Blood residue from ancient tools reveals clues about past

Blood residue on spear points and other ancient stone tools made by American Indians thousands of years ago is providing scientists based at the Savannah River Site with new clues about life in the Carolinas thousands of years in the past.

1/8. SUBMITTED PHOTO Bob Van Buren, a Savannah River Archeological Research Program volunteer, holds an Early Archaic point that was used in a residue study.

The research is producing interesting information that indicates what animals those early people hunted and when huge Pleistocene creatures such as mammoths and mastodons might have ceased to exist.

“The results are interesting, but they are not conclusive,” said Christopher Moore, outreach coordinator for the Savannah River Archeological Research Program. “The evidence needs to be tested further; right now, there still are a lot of unknowns.”

Moore and his colleagues are working to interpret the data from the three studies. The tools they looked at were made anywhere from 13,000 to 500 or 600 years ago. They were found at a Carolina bay at the Savannah River Site known as Flamingo Bay, at other locations in the CSRA and in the Fort Bragg area in eastern North Carolina.

Some of the tools were excavated while others were found on the ground’s surface. Some were collected without human hands touching them to help rule out contamination.

All were sent to the University of Calgary in Canada to be analyzed using a technique called crossover electrophoresis. The scientists also examined soil samples from areas surrounding some of the tools. [...] aikenstandard.com via archaeology.org