Excavating the Traces of Ice Age Foragers
Brendan Nash, a doctoral candidate in anthropological archaeology at the University of Michigan, works with a team of professional and avocational archaeologists investigating the Belson site. Named after the family who owns the property, the excavation in rural southwest Lower Michigan harbors materials left by ice age foragers some 13,000 years ago.
When they began, Nash and his colleagues expected to find what archaeologists call Clovis points, stone spearpoints with a distinctive divot at the base crafted by early inhabitants of North America.
The researchers have indeed uncovered a few Clovis points. But mostly the excavation has yielded tiny stone pieces, or flakes, many no bigger than a fingernail clipping.
Clovis points are well known from the U.S. Southwest and the Great Plains. But recent findings are pushing their range north and east into what is today Ohio, Indiana, and the Great Lakes region. The team hypothesizes that makers of Clovis points migrated north to Michigan, bringing their spearpoints and establishing a hunting camp at the Belson site. The wee lithics suggest the hunters resharpened these tools repeatedly, shedding the fingernail-size flakes in the process.
And because these pieces were found through multiple excavation layers, it’s likely the site was occupied repeatedly—perhaps annually by a small group, the archaeologists think. Such successive, Clovis-rich layers at an archaeological site are “essentially unheard of,” says Nash. “There’s an incredible potential to add to our understanding of early hunter-gatherer anthropology.”
In this short documentary, Nash shares his thoughts about working on the Belson site and its significance.
Produced by Aaron Martin.
Aaron Martin is a filmmaker based in Detroit, Michigan. He has produced work for international publications, national news shows, and local theaters.
