Clovis points are the characteristically fluted projectile points associated with the New World Clovis culture, a prehistoric Paleo-American culture. They are present in dense concentrations across much of North America and they are largely restricted to the north of South America. There are slight differences in points found in the Eastern United States bringing them to sometimes be called "Clovis-like". Clovis points date to the Early Paleoindian period, with all known points dating from roughly 13,400–12,700 years ago. As an example, Clovis remains at the Murry Springs Site date to around 12,900 calendar years ago. Clovis fluted points are named after the city of Clovis, New Mexico, where examples were first found in 1929 by Ridgely Whiteman.
The Clovis culture is an archaeological culture from the Paleoindian period of North America, spanning around 13,050 to 12,750 years Before Present (BP). 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 fibers may also have been 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.
Topper is an archaeological site located along the Savannah River in Allendale County, South Carolina, United States. It is noted as a location of artifacts which some archaeologists believe to indicate human habitation of the New World earlier than the Clovis culture. The latter were previously believed to be the first people in North America.
The Folsom tradition is a Paleo-Indian archaeological culture that occupied much of central North America from c. 10800 BCE to c. 10200 BCE. The term was first used in 1927 by Jesse Dade Figgins, director of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. The discovery by archaeologists of projectile points in association with the bones of extinct Bison antiquus, especially at the Folsom site near Folsom, New Mexico, established much greater antiquity for human residence in the Americas than the previous scholarly opinion that humans in the Americas dated back only 3,000 years. The findings at the Folsom site have been called the "discovery that changed American archaeology."
The Buhl Woman was an Paleoindian Indigenous American woman whose remains were found in a quarry near Buhl, Idaho, United States, in January 1989. The remains are thought to have been deliberately buried. Radiocarbon dating has placed the age of the skeleton at 12,740–12,420 calibrated years before present, making her remains some of the oldest in the Americas, though the quality of the dating has been questioned.
The Page–Ladson archaeological and paleontological site (8JE591) is a deep sinkhole in the bed of the karstic Aucilla River that has stratified deposits of late Pleistocene and early Holocene animal bones and human artifacts. The site was the first pre-Clovis site discovered in southeastern North America; radiocarbon evidence suggests that the site dates from 14,200 to 14,550 BP(12,250 to 12,600 BCE). These dates are roughly 1,000 to 1,500 years before the advent of the Clovis culture. Early dates for Page–Ladson challenge theories that humans quickly decimated large game populations in the area once they arrived.
Cactus Hill is an archaeological site in southeastern Virginia, United States, located on sand dunes above the Nottoway River about 45 miles south of Richmond. The site receives its name from the prickly pear cacti that can be found growing abundantly on-site in the sandy soil. Cactus Hill may be one of the oldest archaeological sites in the Americas. If proven to have been inhabited 16,000 to 20,000 years ago, it would provide supporting evidence for pre-Clovis occupation of the Americas. The site has yielded multiple levels of prehistoric inhabitance with two discrete levels of early Paleo-Indian activity.
The Big Eddy Site (23CE426) is an archaeological site located in Cedar County, Missouri, which was first excavated in 1997 and is now threatened due to erosion by the Sac River.
The Lehner Mammoth-Kill Site is in southern Arizona on the west bank of the San Pedro River 1.5 miles southwest of the town of Hereford. It is significant for its association with evidence that mammoths were killed here by Paleo-Indians 11,000 to 12,000 years before present.
George Carr Frison was an American archaeologist. He received the Society for American Archaeology's Lifetime Achievement Award, the Paleoarchaeologist of the Century Award, and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. He was Wyoming's first State Archaeologist, and was a founder of the University of Wyoming Anthropology Department. He died in September 2020 at the age of 95.
Cueva Fell or Fell'sCave is a natural cave and archaeological site in southern Patagonia. Cueva Fell is in proximity to the Pali Aike Crater, another significant archaeological site. Cueva Fell combined with the nearby Pali Aike site have been submitted to UNESCO as a possible World Heritage Site.
The Naco Mammoth Kill Site is an archaeological site in southeast Arizona, 1 mile northwest of Naco in Cochise County. The site was reported to the Arizona State Museum in September 1951 by Marc Navarrete, a local resident, after his father found two Clovis points in Greenbush Draw, while digging out the fossil bones of a mammoth. Emil Haury excavated the Naco mammoth site in April 1952. In only five days, Haury recovered the remains of a Columbian Mammoth in association with 8 Clovis points. The excavator believed the assemblage to date from about 10,000 Before Present. An additional point was found in the arroyo upstream. The Naco site was the first Clovis mammoth kill association to be identified in Arizona. An additional, unpublished, second excavation occurred in 1953 which doubled the area of the original work and found bones from a 2nd mammoth. In 2020, small charcoal fragments were found adhered to a mammoth bone from the site. AMS radiocarbon dating produced a mean date of 10,985 ± 56 Before Present.
The Coats–Hines–Litchy site is a paleontological site located in Williamson County, Tennessee, in the Southeastern United States. The site was formerly believed to be archaeological, and identified as one of only a very few locations in Eastern North America containing evidence of Paleoindian hunting of late Pleistocene proboscideans. Excavations at the site have yielded portions of four mastodon skeletons, including portions of one previously described as being in direct association with Paleoindian stone tools. The results of excavations have been published in Tennessee Conservationist, and the scholarly journals Current Research in the Pleistocene, Tennessee Archaeology, and Quaternary Science Reviews. The site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on July 12, 2011.
Shawnee-Minisink Site is a prehistoric archaeological site located in Smithfield Township, Monroe County, Pennsylvania in the upper Delaware Valley. It was the site of a Paleoindian camp site. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2007.
Hell Gap is a deeply stratified archaeological site located in the Great Plains of eastern Wyoming, approximately thirteen miles north of Guernsey, where an abundant amount of Paleoindian and Archaic artifacts have been found and excavated since 1959. This site has had an important impact on North American archaeology because of the large quantity and breadth of prehistoric Paleoindian and Archaic period artifacts and cultures it encompasses. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2016.
The Gault archaeological site is an extensive, multicomponent site located in Florence, Texas, United States on the Williamson-Bell County line along Buttermilk Creek about 250 meters upstream from the Buttermilk Creek complex. It bears evidence of human habitation for at least 20,000 years, making it one of the few archaeological sites in the Americas at which compelling evidence has been found for human occupation dating to before the appearance of the Clovis culture. Archaeological material covers about 16 hectares with a depth of up to 3 meters in places. About 30 incised stones from the Clovis period engraved with geometric patterns were found there as well as others from periods up to the Early Archaic. Incised bone was also found.
The Anzick site (24PA506), located adjacent to Flathead Creek, a tributary of the Shields River in Wilsall, Park County, Montana, United States, is the only known Clovis burial site in the New World. The term "Clovis" is used by archaeologists to define one of the New World's earliest hunter-gatherer cultures and is named after the site near Clovis, New Mexico, where human artifacts were found associated with the procurement and processing of mammoth and other large and small fauna.
Anzick-1 was a young Paleoindian child whose remains were found in south central Montana, United States, in 1968. He has been dated to 12,990–12,840 years Before Present. The child was found with more than 115 tools made of stone and antlers and dusted with red ocher, suggesting a deliberate burial. Anzick-1 is the only human whose remains are associated with the Clovis culture, and is the first ancient Native American genome to be fully sequenced.
The Hartley Mammoth Site is a pre-Clovis archaeological and paleontological site in New Mexico. Preserving the butchered remains of two Columbian mammoths, small mammals and fish, the site is notable due to its age, which is significantly older than the currently accepted dates for the settlement of the Americas.
Cooper's Ferry is an archaeological site along the lower Salmon River near the confluence with Rock Creek in the western part of the U.S. state of Idaho, and part of the Lower Salmon River Archeological District. It is 17 kilometres (11 mi) south of the town of Cottonwood and 63 kilometres (39 mi) upstream from the Snake River. Various lithic and animal remains from the Pleistocene to early Holocene ages have been found there. The site is on traditional Nez Perce land, and known to the tribe as the historical village of Nipéhe.
