new acquisition

Preserving An Early Archaic Cemetery

The Sloan site offers a picture of life and death more than 10,000 years ago.

THE CONSERVANCy RECENTLy OBTAINED the Sloan site, which is located on a sandy ridge in northeast Arkansas’ Cache River Valley and dates to approximately 8500 b.c., during the Dalton Period. The site contains what has been called the oldest cemetery in the New World. The Dalton people were hunter-gatherers who lived during the transition from the Ice Age to the Holocene. At that time, the landscape was filled with large spaces of low lying grasslands crisscrossed by networks of shallow streams and high sandy terraces covered with hardwood forests. This environment provided rich hunting grounds for the Dalton people during their seasonal migrations.

Dalton people are named for the eponymous stone projectile points they used. These long, lanceolate-shaped points were attached to a handle or spear shaft. In addition to these points, the Sloan site has also yielded a variety of stone tools that were employed by the Dalton people.

The Sloan family owned property that contained a number of sites and was consequently nicknamed Dalton Field. In 1974 looters began taking Dalton points from their land and, having become aware of the looting, the Sloans assumed the responsibility of protecting these sites.

They also assisted archaeologist Dan Morse, of the Arkansas Archaeological Survey, in excavating one of these sites (the Sloan site), which yielded large numbers of Dalton stone tools. The Sloans donated all the recovered artifacts to the state of Arkansas. This collection consists of 146 Dalton points as well as 42 adzes and adze preforms. The adze

The Dalton points recovered from the site vary in size and shape.

is a wood working tool that is often found on Dalton sites. Some of the projectile points show evidence of heavy use and continual resharpening, while others were hardly used. Some tools are half finished, or were broken and repaired. “It is as if a time traveler were able to grab an armful of unhafted stone tools from a single band over a period of about three generations,” Morse said.

During the excavations human bone was discovered with groups of Dalton tools and it became clear that the two were closely associated. Archaeologists are interpreting these clusters of bones and stone tools as graves, and it appears there are between 28 and 30 of them. Although no bone fragments were large enough to determine age, sex, or stature, it is probable that both juveniles and adults were buried at the cemetery.

The Sloan site contains important evidence of how the Dalton people made and used their tools. Its cemetery also indicates that these ancient people took great care when burying their dead, and that their practices suggest a belief in an afterlife. The Sloan family, who has taken great care for so many years to protect the site, recently sold it to the Conservancy to ensure its preservation. —Jessica Crawford spring • 2011