Archaeologists Find Record-Breaking Artifact at US Butchered-Mammoth Site

Archaeologists have discovered an almost 13,000-year-old artifact they say is the oldest known bead found in the Americas.

The tube-shaped bone bead, which has been described in a study published in the online journal Scientific Reports, was found at the La Prele Mammoth site located in Converse County, eastern Wyoming.

The site, located along La Prele Creek near its confluence with the North Platte River, preserves the partial remains of a Columbian mammoth that was either killed or scavenged by prehistoric Native Americans, as well as an associated camp occupied nearly 13,000 years ago when the animal was butchered.

Columbian mammoths (Mammuthus columbi) were a mammoth species that once lived across vast swaths of the Americas, with their range stretching from what is now the northern United States to Costa Rica.

Growing to around 14 feet tall, the Columbian mammoth is thought to have gone extinct around 12,000 years ago during a period when most other large mammals in North America also disappeared.

The record-breaking bead described in the new study was found in one area of the prehistoric camp at La Prele Creek about 36 feet away from the mammoth remains.

To determine the origin of the bead, the researchers, led by University of Wyoming archaeology professor Todd Surovell, extracted a type of protein known as collagen and then subjected it to mass spectrometry—an analytical technique that can identify chemical substances in a target medium. The team also analyzed the bead with micro-CT scanning—a 3D imaging technique that uses X-rays to see inside an object, slice by slice.

The team's analysis revealed that the bone came from a hare. This represents the first "secure evidence" for the use of hares during the Clovis period. This period is named after the Clovis culture, a prehistoric Native American people that lived roughly 13,000 years ago. Known for distinctive stone artifacts, this culture was named after the Clovis archaeological site in New Mexico where archaeologists first uncovered evidence of them.

The most widely cited age range for the Clovis culture places it in a relatively short period of time between around 13,050 and 12,750 years ago.

"Others have noted that we probably haven't and will never find the earliest Clovis sites because they are very rare, so the early end of the range is likely an underestimate. Based on this notion and a couple of fairly old radiocarbon dates, some would push the origin back to around 13,500 years ago," Spencer Pelton, a Wyoming state archaeologist, told Newsweek.

The researchers dated the bead, which measures around 7 millimeters in length, to around 12,940 years ago, according to the study.

While the use of hare bone was a common practice in western North America during the Holocene (the current geologic epoch, which began around 11,700 years ago), this practice's origins can now be traced back even earlier, to the very end of the preceding Pleistocene epoch.

Beads were used by prehistoric Native Americans as personal ornaments, likely decorating their bodies and/or clothing. The production and use of personal ornaments, such as beads, are important indicators of increasing cultural complexity among prehistoric humans. But the new study provides the earliest evidence of the use of such beads in the Americas.

"Archaeologists were pretty sure that the first North Americans made and wore beads because their ancestors in Asia definitely did starting as early as 35,000 years ago and we have beads from later time periods in North America," Pelton said. "However, direct evidence for beads in the Clovis record had thus far eluded us prior to La Prele. This field discovery sealed the deal that Clovis foragers wore beads.

"The discovery that the bead is made from hare bone is in some ways more significant than finding the object itself. Clovis sites are overwhelmingly associated with hunting big game like mammoths and bison, not jackrabbits or snowshoe hares. Determining that this bead was made from hare bone revises our conceptions about how Clovis spent their time hunting."

The authors suggest that the bead is among the oldest known ornaments found in the Americas to date, if not the oldest, with one possible exception.

In 2023, a team of researchers published a study of the Santa Elina rock shelter in central Brazil that claims to have identified three pendants or beads made from giant ground sloth bones more than 20,000 years old.

"Given their age, context and truly unique characteristics, we are skeptical that these objects are actually modified by humans," Pelton said. "We think these finds deserve some further study before being declared either archaeological or definitive evidence for sloth bone beads predating the last glacial maximum."

The researchers considered the possibility that the bone bead was not created by humans but instead resulted from the hare being eaten and digested by a predator. But the available evidence—such as distinctive grooves observed on the outside of the artifact—indicates that it was made by prehistoric people.

Update 2/14/24, 3:47 p,m. ET: This article has been updated to include additional comments from Spencer Pelton.

Do you have a tip on a science story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about archaeology? Let us know via science@newsweek.com.