Table 1.
Previous radiocarbon dates obtained on bone from Bluefish Caves I (MgVo-1) and II (MgVo-2).
Fig 1.
Cut marks on a horse mandible from Cave II.
The specimen (# J7.8.17) is dated to 19,650 ± 130 14C BP (OxA-33778). The bone surface is a bit weathered and altered by root etching but the cut marks are well preserved; they are located on the medial side, under the third and second molars, and are associated with the removal of the tongue using a stone tool [48].
Fig 2.
Cut marks on a caribou coxal bone from Cave II.
The specimen (# I5.6.5) is dated to 18,570 ± 110 14C BP (OxA-33777) and shows straight and parallel marks resulting from filleting activity.
Fig 3.
New radiocarbon determinations obtained on bone from Bluefish Caves I and II.
The red dot on the map indicates the location of the site. Conventional radiocarbon ages are expressed in 14C BP [70], values are ± one standard error [71]. Calibrations (cal BP) were made using OxCal 4.2 [67] and the INTCAL113 calibration curve [68]. ‘Used’ represents the amount of bone powder pretreated in milligrams. ‘Yield’ represents the weight of collagen or ultrafiltered collagen in milligrams. ‘%Yield’ is the percent yield of extracted collagen as a function of the starting weight of the bone analyzed. ‘%C’ is the carbon present in the combusted collagen and averages 40 ± 2% in the ORAU. Stable isotope ratios are expressed in ‰ relative to vPDB [72] with a mass spectrometric precision of ± 0.2 ‰ for C and ± 0.3 ‰ for N. ‘CN’ is the atomic ratio of C to N and is acceptable if it ranges between 2.9–3.5. aDenote duplicate measurements from the start of the pretreatment chemistry. bSpecimen also identified in previous article [39].