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A Clovis projectile point created using bifacial percussion flaking (that is, each face is flaked on both edges alternatively with a percussor)
Image courtesy of the Virginia Dept. of Historic Resources.

The Clovis culture (sometimes referred to as the Llano culture^[1]) is a prehistoric Paleo-Indian culture that first appears 11,500 rcbp radiocarbon years ago, at the end of the last glacial period, characterized by the manufacture of "Clovis points" and distinctive bone and ivory tools. Archaeologists' most precise determinations at present suggest that this radiocarbon age is equal to roughly 13,500 to 13,000 calendar years ago.

The Clovis culture was replaced by several more localized regional cultures from the time of the Younger Dryas cold climate period onward. Post-Clovis cultures include the Folsom tradition, Gainey, Suwannee-Simpson, Plainview-Goshen, Cumberland, and Redstone. Each of these is commonly thought to derive directly from Clovis, in some cases apparently differing only in the length of the fluting on their projectile points. Although this is generally held to be the result of normal cultural change through time,^[2] numerous other reasons have been suggested to be the driving force for the observed changes in the archaeological record, such as an extraterrestrial impact event or post-glacial climate change with numerous faunal extinctions.

After the discovery of several Clovis sites in western North America in the 1930s, the Clovis people came to be regarded as the first human inhabitants of the New World. Clovis people were considered to be the ancestors of all the indigenous cultures of North and South America. However, this majority view has been contested over the last thirty years by several archaeological discoveries, including possible sites like Cactus Hill in Virginia, Paisley Caves in the Summer Lake Basin of Oregon, the Topper site in Allendale County, South Carolina, Meadowcroft Rockshelter in Pennsylvania, and the Monte Verde ^[3]and Cueva Fell sites in Chile.

Description

The culture was originally named for a small number of artifacts found between 1936 and 1938 at Blackwater Locality No. 1, an archaeological site near Clovis, New Mexico. People began collecting artifacts at this site in the late 1920s but artifacts and animal remains that had not moved since the Pleistocene were not recovered until 1936. The in situ finds of 1936 and 1937 included most of four stone Clovis points, two long bone points with impact damage, stone blades, a portion of a Clovis blade core, and several cutting tools made on stone flakes. Clovis sites have since been identified throughout much, but not all, of the contiguous United States, as well as Mexico and Central America, and even into Northern South America.^[4]

A hallmark of the toolkit associated with the Clovis culture is the distinctively-shaped fluted stone spear point, known as the Clovis point. The Clovis point is bifacial and typically fluted on both sides. Archaeologists do not agree on whether the widespread presence of these artifacts indicates the proliferation of a single people, or the adoption of a superior technology by diverse population groups. It is generally accepted that Clovis people hunted mammoth as Clovis points have repeatedly been found in sites containing mammoth remains. Mammoth is only a small part of the Clovis diet; extinct bison, mastodon, sloths, tapir, palaeolama, horse (the association of Clovis with horse remains is in dispute as no actual Clovis artifacts have been found in direct association with fossil horse remains) and a host of smaller animals have also been found in Clovis sites where they were killed and eaten. In total, more than 125 species of plants and animals are known to have been used by Clovis people in the portion of the Western Hemisphere they inhabited.

Disappearance of Clovis

The most commonly held perspective on the end of the Clovis culture is that a decline in the availability of megafauna, combined with an overall increase in a less mobile population, led to local differentiation of lithic and cultural traditions across the Americas.^[2][5] After this time, Clovis-style fluted points were replaced by other fluted-point traditions (such as the Folsom culture) with an essentially uninterrupted sequence across North and central America. An effectively continuous cultural adaptation proceeds from the Clovis period through the ensuing Middle and Late Paleoindian periods.^[6] It has also been argued that Clovis ended in a very abrupt fashion.

Whether the Clovis culture drove the mammoth, and other species, to extinction via overhunting – the so-called Pleistocene overkill hypothesis – is still an open, and controversial, question. Another possibility is that climate change^[7] coupled with human predation, disease, and additional pressures from newly arrived herbivores (competition) and carnivores (predation) and isolation made it impossible for many species to reproduce and survive. It has also been hypothesized that the Clovis culture saw its decline in the wake of the Younger Dryas cold phase. This 'cold shock', lasting roughly 1,500 years, affected many parts of the world, including North America. It appears to have been triggered by a vast meltwater lake – Lake Agassiz – emptying into the North Atlantic, disrupting the thermohaline circulation.

A recent hypothesis suggests that one or more extraterrestrial bodies caused the mass extinction and triggered a period of climatic cooling.^[8] This is known as the Clovis Comet or the Younger Dryas impact event and proposes that an extraterrestrial object such as a comet exploded in Earth's atmosphere above North America's Great Lakes region about 12,900 years ago,^[9] and significantly impacted the human Clovis culture. Research published in January 2009 argues that there was no extraterrestrial impact but fails to explain the high levels of metal and magnetic spherules found deep inside the tusks and skulls of mammoths.^[10] Additional evidence of comet impact is the widespread occurrence of microdiamonds and black mats in a layer of sedimentary rocks of that era,^[11] but is not reflected in the extinction record.

Discovery

A cowboy and former slave, George McJunkin, found an Ancient Bison (Bison antiquus, an extinct relative of the American Bison) skeleton in 1908 after a flash flood.^[12] It was first excavated in 1926, near Folsom, New Mexico under the direction of Harold Cook and Jesse Figgins. On August 29, 1927 they found the first in situ Folsom point with the extinct B. antiquus bones. This confirmation of a human presence in the Americas during the Pleistocene inspired many people to start looking for evidence of Early Man. ^[13]

In 1929, 19-year-old part Native American Ridgely Whiteman, who had been closely following the excavations in nearby Folsom in the newspaper, discovered the Clovis Man Site in the Blackwater Draw in Eastern New Mexico.^[12] Despite earlier legitimate Paleoindian discoveries, the best documented evidence of the Clovis tool complex was excavated between 1932 and 1937 near Clovis, New Mexico, by a crew under the direction of Edgar Billings Howard from the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences/University of Pennsylvania.^[12] Howard's crew left their excavation in Burnet Cave, New Mexico (truly the first professionally excavated Clovis site) in August, 1932 and visited Whiteman and his Blackwater Draw site. In November, Howard was back at Blackwater Draw to investigate additional finds from a construction project.^[14]

The American Journal of Archaeology (January-March, 1932 V36 #1) in its Archaeological Notes mentions E. B. Howard's work in Burnet Cave, including the discovery of extinct fauna and a "Folsom type" point four feet below a Basketmaker burial. This brief mention of the Clovis point found in place predates any work at Dent, Colorado. Reference is made to a slightly earlier article on Burnet Cave in The University Museum Bulletin of November, 1931.

The first report of professional work at the Blackwater Draw Clovis site is in the November 25, 1932 issue of Science News. The publications on Burnet Cave and Blackwater Draw directly contradict statements by several authors (for example see Haynes 2002:56 The Early Settlement of North America) that Dent, Colorado was the first excavated Clovis site. The Dent Site, in Weld County, Colorado, was simply a fossil mammoth excavation in 1932. The first Dent Clovis point was found November 5, 1932 and the in situ point was found July 7, 1933. The in situ Clovis point from Burnet Cave was excavated in late August, 1931 (and reported early in 1932). E. B. Howard brought the Burnet Cave point to the 3rd Pecos Conference, September 1931, and showed it around to several archaeologists interested in Early Man (see Woodbury 1983).

Clovis First

The predominant hypothesis (known as "Clovis First") among archaeologists in the latter half of the 20th century had been that the people associated with the Clovis culture were the first inhabitants of the Americas. The primary support for this was that no solid evidence of pre-Clovis human inhabitation had been found. According to the standard accepted theory, the Clovis people crossed the Beringia land bridge over the Bering Strait from Siberia to Alaska during the period of lowered sea levels during the ice age, then made their way southward through an ice-free corridor east of the Rocky Mountains in present-day western Canada as the glaciers retreated. This hypothesis has been continuously challenged by studies that suggest a Pre-Clovis Human occupation of the Americas.^{[15 ]}

Evidence of human habitation before Clovis

Predecessors of the Clovis people may have migrated south along the North American coastlines, although there are arguments for many migrations along several different routes^[16]. According to researchers Michael Waters and Thomas Stafford of Texas A&M University, new radiocarbon dates place Clovis remains from the continental United States in a shorter time window (11,050 to 10,900 years ago),^[17] while radiocarbon dating of the Monte Verde site in Chile place Clovis-like culture there as early as 13,500 years ago and remains found at the Channel Islands of California place coastal Paleoindians there 12,500 years ago. This suggests that the Paleoindian migration could have spread more quickly along the Pacific coastline, proceeding south, and that populations that settled along that route could have then begun migrations eastward into the continent.

In 2004, worked stone tools were found at Topper in South Carolina that have been dated by radiocarbon techniques to 50,000 years ago,^[18] although there is significant dispute regarding these dates.^[19] A more substantiated claim is that of Paisley Caves, where rigorous carbon-14 and genetic testing appears to indicate that humans related to modern Native Americans were present in the caves over 1000 ¹⁴C years before the earliest evidence of Clovis. A study published in Science presents strong evidence that humans occupied sites in Monte Verde, at the tip of South America, as early as 13,000 years ago.^[20] If this is true then humans must have entered North America long before the Clovis Culture – perhaps 16,000 years ago.

The Tlapacoya site on the shore of the former Lake Chalco reveals bones, hearths, middens, and a curved obsidian blade, presumed to date to over 21,700 years BP, although the dating has been disputed.

Coastal migration route

Recent studies of the mitochondrial DNA of First Nations/Native Americans suggest that the people of the New World may have diverged genetically from Siberians as early as 20,000 years ago, far earlier than the standard theory would suggest.^{[15 ]} However, this pattern is not inconsistent with a later colonization from Siberia because gene coalescent theory predicts that genetic co-ancestry is expected to greatly predate colonization and/or isolation. According to one alternative theory, the Pacific coast of North America may have been free of ice such as to allow the first peoples in North America to come down this route prior to the formation of the ice-free corridor in the continental interior. No solid evidence has yet been found to support this hypothesis except that genetic analysis of coastal marine life indicates diverse fauna persisting in refugia throughout the Pleistocene ice ages along the coasts of Alaska and British Columbia; these refugia include common food sources of coastal aboriginal peoples, suggesting that a migration along the coastline was feasible at the time ^[21].

Solutrean hypothesis

The controversial Solutrean hypothesis proposed in 1999 by Smithsonian archaeologist Dennis Stanford and colleague Bruce Bradley (Stanford and Bradley 2002), suggests that the Clovis people could have inherited technology from the Solutrean people who lived in southern Europe 21,000-15,000 years ago, and who created the first Stone Age artwork in present-day southern France.^[22] The link is suggested by the similarity in technology between the projectile points of the Solutreans and those of the Clovis people. Such a theory would require that the Solutreans crossed via the edge of the pack ice in the North Atlantic Ocean that then extended to the Atlantic coast of France. They could have done this using survival skills similar to those of the modern Inuit people. Supporters of this hypothesis suggest that stone tools found at Cactus Hill (an early American site in Virginia), are knapped in a style between Clovis and Solutrean. Other scholars such as Emerson F. Greenman and Remy Cottevieille-Giraudet have also suggested a Northern Atlantic point of entry, citing toolmaking similarities between Clovis and Solutrean-era artifacts.

University of New Mexico anthropologist Lawrence G. Straus, a primary critic of the Solutrean hypothesis, points to the theoretical difficulty of the ocean crossing, a lack of Solutrean-specific features in pre-Clovis artifacts, as well as the lack of art (such as that found at Lascaux in France) among the Clovis people, as major deficiencies in the Solutrean hypothesis. The 3,000 to 5,000 radiocarbon year gap between the Solutrean period of France and Spain and the Clovis of the New World also makes such a connection problematic (Straus 2000). In response, defenders of the hypothesis state that the Solutreans introduced a tool-making innovation and not necessarily cultural or artistic practices.

Genetic studies

mtDNA-based chart showing Haplogroups A, C and D entering the Americas about 26,000 years ago. Haplogroups X and B are shown entering the Americas around 15,000 years ago.

Mitochondrial DNA analysis has found that some members of some native North American tribes have a maternal ancestry (called haplogroup X) linked to the maternal ancestors of some present day individuals in western Asia and Europe, albeit distantly.

An article in the American Journal of Human Genetics states "Here we show, by using 86 complete mitochondrial genomes, that all Native American haplogroups, including haplogroup X, were part of a single founding population, thereby refuting multiple-migration models." The study also argues for a Beringian isolation and subsequent coastal migration.^[23] However the study, which extrapolates from modern genetic specimens, addresses only the genetics of surviving populations and does not rule out the possibility of secondary population bottleneck events having occurred at the time of the Younger Dryas. Moreover, the Clovis population bottleneck hypothesis of the Younger Dryas has been receiving recent empirical support.

Other sites

In approximate reverse chronological order:

See also

• Archaeology of the Americas
• Clovis points
• History of Mesoamerica (Paleo-Indian)
• List of archaeological periods (North America)
• List of archaeological periods (Mesoamerica)
• Paleo-Indians

References

Further reading

External links

• Blackwater Draw Site Weblog Current research at the Clovis type site
• Stone Age Columbus BBC TV programme summary
• Texas Beyond History
• Carbon-rich layer fortifies theory on comet impact

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