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.
Clovis culture is a prehistoric Paleoamerican archaeological culture, named for distinct stone and bone tools found in close association with Pleistocene fauna, particularly two Columbian mammoths, at Blackwater Locality No. 1 near Clovis, New Mexico, in 1936 and 1937, though Paleoindian artifacts had been found at the site since the 1920s. It existed from roughly 11,500 to 10,800 BCE near the end of the Last Glacial Period.
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 Meadowcroft Rockshelter is an archaeological site which is located near Avella in Jefferson Township, Pennsylvania. The site is a rock shelter in a bluff overlooking Cross Creek, and contains evidence that the area may have been continually inhabited for more than 19,000 years. If accurately dated, it would be one of the earliest known sites with evidence of a human presence and continuous human occupation in the New World.
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. 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.
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.
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.
Blackwater Draw is an intermittent stream channel about 140 km (87 mi) long, with headwaters in Roosevelt County, New Mexico, about 18 km (11 mi) southwest of Clovis, New Mexico, and flows southeastward across the Llano Estacado toward the city of Lubbock, Texas, where it joins Yellow House Draw to form Yellow House Canyon at the head of the North Fork Double Mountain Fork Brazos River. It stretches across eastern Roosevelt County, New Mexico, and Bailey, Lamb, Hale, and Lubbock Counties of West Texas and drains an area of 1,560 sq mi (4,040 km2).
The archaeology of Iowa is the study of the buried remains of human culture within the U.S. state of Iowa from the earliest prehistoric through the late historic periods. When the American Indians first arrived in what is now Iowa more than 13,000 years ago, they were hunters and gatherers living in a Pleistocene glacial landscape. By the time European explorers visited Iowa, American Indians were largely settled farmers with complex economic, social, and political systems. This transformation happened gradually. During the Archaic period American Indians adapted to local environments and ecosystems, slowly becoming more sedentary as populations increased. More than 3,000 years ago, during the Late Archaic period, American Indians in Iowa began utilizing domesticated plants. The subsequent Woodland period saw an increase on the reliance on agriculture and social complexity, with increased use of mounds, ceramics, and specialized subsistence. During the Late Prehistoric period increased use of maize and social changes led to social flourishing and nucleated settlements. The arrival of European trade goods and diseases in the Protohistoric period led to dramatic population shifts and economic and social upheaval, with the arrival of new tribes and early European explorers and traders. During the Historical period European traders and American Indians in Iowa gave way to American settlers and Iowa was transformed into an agricultural state.
Juliet Morrow is an American archaeologist and a professor of Anthropology at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro, Arkansas.
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.
Vance T. Holliday is a professor in the School of Anthropology and the department of Geosciences as well as an adjunct professor in the department of Geography at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
The Paleoindian Database of the Americas (PIDBA), is a website dedicated to the compilation of projectile point and other relevant data pertaining to Paleoindian site assemblages across the Americas. As of April 2011, the PIDBA database contains information pertaining to locational data (n=29,393), attribute data (n=15,254), and image data on Paleoindian projectile points and other tools in North America and also includes bibliographic references, radiocarbon dates, and maps created making use of database and GIS data. The PIDBA site provides a database that is useful in studying stylistic and morphological variability, lithic raw material usage and procurement strategies, geographic distributions of technology, and land use strategies during the Paleoindian period, which took place prior to ca. 11,450 cal year BP. The PIDBA database also serves a function as an intermediary between academic and advocational archaeologists in the collection and integration of primary projectile point data. Overall, the PIDBA project aims to compile data from multiple sources into a comprehensive database, while simultaneously seeking out and including new data. The PIDBA website contains a large amount of primary data collected and donated by researchers and advocational archaeologists from all over the Americas ranging from metric measurements to the type of chert any particular piece is made from. It is the voluntary contributions of primary data from these researchers that makes PIDBA possible. While it is understandable that researchers would like to fully examine and publish on their data, the site's philosophy is that it is important to disseminate information freely, so that other researchers can work with it. This allows researchers to make new discoveries that they perhaps would not be possible otherwise.
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.
Michael Waters is an American academic working as a professor of anthropology and geography at Texas A&M University, where he holds the Endowed Chair in First American Studies. He specializes in geoarchaeology, and has applied this method to the investigation of Clovis and later Paleo-Indian, and possible pre-Clovis occupation sites.
John Bertram Broster is an American archaeologist formerly serving as the Prehistoric Archeological Supervisor at the Tennessee Division of Archaeology, Department of Environment and Conservation. He is best known for his work on the Paleoindian period of the American Southwest and Southeast, and has published some 38 book chapters and journal articles on the subject.
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.
The Heaven's Half Acre complex is a concentration of Paleoindian sites situated on a series of Pleistocene terraces overlooking a sinkhole in northeastern Colbert County, Alabama, near the town of Leighton. Over one hundred and fifty fluted points have been recovered on these sites, making it one of the most dense fluted point localities in North America.
Paleo Crossing site, also known as the Old Dague Farm site, is an archaeological site near Sharon Center, Ohio in Medina County where Clovis artifacts dated to 10,980 BP ± 75 years Before Present were found. The Cleveland Museum of Natural History conducted an excavation from 1990 to 1993. The site provides evidence of Paleo-Indians in northern Ohio and may be the area's oldest residents and archaeologist Dr. David Brose believes that they may be "some of the oldest certain examples of human activity in the New World." The site contains charcoal recovered from refuse pits. There were also two post holes and blades and tools 80% of which were made from flint from the Ohio River Valley in Indiana, 500 miles from Paleo Crossing, which indicates that the hunter-gatherers had a widespread social network and traveled across distances relatively quickly. The post holes are evidence that there was a shelter built on the site.
