no longer walk the fields, I took up flintknapping about 5 years ago, learning from youtube videos, learning to knapp has given me a deeper insight into the tools made by our ancestors , I really like this video, and I agree with the content, in short they did only what they had to do to make a useful tool, nothing like today's flintknapping culture, today it has taken on such a arty ,sell, make money stuff, anyway I like this video very much sir
Thanks again for the impressive episode. I've never heard of Dust Cave, I found the information on the changing diet and mast production very interesting. I hope everything is going well in Alaska!
We need someone like yourself to write a book about Dust Cave, gathering those scattered resources into a single compendium. Also, would love to pick your brain about Horse Pens 40 near Steele, Al.
I recently found a cave when the ground gave away on the hill of my neighbors house. I found 6 shaft straightening tools, cooked clay figurines, and tons of pottery. Everything is painted red and the cave is burnt on the inside with paintings everywhere on wall.
I wish you could tell the story of the Northern Ozarks Upland's where peoples first carved out a life of our resources from the lower Meramac river's bluffs.As a collector I can see and feel their cultures. Thank you for this video
Thanks Nathan! The education is appreciated. When possible, could you share a little of the history of the rediscovery of these sites? I watched some of the home videos and (again) learned so much about what goes on at a working site - especially a glimpse in to the level of detail that’s going on. It is amazing. All of us that are interested in human history owe so much to all the billionaire archeologists and the work they perform out in the field. Snakes, spiders, poison ivy, etc. - crazy conditions. Thank you. Please keep it up.
I live in DFW area of Tx. My most interesting finds have been literally on the Red River border. I have a tool found in my front yard, I might be wanting it to be a tool.
We don't. What you've got is probably Knox flint, which is super black and glassy. It could also be from a modern knapper. We bring in obsidian from our west all the time.
I'm in south central Kentucky and we find black obsidian spearheads and a cash of blue obsidian, that has not been broken yet. Based in the fossils found, something cataclysmic had to have happened. Fossilized bissen teeth, deer femur, giant sponges, tree fossils, & and something never understood
This is pure conjecture from me, but when you described the prepared clay surfaces, and their relation to mast materials, it makes me wonder if they could have been used as a sieve to remove impurities from flour? Just a thought :)
Thank you again for doing this videos, for non scientist and non american this information very obscure and hard to find. Now I have at least vague understanding of ways Americans lived thousand years ago.
Those prepared clay surfaces are interesting. The texture makes me wonder about use as grinding surfaces. Only have to carry the pestle and not the mortar.
I've never seen a particularly definite answer on that. it would be a pretty huge undertaking to re-excavate the place, and if they knew there were human and dog burials in it they might not have wanted to, but that's an unknown.
*Great content. Like the open approach to the findings but also the recognition of established archeology. Be interested to know what you think the origins of the originals of north america might have been?*
Could the prepared clay surfaces be used as cooking sheets? The slab could be placed on a bed of coals and pieces of meat placed on the hot material to cook without exposing the food to ash or excess smoke.. I can envision acorn meal prepared to remove the tannins, mixed with a little fat and water made into a cake or biscuit sizzling on a clay sheet. You said they were used in relation to food so I assume remnants or traces of food were found. The cloth pattern may just be a remnant of the production. You would kneed the clay and slap it on to a flat stone surface; which would make it extremely hard to remove unless you have a layer of fabric under the clay. You would just peel the fabric up after the clay was more dry.
Wow ! Amazing information ! I am glad not all sites have been destroyed by amateurs . The timeline is fascinating . Many years ago , on a barrier island in Georgia . Land was being cleared for development . Several acres was covered by oyster shells . I realized this was Man made and a campsite for a long time . I walked it many times and found pottery shards everywhere . I saved what I found and are behind glass . What should I do ? It's covered by buildings now .
What are your thoughts on complete well made artifacts left behind on sites?? We're they family units who eventually all died off?? Did they make new tools at new sites?
Sometimes stuff gets lost. Frequently people cache equipment on site since they make seasonal rounds to a series of sites. In rare cases they're votive offerings or grave goods.
Could you do a video on exactly when archery was developed in the Americas? And if it was diffused in from another area? I have always been curious if it was brought in by the Inuit because the timing is around correct I believe???
seems like the mat would be on the underside of the "prepared clay surfaces" to fascillitate handling and putting it in the fire for firing. Items could be roasted on it like a frying pan afterwards?
Im just a few miles from the site, and I used to take friends to that cave and two more in close proximity. We would pick up trash people left. We never looked for artifacts. I know of another large site if interested. Noone has found it yet.
The looting got so bad at Dust they buried the whole vestibule under concrete last year. Hit up someone like Ben Hoksbergen about it maybe. He lives sorta in that area.
@@NathanaelFosaaen Someone with the state or dept. of conservation asked to pass through our farm bottom on seven mile island to get there. We had no clue they would be concreting it up and spending millions on spreading rift raft on the banks. We were told people were digging up the area which would be extremely unlikely due to our cameras monitoring the surrounding fields.We have hundreds if not thousands of wild pigs there. We run three traps with little lasting effect. The pig damage is unreal in the fields. I enjoy your videos.
So I have some disagreements with some people. I find a lot of what looks like half of a hoe or other large tool. But almost all of them have the same degree of “breakage” and almost all also have a little notch for cutting at around the same spot. Some say that it’s a broken tool and I say it’s too much of a coincidence that they almost all have the same shape and features to just have broken that way. I call it a multi tool , cutting and scraping. Not all knives were hafted and these are very ergonomic, why go through a hafting process when you don’t need to. I also find a lot of smaller pebble type rocks that are ground flat. Any idea what they were used for? Some are quite small but definitely used to grind something. Awesome vid brother👍🇺🇸
Some used pebbles to "burnish" almost dry pottery before firing. It almost polishes the pot and I believe it makes it more water tight when they're not glazed.
@@ferengiprofiteer9145 Thanks brother. That never would have crossed my mind and it makes sense. Some are very small which I guess would work for handles or rims. If found anywhere else I would never think to look at it but this site really has no natural rocks to speak of. Everything or almost everything was brought there by a person for one reason or another. It’s the only reason I even pick them up and then upon inspection they show usage. Thanks for the insight👍🇺🇸
You mentioned that tools were more task specific in the Paleolithic and that changed as time went on into the Archaic. I'm wondering why that is? Forgotten knowledge? Environmental changes and food resource changes that made the early tools not necessary? It's as if the Native Americans entered a "dark" age.
Love ark. Stuff.wish that's all I did and most things people kept to there secret self. My older friend who past away at 95 could have should have wrote his book on all the villages along the Missouri in sodakota nodakota area's had every village on paper etc. And was working for the state he lived in as a archeology director in the 20s. And had a great collection.
Ehhh... sorta, but not really. The so called Venus figurines are common in Eurasia but they're not everywhere, and there's no reason that they SHOULD cross into a totally different continent cluster. It's founder effect. Some stuff gets brought along and some get left behind.
What sort of sorta? Founder effect might then suggest that they may have deliberately fled the mother cult or whatever those things stood for. This requires investigation. Founder effect is lazy thinking and about as lame as Clovis first or prospective American settlers must walk and cannot use their perfectly fine canoes. It is an excuse in short.
@@zeideerskine3462 you're in the middle of writing some fantastic fiction, but there's no evidence to support any sort of dramatic narrative like the one you're proposing. Pre-literate religion is very fluid and inconsistent. Traditions are subject to memetic drift just like everything else in human culture. Old ways get dropped. New traditions get developed. Time like a river flows. The Venus figurines are remarkable because of how long the tradition lasted, but there's no reason to believe that EVERY culture in Eurasia practiced it. Only that it had a wide spatial distribution. Other stuff DID seem to make it over from Eurasia though. We know that at the time of contact that the descendants of the Mississippians had a common belief that involved a world tree with sky, earth, and underground/water realms, just like we see in mythologies all over the circumpolar north. So the Venus is just one of those traits of religion that didn't make it over, or didn't last long enough to leave a strong archaeological signal. We Do have some figurines that are similar to Venus at Poverty Point, but that's thousands of years after the continent was settled and there's nothing I've ever seen to bridge that gap.
Nope. I am not interested in fiction. However, I consider throwing burnt clay into soups a strange fiction. Long standing religious traditions that are suddenly abandoned are suspicious, though, especially if other parts including ygdrassil did make it over. It is precisely these cultural carryovers that could fill in the picture together with paleogenetics. Why are there no American Neanderthals? Have we just not liked hard enough? I also think doing more experimental archeology would be a good idea. Try building an Eastern Woodland site with the amount of people you believe they had, feed the people the diet you think the ancient people ate, and see how you handle the sanitation. You could finance it as a weight loss camp or get volunteers. Volunteers will however come in SUVs and bring food and drinks which totally negates the experiment. Maybe somebody could turn this into a video game. That may be awfully complex but better than most answers I have seen thus far.
@@zeideerskine3462 great questions! It's not so much that they were throwing burnt clay into soup as they used it to heat water (so we think). Fish and mussels don't take long to cook in hot water. To my knowledge there's no indication that Venus figurines were a long-standing tradition in Siberia. You get Christians in Japan, but they're not exactly common. By the same token you could have the Venus tradition moving into Siberia a bit but not be included enough in the populations that moved into the Americas to be represented. Siberia is a BIG place. I don't see anything amiss about it, because I don't know of any reason to think the Venus figurines were common in Siberia. Were there Venus figurines found in Japan? The Jomon seem to have been close to some siberian groups too. Go do some investigating on Siberian archaeology in the ballpark of 25-30 thousand years ago and see what you find. You might be on to something, or your expectations might be unreasonable. I can't say. It's a big research question. Go do it.
I fuckin love this channel man. I’ve been lookin for videos on your main type of study as far as eastern woodland archeological sites. I had high hopes of goin to school for geology and archaeology myself but sadly didn’t follow my dream. I still love to study it and ancient peoples of this part of the continent. I live at the mouth of red lick creek before station camp both tributaries to the Kentucky river before you get to Eskipphahitti site in Clark County. This valley is a small route of the old warriors path that runs through Kentucky. Although I do enjoy finding artifacts and studying them from creeks and fields etc.. non invasive finding btw.. I wouldn’t jus call them “shiny bullshit” I understand what you mean for sure but I’m afraid some will misunderstand how you describe shiny bullshit as if artifacts and tools etc have no meaning in how ancient peoples lived an interacted. I really hate to sound like a stickler asshole just thought maybe a different word choice would help to get new comers to understand that you’re not calling artifacts bullshit lol. It’s your channel you can do whatever just thought I’d throw that out there. Love the channel and the content please keep it going
See, based on the work that's been done here, I don't think it was ever strictly seasonal or single-purpose except MAYBE at the very end of the Middle Archaic. The tool types are too diverse to suggest a restricted logistical site. It really looks more like a home base all the way back.
@@NathanaelFosaaen i dont see any problem with the idea that they moved bases with seasons though. Even migratory hunter gathers would have familiar hunting grounds they used for generations, and its logical to assume they had bases close to the areas where food was easist to get.
i’m baffled re dust cave filling with organic debris to the point where people could no longer inhabit it as they couldn’t stand up. surely these peeps had the tools and ability to loosen up and clear off a foot of dirt? a dozen adults could accomplish this (not perhaps the whole cave) before the sun went down. only thing i can think of is that the earth underfoot was compressed into cement like hardness?
nah it wasn't that hard to dig up. They could have cleared it out, but people were burying their dead in Dust Cave for centuries. Also, given that we're dealing with thousands of years here, we have no reason to think that it was occupied continuously by the same people. It probably just silted over a bunch during a stretch of time when nobody was using it.
@@NathanaelFosaaen they are what got me interested in archeology. I just found your channel and love it. I am binge watching it all. It makes me realize that people have been on this planet A LOT longer then we are all taught and we learned over millennia
Almost never any super-awesome Shiney treasure found in caves. All the treasure hunters do is loot the site and ruin any cultural context that may have been found. I visited friends in Missouri that were digging a rock shelter on their private property, and none of them found anything worth mentioning after weeks of digging.. in the first half hour there I decided to walk the bluff above it, and found a G10 St. Charles Dovetail just laying on the surface. Talk about a long ride home 🤣
Before I checked this video out, I never knew there was a Dust Cave. I've been learning a lot from UA-cam channels like this one, and I want to thank you for posting these videos.
Glad you enjoyed it! Yeah, Dust Cave is one of those sites that only archaeologists really know anything about.
Really interesting episode! Goes to show what good archaeology can teach us.
It’s fun that two of my favorite channels intersect with this comment
it tells me that as much as we like to think we are the be-all, end-all, and that
what we are, have made and live with, is as good as it has ever been or is going to get,
is false pride.
"Ancient" peoples were just as smart as we are, and probably more inventive on a general and individual basis than any one of us. We would be hard pressed to live their lives.
It isn't good archaeology when one assumes a date that can't be proven then states it as a fact. "Suggest" is the best one can get without a record.
Hey Nathanael, Old blind and toothless here. Thank you so much for what you are doing. It is a breath of fresh air compared to most of the bs on line anymore. I grew up in the Poteau river bottoms of se Oklahoma (Hontubby) and have always had a keen interest in our local history and after losing most of my vision a few years ago reading is difficult and listening to you is brightening my day thank you again
💖Thank you and your colleagues for helping to save our past! It is sad that so much was destroyed before it could be understood, documented or pasted down orally.
It fascinates me to no end the things that might be hidden in the earth. It got me into metal detecting and that got me into archaeology and anthropology.
Very informative. I live in south central TN and this area continues to have varied and abundant food sources like those that sustained prehistory people. Thank you.
Over time I have worked stone for points, a blade is a useful tool for butchering making leather items, cutting sinew for wrapping and trimming feathers for arrow/dart fetching. You can use flakes for the same things but blades are more useful. Sometimes it seems that earlier stone tools are more sophisticated than later designs. An example .. making the hafting flutes of a Clovis style point. Good videos, there is a lot more history in America than we were taught in school.
Yep! all true!
A friend of mine has a piece of land 50-60 miles from dust cave and 75 miles from what i read as being "a cradle of civilization for native americans" as well as the "magic valley" and i believe ive found a plethora of stone tools at the base of a spring from a hillside and at the base of a bluff and adjacent to beautiful platforms halfway up the bluff. Its a tributary of "Indian Creek" and from there the Tennessee River. It may be an initial base for tool makin. Im hoping to get in touch with a professional eye so i can share some pics of the 100s of specimens ive found in this short stretch of creek bed. Especially before the layers are any more disturbed than theyve already been..i was never an artifact hunter of any sort but my eye peeked on a few rocks last year or two and its just exploded with possibilities since..i hope to hear from you or a local archaeologist 😀
Thank you! I really enjoy your videos.
Aw man 3 months late to the party! cool to see a place in my state
very good sir, I live less than 100 miles from this site, I was a artifact hunter locally until I could no longer walk the fields, I took up flintknapping about 5 years ago, learning from youtube videos, learning to knapp has given me a deeper insight into the tools made by our ancestors , I really like this video, and I agree with the content, in short they did only what they had to do to make a useful tool, nothing like today's flintknapping culture, today it has taken on such a arty ,sell, make money stuff, anyway I like this video very much sir
Good video mate. Lot's of information and lots of questions
Thanks again for the impressive episode. I've never heard of Dust Cave, I found the information on the changing diet and mast production very interesting. I hope everything is going well in Alaska!
It's one of those sites that only archaeologists know about.
@@NathanaelFosaaen What part of AK? POW?
We need someone like yourself to write a book about Dust Cave, gathering those scattered resources into a single compendium.
Also, would love to pick your brain about Horse Pens 40 near Steele, Al.
👍 Man, that Ancestor 1 and 2 vid really stirred my brain like a whisk, I'm having to slot that theory into all the rest of these vids, thanks so much!
I recently found a cave when the ground gave away on the hill of my neighbors house. I found 6 shaft straightening tools, cooked clay figurines, and tons of pottery. Everything is painted red and the cave is burnt on the inside with paintings everywhere on wall.
Shoot some pictures to your state arch society.
Thanks for a very interesting presentation. Keep up the good work!
I wish you could tell the story of the Northern Ozarks Upland's where peoples first carved out a life of our resources from the lower Meramac river's bluffs.As a collector I can see and feel their cultures. Thank you for this video
wow can you jam electric guitar where you are or are you acoustic style? I saw your Ibanez or Jackson . I have a couple Paul Reed Smiths.
Interesting. Thanks for the video
Thanks for watching!
Thanks Nathan! The education is appreciated. When possible, could you share a little of the history of the rediscovery of these sites? I watched some of the home videos and (again) learned so much about what goes on at a working site - especially a glimpse in to the level of detail that’s going on. It is amazing. All of us that are interested in human history owe so much to all the billionaire archeologists and the work they perform out in the field. Snakes, spiders, poison ivy, etc. - crazy conditions. Thank you. Please keep it up.
The concept of "billionaire archaeologists" never fails to make me laugh.
I find this extremely interesting. You should consider doing a podcast as well.
I live in DFW area of Tx. My most interesting finds have been literally on the Red River border. I have a tool found in my front yard, I might be wanting it to be a tool.
It would be great if someone like you wrote a book about Dust Cave, Nathanael.
Dude, I’m loving these videos. How rare is it to find obsidian tools in the southeast? I found an obsidian core and don’t know what to do with it.
We don't. What you've got is probably Knox flint, which is super black and glassy. It could also be from a modern knapper. We bring in obsidian from our west all the time.
I'm in south central Kentucky and we find black obsidian spearheads and a cash of blue obsidian, that has not been broken yet. Based in the fossils found, something cataclysmic had to have happened. Fossilized bissen teeth, deer femur, giant sponges, tree fossils, & and something never understood
I have a blue catch of obsession, black is more prevalent. I also have red , and what looks like geods.... carved
This is pure conjecture from me, but when you described the prepared clay surfaces, and their relation to mast materials, it makes me wonder if they could have been used as a sieve to remove impurities from flour? Just a thought :)
Is there any evidence east of the Mississippi for shelter structures?
Thank you again for doing this videos, for non scientist and non american this information very obscure and hard to find. Now I have at least vague understanding of ways Americans lived thousand years ago.
Those prepared clay surfaces are interesting. The texture makes me wonder about use as grinding surfaces. Only have to carry the pestle and not the mortar.
They wouldn't hold up for very long. They're basically made of daub.
So this might be a stupid question but: Why wouldn't they just excavate the dirt instead of letting it fill up in the cave so that it's unlivable?
I've never seen a particularly definite answer on that. it would be a pretty huge undertaking to re-excavate the place, and if they knew there were human and dog burials in it they might not have wanted to, but that's an unknown.
Fascinating. Thank you. 🖖
Could the clay slabs be used to line a cooking pit?
They're not found at the bottom of pits. they're on the contemporaneous ground surface.
@@NathanaelFosaaen Thanks. After I asked, it occurred to me that if they were used that way, they would be found IN the pitts.
*Great content. Like the open approach to the findings but also the recognition of established archeology. Be interested to know what you think the origins of the originals of north america might have been?*
Could the prepared clay surfaces be used as cooking sheets? The slab could be placed on a bed of coals and pieces of meat placed on the hot material to cook without exposing the food to ash or excess smoke.. I can envision acorn meal prepared to remove the tannins, mixed with a little fat and water made into a cake or biscuit sizzling on a clay sheet. You said they were used in relation to food so I assume remnants or traces of food were found. The cloth pattern may just be a remnant of the production. You would kneed the clay and slap it on to a flat stone surface; which would make it extremely hard to remove unless you have a layer of fabric under the clay. You would just peel the fabric up after the clay was more dry.
Wow ! Amazing information ! I am glad not all sites have been destroyed by amateurs . The timeline is fascinating . Many years ago , on a barrier island in Georgia . Land was being cleared for development . Several acres was covered by oyster shells . I realized this was Man made and a campsite for a long time . I walked it many times and found pottery shards everywhere . I saved what I found and are behind glass . What should I do ? It's covered by buildings now .
UGA has a guy named Victor Thompson that does work on shell rings in coastal GA, there's also a Georgia archaeological society that you could contact.
@@NathanaelFosaaen Copy that . I did contact the Georgia Historical Society . No help . I will move on . Thanks so much .
Yeah historians don't really know what to do with stuff like that. they deal more with written records.
What are your thoughts on complete well made artifacts left behind on sites?? We're they family units who eventually all died off?? Did they make new tools at new sites?
Sometimes stuff gets lost. Frequently people cache equipment on site since they make seasonal rounds to a series of sites. In rare cases they're votive offerings or grave goods.
i’m only one man and in my one lifetime thus far i’ve lost at least half a dozen pocket knives in the bush.
Could you do a video on exactly when archery was developed in the Americas? And if it was diffused in from another area? I have always been curious if it was brought in by the Inuit because the timing is around correct I believe???
There's already 2 that deal with this.
Found it thank you
seems like the mat would be on the underside of the "prepared clay surfaces" to fascillitate handling and putting it in the fire for firing. Items could be roasted on it like a frying pan afterwards?
But it's not. The mat impression is on the top.
excellent stuff! on a site that is basically unknown to the general public
(include me in that demographic)
Dust is one of those sites that only people who are deep into archaeology ever hear about, which is really a shame because it's so well done.
Im just a few miles from the site, and I used to take friends to that cave and two more in close proximity. We would pick up trash people left. We never looked for artifacts. I know of another large site if interested. Noone has found it yet.
The looting got so bad at Dust they buried the whole vestibule under concrete last year.
Hit up someone like Ben Hoksbergen about it maybe. He lives sorta in that area.
@@NathanaelFosaaen Someone with the state or dept. of conservation asked to pass through our farm bottom on seven mile island to get there. We had no clue they would be concreting it up and spending millions on spreading rift raft on the banks. We were told people were digging up the area which would be extremely unlikely due to our cameras monitoring the surrounding fields.We have hundreds if not thousands of wild pigs there. We run three traps with little lasting effect. The pig damage is unreal in the fields. I enjoy your videos.
So I have some disagreements with some people. I find a lot of what looks like half of a hoe or other large tool. But almost all of them have the same degree of “breakage” and almost all also have a little notch for cutting at around the same spot. Some say that it’s a broken tool and I say it’s too much of a coincidence that they almost all have the same shape and features to just have broken that way. I call it a multi tool , cutting and scraping. Not all knives were hafted and these are very ergonomic, why go through a hafting process when you don’t need to. I also find a lot of smaller pebble type rocks that are ground flat. Any idea what they were used for? Some are quite small but definitely used to grind something. Awesome vid brother👍🇺🇸
Some used pebbles to "burnish" almost dry pottery before firing. It almost polishes the pot and I believe it makes it more water tight when they're not glazed.
@@ferengiprofiteer9145 Thanks brother. That never would have crossed my mind and it makes sense. Some are very small which I guess would work for handles or rims. If found anywhere else I would never think to look at it but this site really has no natural rocks to speak of. Everything or almost everything was brought there by a person for one reason or another. It’s the only reason I even pick them up and then upon inspection they show usage. Thanks for the insight👍🇺🇸
Probably just rocks.
@@ericschmuecker348 Lol! No doubt👍🇺🇸
You mentioned that tools were more task specific in the Paleolithic and that changed as time went on into the Archaic. I'm wondering why that is? Forgotten knowledge? Environmental changes and food resource changes that made the early tools not necessary? It's as if the Native Americans entered a "dark" age.
Love ark. Stuff.wish that's all I did and most things people kept to there secret self. My older friend who past away at 95 could have should have wrote his book on all the villages along the Missouri in sodakota nodakota area's had every village on paper etc. And was working for the state he lived in as a archeology director in the 20s. And had a great collection.
I might know a few good caves to check
Are there any American "Venus figurines"? If not, why not? There were all over Eurasia including Siberia. We need another video on that.
Ehhh... sorta, but not really. The so called Venus figurines are common in Eurasia but they're not everywhere, and there's no reason that they SHOULD cross into a totally different continent cluster. It's founder effect. Some stuff gets brought along and some get left behind.
What sort of sorta? Founder effect might then suggest that they may have deliberately fled the mother cult or whatever those things stood for. This requires investigation. Founder effect is lazy thinking and about as lame as Clovis first or prospective American settlers must walk and cannot use their perfectly fine canoes. It is an excuse in short.
@@zeideerskine3462 you're in the middle of writing some fantastic fiction, but there's no evidence to support any sort of dramatic narrative like the one you're proposing. Pre-literate religion is very fluid and inconsistent. Traditions are subject to memetic drift just like everything else in human culture. Old ways get dropped. New traditions get developed. Time like a river flows. The Venus figurines are remarkable because of how long the tradition lasted, but there's no reason to believe that EVERY culture in Eurasia practiced it. Only that it had a wide spatial distribution. Other stuff DID seem to make it over from Eurasia though. We know that at the time of contact that the descendants of the Mississippians had a common belief that involved a world tree with sky, earth, and underground/water realms, just like we see in mythologies all over the circumpolar north. So the Venus is just one of those traits of religion that didn't make it over, or didn't last long enough to leave a strong archaeological signal. We Do have some figurines that are similar to Venus at Poverty Point, but that's thousands of years after the continent was settled and there's nothing I've ever seen to bridge that gap.
Nope. I am not interested in fiction. However, I consider throwing burnt clay into soups a strange fiction. Long standing religious traditions that are suddenly abandoned are suspicious, though, especially if other parts including ygdrassil did make it over. It is precisely these cultural carryovers that could fill in the picture together with paleogenetics. Why are there no American Neanderthals? Have we just not liked hard enough? I also think doing more experimental archeology would be a good idea. Try building an Eastern Woodland site with the amount of people you believe they had, feed the people the diet you think the ancient people ate, and see how you handle the sanitation. You could finance it as a weight loss camp or get volunteers. Volunteers will however come in SUVs and bring food and drinks which totally negates the experiment. Maybe somebody could turn this into a video game. That may be awfully complex but better than most answers I have seen thus far.
@@zeideerskine3462 great questions! It's not so much that they were throwing burnt clay into soup as they used it to heat water (so we think). Fish and mussels don't take long to cook in hot water. To my knowledge there's no indication that Venus figurines were a long-standing tradition in Siberia. You get Christians in Japan, but they're not exactly common. By the same token you could have the Venus tradition moving into Siberia a bit but not be included enough in the populations that moved into the Americas to be represented. Siberia is a BIG place. I don't see anything amiss about it, because I don't know of any reason to think the Venus figurines were common in Siberia. Were there Venus figurines found in Japan? The Jomon seem to have been close to some siberian groups too. Go do some investigating on Siberian archaeology in the ballpark of 25-30 thousand years ago and see what you find. You might be on to something, or your expectations might be unreasonable. I can't say. It's a big research question. Go do it.
Those disks sound like a modern comal.
I fuckin love this channel man. I’ve been lookin for videos on your main type of study as far as eastern woodland archeological sites. I had high hopes of goin to school for geology and archaeology myself but sadly didn’t follow my dream. I still love to study it and ancient peoples of this part of the continent. I live at the mouth of red lick creek before station camp both tributaries to the Kentucky river before you get to Eskipphahitti site in Clark County. This valley is a small route of the old warriors path that runs through Kentucky. Although I do enjoy finding artifacts and studying them from creeks and fields etc.. non invasive finding btw.. I wouldn’t jus call them “shiny bullshit” I understand what you mean for sure but I’m afraid some will misunderstand how you describe shiny bullshit as if artifacts and tools etc have no meaning in how ancient peoples lived an interacted. I really hate to sound like a stickler asshole just thought maybe a different word choice would help to get new comers to understand that you’re not calling artifacts bullshit lol. It’s your channel you can do whatever just thought I’d throw that out there. Love the channel and the content please keep it going
It sounds like the caves been used as a seasonal hunting camp.
At least it was to start. Is there any idea why the use changed??
See, based on the work that's been done here, I don't think it was ever strictly seasonal or single-purpose except MAYBE at the very end of the Middle Archaic. The tool types are too diverse to suggest a restricted logistical site. It really looks more like a home base all the way back.
@@NathanaelFosaaen i dont see any problem with the idea that they moved bases with seasons though. Even migratory hunter gathers would have familiar hunting grounds they used for generations, and its logical to assume they had bases close to the areas where food was easist to get.
i’m baffled re dust cave filling with organic debris to the point where people could no longer inhabit it as they couldn’t stand up. surely these peeps had the tools and ability to loosen up and clear off a foot of dirt? a dozen adults could accomplish this (not perhaps the whole cave) before the sun went down. only thing i can think of is that the earth underfoot was compressed into cement like hardness?
nah it wasn't that hard to dig up. They could have cleared it out, but people were burying their dead in Dust Cave for centuries. Also, given that we're dealing with thousands of years here, we have no reason to think that it was occupied continuously by the same people. It probably just silted over a bunch during a stretch of time when nobody was using it.
Darn, with your opening statement you obliterated my love for Indiana Jones and all the shiny things he said deserve to be in a museum. Hahaha.
Great movies though.
@@NathanaelFosaaen they are what got me interested in archeology. I just found your channel and love it. I am binge watching it all. It makes me realize that people have been on this planet A LOT longer then we are all taught and we learned over millennia
@@robdog7516 yeah, anatomically modern humans show up about 100,000 years ago. It's been a minute.
🙂
"Archaeology is not about filling museums with shiny bullsh-t." BORING!
But seriously, good stuff here! Keep up the good work.
Glad you enjoyed it
Wait wait wait so.....the steak knife is first. For those who wondered haha.
Almost never any super-awesome Shiney treasure found in caves. All the treasure hunters do is loot the site and ruin any cultural context that may have been found.
I visited friends in Missouri that were digging a rock shelter on their private property, and none of them found anything worth mentioning after weeks of digging.. in the first half hour there I decided to walk the bluff above it, and found a G10 St. Charles Dovetail just laying on the surface. Talk about a long ride home 🤣
I hazard a guess that women did everything men did and more. So tired of being left out of history.