Clovis culture

On August 29, 1927, the first 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 newspapers, 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 L. Cotter from the Academy of Natural Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania. Howard's crew left their excavation in Burnet Cave, the first 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 Howard's work in Burnet Cave, including the discovery of extinct fauna and a "Folsom type" point 4 ft below a Basketmaker burial. Reference is made to a slightly earlier article on Burnet Cave in The University Museum Bulletin from November 1931. The Dent site in Colorado was the first known association of Clovis points with mammoth bones, as noted by Hannah Marie Wormington in her book Ancient Man in North America (4th ed. 1957). Gary Haynes, in his book The Early Settlement of North America, suggested the type of fluted point thereafter associated with megafauna (especially mammoths) at over a dozen other archaeological sites in North America would have been more appropriately named "Dent" rather than Clovis, the town near Blackwater Draw that gave the type of point its name. ==Material culture==

A feature considered to be distinctive of the Clovis tradition is overshot flaking, which is defined as flakes that "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. 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. Tools Clovis point A hallmark of the toolkit associated with the Clovis culture is the distinctively shaped lithic point known as the Clovis point. Clovis points are bifacial (having flakes removed from both faces) and typically fluted (having an elongate flake removed from the base of the point or a half of the length of the point, distinct from many later Paleoindian traditions where the flute runs up the entire point length. Clovis points are commonly thought to have served as tips for spears/darts likely used as handheld thrusting or throwing weapons (or possibly as ground-mounted pikes Wear on Clovis points indicates that they were multifunctional objects that also served as cutting and slicing tools, with some authors suggesting that some Clovis-point types were primarily used as knives. Clovis points were at least sometimes resharpened, though the idea that they were continually resharpened "long-life" tools has been questioned. The shape and size of Clovis points varies significantly over space and time; The points were generally produced from nodules or siliceous cryptocrystalline rocks. Clovis blades are twice as long as they are wide and were used and modified to create a variety of tools, including endscrapers (used to scrape hides), serrated tools, and gravers. Bifaces Bifaces served a variety of roles for Clovis hunter-gatherers, such as cutting tools, preforms (partially shaped precursors) for formal tools such as points, and as portable sources of large flakes useful as preforms or tools. Other tools Other tools associated with the Clovis culture are adzes (likely used for woodworking), as well as rods, some of which have beveled (diagonally shaped) ends. These rods are made of bone, antlers, and ivory.) while rods that are beveled on only one end, with the other being pointed, are most often interpreted as projectile points. The rods may have served other purposes, such as prybars., where a collection of artifacts (typically stone tools, such as Clovis points or bifaces) were deliberately left at a location, presumably with the intention to return to collect them later, though some authors have interpreted cache deposits as ritual behavior. Over twenty such "caches" have been identified across North America. ==Art and ritual practices==

A few Clovis culture artifacts are suspected to reflect creative expression, such as rock art, the use of red ochre, and engraved stones. The best-known examples of this were found at the Gault site in Texas and consist of limestone nodules incised with expressive geometric patterns, some of which mimic leaf patterns. Clovis peoples, like other Paleoindian cultures, used red ochre for a variety of artistic and ritual purposes, including burials, and to cover objects in caches. Clovis peoples are known to have transported ochre from its original outcrop. ==Lifestyle==

in Mexico's National Museum of Anthropology Clovis hunter-gatherers are characterized as "high-technology foragers" who utilized sophisticated technology to maintain access to resources while being highly mobile. In many Clovis localities, the stone tools found at a site were hundreds of kilometers away from the source stone outcrop, in one case over away. The people who produced the Clovis culture probably had a low population density but with geographically extensive cultural networks. Clovis artifacts have often been found associated with big game, including proboscideans (Columbian mammoth, mastodon,), bison, A handful of sites possibly suggest the hunting of caribou/reindeer, peccaries (Platygonus, Mylohyus), ground sloths (Paramylodon), glyptodonts (Glyptotherium), tapirs, the camel Camelops, and the llama Hemiauchenia''. Proboscideans (predominantly mammoths) are the most common recorded species found in Clovis sites, followed by bison. However, the Clovis culture is not exclusively associated with large animals, with several sites showing the exploitation of small game like tortoises, Plant remains at Clovis sites (which are almost exclusively from eastern North America) primarily consist of food that can be easily gathered, such as fruit that required little processing, with little evidence of plant processing tools being found. The effectiveness of Clovis tools for hunting proboscideans has been contested by some authors, though others have asserted that Clovis points were likely capable of killing proboscideans, noting that replica Clovis points have been able to penetrate elephant hide in experimental tests, and that groups of hunter-gatherers in Africa have been observed killing elephants using spears. Isotope analysis of the only known Clovis burial, the young child Anzick-1 from Montana, suggests that mammoths made up a large proportion (~35–40%) of the total diet of this group, with major contributions also coming from elk and probably bison, with small animals only making up a small proportion (~4%) of the diet. In the Southern Plains, Clovis people created campsites of considerable size, which are often on the periphery of the region near sources of workable stone, from which they are suggested to have seasonally migrated into the plains to hunt megafauna. In the southeast, Clovis peoples created large camps that may have served as "staging areas", which may have been seasonally occupied, where a number of bands may have gathered for social occasions. Megafaunal extinction Beginning in the 1950s, Paul S. Martin proposed the "overkill hypothesis", suggesting that the Late Pleistocene megafauna extinctions in North America were driven by human hunting, including by Clovis peoples, with the hunting and extinction of large herbivores having a knock-on effect causing the extinction of large carnivores. This suggestion has been the subject of controversy. The timing of megafauna extinction in North America also coincides with major climatic changes, making it difficult to disentangle the effects of various factors. In a 2012 survey of archaeologists in The SAA Archaeological Record, 63% of respondents said that megafauna extinctions were likely the result of a "combination of factors". ==Genetics==

The only known Clovis burial is that of Anzick-1, an infant boy who was found near Wilsall, Montana, in 1968. The body was associated with over 100 stone and bone artifacts, all of which were stained with red ocher, and it dates to approximately 12,990–12,840 years BP. Sequencing of his genome demonstrates that he belonged to a population that is ancestral to many contemporary Indigenous peoples of the Americas, though there is considerable variability in the genetic closeness of Central and South American indigenous peoples to Anzick-1, with older ancient South American remains generally being closer, suggesting that the Native American population had already diverged into multiple genetically distinct groups by the time of the Clovis culture, followed by subsequent migration of these populations later in the Holocene. Like other Native Americans, Anzick-1 is closely related to Siberian peoples, confirming the Asian origin of the Clovis culture. He belongs to Y chromosome Haplogroup Q-L54, which is common among contemporary Native Americans, and to mitochondrial haplogroup D4h3a, which is rare among contemporary Native Americans (occurring in only 1.4%, primarily along the Pacific coast) but more common in the very earliest Indigenous Americans. ==Distribution and chronology==

Some authors have suggested that the Clovis culture lasted for a relatively short period of a few centuries. A 2020 study suggests a temporal range, based on ten securely radiocarbon-dated Clovis sites, of 13,050 to 12,750 calibrated years BP, ending subsequent to the onset of the Younger Dryas; Other authors have argued that some sites extend the range of the Clovis culture back to 13,500 years BP, though the dating for these earlier sites is not secure. as well as Paisley Caves in Oregon (c. 14,200 years BP) and Cooper's Ferry in Idaho (c. 15,800 years BP) are suggested to be considerably older than the oldest Clovis sites. The White Sands footprints in New Mexico may be even older, dating to the Last Glacial Maximum, around 23,000 years ago. Historically, it was suggested that the ancestors of the people who produced the Clovis culture migrated into North America along the "ice-free corridor" (the boundary region between the Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets that is suggested to have melted and become ice-free prior to the melting of the rest of the ice sheets, providing a passageway between Eastern Beringia and central North America), but many later scholars have suggested that a migration along the Pacific coast is more likely. A 2022 study proposed that the ice-free corridor was impassable until around 13,800 years ago, long after the earliest confirmed human presence in the Americas south of the ice sheets. It has also been suggested that the fluted projectile-point style of the Clovis culture originated in temperate North America south of the ice sheet and was later transported northwards along the expanding ice-free corridor. The Clovis culture is known from localities across North America, from southern Canada to northern Mexico and across the east and west of the continent. 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. The Clovis culture was succeeded by various regional point styles, such as the Folsom tradition in central North America, the Suwannee and Simpson points in the southeast, and the Gainey points in the northeast-Great Lakes region. The Clovis and Folsom traditions may have overlapped, perhaps for around 80–400 years. A number of authors have suggested that the Clovis culture is ancestral to other fluted point-producing cultures in Central and South America, like the widespread Fishtail or Fell point style. ==See also==