Battle of Backbone Mountain

"A Clovis blade with medium to large lanceolate spear-knife points. Side is parallel to convex and exhibit careful pressure flaking along the blade edge. The broadest area is near the midsection or toward the base. The base is distinctly concave with a characteristic flute or channel flake removed from one or, more commonly, both surfaces of the blade. The lower edges of the blade and base is ground to dull edges for hafting. Clovis points also tend to be thicker than the typically thin later stage Folsom points. Length: 4–20 cm/1.5–8 in. Width: 2.5–5 cm/1–2
A Clovis point created using bifacial percussion flaking, (which flakes both edges with a percussor). The deep flake initiated from the base constitutes the "flute" characteristic of Clovis and some other early Paleoindian points.

Clovis culture is a prehistoric Paleoamerican archaeological culture, named for distinct stone and bone tools found in close association with Pleistocene fauna, initially two Columbian mammoths, at Blackwater Locality No. 1 near Clovis, New Mexico, in 1936 and 1937, though Paleoindian artifacts had been found at the site since the 1920s. It existed from roughly 11,500 to 10,800 BCE (≈13,500-12,800 years Before Present) near the end of the Last Glacial Period.

Clovis culture is characterized by the manufacture of "Clovis points" and distinctive bone and ivory tools, and it is represented by hundreds of sites, from which over 10,000 Clovis points have been recovered.[3] Knowledge of the Clovis culture has primarily been gathered from North America.[4] In South America, the similar related Fishtail or Fell projectile point style was contemporaneous to the usage of Clovis points in North America,[5][6] and possibly developed from Clovis points.[7]

Discovery

Main articles: Burnet Cave, Dent site, and Blackwater Draw

On 29 August 1927, the first in place evidence of Pleistocene humans seen by multiple archaeologists in the Americas was discovered near Folsom, New Mexico. At this site they found the first in situ Folsom point with the extinct B. antiquus bones. This confirmation of a human presence in the Americas during the Pleistocene inspired many people to start looking for evidence of early humans.[8] Another earlier example at Folsom was discovered by George McJunkin, a cowboy, who found an ancient bison (Bison antiquus, an extinct relative of the American bison) skeleton in 1908 after a flash flood.[9] The site was first excavated in 1926 under the direction of Harold Cook and Jesse Figgins.

In 1929, 19-year-old Ridgely Whiteman, who had been closely following the excavations in nearby Folsom in the newspaper, discovered the Clovis site near the Blackwater Draw in eastern New Mexico. Despite several earlier Paleoindian discoveries, the best documented evidence of the Clovis complex was collected and excavated between 1932 and 1937 near Clovis, New Mexico, by a crew under the direction of Edgar Billings Howard until 1935 and later by John Cotter from the Academy of Natural Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania. Howard's crew left their excavation in Burnet Cave, the first truly professionally excavated Clovis site, in August, 1932, and visited Whiteman and his Blackwater Draw site. By November, Howard was back at Blackwater Draw to investigate additional finds from a construction project.[10]

The American Journal of Archaeology, in its January–March 1932 edition, mentions E. B. Howard's work in Burnet Cave, including the discovery of extinct fauna and a "Folsom type" point 4 ft below a Basketmaker burial. This brief mention of the Clovis point found in place predates any work done at the Dent site in Colorado. The reference is made to a slightly earlier article on Burnet Cave in The University Museum Bulletin of November, 1931.[11]

The first report of professional work at the Blackwater Draw Clovis site was published in the November 25th issue of Science News (V22 #601) in 1932.[12] The publications on Burnet Cave and Blackwater Draw directly contradict statements by several authors (for example see Haynes 2002:56 The Early Settlement of North America[13]) that Dent, Colorado was the first excavated Clovis site. The Dent site, in Weld County, Colorado, was simply a fossil mammoth excavation in 1932. The first Dent Clovis point was found on November 5, 1932, and the in situ point was found July 7, 1933.[14] The in situ Clovis point from Burnet Cave was excavated in late August, 1931 (and was reported in early 1932).[15]

Age and Distribution

After the discovery of several Clovis sites in western North America in the 1930s (such as Blackwater Draw, NM and Dent, CO), the Clovis people came to be regarded as the first human inhabitants who created a widespread culture in the Americas and the ancestors of most of the indigenous peoples of the Americas.[16][17][18] While historically many scholars held to a "Clovis first" model, where Clovis represented the earliest inhabitants in the Americas, today this is increasingly rejected, with several generally accepted sites across the Americas being dated a thousand years or more older than the oldest Clovis sites.[19]

Clovis points are found throughout North America south of the extent of contemporary ice sheets, and extend into Mexico and Central America where they grade technologically into other fluted point types such as the Fishtail or Fell projectile point styles. Clovis points have been found in each of the United States except Hawaii; however, fluted points found in Alaska appear to post-date the Clovis period, suggesting fluted point technology was developed south of the ice sheets and diffused northward. While better preserved Clovis sites are more often found in the American West, the densest concentrations of Clovis artifacts are found in the U.S. Southeast.

Traditional age estimates for Clovis are between 13,500 to 12,800 calBP (years ago). However, archaeologists Michael Waters and Thomas Stafford (2007) revised the Clovis time frame to 13,050 to 12,750 calBP. Waters and Stafford (2007) came to this conclusion by removing sites which they believed to have unreliable dating, leaving them with a sample size of 11 sites. Due to the new proposed time frame being much shorter, Waters and Stafford postulated that it was more likely Clovis was a technology which spread through already existing populations of people, rather than Clovis being a group of people that spread out through an unpopulated landscape. Haynes et al. (2007) argued that many of the sites they deemed to be unreliable, are in fact reliable, and the exclusion of key Clovis sites significantly changes the time range for Clovis. One of the sites which Waters and Stafford excluded was El Fin del Mundo in northwestern Sonora, Mexico, discovered during a 2007 survey.[20] At the site, remains of a gomphothere (elephant relative) Cuvieronius were found associated with Clovis points. In a 2013 study it was estimated to date to 13,390 years Before Present (BP).[20] However, other authors have contested these dates, suggesting the site is likely younger than this, with a 2020 study finding that all reliably datable Clovis sites span from around 13,050 to 12,750 years BP.[5]

The most commonly held perspective on the end of the Clovis culture is that a decline in the availability of megafauna, combined with an overall increase in a less mobile population, led to local differentiation of lithic and cultural traditions across the Americas.[21][22] After this time, Clovis-style fluted points were replaced by other fluted-point traditions (such as the Folsom culture) with an essentially uninterrupted sequence across North and Central America. An effectively continuous cultural adaptation proceeds from the Clovis period through the ensuing Middle and Late Paleoindian periods.[23]

The Younger Dryas Impact hypothesis, or Clovis Comet hypothesis, originally proposed that a large air burst or earth impact from a comet or comets initiated the Younger Dryas cold period about 12,900 years ago (10,900 14C years ago), and led to the demise of the Clovis culture.[24][25][26] This hypothesis has been largely refuted, with research showing that most of the original findings cannot be replicated by other scientists. This hypothesis is criticized because of its misinterpretation of data and the lack of confirmatory evidence.[27][28][29][30]

The end of the Clovis culture likely represents a technological change occurring within a growing human population rather than a catastrophic event. Clovis technology was replaced by several more localized regional technocomplexes from the Younger Dryas cold-climate period onward. For the Great Plains, recent data presented by Buchanan and others suggests that there was a considerable overlap between Clovis and the ensuing Folsom culture, with an estimated 80-to-400 year overlap between the two. The data shows a roughly 200 year overlap particularly in western North America, where it is believed Folsom originated.[31] The Clovis culture lasted roughly 690 years, while the Folsom culture was significantly shorter in lifespan, at roughly 460 years. Through this analysis, it was shown that Folsom lasted roughly 100 years before the end of Clovis, leading some to believe that Folsom was the primary technology to replace Clovis.

In addition to the Folsom tradition, post-Clovis technocomplexes include Gainey, Suwannee, Simpson, Plainview-Goshen, Cumberland, and Redstone. Each of these is thought to derive directly from Clovis, in some cases apparently differing only in the length of the fluting on their projectile points. Although this is generally held to be the result of normal cultural change through time,[21] numerous other reasons have been suggested as driving forces to explain changes in the archaeological record, such as the Younger Dryas postglacial climate change, and the decline and extinction of North American megafauna as part of the Late Pleistocene extinctions.[25][32] The potential causal role of Clovis hunters in the extinction of the megafauna has been the subject of controversy.[33]

Biological Relations

Biological remains of Clovis people are extremely rare; however, a Clovis burial site was found in Montana in 1968. It contained the remains of an approximately two-year-old child buried along with a cache of Clovis stone tools discovered in a rockshelter near Anzick, Montana. DNA analysis of the Anzick-1[34][35][36] burial indicates the child is more closely related to all of the indigenous peoples of the Americas than to any other group.[37] Paleogenetic analyses of Anzick-1's ancient nuclear, mitochondrial, and Y-chromosome DNA[37] reveal that Anzick-1 is closely related to some modern Native American populations, including those in Southern North America, Central America, and South America and populations in Central Asia and Siberia, which lends support to the Beringia or coastal Pacific hypotheses that they were responsible for the initial settlement of the Americas.[38][36]

Available genetic data from Anzick and other sources show that the Clovis people are the direct ancestors of roughly 80% of all living Native American populations in North and South America, with the remainder descended from ancestors who entered in later waves of migration.[63][64] As reported in February 2014, DNA from the 12,600-year-old remains of Anzick boy, found in Montana, has affirmed this connection to the peoples of the Americas. In addition, this DNA analysis affirmed genetic connections back to ancestral peoples of northeast Asia. This adds weight to the theory that peoples migrated across or along the coast of a land bridge from Siberia to North America[36].

Diet and Subsistence

The Clovis culture is traditionally considered to have been based on highly mobile hunter-gatherer populations that heavily engaged in big game hunting, though some recent scholarship has questioned how reliant Clovis hunters were on big game.[39] Clovis people are generally accepted to have hunted mammoths, as well as extinct bison, mastodon, gomphotheres, and possibly ground sloths, tapir, Camelops, horse, and other smaller animals. While these megafauna associations indicate big game was a major part of Clovis diet, more than 125 species of plants and animals are known to have been used by Clovis people in the portion of the Western Hemisphere they inhabited.[40][41] indicating that a diverse diet including plants was likely necessary to meet basic nutritional needs. In regions where significant big game was scarce, Clovis people included a broader range of food sources, particularly caribou, deer, pronghorn, birds, fish, turtles, and other small mammals as well as plants (Waguespack 2009), challenging the perception of a universal big game only diet (Haynes et.al.).

Some recent experimental research casts doubt on whether Clovis points were well-suited for hunting mammoth at all, and suggests they were more often used as knives;[42][43] however, a counterargument supports the traditional interpretation of points as effective hunting weapons used on large game, including mammoth and other proboscideans.[44]

The potential role of Clovis hunters in the extinction of the megafauna has been the subject of controversy [20]. However, the disappearance of the late Pleistocene Megafauna in North America was not clearly caused by the past patterns of Clovis hunting, so the Overkill Hypothesis is not assumed to be correct (Grayson & Meltzer, 2002).

Clovis Technology

Clovis points from the Rummells-Maske Cache Site in present-day Iowa

A hallmark of the toolkit associated with the Clovis culture is the distinctively shaped, fluted spear point known as the Clovis point. The Clovis point is bifacial and typically fluted on both sides. Clovis hunter-gatherers are characterized as "high-technology foragers" who utilized sophisticated technology to maintain access to resources under conditions of high mobility.[45] The Clovis people could manipulate their tool kit for any hunting or daily tasks, including bifaces, and flake tools, and fluted points (Eren et al. 2016). While Clovis likely utilized a wide variety of materials for making tools, lithic (stone) artifacts, and less frequently osseous (bone or ivory), are most often preserved and thus form the basis of our understanding of Clovis technology. Archaeologists organize Clovis lithic technology into three modes of reduction: bifaces (including projectile points), blades, and flakes.

Clovis Projectile points

Projectile points fall into the biface reduction mode. Clovis projectile points are one of the most widely recognized precontact artifacts in North America. Edgar B. Howard first identified Clovis points in 1932 near the town of Clovis, New Mexico (Mann 2013). Although they range widely in size, they average 10 centimeters long, 3 centimeters wide, and 7.5 millimeters thick (Meltzer 2021). Clovis points are leaf-like in shape, bifacially flaked, fluted, and feature basal grinding (Howard 1990). Fluting is the removal of a flake on one or both sides of the point from the base towards the tip; this is a difficult process that causes a point to break between ten and twenty percent of the time (Meltzer 2021). This causes many of the Clovis points found at archaeological sites to be either broken or resharped to be a fraction of their original size. Fluting could be considered the “first American invention” as it originated south of the Cordilleran and Laurentide ice sheets and spread north (Mann 2013; Meltzer 2021).

Clovis points appear to have been designed to be resharpened and maintained to extend their use lives. Point size and shape are the result of two processes defined by Huckell: production and repair (Haynes 2013). Production is the initial knapping of a new point from a preform or some other biface. Repair is the process by which broken or chipped points were made useful again, normally through resharpening. If a point were damaged beyond repair to be used as a projectile, it would often be repurposed into a cutting tool or scraper (Haynes 2013).

Clovis points are commonly understood to serve as tips for spears or darts thrown with an atlatl for hunting, as well as serving as multi-tools for cutting and other tasks. Some recent experimental research casts doubt on whether Clovis points were well-suited for hunting mammoth at all, and suggests they were more often used as knives;[42][43] however, a counterargument supports the traditional interpretation of points as effective hunting weapons used on large game, including mammoth and other proboscideans.[44]

Bifaces

The DeGraffenried Clovis cache from central Texas contains four large bifaces and one late stage Clovis point preform made from high quality Edwards Plateau chert.

Bifaces served a variety of roles for Clovis hunter-gatherers, serving as cutting tools, preforms for formal tools such as points, and as portable sources of large flakes useful as preforms or tools.[46] Clovis people sometimes traveled hundreds of kilometers to obtain good quality stone material, seeking raw materials of adequate size, abundance, and quality (Pevny & Goodwin, 2011). The package size of the raw material greatly influences what the end product of the tool will be. Clovis people are known to make large 22.9 cm to 30.48 cm tools, so size and quality were critically important. Once the variables of these qualities are determined they find a balance between brittleness, elasticity, and homogeneity for their final stone tool (Pevny & Goodwin, 2011). The biface producing process is often described as staged, with bifaces held in the mobile toolkit at various stages of reduction (Pevny & Goodwin, 2011).  

Blades

A Lithic blade is a flake that has parallel edges, exterior flake scars, and prepared platforms (Pevny 2011). Clovis blades are part of the global Upper Paleolithic blade tradition, and are long flakes removed from specially prepared conical or wedge-shaped cores.[47] Unlike bifaces, Clovis blade cores do not appear to have regularly transported long distances, with only the blades typically carried in the mobile toolkit.[48] Blades were useful to cut and scrape a variety of materials (Pevny 2011).

Other lithic tools

Flake tools carry out duties such as skinning or cutting tasks (Pevny & Jennings 2012). Steeply angled flakes or blade segments served as scraping tools for working animal hides or perhaps bone or wood (Pevny & Jennings 2012). Gravers possess pointed spikes for piercing (perhaps tattooing) or shredding. Even unmodified flakes from a core serve as expedient cutting tools that could be resharpened or discarded after use.

Bone and Ivory

Organic materials, such as bone and ivory artifacts, break down naturally over time, which reduces the likelihood of preservation and accounts for their low frequency in the archaeological record (Pevny 2012; Meltzer 2021). Therefore, bone and ivory artifacts are mostly recovered in dry, arid, or submerged sites (Pevny 2012). Bone and ivory tools served both utilitarian and non-utilitarian purposes, including hide scraping, hammering, and clothing manufacturing (Pevny 2012; Meltzer 2021; Wygal et al. 2022; Bradley 1995). Well-known Clovis osseous tools include a mammoth ivory shaft wrench found at Murray Springs, Arizona, as well as dozens of bone and ivory rods found from a number of sites across North America. These rods, often beveled or pointed at each end, may have served as foreshafts for spears or atlatl darts, or handles for some other component tools. Other bone and ivory tools from the Clovis period include billets, ivory points, bone awls, and many more (Hemmings).

Art and Aesthetics

Examples of Clovis Period art pieces are rare and difficult to verify. Age is difficult to determine and date due to natural disturbances, weathering, potential fraudulent manipulation, and visual quality of many pieces (Malokti). However, there are a few examples of artifacts suspected to reflect creative expression such as rock art, the use of red ocher, and engraved stones. The best known examples of Clovis art were found at the Gault site in Texas, and consist of limestone nodules incised with expressive geometric patterns, some of which mimic leaf patterns.[49] The Upper Sand Island site in Utah features engraved and red ocher petroglyphs apparently depicting a bison and mammoth several meters above ground.

Red ocher (hematite) has been found at various Clovis sites and is believed to be an integral part of Clovis “toolkits” that were carried over long-distances (Zarzycka). This oxide mineral was used for creative purposes, such as coloring bones, importance in mortuary rituals, and to color hides for decoration (Zarzycka). Red ochre is often associated with caches of Clovis artifacts[50]

Some Key Clovis Sites

What is known of Clovis technology and lifeways as based primarily on four kinds of archaeological sites: kill sites, camp sites, quarry/workshop sites, and caches. Some examples of each of these site types are presented below. Blackwater Draw Locality No. 1 and a collection of Clovis sites in the San Pedro Valley of Arizona were critical for identifying and defining the Clovis culture, and each represent multiple site types. These are discussed first.

Blackwater Draw, New Mexico (The Clovis Site)

Blackwater Locality No. 1, between the towns of Clovis and Portales in New Mexico, established the Clovis Culture and its association with Pleistocene fauna. It also established Blackwater Draw Locality No. 1 as the type site for Clovis culture, commonly referred to as "The Clovis Site" (Hester et al. 1972). During the initial excavation in 1932, John L. Cotter discovered in situ mammoth remains associated with Clovis points and other tools in a gravel quarry pit (Hester et al. 1972). In addition to the Clovis finds, Blackwater Draw contains a stratified record of Folsom, Late Paleoindian, and Archaic period archaeology, making it one of the most important sites in North America.

Ongoing gravel mining along the North Bank of Blackwater Draw, also known as El Llano Dig No. 1, exposed five additional mammoth in 1962, many also associated with artifacts (Hester et al. 1972; Boldurian 2008). Archaeologists have discovered over 166 Clovis artifacts including points, scrapers, and flakes in association with mammoth and extinct Bison antiquus over several decades (Hester et al. 1972; Warnica 1966). In addition, Blackwater draw has two Clovis caches associated with bone, ivory, and stone tools, large bi-faces, and stone blades (Bennet et al. 2014).

San Pedro Valley sites, Arizona

The Naco Arizona Mammoth Site located in the San Pedro River Valley along the South bank of Greenbrush Draw, near the Mexico border. Archeologists in 1952 discovered incomplete remains of one adult mammoth, and a few bones from the foot that were placed around another pile with more mammoth bones (Holliday et al., 2021). The Naco Site was initially radiocarbon dated between 10,000 to 11,00 years ago and has since been revised to around 13,000 years (Holliday et al., 2021).

The Lehner Site located near Hereford, Arizona, contained an extensive bone bed associated with Clovis artifacts (Haury et al. 1959). Some of the main artifacts uncovered at the Lehner site were butchering tools, and Clovis fluted points used for hunting and butchering. These artifacts were found in association with 9 immature mammoths as well as horse, bison, tapir bones. All dated to around 11,000 to 12,000 uncalibrated radiocarbon years. (Haury et al. 1959).

Murray Springs lies on the west bank of the San Pedro River and was exposed as a result of arroyo cutting. The large site includes discrete mammoth and bison kill localities and a nearby camp. The camp site and bison kill are believed to have happened around the same time as fragments from a point found at the two separate locations can be fitted together (Holliday 2021). The most notable artifact found by the mammoth was a “shaft wrench” made of ivory, it is believed to have been used for straightening spears.

Kill Sites

Sites where Clovis hunting and butchering weaponry are associated with animal remains are interpreted as kill sites. Clovis kill sites are most often associated with proboscideans (mammoth, mastodon, and gomphothere), bison, or caribou.

Colby, Wyoming

The Colby site in North Central Wyoming provides extensive evidence for Clovis hunting of mammoth. Hundreds of mammoth bones were distributed in two discrete piles, and are thought to be the result of meat caching behavior (Bostrom 2002). The remains represent at least seven individual mammoth, with evidence of butchery and processing. The assemblage include eight Clovis points, including 1 Clovis point with the tip broken consistent with thrusting motion (Frison & Todd 2001). The site contains at least 7 different mammoths and 1 camel. Bone tools are theorized to be present from wear and polishing marks (Frison & Todd 2001).

El Fin del Mundo, Sonora

El Fin del Mundo is a kill site located in the volcanic hills in the Sonoran desert, Mexico (Sanchez 2014). Archaeologists found 27 stone and bone tools in association with the remains of a gomphothere, an animal that had been thought to have been extinct before humans came to the Americas. These artifacts date back to about 11,550 uncalibrated radiocarbon years BP (Sanchez 2014) making this kill site one of the oldest and most southwestern sites.

Kimmswick, Missouri

The Kimmswick site is a single kill site located in Kimmswick, Missouri just south of Saint Louis, Missouri first discovered in 1839. During the excavations in 1979, Paleontologist Russell W Graham provided evidence of Clovis points; unifacial, and bi-facial tools along with the bones of an American Mastodon (Graham and Haynes 1981) .

Camp Sites

Camp sites are archaeological sites that show evidence of residential activities, sometimes associated with a kill site but often not. Residential activities include such behaviors as cooking, building shelters, manufacturing or repairing tools, and other daily living behaviors.

Mockingbird Gap, New Mexico

Mockingbird Gap is a Clovis Campsite discovered in the 1960’s by Robert H. Webber, and is located in New Mexico along Chupadera Arroyo. This site is the largest Clovis camp site in the Southwestern United States, extending for over a kilometer along the margins of the wash. The site contains over 200 Clovis points, along with preforms, flake tools, and other lithic artifacts. Socorro Jasper and green, gray-black-chert were the two most used raw materials at this site. (Holiday et al. 2009). The site may represent a large aggregation of several Clovis bands, frequent reuse by single Clovis bands, or some combination of both.

Paleo Crossing, Ohio

Paleo Crossing is a Clovis era Paleoindian campsite in Ohio that was excavated between 1990 and 1993 and was revisited from 2016 to 2018 (Meltzer, Redmond, and Eren 2021). Paleo Crossing dates to around 10,980 +/- 75 based on radiocarbon dates produced by charcoal found at the site (Miller 2013). Based on caribou remains, the site was an intensive hide working spot, and wear patterns on lithics found at the site also show that there was a great deal of plant processing at the site as well (Cleveland Museum of Natural History n.d.; Miller 2013). The lithics at the site are mostly made of Wyandotte Chert and the assemblage includes 81 implements (Eren and Redmond 2011).

Bull Brook, Massachusetts

The Bull Brook site is in Ipswich, Massachusetts (Harris 2014). This site has over 30 activity areas in a ring-shaped pattern that has been interpreted as a campsite (Harris 2014). There are specialized zones for stone tool making; for example, there is a zone dedicated to fluting points (Harris 2014). There were thousands of flakes and tools found at this site (Robinson et al. 2009). This site is unique because it’s one of the few known aggregate and lived in sites (Harris 2014).

Quarries and Workshops

Quarry sites are those where lithic raw material (stone used for stone tools) are extracted from geologic sources such as outcrops or gravel beds. Workshops are associated areas where stone is reduced into forms to be used or transported to other locations.

Adams, Kentucky

The Adams site is a part of a complex of Clovis period workshops and quarries that run along a part of the Little River in southwestern Kentucky, where Ste. Genevive chert was procured for the manufacture of lithic tools. Analysis of the site's artifacts convey the entirety of the manufacturing process of Clovis points and blades, from procurement of materials, formation of cores and flakes, to the meticulous detailing of points (Gramly 1992).

Topper, South Carolina

The chert workshop at Topper, South Carolina includes Clovis artifacts such as points, flakes, tools, and cores manufactured from Allendale chert. The excavations at Topper provide a window into the lifeway patterns, workshop usage, and toolmaking methods of Clovis peoples (Smallwood 2015). Similarly to the Adam’s site, artifacts are pieced together to reveal the structure of their shops, the methods they used to create tools, and where they took these tools and discarded them.

Gault/Friedkin, Texas

The Gault/Friedkin site is located in Bell County, Texas on Buttermilk creek. It served as a workshop and campsite adjacent to extensive outcrops of high quality Edwards Plateau chert. At Friedkin alone “almost 67,000 clovis lithic artifacts” (Waters) have been recorded, representing early stage manufacture of bifaces, points, and blades, as well as domestic tools used at the site.

Caches

Caches are places where tools and other materials were set aside for storage or perhaps associated with a burial or offering. Clovis caches are often stunning, with dozens of well-made tools stashed at locations where they might be needed in the future.

Fenn cache, Wyoming/Utah/Idaho

The Fenn clovis cache is believed to have been along the border of Wyoming, Idaho, and Utah, although it's history is largely unverified. The cache is notable for its size, high manufacturing quality, and variety of artifacts. The cache contains 56 artifacts including 31 bifaces and 23 clovis points varying in shape and size (Bostrom 2012). One flake and crescent may be associated with the Fenn cache, which is significant because it’s the only known crescent ever discovered in a Clovis cache (Tyson 2004). The artifacts found within the cache are composed of red jasper, green river formation chert, quartz crystal, obsidian, Utah agate, and red ochre (Bostrom 2012).

Anzick, Montana

The Anzick Cache site was discovered in a collapsed rock shelter just outside of Wilsall, Montana. The site was discovered accidentally during construction work (Owsley and Hunt 2001). It is radiocarbon dated to roughly 12,000 YBP (Morrow and Fiedel 2006; Rasmussen eat al. 2014). The cache included 83 biface fragments, 8 projectile points, 2 flakes and 7 flake tools as well as 11 bone rod fragments associated with the partially cremated remains of an infant (Kilby and Huckell 2013). Both artifacts and remains had stains of red ocher on them (Kilby and Huckell 2013).

East Wenatchee, Washington

Until the discovery of the East Wenatchee Clovis cache, the U.S. Northwest was not known for Clovis activity. In May 1987, stone tools were found on an apple orchard by a farmworker who was digging for irrigation (Kilby, Huckell 2014). The site was relatively undisturbed, allowing for it to be one of the few professionally excavated sites (Kilby, Huckell 2014), and testing revealed the dating of the tools to be 13,000 cal BP (Wygal et al., 2022). The cache contained 20 stone bifaces, 14 projectile points, 4 blades, 3 flakes, 5 flake tools, and 12 bone rods made from mammoth or mastodon (Kilby, Huckell 2014). The site contained several points longer than 20.3 cm (8 in.), which were unusually large in comparison to others discovered at that time.

See also

References

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Further reading

External links

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clovis_culture