On the Nature and Antiquity of the Manix Lake Industry

Unfortunately, much of the debate between these two positions is characterized by preliminary research reports, hasty examinations of sites, a near absence of published data, and unsystematic and incomplete analyses. This is particularly true when the debate is over claims for early occupation in southern California, a region that has produced more purportedly early material than any other part of North America (cf. Moratto 1984). The purpose of this paper is to present recent data bearing on one of these claims, the Manix Lake Industry (Simpson 1958, 1960, 1964). Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology Vol. 10, No. 2, pp. 209-226 (1988). On the Nature and Antiquity of the Manix Lake Industry D O U G L A S B . B A M F O R T H , Dept. of Anthropology, Univ. of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE 68588-0368. R O N A L D I. D O R N , Dept. of Geography, Arizona State Univ., Tempe, AZ 85287. X HE antiquity of human occupation in the New World undoubtedly is one of the major unresolved culture-historical problems in North American prehistory. On the one hand, a dominant position with a long history in American archaeology (cf. Wilmsen 1965) holds that human beings arrived in the New World at the close of the Pleistocene, no longer than 12,000 years ago, and that Clovis sites represent the oldest occupation in the Americas (Haynes 1970; Martin 1973; Waters 1985). On the other hand, a less widely accepted school of thought sees a variety of evidence for human occupation in the Americas well back into the Pleistocene, with dates ranging from 19,000 B.P. at Meadowcroft Rockshelter, Pennsylvania (Stuckenrath et al 1984), to 32,000 B.P. at Boquiero do Sitio da Pedra in Brazil (Guidon and Delibrias 1986), and to at least 220,000 B.P. at Calico Hills in the California desert (Bischoffetal. 1981). Unfortunately, much of the debate between these two positions is characterized by preliminary research reports, hasty examinations of sites, a near absence of published data, and unsystematic and incomplete analyses. This is particularly true when the debate is over claims for early occupation in southern California, a region that has produced more purportedly early material than any other part of North America (cf. Moratto 1984). The purpose of this paper is to present recent data bearing on one of these claims, the Manix Lake Industry (Simpson 1958, 1960, 1964). THE MANIX LAKE INDUSTRY Prehistoric Manix Lake existed in what is now the valley of the Mojave River east of Barstow, California (Fig. 1). Although this region is now extremely arid, geomorphic and stratigraphic evidence clearly shows that the river fed a large, permanent lake in the Manix Basin for much of the late Pleistocene (Jefferson 1985). The lake attained a maximum level of approximately 1,780 ft. (543 m.), and drained before ca. 17,000 B.P. (Dorn et al. 1986; Meek 1988). During extensive surface surveys around the ancient shorelines of this basin, particularly the 1,780-foot shoreline, Simpson (1958, 1960, 1964) found a variety of artifacts which she grouped together as the Manix Lake Industry. She assigned these artifacts a late Pleistocene age coincident with the maximum lake stand, thought at the time of her research to date between 12,000 and 25,000 B.P. The Manix Lake Industry is characterized by large, roughly worked bifaces, as well as by a few simple types of unifacially retouched flakes, hammerstones, "Clactonian" flakes, and discs. Specimens identified as Manix Lake implements principally are found in the eastern Calico Mountains adjacent to the Coyote Lake embayment of the Manix Basin, on desert pavement surfaces composed of volcanics and raw nodules of chert, chalcedony, and jasper. Although Simpson noted that debris from lithic procurement and initial tool production occurred on these sites, she explicitly argued that this debris is distinct from the material she identified as