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. 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.
Paleo-Indians were the first peoples who entered and subsequently inhabited the Americas towards the end of the Late Pleistocene period. The prefix paleo- comes from the Ancient Greek adjective: παλαιός, romanized: palaiós, lit. 'old; ancient'. The term Paleo-Indians applies specifically to the lithic period in the Western Hemisphere and is distinct from the term Paleolithic.
In the sequence of cultural stages first proposed for the archaeology of the Americas by Gordon Willey and Philip Phillips in 1958, the Lithic stage was the earliest period of human occupation in the Americas, as post-glacial hunter gatherers spread through the Americas. The stage derived its name from the first appearance of Lithic flaked stone tools. The term Paleo-Indian is an alternative, generally indicating much the same period.
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 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 Paisley Caves or the Paisley Five Mile Point Caves complex is a system of eight caves in an arid, desolate region of south-central Oregon, United States north of the present-day city of Paisley, Oregon. The caves are located in the Summer Lake basin at 4,520 feet (1,380 m) elevation and face west, carved into a ridge of Miocene and Pliocene era basalts mixed with soft volcanic tuffs and breccias by Pleistocene-era waves from Summer Lake. One of the caves may contain archaeological evidence of the oldest definitively-dated human presence in North America. The site was first studied by Luther Cressman in the 1930s.
J&J Hunt Site (8JE740) is an inundated prehistoric archaeological site located 6 km off the coast of northwestern Florida. The site which was discovered in 1989 is located in 3.7 to 4.6 m of salt water in the Gulf of Mexico along the PaleoAucilla River. In prehistory the site had at least two different occupations: a Late Paleoindian-Early Archaic and Middle Archaic. The J&J Hunt site was a major focus of the PaleoAucilla Prehistory Project conducted by Michael K. Faught.
The Lind Coulee Archaeological Site, also known as 45GR97, is the site of an archaeological dig near Warden, Washington. It dates to c. 11,000 cal BP.
The Windust Caves (45-FR-46) are a series of nine caves eroded into a basalt cliff on the north side of the lower Snake River in Franklin County, southeastern Washington. The caves were excavated from 1959 until 1961 by a crew led by Harvey S. Rice. The site contains cultural artifacts dating back over 10,000 years and is culturally associated with other sites in the Columbia Basin.
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.
St. Mary Reservoir is a reservoir in southwestern Alberta, Canada. It was created for irrigation purposes by the damming of the St. Mary River, which was completed in 1951. The Kainai Nation's Blood 148 Indian reserve borders its northwest side. There are camping and picnic areas at the reservoir, and it is a popular site for power boating, water skiing, windsurfing, swimming and fishing.
The Buttermilk Creek complex is the remains of a paleolithic settlement along the shores of Buttermilk Creek in present-day Salado, Texas. The assemblage dates to ~13.2 to 15.5 thousand years old. If confirmed, the site represents evidence of human settlement in the Americas that pre-dates the Clovis culture.
Golondrina points are lanceolate spear or dart projectile points, of medium size, dated to the transitional Paleo-Indian Period, between 9000–7000 BP. Golondrina points were attached on split-stem hafts and may have served to bring down medium-sized animals such as deer, as well as functioning as butchering knives. Distribution is widespread throughout most of Texas, and points have also been discovered in Arkansas and Mexico. The concentration of Golondrina specimens is highest across the South Texas Plains, where the point is the most prevalent of Paleo-Indian types and defines a distinctive cultural pattern for the region. The Golondrina point is so named for its flared basal corners ("ears"), which resemble a swallow's split tail. Classification of Golondrina can be difficult because of its similarity to other types, particularly the Plainview point, to which it was originally thought to be related.
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 Quad site is a series of Paleoindian sites and localities in Limestone County near Decatur, Alabama. It was first reported by Frank Soday in 1954, and later findings were also documented by James Cambron, David Hulse and Joe Wright and Cambron and Hulse. The Quad Locale can seldom be viewed at current lake levels, even during normal winter pool, due to extensive erosion, but is considered one of the most important and well known Paleoindian sites in the Southeastern United States.
Chipped stone crescents are a class of artifact found mainly associated with surface components of archaeological sites located in the Great Basin, the Columbia Plateau, and throughout California. Although their distribution covers a large portion of the western United States, crescents are often found in similar contexts in close proximity to water sources including playas, lakes, rivers, and mainland and island coast lines. Crescents are generally thought to be diagnostic to the terminal Pleistocene and early Holocene and are representative of assemblages that include fluted and stemmed projectile points.
The coastal migration hypothesis is one of two leading hypotheses about the settlement of the Americas at the time of the Last Glacial Maximum. It proposes one or more migration routes involving watercraft, via the Kurile island chain, along the coast of Beringia and the archipelagos off the Alaskan-British Columbian coast, continuing down the coast to Central and South America. The alternative is the hypothesis solely by interior routes, which assumes migration along an ice-free corridor between the Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets during the Last Glacial Maximum.
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.
Rimrock Draw Rockshelter is a rockshelter located in Eastern Oregon of the US. It is an archaeological site being studied by the University of Oregon under the guidance of Dr. Patrick O'Grady in coordination with the Museum of Natural and Cultural History and in partnership with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).
