11,500-Year-Old Bison Butchering Site Discovered in Oklahoma

A stretch of floodplain in northwestern Oklahoma, already known for its profusion of prehistoric hunting sites, has turned up new find: a scatter of butchered bison bones dating back nearly 11,500 years — extending the evidence of bison hunting in the area by centuries, archaeologists say. The find includes nearly three dozen pieces of leg, foot, and back bones from ancient bison, and two stone tools: a quartzite hammerstone and a small, sharp flake fashioned from Texas chert. Together, these artifacts lend new depth to the already ample record of ancient hunts — including three bison-kill sites that are even older — in a region of the southern Plains known as the Beaver River complex...more