Caddo County
Click on Oklahoma
map to return to county listings
451 reported archeological sites for Caddo
County to date
|
|
|
The Domebo Canyon Site
At the end of the Ice Age, when winters were warmer
and summers cooler, a Columbian mammoth wandered into a swampy slough
at the bottom of a deep ravine in Caddo County. Weighing in at 10
tons, he stood some 14 feet tall. While he grazed on the lush marsh
grasses, a family of prehistoric hunters, hidden downwind from the
giant, quietly watched his movements. Slowly, so that the mammoth
did not spook, the hunters rose. Their spears, launched with a throwing
tool called the atlatl, flew with fierce power and felled the creature.
The flesh of the mammoth fed the family for many weeks.
|
|
Within 5 years of the mammoth's death, the slough had silted
in so that the bones were covered. Eventually, the entire
creek channel filled with sandy soil eroded from the nearby
sandstone hills. Over the centuries there were several cycles
of erosion and deposition. The massive bones lay in their
silt and clay bed, largely undisturbed. The 20th century,
though, brought an erosional cycle that eventually exposed
the mammoth skeleton, buried for some 11,000 years.
In 1961, Mr. Buck Patterson contacted archeologists at the
Museum of the Great Plains in Lawton about the bones he had
discovered eroding from the bank of a branch of Tonkawa Creek.
When archeologists excavated, they found the kill site from
that long-distant date.
|
|
Artifacts from the Domebo Canyon
Site
|
Mammoth skeletons are uncovered in land clearing and excavation
fairly often in Oklahoma. Usually, these ancient elephants
died from natural causes. At the Domebo Canyon site, though,
archeologists discovered the stone tools left behind by the
prehistoric hunters who killed and then butchered the mammoth.
For this reason, the Domebo Canyon site is both rare and important.
Clovis hunters like those at the Domebo Canyon site may have
been among the first people on the American continents. Little
is known about this period of Oklahoma's prehistory so future
research will undoubtedly reveal more details about the big
game hunters who once called Oklahoma home.
For further reading, consult:
Domebo: A Paleo-indian Mammoth Kill Site in the Prairie
Plains by Frank C. Leonhardy (Contributions of the
Museum of the Great Plains No. 1, Lawton.1966).
|
|
| |
Prehistoric Sites in Caddo County Identified to Time Period
|
