Fell's cave (2) with Cerro Sota cave nearby, and Pali Aike cave (1) are only 26 km apart. Although the site's name is Fell's cave, it is in fact a rock shelter and not a real cave.
54. Possible Relatives in the Americas
Fell's Cave (Tierra del Fuego, Chile)
by George Weber
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Fell's cave (2) with Cerro Sota cave nearby, and Pali Aike cave (1) are only 26 km apart. Although the site's name is Fell's cave, it is in fact a rock shelter and not a real cave. |
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Fell's cave under excavation. It is thought that the rock shelter was a hunting base of the Patagonian Aonikenk (southern Tehuelche) at the southern end of their range until they became culturally extinct in the 19th century. The rock shelter is roughly 11 m wide, 8.5 m deep and 3.3 m high. |
Fell's Cave (rock shelter) lies in the valley of the Rio Ciaike (Chico). It was first excavated by J.B. Bird in 1936-1937 and again in the late 1960s.Unfortunately, he did not publish his findings comprehensively; this was done only posthumously in 1988.
Bird found that the shelter's earliest human occupants had left behind an impressive layer of refuse. Luckily, too, at an early stage this refuse was sealed off by a rockfall from the shelter overhang. Under this debris Bird found firepits with the broken bones of native horse, sloth, and guanaco. Many tools were also discovered: 1 triangular base point, 15 "Fell's cave fishtail points", 3 knife fragments, 26 single-edge rough flake stone scrapers, 1 two-edged large scraper, 2 two-point scrapers, 6 large, rough, circular edge scrapers, 1 reversed edge scraper, 6 end-scrapers, andf 2 discoidal stones (see below), more than 300 stone flakes and chips and 5 bone artefacts. The oldest C14 date from the the lowest layer for the is 11, 000 ± 170 years before the present.
The lowest and oldest level was remarkably thin - only 7 to 23 cm thick. Four hearths were identified in this oldest level, each about 60 cm across, 12.5 cm deep and filled with a fine black ash as well as burned bones of horse, sloth and guanaco and some stone flakes.
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"Fell's cave fishtail points" (or just "Fell points") are bifacial (i.e. chipped on both sides) spear points of chipped stone, so called because they were first found at Fell's cave. They have since been found all over South America and as far north as Belize in Mesoamerica.
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Outside Tierra del Fuego this tool type actually occurs more frequently and more widely than in Fuegia. The fishtail points also do not form a convenient archaeological horizon marker but instead occur in varying densities all over, occasionally vanishing from the record even at sites dated to the time they "should" occur if the "fashion" of making them was passed from group to group.
It appears that widely varying projectile point styles were used by different groups between 13,000 and 10,000 years ago, almost as if they were experimenting before deciding which suited them best. Unlike North America where popular point styles soon became widely distributed, most early South Americans continued to use different styles and technologies from even their nearest neighbours and many groups changed the type of tool used, again without reference to what their neighbours were doing. It looks as if the stone point manufacturer had a marketing problem (joke joke, all your serious researcher persons).
After the rock-fall that so conveniently sealed off the oldest layers Fell I, the rock shelter was occupied again as Fell II dated between 9,l00 and 8,l00 years ago, This culture was similar to the earlier one but lacked bifacial points and particularly fishtail points. Next was Fell III between 8,100 and 6,560 years ago which had triangular points.
Among web-sites with further informationare:
- http://www.ele.net/LaBelle/pampas/pamframe.htm
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Last change 31 March 2007
