Terah L. Smiley Paul E. Damon John F. Lance Spencer R. Titley
Caleb Vance Haynes Jr. (born February 29, 1928), known as Vance Haynes or C. Vance Haynes Jr., is an archaeologist, geologist and author who specializes in the archaeology of the American Southwest. Haynes "revolutionized the fields of geoarchaeology and archaeological geology."[1] He is known for unearthing and studying artifacts of Paleo-Indians including ones from Sandia Cave in the 1960s, work which helped to establish the timeline of human migration through North America. Haynes coined the term "black mat" for a layer of 10,000-year-old swamp soil seen in many North American archaeological studies.[2]
Caleb Vance Haynes Jr. was born in 1928 on February 29, Leap Day, in Spokane, Washington. He was the only child of his parents, Marjory McLeod and Caleb Vance Haynes, an air officer, commander of a military airfield, who would later rise to the rank of major general in the United States Air Force (USAF).[4]
Haynes enrolled in the Colorado School of Mines, studying Geologic Engineering (with the Mining Option) for two years. Like his father, Haynes entered the USAF; he served for almost four years 1951–1954.[1] During this time, he was posted to air bases in Fairbanks, Austin, El Paso and in Albuquerque. At each station he indulged his interest in archaeology, and sought contact with some of the early researchers studying Paleoindian traces.[2] He was interested in rocketry and guided missiles, and was posted to special weapons units, including a stint at Sandia Base adjoining Albuquerque. In the Albuquerque area on his days off, he explored early human settlement sites with an Air Force colleague.[1] After his military stint, Haynes returned to the Colorado School of Mines, earning his Bachelor of Science degree in geology and archaeology in 1956.[1]
Archaeology
Attracted by the school's program in geochronology, Haynes entered the University of Arizona at Tucson for graduate study. As well, he was drawn by the Paleoindian research being performed by Emil Haury. Under Haury, Haynes and professor George Agogino began in 1960 to gather charcoal samples from many sites of ancient human activity in the Great Plains, returning to the university's new radiocarbon dating equipment to process the samples and establish as narrow a time range as possible. From this work, Haynes established the first reliable dates for the Folsom tradition and the Clovis culture.[2]
Later, Haynes became one of the leading proponents and defenders of 'Clovis first' theory. Haynes has been critical of all proposed pre-Clovis sites for failure to provide unequivocal evidence and to consider alternative hypotheses.
He earned his PhD in 1965, and joined in archaeological digs at Hell Gap and Sister's Hill in Wyoming.[2]Fred Wendorf invited Haynes to join the High Plains Paleoecology Project (HPPP), an association which led to his first work at the Clovis archaeological dig, Blackwater Draw Locality1. His careful dating of Clovis carbon traces provided Haynes with one of the most significant advances in the understanding of early human activity and migration in North America.[2]
Haynes has primarily been interested in determining how the New World was populated by humans. Other interests of his include studies of the Quaternary extinction event, the Pleistocene–Holocene transition in which megafauna died off in great numbers. Haynes has studied both modern and historic climate change, human occupation of the Sahara, and battlefield archaeology.[6]
Haynes has studied the disappearance from Earth of its largest animals approximately 11,000–10,900 years ago. Haynes questions the theorists who say humans killed off the large mammals by predation, as well as the theorists who look to an asteroid impact. He suspects it was a combination of drought and human predation as animals concentrated at watering places as per Jelinek (1967). Haynes notes that the extinction period could have been as short as one century—he concludes that too little is known, and more research must be undertaken to achieve complete understanding.[7]
In 1997, Haynes co-authored a memorial of his teacher Emil Haury, an article written with Raymond Harris Thompson and James Jefferson Reid which appeared in Biographical Memoirs, Volume 72, of the National Academy of Sciences.
On September 28, 1999, some 90 former students of Haynes converged at the University of Arizona to honor him during a two-day symposium.[8]
The Argonaut Archaeological Research Fund (AARF) was the recipient in Fall 2002 of Haynes's extensive collection of 800 mostly epoxy resin, with some acrylic, casts made from Paleoindian projectile points. The collection is housed at the School of Anthropology at the University of Arizona.[9]
In 2003–2004, Haynes submitted arguments to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit with other scientists to question various tribal claims to the remains of the Kennewick Man, estimated to be 8,340 to 9,200 years old, in order to determine which tribe, if any, it could be identified with.[10] The remains in question were ones that Haynes said predated any organized tribes currently known, and as such could not be considered the direct ancestor of any of the tribes who sought to have the bone fragments immediately reburied.[10] Writing to the Army Corps of Engineers on October 3, 1996, Haynes was one of the first scientists to question the rights of the several Native American tribes wishing to take possession of the skeleton and to rebury it—he argued that the skeleton should be studied by qualified scientists.[11] In mid-October, he and seven other scientists sued to gain access to the skeleton, and to prevent its "repatriation" with Indian tribes.[12] The court concluded that the Kennewick Man could not be considered "Native American" as defined by the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.[10]
Geoarchaeology of Egypt
In the 1960s, Haynes began research into geoarchaeology of middle and late Paleolithic sites in the Western Desert of Egypt and Sudan. He investigated the geochronology of playas, landscape evolution, processes of sand movement, and other relevant subjects. In this, he was influenced by the work of Ralph Bagnold.
He also documented previously unknown Paleolithic sites and the historic camps of early desert travelers. Some of this work is presented in a special issue of the journal Geoarchaeology (January 2001, volume 16, number 1).[13]
"Black mat" layers
In the 1950s, in his work on the Lehner Mammoth-Kill Site near Hereford, Arizona, Emil Haury found Clovis point artifacts buried by a distinctive black clay layer. It was then known as "Lehner swamp soil". This black soil was associated with a subhumid climate and ponding.[2]
Later, Haynes studied this phenomenon, and renamed it as “black mat”. Radiocarbon dates indicate that it formed between 9,800 and 10,800 BP.[14]
Over 60 geoarchaeological sites bridging the Pleistocene–Holocene transition (last deglaciation) exhibit this "black mat"; it is a black organic-rich layer in the form of mollic paleosols, aquolls, and diatomites. This layer is associated with the Younger Dryas cooling episode ~10,900 B.P. to ~10,000 B.P., and covers the surfaces on which the last remnants of the terminal Pleistocene megafauna are recorded.[15]
According to Haynes, 'black mat' is a general term that also includes the similar other deposits of various shades of grey or even white, because some Younger Dryas marls and diatomites are actually white to grey in color.[15] Firestone and colleagues published an Inner Traditions trade book about cosmic catastrophes in which they claimed that raised levels of radioactivity were associated with the mat at the Murray Springs Clovis Site.[16] But Haynes found no such radioactive anomaly of the black mat or the Pleistocene-Holocene boundary that it covers at Murray Springs, Lehner Ranch, or Blackwater Draw. Astrophysicist David Morrison later characterized Firestone's book as "catastrophist pseudoscience" [17]
In the late 1990s, it was reported that, in the North American Great Basin area, black mats actually occur between 11,000 and 6300 BP (cal). Also, some had occurred post-2300 BP (cal). However, there's an extensive cluster of them near 10,000 BP.[18]
This Rancholabrean termination or extinction is now dated at 10,900 ± 50 B.P.[15]
Personal life
While stationed with the USAF in Fairbanks, Alaska, Haynes met and married Elizabeth "Taffy" Hamilton. She previously broke codes for the U.S. Army in California, then moved to Fairbanks to work as a civil servant for the USAF. In 1955, while living in Denver, they had a daughter, Elizabeth Anne "Lisa" Haynes. In the late 1960s, Taffy earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Arizona. She died in 2003, and was memorialized by her family with a leaf tile and a brick paver at the University of Arizona's Women's Plaza of Honor.[19]
A hobby of Haynes is the collecting and researching the design and development of the elegant Springfield Officers Model Rifle (OMR), 1875-1885, by the National Armory at Springfield, Massachusetts. This was to replace the tedious customizing of sporting rifles by production of a standard model for officers to use on campaigns during the Indian wars in the west. This was for hunting to supplement the bland diet of salt pork and hardtack for the troops in the field.
Haynes also contributed to battlefield archaeology and geology for the National Park Service at the Little Bighorn, Washita, and Yellowstone battlefields, 1868-1877.
Haynes, C. Vance Jr. (September 1985) Mastodon-Bearing Springs and Late Quaternary Geochronology of the Lower Pomme de Terre Valley, Missouri. ISBN978-0-8137-2204-7
Haynes, C. Vance Jr. and George A. Agogino (1986) Geochronology of Sandia Cave. Smithsonian contributions to anthropology, Number 32. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Haynes, C. Vance Jr. (1995) General Custer and His Sporting Rifles. Tucson: Westernlore Publications.
Haynes, C. Vance Jr., editor. (February 2007) Murray Springs: A Clovis Site with Multiple Activity Areas in the San Pedro Valley, Arizona. ISBN978-0-8165-2579-9
Related Research Articles
Clovis points are the characteristically fluted projectile points associated with the New World Clovis culture, a prehistoric Paleo-American culture. They are present in dense concentrations across much of North America and they are largely restricted to the north of South America. There are slight differences in points found in the Eastern United States bringing them to sometimes be called "Clovis-like". Clovis points date to the Early Paleoindian period, with all known points dating from roughly 13,400–12,700 years ago. As an example, Clovis remains at the Murry Springs Site date to around 12,900 calendar years ago. Clovis fluted points are named after the city of Clovis, New Mexico, where examples were first found in 1929 by Ridgely Whiteman.
The Clovis culture is a prehistoric Paleoamerican archaeological culture, named for distinct stone and bone tools found in close association with Pleistocene fauna, particularly two Columbian mammoths, at Blackwater Locality No. 1 near Clovis, New Mexico, in 1936 and 1937. It existed from roughly 11,500 to 10,800 BCE near the end of the Last Glacial Period. It is characterized by the manufacture of "Clovis points" and distinctive bone and ivory tools, and it is represented by hundreds of sites, from which >10,000 Clovis points have been recovered. The Clovis culture is primarily known from North America. In South America, the similar related Fishtail or Fell projectile point style was contemporaneous to the usage of Clovis points in North America, and possibly developed from Clovis points.
Topper is an archaeological site located along the Savannah River in Allendale County, South Carolina, United States. It is noted as a location of artifacts which some archaeologists believe to indicate human habitation of the New World earlier than the Clovis culture. The latter were previously believed to be the first people in North America.
Paleo-Indians, Paleoindians or Paleo-Americans were the first peoples who entered, and subsequently inhabited, the Americas during the final glacial episodes of the late Pleistocene period. The prefix paleo- comes from the Greek adjective palaios (παλαιός) 'old; ancient'. The term Paleo-Indians applies specifically to the lithic period in the Western Hemisphere and is distinct from the term Paleolithic.
The Folsom tradition is a Paleo-Indian archaeological culture that occupied much of central North America from c. 10800 BCE to c. 10200 BCE. The term was first used in 1927 by Jesse Dade Figgins, director of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. The discovery by archaeologists of projectile points in association with the bones of extinct Bison antiquus, especially at the Folsom site near Folsom, New Mexico, established much greater antiquity for human residence in the Americas than the previous scholarly opinion that humans in the Americas dated back only 3,000 years. The findings at the Folsom site have been called the "discovery that changed American archaeology."
Emil Walter "Doc" Haury was an influential archaeologist who specialized in the archaeology of the American Southwest. He is most famous for his work at Snaketown, a Hohokam site in Arizona.
James M. Adovasio is an American archaeologist and one of the foremost experts in perishable artifacts. He was formerly the Provost, Dean of the Zurn School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, and Director of the Mercyhurst Archaeological Institute at Mercyhurst University in Erie, Pennsylvania, Adovasio is best known for his work at Meadowcroft Rockshelter in Pennsylvania and for his subsequent role in the "Clovis First" debate. He has published nearly 400 books, monographs, articles, and papers in his field.
The Gila Pueblo Archaeological Foundation was a research organization which conducted archaeological research in the American Southwest and surrounding areas. It was founded in 1928 in Globe, Arizona, by Harold S. Gladwin and Winifred (McCurdy) Gladwin. It ceased operations in 1950.
Charles Corradino Di Peso was an American archaeologist. He is known for his research in Northern Mexico and the American Southwest.
The Younger Dryas impact hypothesis (YDIH) or Clovis comet hypothesis is a speculative attempt to explain the onset of the Younger Dryas (YD) as an alternative to the long-standing and widely accepted cause due to a significant reduction or shutdown of the North Atlantic "Conveyor" in response to a sudden influx of freshwater from Lake Agassiz and deglaciation in North America. The YDIH posits that fragments of a large, disintegrating asteroid or comet struck North America, South America, Europe, and western Asia around 12,850 years ago, coinciding with the beginning of the Younger Dryas cooling event. Advocates proposed the existence of a Younger Dryas boundary (YDB) layer that can be identified by materials they interpret as evidence of multiple meteor air bursts and/or impacts across a large fraction of Earth’s surface. Some YDIH proponents have also proposed that this event triggered extensive biomass burning, a brief impact winter and the Younger Dryas abrupt climate change, contributed to extinctions of late Pleistocene megafauna, and resulted in the end of the Clovis culture. The hypothesis is not widely accepted by relevant experts.
Ventana Cave is an archaeological site in southern Arizona. It is located on the Tohono O'odham Indian Reservation. The cave was excavated under the direction of Emil Haury by teams led by Julian Hayden in 1942, and in 1941 by a team led by Wilfrid C Bailey, one of Emil Haury's graduate students. The deepest artifacts from Ventana Cave were recovered from a layer of volcanic debris that also contained Pleistocene horse, Burden's pronghorn, tapir, sloth, and other extinct and modern species. A projectile point from the volcanic debris layer was compared to the Folsom Tradition and later to the Clovis culture, but the assemblage was peculiar enough to warrant a separate name – the Ventana Complex. Radiocarbon dates from the volcanic debris layer indicated an age of about 11,300 BP.
The Naco Mammoth Kill Site is an archaeological site in southeast Arizona, 1 mile northwest of Naco in Cochise County. The site was reported to the Arizona State Museum in September 1951 by Marc Navarrete, a local resident, after his father found two Clovis points in Greenbush Draw, while digging out the fossil bones of a mammoth. Emil Haury excavated the Naco mammoth site in April 1952. In only five days, Haury recovered the remains of a Columbian Mammoth in association with 8 Clovis points. The excavator believed the assemblage to date from about 10,000 Before Present. An additional point was found in the arroyo upstream. The Naco site was the first Clovis mammoth kill association to be identified. An additional, unpublished, second excavation occurred in 1953 which doubled the area of the original work and found bones from a 2nd mammoth. In 2020, small charcoal fragments were found adhered to a mammoth bone from the site. AMS radiocarbon dating produced a mean date of 10,985 ± 56 Before Present.
Anna Curtenius Roosevelt is an American archaeologist and Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois Chicago. She studies human evolution and long-term human-environment interaction. She is one of the leading American archeologists studying Paleoindians in the Amazon basin. Her field research has included significant findings at Marajo Island and Caverna da Pedra Pintada in Brazil. She does additional field work in the Congo Basin. She is the great-granddaughter of United States President Theodore Roosevelt.
Vance T. Holliday is a professor in the School of Anthropology and the department of Geosciences as well as an adjunct professor in the department of Geography at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
Dust Cave is a Paleoindian archaeology site located in northern Alabama. It is in the Highland Rim in the limestone bluffs that overlook Coffee Slough, a tributary of the Tennessee River. The site was occupied during the Pleistocene and early Holocene eras. 1LU496, another name for Dust Cave, was occupied seasonally for 7,000 years. The cave was discovered in 1984 by Dr. Richard Cobb and initially excavated in 1989 under Dr. Boyce Driskell from the University of Alabama.
Murray Springs is located in southern Arizona near the San Pedro River and once served as a Clovis hunting camp approximately 11,000 years BP. The site is unique for the massive quantity of large megafauna processing and extensive tool making. Archaeologists identified five buried animal kills and processing locations and a Clovis camp location. The site is located in the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area, administered by the Bureau of Land Management.
Hell Gap is a deeply stratified archaeological site located in the Great Plains of eastern Wyoming, approximately thirteen miles north of Guernsey, where an abundant amount of Paleoindian and Archaic artifacts have been found and excavated since 1959. This site has had an important impact on North American archaeology because of the large quantity and breadth of prehistoric Paleoindian and Archaic period artifacts and cultures it encompasses. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2016.
John Bertram Broster is an American archaeologist formerly serving as the Prehistoric Archeological Supervisor at the Tennessee Division of Archaeology, Department of Environment and Conservation. He is best known for his work on the Paleoindian period of the American Southwest and Southeast, and has published some 38 book chapters and journal articles on the subject.
The Gault archaeological site is an extensive, multicomponent site located in Florence, Texas, United States on the Williamson-Bell County line along Buttermilk Creek about 250 meters upstream from the Buttermilk Creek complex. It bears evidence of almost continuous human occupation, starting at least 16,000 years ago—making it one of the few archaeological sites in the Americas at which compelling evidence has been found for human occupation dating to before the appearance of the Clovis culture. Archaeological material covers about 16 hectares with a depth of up to 3 meters in places. About 30 incised stones from the Clovis period engraved with geometric patterns were found there as well as others from periods up to the Early Archaic. Incised bone was also found.
Rolfe D. Mandel is a Distinguished Professor of archaeology in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Kansas as well as Senior Scientist and Executive Director of the Odyssey Geoarchaeological Research Program at the Kansas Geological Survey. Initially trained as a geographer, he has been a major figure in defining the subdiscipline of geoarchaeology and has spent the last thirty years focusing on the effects of geologic processes on the archaeological record. His primary research interests include geoarchaeology, Quaternary soils, geology, paleoecology, and paleoenvironmental reconstruction in the Great Plains region of the United States as well as the Mediterranean. Over the years, Mandel has participated in numerous research projects and has served as an editor to multiple journals and a book. His work has been key in promoting an interdisciplinary approach in archaeology, geology, and geography.
↑ Haynes, C. Vance Jr. (2007) Radiocarbon dating at Murray Springs and Curry Draw. In Murray Springs: A Clovis Site with Multiple Activity Areas in the San Pedro Valley, Arizona, edited by C. Vance Haynes Jr. and Bruce B. Huckell, pp. 229–239. University of Arizona Press, Tucson
↑ Haynes, Vance; Lisa Haynes (October 24, 2006). "Elizabeth Hamilton (Taffy) Haynes". Women's Plaza of Honor. Tucson, Arizona: The University of Arizona. Retrieved February 19, 2010.
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