In Search of Ancient Alaska Archers
While mapping the rocky features of Alaska's Lime Hills in 1992, geologist Tom Bundtzen and a few colleagues rested at the mouth of a hillside cave.
With a panoramic view over the tundra plains to the north and west, Bundtzen mused at what a great spot it would be for caribou hunting. Realizing he might not be the first to dream about steaks while gazing out the cave, he called an archaeologist when he got back to Fairbanks, where Bundtzen works for the Alaska Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys.
Following Bundtzen's tip, Washington State University Anthropologist Robert Ackerman visited the cave in the summer of 1993. Inside, he found unique bone arrowheads used by hunters 7,500 years before the birth of Christ. The find represents the earliest appearance of the bow and arrow on the North American continent, according to Ackerman, who wrote about the discovery in a field report. Bundtzen got his hunch while mapping the area's geology as part of the state's land selection project. The Lime Hills, which are located about 200 miles northwest of Anchorage as the raven flies, are porous with caves, that are formed as groundwater, rain, and snow melt trickles through limestone.
The cave that captured Bundtzen's imagination has a wide opening that allowed him to walk in without bumping his head. Under the cave's protective roof, he could see the Stony and Swift river plains.
Bow hunters who sought shelter in the cave 9,500 years ago were advanced enough to carry their own "tool kits" to repair their weapons, Ackerman said during a recent interview. These ancient people, descendants of the Duiktai culture of present-day Siberia, filtered into Alaska across the Bering Land Bridge.
The discovery of the first arrowhead was made after Ackerman, Bundtzen, and geologists Ellie Harris and Greg Laird sifted through inches of sediment on the cave floor. At first, they struck layers of animal bones that looked as if they were drug into the cave by predators. After digging down about 40 centimeters, Bundtzen pulled out what he thought was a long bird bone. He held it up to Ackerman, and asked what it was.
"He looked over at me and gasped" Bundtzen recalled. Ackerman instantly recognized the dirt covered bone as an arrowhead, the first of four eventually unearthed in the cave.
To the untrained eye, the arrowheads can be easily mistaken for broken chopsticks. The fragments Ackerman recovered are four-and-a-half-inch cylinders of bone, each about the width of a pencil. The arrowheads have a sharpened end that would have punctured animals' skin and a flattened end that attached to the shaft.
Using technology copied by modem bow hunters, the prehistoric hunters cut two slots into the side of the arrowheads just below the sharpened point. Into these slots, the hunters wedged "microblades," sharp rectangles of workable rock, such as chert or obsidian. The microblades made the arrowheads more effective by increasing the arrows' ability to slice through animal flesh.
Ancient people probably didn't live in the cave, Ackerman said. More likely, the nomadic hunters used the cave as an overnight shelter. He pictures them warming up, resting, and replacing dull microblades on their arrows there.
The cave also yielded clues that indicate perhaps humans may have rested there centuries earlier. A broken caribou bone that could have been used to scrape hides was radiocarbon dated to be 13,000 years old. A caribou bone scarred with cut marks possibly made by a stone knife was dated to be 15,000 years old, and a bison's anklebone found in the cave was estimated to be 27,000 years old.
Bundtzen's curiosity and Ackerman's work proves that Alaskan hunters were way ahead of their Lower 48 counterparts. The bow and arrow wasn't used in Washington state until 2,500 years ago. That's 7,000 years after hunters were skillfully replacing their microblades inside the Lime Hills cave, occasionally glancing out to look for moving animals on the horizon.
