Clovis Culture

The antiquity of humans in the New World had been a controversy during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Insight into just how long ago the incursion of people into the Americas occurred came in 1927, when lanceolate projectile points were found with the remains of extinct bison near Folsom, New Mexico. [Page 521]Then, in 1932, similar but distinctive stone points were found at Dent, Colorado, this time associated with the mammoth. These artifacts appeared to be related to the Folsom points, both of them bearing axial channels (“flutes”) at their bases for hafting. The Dent points were different, however, in being larger and thicker and having proportionally shorter axial channels and coarser flake scars. Clearly, humans were in North America by at least the late Ice Age.

In the mid-1930s, Dent-type points were found near Clovis, New Mexico, at a site called Blackwater Locality No. 1, beneath an unconformity (a break in the vertical deposition sequence). Above the unconformity were Folsom points. This stratified sequence showed that the Dent-type artifacts (thereafter referred to as “Clovis” points, for the nearby town) were older than the Folsom points. Clovis points, or points closely resembling them, are now known from most of North America. They, and the other artifacts found with them, have come to represent a cultural complex that bears the same name.

Clovis is the oldest clearly defined culture known in North America, with radiocarbon dates concentrating in the range of 11,200–10,900 years BP (before the present) (though a few sites have yielded dates three to four centuries older). Its most characteristic artifact, the Clovis projectile point is lanceolate (axially elongate with roughly parallel sides curving to a point), with a concave base, and one or more elongate axial flakes removed from each side of the base, presumably to facilitate hafting to a shaft. The edges of the lower sides and the base were commonly blunted by grinding, in order to avoid severing the binding. The artifact was made remarkably thin through a process called “overshot flaking” (outre passé), which involved removing a flake from one side of the artifact clear across to the other side. These points, or ones closely resembling them, occur in North America from the East to the West Coast, and from the Canadian plains to central Mexico and possibly even Panama. The Clovis lithic industry is also typified by blades, end scrapers, side scrapers, pièces esquillées, and gravers. Burins, while present, are generally rare, and microblades are absent.

While the Clovis fluted projectile point is distinctive, it does show a degree of variation. This is strikingly illustrated by eight points found at the Naco site in Arizona. They were associated with a mammoth skeleton and are believed to reflect a single hunting event. The points differ markedly in length (approx. 11.6 to 5.8 cm), though less so in width and in the profile of the edges. One of the longest Clovis points known is a 23.3 cm chalcedony artifact from the Richey-Roberts Clovis Cache, at East Wenatchee, Washington State.

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