Bone needles uncover new insights into Clovis culture and Ice Age life

January 24, 2025 - Louise Henderson

Tiny bone needles discovered at an archaeological dig site in Wyoming are helping tell the story of Indigenous communities during the Ice Age in North America.

Dr. Madeline Mackie, faculty for the Department of Anthropology at Michigan State University, co-authored a new bone needle study in the scientific journal PLOS ONE.

“These needles offer a really different understanding of the type of animals people were using during these time periods that are just really hard to see in the archaeological record,” Mackie said.

Using a technique called zooarchaeology by mass spectrometry (ZooMS), Mackie and colleagues identified the species of the bones used to make these tools. The needles, discovered at the approximately 13,000 year old La Prele archaeological site in Wyoming were crafted from hare, red foxes, and wild cat.

“This technology is allowing us to look at materials in different ways and to gain more clues about the past,” Mackie said.

La Prele is home to a wealth of Ice Age artifacts, including a butchered mammoth, butchered bison, four hearth-centered spaces, and numerous stone tools associated with the Clovis culture.

“Clovis populations lived around the time of Ice Age megafauna extinctions,” Mackie said. “This archaeological culture is named and identified by their distinctive spearpoints, which were first found in association with mammoth remains at a site near Clovis, New Mexico in the 1930s.”

Mackie explained that the identification of these species from the bone needles gives clues about the types of hides Clovis people may have used and contributes to the archaeological record of these people’s  relationship with animals and the environment 13,000 years ago.

“This identification adds a different dimension towards understanding how people are using the environment,” Mackie said. “This is just a small part of our larger effort to understand what people were doing at this site and what life was like in Wyoming during the Ice Age. “