The Page–Ladson archaeological and paleontological site ( 8JE591) is a deep sinkhole in the bed of the

karst Karst is a topography formed from the dissolution of soluble rocks such as limestone, dolomite, and gypsum. It is characterized by underground drainage systems with sinkholes and caves. It has also been documented for more weathering-resistant ro ...

Aucilla River The Aucilla River rises in Brooks County, Georgia, USA, close to Thomasville, and passes through the Big Bend region of Florida, emptying into the Gulf of Mexico at Apalachee Bay. Some early maps called it the Ocilla River. It is long and ha ...

(between

Jefferson Jefferson may refer to: Names * Jefferson (surname) * Jefferson (given name) People * Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), third president of the United States * Jefferson (footballer, born 1970), full name Jefferson Tomaz de Souza, Brazilian foo ...

and

Taylor Taylor, Taylors or Taylor's may refer to: People * Taylor (surname) **List of people with surname Taylor * Taylor (given name), including Tayla and Taylah * Taylor sept, a branch of Scottish clan Cameron * Justice Taylor (disambiguation) Plac ...

counties in the Big Bend region of

Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...

) that has

stratified Stratification may refer to: Mathematics * Stratification (mathematics), any consistent assignment of numbers to predicate symbols * Data stratification in statistics Earth sciences * Stable and unstable stratification * Stratification, or st ...

deposits of late

Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological Epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was fina ...

and early

Holocene The Holocene ( ) is the current geological epoch. It began approximately 11,650 cal years Before Present (), after the Last Glacial Period, which concluded with the Holocene glacial retreat. The Holocene and the preceding Pleistocene togethe ...

animal bones and human artifacts. The site was the first pre-Clovis site discovered in southeastern North America; radiocarbon evidence suggest that the site date from 14,200 to 14,550 BP. These dates are roughly 1,000 to 1,500 years before the advent of the

Clovis culture The Clovis culture is a prehistoric Paleoamerican culture, named for distinct stone and bone tools found in close association with Pleistocene fauna, particularly two mammoths, at Blackwater Locality No. 1 near Clovis, New Mexico, in 1936 ...

. Early dates for Page–Ladson challenge theories that humans quickly decimated large game populations in the area once they arrived.

Prehistoric environment

At the height of the last

ice age An ice age is a long period of reduction in the temperature of Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental and polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. Earth's climate alternates between ice ages and gree ...

(the

Wisconsin glaciation The Wisconsin Glacial Episode, also called the Wisconsin glaciation, was the most recent glacial period of the North American ice sheet complex. This advance included the Cordilleran Ice Sheet, which nucleated in the northern North American Cor ...

), the sea level was up to 100 meters lower than at present. Much more land was above the water along the coast, which was extended much farther to the west. Most of Florida is a thick

limestone Limestone ( calcium carbonate ) is a type of carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of . Limestone forms whe ...

platform, with typical

Karst topography Karst is a topography formed from the dissolution of soluble rocks such as limestone, dolomite, and gypsum. It is characterized by underground drainage systems with sinkholes and caves. It has also been documented for more weathering-resistant ro ...

. As limestone is porous, salt water penetrates the lower part of the Florida platform, and fresh water floats on top of the salt water. With the lowered sea level of the ice age, the fresh water table in Florida also was lowered, leaving most of Florida much drier than it is at present. The only reliable sources of fresh water at elevations that are currently above sea level were

sinkhole A sinkhole is a depression or hole in the ground caused by some form of collapse of the surface layer. The term is sometimes used to refer to doline, enclosed depressions that are locally also known as ''vrtače'' and shakeholes, and to openi ...

s and the deeper parts of river beds. The Page–Ladson site was one of those watering holes, located in a

ravine A ravine is a landform that is narrower than a canyon and is often the product of streambank erosion. Before it was inundated by the Aucilla river, Page–Ladson was a sinkhole containing a small pond within it. Currently, Page–Ladson is about 60 m by 45 m wide and 10 m deep. The lower part of the Aucilla River (from the

Cody Scarp The Cody Scarp or Cody Escarpment is located in north and north central Florida United States. It is a relict scarp and ancient persistent topographical feature formed from an ancient early Pleistocene shorelines of ~1.8 million to 10,000 years ...

to the

Gulf of Mexico The Gulf of Mexico ( es, Golfo de México) is an oceanic basin, ocean basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, largely surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of ...

) crosses the

Woodville Karst Plain The Woodville Karst Plain is a karst area that runs from Tallahassee, Florida, U.S. to the Gulf of Mexico separated by the Cody Scarp. This karst plain includes numerous first magnitude springs, including Wakulla- Leon Sinks Cave System, the lon ...

, which consists of a thin layer of sand over limestone bedrock. Much of the flow of the Aucilla River has been captured by an underground drainage system created by karst processes. Sections of the river are entirely underground, surfacing for short stretches and then disappearing again. The Page-Ladson site is located in one of the above ground sections, known as Half-Mile Run (although it is closer to one mile long). Other sites on the Aucilla River also are yielding

paleontological Paleontology (), also spelled palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene epoch (geology), epoch (roughly 11,700 years before present). It includes t ...

and

archaeological Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscap ...

finds, first as part of the long-running Aucilla River Prehistory Project, and, more recently, by the Aucilla Research Institiute (https://www.aucillaresearchinstitute.org/), the Center for the Study of the First Americans (https://liberalarts.tamu.edu/csfa/research/#page), and Florida State University (https://sites.google.com/view/jessi-j-halligan/research-projects).

Aucilla River Prehistory Project

Starting in 1959, Dick Ohmes and other

scuba divers This is a list of underwater divers whose exploits have made them notable. Underwater divers are people who take part in underwater diving activities – Underwater diving is practiced as part of an occupation, or for recreation, where t ...

began retrieving artifacts and Pleistocene animal bones bearing

butcher A butcher is a person who may Animal slaughter, slaughter animals, dress their flesh, sell their meat, or participate within any combination of these three tasks. They may prepare standard cuts of meat and poultry for sale in retail or wholesal ...

marks from the lower reaches of the Aucilla River. A team led by

archaeologist Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscap ...

James M. Dunbar and

paleontologist Paleontology (), also spelled palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene epoch (roughly 11,700 years before present). It includes the study of fossi ...

S. David Webb began a survey of Half-Mile Run in 1983. A former

U.S. Navy Seal The United States Navy Sea, Air, and Land (SEAL) Teams, commonly known as Navy SEALs, are the United States Navy, U.S. Navy's primary special operations force and a component of the United States Naval Special Warfare Command, Naval Special Wa ...

, Buddy Page, showed them a site where he had found

elephant Elephants are the largest existing land animals. Three living species are currently recognised: the African bush elephant, the African forest elephant, and the Asian elephant. They are the only surviving members of the family Elephantidae an ...

bones. A test pit yielded elephant bones, bone tools, and chips from tool making.

Radiocarbon dating Radiocarbon dating (also referred to as carbon dating or carbon-14 dating) is a method for determining the age of an object containing organic material by using the properties of radiocarbon, a radioactive isotope of carbon. The method was dev ...

of organic material from the pit yielded dates from 13,000 to 11,700 years

Before Present Before Present (BP) years, or "years before present", is a time scale used mainly in archaeology, geology and other scientific disciplines to specify when events occurred relative to the origin of practical radiocarbon dating in the 1950s. Becaus ...

. The owners of the land surrounding Half-Mile Run, the Ladson family, granted permission to the team to access and camp along Half-Mile Run. Therefore, the site was named Page–Ladson. From 1983 until 1997 Dunbar (then with the Florid
Bureau of Archaeological Research
and Webb (then with th
Florida Museum of Natural History
at University of Florida) led excavations, collectively termed th
Aucilla River Prehistory Project
(ARPP). Florida Museum of Natural History published an annual Aucilla River Times newsletter, as well as researchers reporting in scientific periodicals. As the project progressed, the team developed new methods of recording the stratigraphic placement of all material in an underwater environment. This excavation yielded eight lithic artifacts associated with mastodon butchering. This excavation dated the artifacts to approximately 14,400 BP, confirming that the Page–Ladson site was a Pre-Clovis site and the oldest site east of the Mississippi River. In 2012, archaeological excavation at Page–Ladson resumed, following Dunbar's discovery of the pre-Clovis component at the site, with the intention of finding the oldest dates for human remains and artifacts at the site. These excavations continued until 2014. This excavation yielded six lithic artifacts (bifaces and flakes) made from local coastal plain

chert Chert () is a hard, fine-grained sedimentary rock composed of microcrystalline or cryptocrystalline quartz, the mineral form of silicon dioxide (SiO2). Chert is characteristically of biological origin, but may also occur inorganically as a prec ...

from layers dating before Clovis. This excavation dated the site to approximately 14,200 to 14,550 BP, reaffirming the earlier dating from the previous excavation. The 2012-2014 excavation was funded by th
Center for the Study of First Americans
and private grants; led by Jessi Halligan, James Dunbar, and Michael Waters; and included local support such as from Dunbar'
Aucilla Research Institute
and researchers from additional institutions such as

Indiana University of Pennsylvania Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP) is a public research university in Indiana County, Pennsylvania. As of fall 2021, the university enrolled 7,044 undergraduates and 1,865 postgraduates, for a total enrollment of 9,009 students. The univ ...

Late Pleistocene animals and Paleoindians

The lowest stratum in Page–Ladson dates to the late Pleistocene. It includes

mastodon A mastodon ( 'breast' + 'tooth') is any proboscidean belonging to the extinct genus ''Mammut'' (family Mammutidae). Mastodons inhabited North and Central America during the late Miocene or late Pliocene up to their extinction at the end of th ...

mammoth A mammoth is any species of the extinct elephantid genus ''Mammuthus'', one of the many genera that make up the order of trunked mammals called proboscideans. The various species of mammoth were commonly equipped with long, curved tusks and, ...

horse The horse (''Equus ferus caballus'') is a domesticated, one-toed, hoofed mammal. It belongs to the taxonomic family Equidae and is one of two extant subspecies of ''Equus ferus''. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million y ...

ground sloth Ground sloths are a diverse group of extinct sloths in the mammalian superorder Xenarthra. The term is used to refer to all extinct sloths because of the large size of the earliest forms discovered, compared to existing tree sloths. The Caribbe ...

palaeolama ''Palaeolama'' () is an extinct genus of laminoid camelid that existed from the Late Pliocene to the Early Holocene (). Their range extended from North America to the intertropical region of South America. Description ''Palaeolama'' were relat ...

bones, and "straw mats" of chopped vegetation (leaves, bark, and wood) of relatively uniform length. The length of the chopped vegetation is consistent with the spacing between cusps on mastodon teeth, and the "straw mats" have been interpreted as equivalent to the layers of trampled

dung found around water holes in

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

. Elephant steroids have been identified in the "digesta" deposits at Page–Ladson and Latvis–Simpson (a 32,000-year-old mastodon site farther south in the Aucilla). Some of the bones from this level show apparently human-made cut marks, particularly a complete mastodon tusk.

Ivory Ivory is a hard, white material from the tusks (traditionally from elephants) and teeth of animals, that consists mainly of dentine, one of the physical structures of teeth and tusks. The chemical structure of the teeth and tusks of mammals is ...

spear points (often called "foreshafts") are found more frequently in the Aucilla River than from any other sites in North America. Samples from the "straw mat" level have yielded radiocarbon dates from 13,130 +/- 200 to 11,770 +/- 90 years

. The "straw mat" level is covered by a layer of mud that did not contain any bones of extinct animals.

People of the early Archaic period

In 1996 an Early Archaic Bolen habitation level was found. At least three

hearth A hearth () is the place in a home where a fire is or was traditionally kept for home heating and for cooking, usually constituted by at least a horizontal hearthstone and often enclosed to varying degrees by any combination of reredos (a lo ...

s were identified along with various stone points, scrapers,

adze An adze (; alternative spelling: adz) is an ancient and versatile cutting tool similar to an axe but with the cutting edge perpendicular to the handle rather than parallel. Adzes have been used since the Stone Age. They are used for smoothing ...

s, and gouges that were found, as well as antler points used to press flakes off the stone tools. Three wooden stakes were found upright in the ground, and a cypress log that had been burned on the top side and hollowed out. Radiocarbon dating yielded dates approximately 10,000 years Before Present. The site was well preserved because it had been flooded by a rise in the river level within a hundred years after the site had been occupied.

Evidence of Floridian human and mastodon coexistence

Underwater archaeologists and other researchers reexamining the Page–Ladson site have shown that some Late Pleistocene human populations provisioned themselves with mastodons that were either butchered or scavenged 14,450 years ago (~14,550 cal yr B.P.) , about 2000 years before large mammal extinction. Prior to this determination, evidence of human scavenging or butchering of mastodons was deemed ambiguous. "''The new discoveries at Page–Ladson show that people were living in the Gulf Coast area much earlier than believed, The stone tools and faunal remains at the site show that at 14,550 years ago, people knew how to find game, fresh water and material for making tools. These people were well-adapted to this environment. The site is a slam-dunk pre-Clovis site with unequivocal artifacts, clear stratigraphy and thorough dating''" (

Phys.org Phys.org is an online science, research and technology news aggregator offering briefs from press releases and reports from news agencies (a form of journalism sometimes pejoratively called churnalism). The website also produces its own science jo ...

Notes

References

* * * *
Report of the 1999 Field Operations - PaleoAucilla Prehistory Project
- accessed November 30, 2011 * {{DEFAULTSORT:Page-Ladson Site Archaeological sites in Florida Natural history of Florida Paleontological sites of Florida Geography of Jefferson County, Florida Geography of Taylor County, Florida Pre-Clovis archaeological sites in the Americas Underwater archaeological sites 1959 in paleontology