Ancient Tools, New Discoveries: Results of Protein Residue Analysis on Ice Age Stone Tools in the New York Region

The First Peoples entered what we now call New York during the Ice Age, shortly after 13,000 years ago. They encountered a subarctic climate with bitterly cold winters and recently deglaciated landscapes populated by mammoth, mastodon, and other Ice Age animals.

The archaeological sites of these earliest Native Americans show they were mobile hunter-gatherers who traversed the New York region during their seasonal travels. Because New York’s acidic soils usually prevent preservation of animal bones, direct evidence of hunting is rare.

Join Dr. Jonathan Lothrop, Curator of Archaeology, to hear about protein-residue tests on Ice Age tools that offer the first archaeological evidence for hunting. These results shed new and surprising light on the prey species and lifeways of the First Peoples of New York.