The Drop 45 Drive Lane. Left: a plan showing the major topographic and cultural features associated with the drive lane – black dots represent the location of placed stones; the hunting blinds incorporated within the main drive lane feature are labeled. Right: an acoustic image of the drive lane produced via a mosaic of scanning sonar images. Image credit: O’Shea JM et al.
Sci-News
written by Staff
Tuesday April 29, 2014
Archaeologists led by Prof John O’Shea from the University of Michigan have discovered what they say is a 9,000-year-old caribou hunting drive lane about 37 m beneath the surface of Lake Huron.
The site was discovered on the Alpena-Amberley Ridge, about 56 km southeast of Alpena, Michigan, on what was once a dry land corridor connecting northeast Michigan to southern Ontario.
The main feature, called Drop 45 Drive Lane, is the most complex hunting structure found to date beneath the Great Lakes.
Constructed on level limestone bedrock, the stone lane is comprised of two parallel lines of stones leading toward a cul-de-sac formed by the natural cobble pavement. Three circular hunting blinds are built into the stone lines, with additional stone alignments that may have served as blinds and obstructions for corralling caribou.
“This site and its associated artifacts, along with environmental and simulation studies, suggest that Late Paleoindian/Early Archaic caribou hunters employed distinctly different seasonal approaches,” said Prof O’Shea, who is the lead author of a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“In autumn, small groups carried out the caribou hunts, and in spring, larger groups of hunters cooperated.”
The orientation of Drop 45 shows that it would only have been effective if the animals were moving in a northwesterly direction, which they would have done during the spring migration from modern day Ontario.
“It is noteworthy that V-shaped hunting blinds located upslope from Drop 45 are oriented to intercept animals moving to the southeast in the autumn. This concentration of differing types of hunting structures associated with alternative seasons of migration is consistent with caribou herd movement simulation data indicating that the area was a convergence point along different migration routes, where the landform tended to compress the animals in both the spring and autumn.”
“The structures in and around Drop 45, and the chipped stone debris for repairing stone tools, provide unambiguous evidence for intentional human construction and use of the feature. And they also provide important insight into the social and economic organization of the ancient hunters using this area,” Prof O’Shea concluded.
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