Clovis point
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Clovis points are the diagnostic projectile point associated with the North American Clovis culture. They date to the Paleo-Indian period around 13,500 years ago. They are named after the town of Clovis, New Mexico, where examples were found in 1929 by local men who eventually encouraged Edgar Billings Howard to visit. This first visit occurred in August of 1932 while Howard was digging with a joint team from the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences and the University of Pennsylvania at Burnet Cave in the Guadalupe Mountains, New Mexico. Clovis points are often found within the remains of ice age animals.
Clovis points[1] are thin, fluted projectile points created using bifacial percussion flaking (this simply means each face is flaked alternatively with a percussor). To finish shaping and sharpening the points they are sometimes pressure flaked along the outer edges of the flint, chert or other stone material. Clovis points are characterized by a concave longitudinal groove running from the base of the point one third up its length. Archaeologists think the groove permitted the poinst to be fastened (hafted) to wooden spears or short shafts (commonly called foreshafts). There are numerous examples of later points hafted to foreshafts but there is no evidence that Clovis people used this type of technological system. The known Clovis bone and ivory tools are not effective foreshafts though the idea of Clovis foreshafts is commonly repeated despite a lack of evidence. The completed spear could be thrown by hand or with the aid of the atlatl, or spear thrower. In the last few years ivory and bone atlatl hooks of Clovis age have been discovered.
Clovis points have been found over most of North America[2] and as far south as Venezuela. Significant Clovis finds include the Anzick site in Montana; the Blackwater Draw type site in New Mexico; the Colby site in Wyoming; the Gault site in Texas; the Simon site in Idaho; the East Wenatchee Clovis Site in Washington; and the Fenn cache, which came to light in private hands in 1989 and whose place of discovery is unknown.
Whether Clovis toolmaking technology was native to the Americas or originated through influences from elsewhere is a contentious issue amongst archaeologists. Clovis points seem to appear in the New World with no lithic antecedents in east Asia.
Around 10,000 BCE, a new type of fluted projectile point called Folsom seems to emerge, replacing the Clovis-style points over much of the continental United States.
Besides its function as a tool, Clovis technology became the lithic symbol of a highly mobile culture that exploited a wide range of faunal resources during the Pleistocene. As Clovis technology expanded, its very use may have affected some resource availability, being a possible contributor to the extinction of the megafauna.
There are different opinions about the emergence of Clovis points. One is that pre-Clovis people in the New World developed the Clovis tradition independently in the Middle Paleolithic. Another opinion is that the first inhabitants in the New World were the Clovis from the Upper Paleolithic who reverted back to flake technology. Both opinions mean that the Clovis point was developed in the New World, but the pre-Clovis opinion requires that a very early entry into the New World was formed, the Clovis opinion does not show this. At this time, no lithic antecedents to Clovis points have been found in northwestern Asia or Alaska. However, the Solutrean hypothesis suggests that Clovis Culture developed from the similar Solutrean of southwestern Europe, and that the technology may have been brought to America through migration along the Atlantic pack ice edge using survival skills similar to that of modern Inuit people.
