Re: U of South Carolina Releases Topper Radiocarbon Dates

From: Daryl Krupa (icycalmca_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 12/01/04 

Date: 30 Nov 2004 17:27:34 -0800

paleocity@hotmail.com (Lee Olsen) wrote in message news:<40a73547.0411300739.5768f52f@posting.google.com>...
> icycalmca@yahoo.com (Daryl Krupa) wrote in message news:<c70365ef.0411262320.52358a2c@posting.google.com>...
> > paleocity@hotmail.com (Lee Olsen) wrote in message news:<40a73547.0411241031.52c0085a@posting.google.com>...
> > <snip>
> > > The excavations have uncovered an enormous amount of ground and not
> > > just a tiny fireplace pit. Where's the beef (oops, I mean humus) and
> > > better yet, why should there be any in the first place 50 thousand
> > > years ago? Humus soil does not necessarily form in dunes, but it
> > > doesn't seem possible that some wouldn't have formed somewhere in that
> > > amount of time. I have never been to the Topper area, but I can assure
> > > you out here on the Pacific Coast vegetation takes hold in the dunes
> > > and on the over-bank flood-plains rather rapidly. For example, the
> > > Kennewick Man site has 14C dates on humus (this area gets only 7
> > > inches of rain a year and no oak, pine etc. grows there) and the
> > > Columbia River has a history of more violent flooding than anything
> > > seen on the Savannah River. The *no humus* seems like a legitimate
> > > puzzle.
> > <snip>
> >
> > I forgot to mention the most obvious (and most problematic) explanation
> > for the lack of humic paleosols at depth: consumption by fire.
>
> I don't think you will have much luck selling this idea.
>
> http://www.nps.gov/yell/nature/fire/
> "Surveys revealed that less than 1% of soils were heated enough to
> burn below-ground plant seeds and roots."
>
> http://www.x98ruhf.net/yellowstone/fire.htm
> "Many people thought that Yellowstone would never recover. Scientists,
> however, knew that fire was a necessary part of the cycle of life in a
> forest. Life would not only go on, but would also benefit from the
> fire."

  Unless IDNRC, Yellowstone's forests are not founded on sand.
  Unless IDNRC, Yellowstone's forests are not red pine or xeric scrubland.
  Unless IDNRC, Yellowstone's fires were crown fires.
  Unless IDNRC, Yellowstone's preciptation increased after the fire,
  so therefore Yellowstone's climate could not be called xeric afterward,
and it's debatable if it should have been called xeric befoire the fire.

> > Open boreal woodland near Late Glacial Maximum:
> >
> > "This vegetation map showing the eastern USA during the period
> > 28,000-25,000 14C y.a. has been compiled by Paul & Hazel Delcourt.
> > An ice *** already covered most of Canada and extended south of
> > the Great Lakes. Boreal conifer woodlands and forests predominated
> > in what is now the cool temperate forest zone, and the cool and
> > warm temperate forest belts were compressed southwards."
>
> The URL I cited in my reply to Bob cited Delcourt and Delcourt.

  It's more complicated than that:
  The site at one of the URLs you cited in your reply cited 4
Delcourt and Delcourts, but it didn't display D&D's map from that time;
the vegetation history and climate history starts at 18ka BP, at
http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/sustain/report/pdf/chapter_24e.pdf
  I'm not sure why you mention this.

> And, since none of these URLs gave an opinion for the time in
> question, c50 k 14C date, I compared that with the GRIP cores and
> see no climate match for a forest of the hearth type.

  If by "a forest of the hearth type" you mean
the woods that formed the charcoal in the supposed 50 ka BP firepit
("oak, red cherry, buckeye and pine"?), then I'm afraid I don't see
how you are doing your climate matching.
  Are you equating climate with ecotype?
  What would you call the ecotype of ""a forest of the hearth type"?
  If the assemblage of charcoal is artifactual, then wasn't it
necessarily un-naturally selected, and so isn't it
a random, and
not necessarily a representative,
sample of the wood available?
  That's all hot-burning wood, and some of it will burn when damp.
  I don't think that we can say nay more than that
the assemblage of charcoal is a subset of the contemporary vegetation
assemblage.

> Maybe the GRIP dates are off?

  You got me. Could you reference your GRIP dates for me?

> > http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/NAm28-25kyr.gif
> >
> > "28,000-25,000 14C y.a.; shortly before Last Glacial Maximum.
> > In the eastern USA, conditions may have been generally drier than today.
> > A xeric scrub cover existed in Florida at this time, instead of the
> > present forest (Watts & Stuiver 1980).
> > In Maryland (38N, 75W) pollen evidence indicates pine-birch barrens or
> > spruce parkland
> > dominating after 30,000 14C years ago (Wells 1992 p.612), and it is
> > possible that most of the eastern USA had an open wooded vegetation
> > cover at this time."
> >
> > http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/nercNORTHAMERICA.html
> >
> > Hmmm ... xeric scrubland ... fire-dominated ecosystem ... IIRC,
> > Georgia pines are well-adapted to both sandy soils and a regular
> > occurrence of fire.
> > Dry piney duff burns ferociously, and fires in such environments
> > often totally consume what surface organics might have acculmulated.
>
> I'm not going to buy this idea. I just drove through the remnants of a
> pine forest fire last Thursday. You can't burn a forest down. By the
> time the dead trees and roots rot, new trees are growing better than
> ever.

  Not in truly xeric conditions.
  Have you ever seen a fire in dead pines on sand dunes that have dried
out, with a thick dry carpet of pine needles on the sand? In a hot climate?
  The conditions I'm talking about do not exist in Alaska.

> Then:
> http://www.tillamoo.com/burn.html
>
> Today you can drive through this area and you would never know there
> was even a fire there unless someone told you:
> http://www.tillamookforest.org/
>
> Unusual conditions may impede regrowth for a short time, but on the
> hundred-year-scale fires have no detrimental impact at all.

  Oregon rain forest is not representative of xeric scrubland.
 
> > What ash remained could have been stripped by winds, to be
> > redeposited in lower ground (or carried away by the river when it
> > topped the bank [no pun intended]).
> > The lack of humic horizons in the sediment face might indicate that
> > they tended to be catastrophically oxidised before being covered with
> > a preserving layer of sediment.
>
> Doesn't happen that way. If all the seeds and roots blew away (and
> they can't blow away forever) there wouldn't have been a pine forest
> in the first place.

  I'm not talking about seeds and roots. I'm talking about paleosols.
And humic staining of soil. And duff. And A horizon. Not seeds and roots.
 
> Anyway, it's the oak and buckeye that troubles me. See fig 24.2.

  If you see buckeye there, you've got more troubles than you think.
  What are you talking about?
  Are you assuming that only modern vegetation assemblages
were represented in the past?
  There's a good reason why the labels in 24.1 and 24.2 don't match, at
http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/sustain/report/pdf/chapter_24e.pdf

> > Fragments of pine cones would be interesting to investigate.
> >
> > A shallow fire pit might be a localised site of aeolian redeposition
> > of burned remnants of forest or forest floor material, followed by
> > aeolian deposition of mineral material to flatten out the surface,
> > but then,
> > so would a hollow created by a wallowing bison.
>
> First it has to be proven that an oak, pine, cherry and buckeye system
> was in place at the time of Stafford's 14C dates.

  First before what? Before a bison can wallow a hollow? Before eolian
deposition? Before investigating pine cone fragments?
  Whatever are you on about?

> > There's a site in northwestern Alberta (Saskatoon Mountain) that is
> > similar in many ways: a hillside above a source of aeolian sediment
> > (dried-out drained-glacial-lake bed), where the prevailing westerlies
> > tended to deposit layers of silty sand just below the crest of the hill,
> > where the wind velocity decreased after compression of the transporting
> > air mass by the hillside below.
> > Some humic horizons there, along with some evidence of fire.
> > The oldest artifacts, 9500 BP, predate the establishment of
> > coniferous boreal in the area, and thereafter vegetation cover
> > tended to anchor the lake surface and limit sediment removal to
> > the dig site, and so the record ends quite early.
> > Conditions at the Topper site might possibly have been similarly
> > susceptible to climatic and vegetation-cover influences, creating
> > interruptions or hiatuses in the sedimentary record.
 
> Sure, nothing is constant, but 36,000 years of what appears to be a
> blank spot except one fire pit and a few iffy tools?

  At Saskatoon Mountain, the sedimentary conditions that created the
hillside dune deposit lasted 5,000 years, beginning as soon as the
glacial lake drained and its bed dried 10,000 years ago, and lasted only
5,000 years until trees became established in the area 5,000 years ago.
  Those conditions will not recur until the regional vegetation is
reduced to herb tundra again, or to desert playa, which is not going
to happen for quite some time hence. See? Millennia of non-sedimentary
hiatus.
  Also, a gap in the record can be created by erosion: beside a river,
36,000 years of sedimentary accumulation can be removed overnight.
  
> Now wasn't that a lucky shot? Goodyear is quite proud that he
> dug a little deeper than the Clovis horizon. But he admits himself:
> "But river-cobble chert and the large hammerstones present in the
> river bottom today are absent from the pre-Clovis zone at Topper."
> Another words the fact that he dug deeper at a Clovis site had
> nothing what-so-ever to do with the fact that he hit fire residue.
> There really isn't any particular reason for anyone to be at a chert
> quarry when there isn't any chert.
> There are 3 million square miles of land area in the U.S. How many
> millions of miles of river shoreline? He just sunk a hole in the
> ground and hit by random chance a man-made hearth 50 thousand years
> old?

  I cannot grasp your inference.
  Are you suggesting that Goodyear manufactured the evidence?

> > The view upwind:
> >
> > http://www.pinetreeline.org/photos/belodg/belod228.jpg
> >
> > The dig, with some evidence of paleosols:
> >
> > http://www.pinetreeline.org/photos/belodg/belod226.jpg
> >
> > Reading:
> >
> > Beaudoin, A. B., M. Wright and B. Ronaghan, 1996.
> > Late Quaternary Landscape History and Archaeology in the
> > "Ice-Free Corridor": Some Recent Results from Alberta.
> > Quaternary International, 32:113-126
> >
> > Zo, if the dominant vegetation at the Topper site during the
> > mid-Wisconsinan interstadial was subject to frequent intensive
> > fire distubance, then the lack of humic horizons might be
> > explained by conditions tending to act against the chance of
> > preservation of surface organic material.
> >
> > 'Nuff said?
>
> No :-).

  Please take your time while formulating your reply.
  Using disturbance in
a modern NW U.S. temperate rain forest
to make a point about conditions in
an interstadial SE U.S. semi-desert
was a mark of wasteful haste.

Daryl Krupa

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