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The Clovis culture is an archaeological culture from the Paleoindian period of North America, spanning around 13,050 to 12,750 years Before Present. The type site is Blackwater Draw locality No. 1 near Clovis, New Mexico, where stone tools were found alongside the remains of Columbian mammoths in 1929. Clovis sites have been found across North America. The most distinctive part of the Clovis culture toolkit are Clovis points, which are projectile points with a fluted, lanceolate shape. Clovis points are typically large, sometimes exceeding 10 centimetres (3.9 in) in length. These points were multifunctional, also serving as cutting tools. Other stone tools used by the Clovis culture include knives, scrapers and bifacial tools, with bone tools including beveled rods and shaft wrenches, with possible ivory points also being identified. Hides, wood, and natural fibres may also have been heavily utilized, though no direct evidence of this has been preserved. Clovis artifacts are often found grouped together in caches where they had been stored for later retrieval, and over 20 Clovis caches have been identified. The Clovis peoples are thought to have been highly mobile groups of hunter-gatherers. It is generally agreed that these groups were reliant on hunting big game (megafauna), having a particularly strong association with mammoths, and to a lesser extent with mastodon, bison, camel and horse, but they also consumed smaller animals and plants. The Clovis hunters may have contributed to the Late Pleistocene megafauna extinctions in North America, though this has been subject to controversy. Only one human burial has been directly associated with tools from the Clovis culture: Anzick-1, a young boy found buried in Montana, who has a close genetic relation to some modern Native American populations, primarily in Central America and South America. The Clovis culture represents the earliest widely recognised archaeological culture in North America (though in western North America it appears to have been contemporaneous with the Western Stemmed Tradition). While historically many scholars held to a "Clovis first" model, where Clovis represented the earliest inhabitants in the Americas, today this is largely rejected, with several generally accepted sites across the Americas like Monte Verde II being dated to at least a thousand years older than the oldest Clovis sites. The end of the Clovis culture may have been driven by the decline of the megafauna that the Clovis hunted, as well as decreasing mobility resulting in local differentiation of lithic and cultural traditions across North America. Beginning around 12,750-12,600 years Before Present, the Clovis culture was succeeded by more regional cultures, including the Folsom tradition in central North America, the Cumberland point in mid/southern North America, the Suwannee and Simpson points in the southeast, and Gainey points in the northeast-Great Lakes region. The Clovis and Folsom traditions may have overlapped, perhaps for around 80-400 years. The end of the Clovis culture is generally thought be the result of normal cultural change through time. In South America, the widespread similar related Fishtail or Fell point style was contemporaneous to the usage of Clovis points in North America, and possibly developed from Clovis points. Discovery 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 bones of the extinct bison species Bison antiquus. This confirmation of a human presence in the Americas during the Pleistocene inspired many people to start looking for evidence of early humans. 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. 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. The first report of professional work at the Blackwater Draw Clovis site was published in the 25 November issue of Science News (V22 #601) in 1932. 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) 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 5 November 1932, and the in situ point was found 7 July 1933. The in situ Clovis point from Burnet Cave was excavated in late August, 1931 (and was reported in early 1932). Material culture A feature considered to be distinctive of the Clovis tradition is overshot flaking, overshot flakes are those which "during the manufacture of a biface are struck from prepared edges of a piece and travel from one edge across the face", with limited removal of the opposite edge. Whether or not the overshot flaking was intentional on the part of the stoneknapper has been contested, with other authors suggesting that overface flaking (where flakes that travel past the midline, but terminate before reaching the opposite end are removed) was the primary goal. Other elements considered distinctive of the Clovis culture tool complex include "raw material selectivity; distinctive patterns of flake and blade platform preparation, thinning and flaking; characteristic biface size and morphology, including the presence of end-thinning; and the size, curvature and reduction strategies of blades". It has long been recognised that the definition of the Clovis culture is to a degree ambiguous, the term being "used in a number of ways, referring to an era, to a culture, and most specifically, to a distinctive projectile point type" with disagreement between scholars about distinguishing between Clovis and various other Paleoindian archaeological cultures. Too.... Discover the Mario G Huacuja popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Mario G Huacuja books.