Ed,
Your comments are foolish because Lori is NOT my wife!!! However, Lori shows in her presentation native copper use in southern Illinois dating to 3,000 BC and this is the correct date. Cahokia chronology that is proposed by your sources does not acknowledge or include this valuable information.
The copper used at Cahokia was matched to the type from upper michigan.
Your conjecture about the engravings on the Welch Butterfly unfortunately cannot be disproven or proven. The piece at the Smithsonian is only a plaster cast of the original Banded Slate artifact. The original banded slate example is unknown and may be in someones collection.
Your claim about the DeSoto map also falls short, for the photo that i have shown is actually source material used by Hudson and His associates to map DeSoto's route. The Green dots are the locations of Spanish artifacts.
This time frame is called Chalcolithic - and the similarities between Iberian Peninsula stone work, and that of Northern India are noted by a broad study of world archaeology. As such, birchbark scrolls were also found among both cultures, and relavent because microblades were probably used to incise the birchbark. Microblades at Cahokia were found with copper workshop evidence and this lithic chronology has not been included in your source.
http://s243.photobucket.com/albums/ff280/Marburg72/Erb%20and%20Mathews%20collections/Microblade%20Core/Further Documentation of "Old-world and New-world" Microblade Chronology:
The gap between this upper palaeolithic and the neolithic-chalcolithic cultures has
now been bridged in some regions such as Uttar Pradesh, Karnatak and SE. Rajasthan
by microlithic cultures, for which we have dates ranging from 8000 B.C. to 2000 B.C. There
is no doubt that in some parts of India microlithic cultures continued to flourish side by
side with other advanced cultures (Misra 1971).
(Prehistoric colonization of India)
The Ahar culture, as revealed by the excavations at Ahar, has been found to be a purely
copper-using culture (I.A.R. 1961-2: 50). At Gilund (Rajasthan), however, a few microliths
were found associated with this culture (I.A.R. 1959-60: 41).
Ahar Culture (1700-1500 BC)
(New Light on the Prehistoric Cultures of Central India)
At most of the excavated sites of the Upper Gangetic Valley the Ochre Coloured
Pottery is succeeded by the Painted Grey Ware but at two of them, Atranjikhera 6,
and Noh '), an ill-defined Black-and-Red Ware horizon is interposed between
these two levels. Nothing is known about the cultural identity of this Black-and-Red
Ware except that it XI-as associated at Atranjikhera with "microlithic cores and copper."
A clear appraisal must await fuller investigation
(Prehistoric Ganges)
While a wide variety of microlithic implements along with a more or less extensive use of Copper
form the basic technological ingredient, the primary crop cultivated was rice.
There was a wide assortment of plain and painted wheelmade wares among which a
Black-and-Red Ware formed the dominant element. This Black-and-Red Ware
has been discovered as far as Rajghat l) and Sohgaura 2, in East U.P. The C-14 dates
suggest a beginning around I roo B.C. 3). The origin is obscure but there is little
evidence for a migration of the chalcolithic elements from South-east Rajasthan,
Central India or Deccan. This chalcolithic level gradually merged into an iron-using
stage around 700 B.C. 4). This aspect of the gradual merger between the chalcolithic
and iron-using stages is clear from the sequences of Chirand and Mahisdal where
chalcolithic elements including pottery and microlithic tools continue significantly
in the iron-using level. Early historic period began, as in the Upper Gangetic Valley,
in the sixth century B.C.
(Prehistoric Ganges)
The technological traditions of the Franco-Iberian
Solutrean were firmly rooted in those of the
Gravettian (middle Upper Paleolithic) of western
Europe. Depending on the local availability and quality
of lithic raw materials, as well as on site function,
blanks used for making stone implements were
flakes, blades, and bladelets ("micro-blades" in
American terminology), although the Solutrean leaf,
shouldered, and stemmed points were usually made
on blades often produced from diverse specific forms
of prismatic cores. The hallmark of Solutrean lithic
technology is indeed its projectile component, consisting
of both a variety of single-element tips (of
widely varying sizes and weights, including many
"laurel leaves" that may actually have been used as
knives) and (especially in later Solutrean contexts)
backed bladelets that were used multiply as barbs
and/ or tips of projectiles, whose other elements were
basally beveled antler points.
(soulterian)
Microblades, tanged and
shouldered points-all common in various Solutrean
assemblages-are absent in the far more limited technological
repertoire of Clovis. While there are superficial
similarities (e.g., some concave base foliate
projectile points, some organic points or foreshafts
with anti-skid engraved lines on basal bevels), these
are most parsimoniously explainable as independent
developments-similar solutions to similar functional
problems, given limited available lithic and
osseous materials and manufacturing techniques.
The fact that red ochre was used by people in both
techno-complexes-as cited by Stanford-is meaningless,
as such pigment use is virtually a cultural
universal among Homo sapiens foragers worldwide.
(Soulterian)
The creativity of the Solutrean extended
beyond the "arms race" that is attested by the plethora
of lithic and antler point sizes and types (and even
224 AMERICAN ANTIQUITY [Vol. 65, No. 2, 20001
backed micro-blade elements) and by the invention
of the spearthrower.
(souterian)
Yet such pieces in the Solutrean are
found only at a handful of sites in a small area of
northern Spain-not in France or in the rest of Iberia.
Nor are the Solutrean points fluted, a feature which
is absolutely diagnostic of Clovis points. Shouldered
and stemmed points, as well as micro-blades, all so
common in the Solutrean, are completely absent
from the Clovis lithic repertory. And beveled antler
points (or foreshafts), common in the Solutrean, are
very rare in Clovis.
(soulerian)
The microliths
are consistently found in association with pottery and bifacially
worked projectile points of the Neolithic and
Chalcolithic of the third and second millennia B.C.
(USSR)
The above observations as well as data from
I. V. Sinitsyn's excavations on the Volga (Berezhnov
I1 cemetery), from those on the left bank
of the Dniepr (Bader 1950), and in Crimea
(Krainov 1957), indicate a persistence of microlithic
technology as late as the age of metal,
allowing us to place microlithic sites in Asia as
being Chalcolithic. Pottery found with microliths
in Dzhanbas-Kala, Dzhebel Cave, and a
series of eroded sites enables us to date microlithic
sites in Kazakhstan and Central Asia in
the main to the third and early second millennia
B.C. This same chronological placement is
indicated by the type of bifacially retouched
projectile points-the triangular point with an
indentation in the base. Points of this type are
common in the third and second millennia B.C.
and possibly were manufactured as early as the
end of the fourth millennium.
(USSR)
Triangular Points of this type were found at Cahokia Mounds in abundance.
The excavations of I. V.
Sinitsyn in the Berezhnov I1 cemetery definitely
linked the microlithic cultures of the lower
Volga with the Yamno cultures of the third
millennium B.C. Here in Kurgan (burial
mound) 9, with Burials 3, 5, 9, and 17 were
found two microblades, three end-scrapers
made on blades, three rounded microscrapers,
a composite tool, and two other artifacts quite
usual in lower Volg-a sites. Thus, in the third
millennium B.C. geometric tools were still being
produced in the lower reaches of the Volga.
(USSR)
The Introduction
of microblades is now seen as a regional tradition
lasting from at least 1200 B.C. until around A.D. 400.
(Microblades)
Microblades and cores were next reported
from the top horizon of DjRi3 in the Fraser Canyon,
but the relation of these objects to the
radiocarbon date given for the horizon, 410 B.C.
60 (S-112), is not made clear (Borden 1961:
1). (Microblades)
As Table 1 indicates, date estimates for assemblages,
including microblades or cores, range
from 1210 B.C. 2 130 (GSC437) as the earliest
to A.D. 370 f 140 (S-19) as the most recent.
(Microblades)
New World are in the
far north and Mesoamerica. The Northwest
Microblade tradition is estimated by MacNeish
(Willey 1966: 415) to have begun about 6000
B.C. The Arctic Small Tool tradition, starting at
4000-3000 B.c., spread from Alaska to Greenland
and lasted until about 500 B.C. In Mesoamerica,
the Tehuacin Valley sequence showed
obsidian blades struck from prepared polyhedral
cores in the Abejas phase, dated by MacNeish
(1962) at 3400-2300 B.C. Willey (1966: 83)
states "this common little instrument was to
become one of the most persistent of the Mesoamerican
technological traditions." In view of
the probable advenr of other Mesoamerican
traits into the Mississippi Valley in Poverty
Point times, a Mesoamerican origin for the
microflint industry seemq appropriate. One can
only conjecture why this tool maintained its
popularity only through Poverty Point and
Hopewell times.
(poverty Point)
