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Journal of Archaeological Science  (1996) 23, 459–460

Commentson a Supposed Clovis ‘‘Mastic’’

Curt W. Beck

A mber Research L aborat ory, V assar Coll ege, P oughkeepsie, N Y 12601, U .S.A.

(Received 6 February 1995, accepted 14 April 1995 )

 The conclusions of a paper in this journal (Tankersley, 1994) rest on inaccurate use of terms for, and erroneouslyassigned properties of, organic materials commonly encountered in archaeological contexts.

1996 Academic Press L imited

Keywords:  UPPER PALAEOLITHIC, HOYT SITE, CLOVIS CULTURE, H AFTIN G, MA STIC, FOSSILRESIN, AMBER, TAR, PITCH.

Introduction

In a paper titled ‘‘Clovis M astic and its H aftingImplications’’ Tankersley proceeds from minimalphysical evidence about an amorphous material

adhering to the flute of a Clovis point from the Hoytsite in Oregon to the contention that ‘‘amber’’ beadsand pendants were worn in Eastern Europe during theUpper Palaeolithic not just for decoration, but as ahandy repair kit for on-the-spot mending of haftedtools. Thepaper is marred by looseand erroneoususesof technical terms and by a broad disregard for theestablished facts of materials science. The chain of 

reasoning and theconclusions reached are of thekindthat the physicist Wolfgang Pauli liked to call ‘‘noteven wrong’’.

Terminology

 The ‘‘mastic’’ of the title is referred to as an ‘‘amber-like’’ ‘‘resinous material’’. A fter finding that it is par-tially soluble in xylene, Tankersley considers that itmay be a ‘‘hardened bitumen’’, a ‘‘hardened pitch’’, a‘‘fossil pitch, i.e. amber’’, or a ‘‘Clovis-age pitch oramber’’. All but one of these terms are inappropriate.M asti c is theresin produced by trees of theM editerra-

nean genus Pistacia ; the name is also used for thesetrees themselves aswell asfor several unrelated species,including the West Indian Bursera gummifera , thePeruvian Schinus molle , and the herb Thymus masti- 

china . A last and minor use of the term is for aparticular group of cements made from lime or pow-dered brick with additions of tar, resin, or bitumen. I tshould not be used as a general synonym of adhesive,although that practice is quite wide-spread amongEnglish-speaking anthropologists. A resin is alwaystheexudation of a living plant, unmodified except for thenatural evaporation of its more volatile constituents.Pitch (as well as tar) is, on the other hand, an anthro-

pogenic material, made by the destructive distillationof resin or of resinouswood or bark. A ‘‘fossil pitch’’ isa plain contradiction of terms, since‘‘fossil’’ implies anage of the order of a million years. Amber  is certainlynot a pitch. It is a fossil resin. Originally, the term waslimited to the fossil resin also called Baltic amber orsuccinitethat occursnaturally in Northern and EasternEurope and that was widely traded throughout theancient world in prehistoric times. Itsbotanical source,long thought to be an extinct species of  Pinus , is nowknown to bea member of theSouth-East Asian familyAraucariaceae  (Mills, White & Gough, 1984/1985).L ater, the word was more broadly applied to other

fossil resins in other regions, e.g. Sicilian amber forsimetite, Roumanian amber for rumanite, Burmeseamber for burmite, etc.

Material Properties

 The physical data presented by Tankersley for theClovis adhesive are limited to optical and electronmicroscopy, X-ray diff raction (showing it to be amor-phous) and in situ  solubility tests. None of these issufficient to show that the material is a resin (althoughthat would seem to be a priori  most likely), a pitch,

or amber. Its partial solubility in an aromatic solventlike xylene is actually a fairly reliable indicator of abitumen (Collins, 1981).

Amber is theonematerial that can beruled out withcomplete confidence. Baltic amber (the only kindwhose chemical composition is well established) is across-linked polymer of communic acid and communol(Mills, White & Gough, 1984/1985). Unlike linearpolymers, it is not thermoplastic, i.e. it does not softenor melt upon heating; instead, it decomposes at tem-peratures approaching 400C to yield an oil (‘‘oil of amber’’) that has no adhesive properties. The state-ments‘‘amber is easier to work with than pitch . . . and

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7/27/2019 Beck Comments on a Supposed Clovis GÇÿGÇÿMasticGÇÖGÇÖ

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easier to mould when heated’’ and ‘‘amber melts at ornear 100C and upon cooling becomes hard’’ arewholly wrong. Tankersley does not statewhat materialheused to arriveat such ‘‘experimental data’’, but it iscertain that it was not amber in any acceptable mean-ing of the word. The same is true of Silsby (1991)

whomTankersley cites to say that ‘‘wood charcoal andamber produce a strong flexible adhesive’’. The state-ment that ‘‘it is unlikely that [amber] would commonlysurvive for long periods of time when buried in themoist soil conditionstypical of Early Palaeoindian sitesin eastern North America’’ is quite wrong. These are,in fact, the ideal conditions for the preservation of Baltic amber because they protect it from the atmos-pheric oxygen that destroys it in dry, porous soils.

 Thus amber is perfectly preserved in the Neolithic bogburials of Denmark, while it is almost completelyoxidised in the much more recent Etruscan chambertombs of I taly. L astly, Tankersley reports that ‘‘amber

has been recovered from North American Palaeoin-dian contexts’’, citing the monograph of Wilmsen &Roberts (1984) on the L indenmeier site in Colorado.

 The specimen in question was analysed in this labora-tory by intra-red spectroscopy and nuclear magneticresonance in 1970. Wilmsen & Roberts (1984) quoteme correctly to say that the specimen yielded spectravery similar to those of ‘‘certain fossil resins of South-east Europe, viz schraufite and Flysch-resin fromAustria’’, but nothing in my report or in Wilmsen &Roberts’ (1984) states that the L indenmeier find isamber in any acceptable senseof theword. Theseveralreferences to amber at U pper Palaeolithic sites in theUkraine all lack physical verification that they are, in

fact, amber. They are likely to be, sincesucciniteoccursthroughout the Ukraine, but only one Ukrainianfind, from the excavation by S. Benezanska (K iev)of a Bronze Age settlement at Gordievka in theGrostjanickedistrict has been analysed, in this labora-tory, and found to beof Baltic amber or succinite. Theresults have not been published.

Conclusions

In summary, Tankersley fails to show that the Hoytadhesiveis anything to do with amber; indeed, his verylimited evidence cannot distinguish between a fossil

resin, a geologically recent resin, a pitch, or a bitumen.

M oreover, theuse of amber in theproper senseof thatword as an adhesive is a physical impossibility. Withtheamber hypothesis falls Tankersley’sconclusion thatthe Hoyt site adhesive off ers ‘‘another possible com-mon trait between Clovis and Old World, UpperPalaeolithic complexes’’. L ocally available resins have

been used as adhesives by all cultures at all timesthe world over. What the Clovis adhesive is, andwhat inferences it permits, should be establishedby a thorough compositional analysis using gaschromatography–mass spectrometry, an approach thatis now routine and that has been used successfully fororganic residues on Palaeoindian stone implements of theGreat Basin (Fox, H eron & Sutton, 1995).

It bears repeating that not all the fallacies in thispaper are sui generi s . It is precisely because loosenomenclature is so widespread in the literature thatthesecomments havebeen off ered. An ancient Chineseproverb has it that knowing the right names for things

is the birth of wisdom. Perhaps. Certainly not  know-ing the right names for things is the death of validinference.

Acknowledgements

Work at the A mber Research L aboratory (AR L ) issupported by Vassar College and by Grant DBS92-13800 from the United States National ScienceFoundation, Division of Anthropology. This is ARLCommunication No. 120.

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of natural products on Native American archaeological andethnographic materials from the G reat Basin region, USA.Archaeometry  37, 363–375.

M ills, J . S., White, R. & Gough, L . J . (1984/1985). The chemicalcomposition of amber. Chemical Geology  47, 15–39.

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