Ancient Tools, New Discoveries: Results of Protein Residue Analysis on Ice Age Stone Tools in the New York Region
June 5, 2026
Free
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 tell us they were mobile hunter-gatherers who traversed the New York region during their seasonal travels. But because of New York’s acidic soils, the bones of the animals they hunted to survive are usually not preserved. Join Dr. Jonathan Lothrop, Curator of Archaeology, to hear about protein residues tests on Ice Age tools that offers 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.
