User:Hemiauchenia/sandboxClovis

The Clovis culture is an archaeological culture from the Paleoindian period of North America, spanning from around 13,250 to 12,750 years Before Present. Found in localities across the continent, the type locality is Blackwater Draw locality No. 1 near Clovis, New Mexico, where stone tools were found in association with the remains of Columbian mammoths in 1929. The most distinctive part of the Clovis culture toolkit are Clovis points, these fluted (having a flake removed from the base, either one one or both sides) lanceolate points are typically large in size, the largest exceeding 10 cm. in length. Other stone tools used by Clovis culture include knives, scrapers and bifacial tools, with bone tools including beveled rods and shaft wrenches, with possible ivory points also being identified. The Clovis culture is suggested to have also heavily utilized hide, wood and natural fibres, though no direct evidence of this has been preserved. A distinctive feature of the Clovis culture is the deposition of "caches", which are sets of artifacts that were deliberately deposited with the expectation of being later retrieved. Over 20 Clovis caches have been identified.

The Clovis culture is traditionally considered to have been based on highly mobile hunter-gatherer populations. Although it has often been asserted that the Clovis culture represents specialised big game hunters, other authors have argued that the Clovis culture represents generalist hunter gatherers, occasionally hunting big game, with the behaviour of Clovis hunters possibly varying by region. Due to the the close temporal associaton between the Clovis culture and the Late Pleistocene megafauna extinctions in North America, suggestions have been made that big game hunting by Clovis hunters may have been a contributory factor in the extinctions, though this has been subject to controversy.

The only human burial that has been directly associated with tools from the Clovis culture included the remains of an infant boy found in Montana that researchers named Anzick-1. Paleogenetic analyses of Anzick-1's ancient nuclear, mitochondrial, and Y-chromosome DNA reveal that Anzick-1 is closely related to some modern Native American populations, including those in Southern North America, Central America, and South America.

In South America, the similar related Fishtail or Fell projectile point style was contemporaneous to the usage of Clovis points in North America, and possibly developed from Clovis points.

The Clovis culture represents the earliest widely recognised archaeological culture in North America. While historically many scholars held to a "Clovis first" model, where Clovis represented the earliest inhabitants in the Americas, today this is largely rejected, with several generally accepted sites across the Americas like Monte Verde II being dated to at least a thousand years older than the oldest Clovis sites.

The Clovis culture was succeeded by more local traditions such as the Folsom tradition beginning around 12,750-12,600 years Before Present, around the onset of the Younger Dryas.

Discovery
On 29 August 1927, the first in place evidence of Pleistocene humans seen by multiple archaeologists in the Americas was discovered near Folsom, New Mexico. At this site they found the first in situ Folsom point with the bones of the extinct bison species Bison antiquus. This confirmation of a human presence in the Americas during the Pleistocene inspired many people to start looking for evidence of early humans.

In 1929, 19-year-old Ridgely Whiteman, who had been closely following the excavations in nearby Folsom in the newspaper, discovered the Clovis site near the Blackwater Draw in eastern New Mexico. Despite several earlier Paleoindian discoveries, the best documented evidence of the Clovis complex was collected and excavated between 1932 and 1937 near Clovis, New Mexico, by a crew under the direction of Edgar Billings Howard until 1935 and later by John Cotter from the Academy of Natural Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania. Howard's crew left their excavation in Burnet Cave, the first truly professionally excavated Clovis site, in August, 1932, and visited Whiteman and his Blackwater Draw site. By November, Howard was back at Blackwater Draw to investigate additional finds from a construction project.

The American Journal of Archaeology, in its January–March 1932 edition, mentions E. B. Howard's work in Burnet Cave, including the discovery of extinct fauna and a "Folsom type" point 4 ft below a Basketmaker burial. This brief mention of the Clovis point found in place predates any work done at the Dent site in Colorado. The 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 was published in the November 25th issue of Science News (V22 #601) in 1932. 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 on 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 was reported in early 1932).

Description
A feature considered to be distinctive of the Clovis tradition is overshot flaking, overshot flakes are those which "during the manufacture of a biface are struck from prepared edges of a piece and travel from one edge across the face", with limited removal of the opposite edge. Whether or not the overshot flaking was intentional on the part of the stoneknapper has been contested. Other elements considered distinctive of the Clovis culture tool complex include "raw material selectivity; distinctive patterns of flake and blade platform preparation, thinning and flaking; characteristic biface size and morphology, including the presence of end-thinning; and the size, curvature and reduction strategies of blades". In many Clovis localities, the original stone outcrop which were used to create the tools was hundreds of kilometers away from where the tools were found, in one case over 900 km away.

Clovis point
A hallmark of the toolkit associated with the Clovis culture is the distinctively shaped, fluted lithic point known as the Clovis point. The Clovis point is bifacial and typically fluted (having a flake removed from the base of the point) on both sides, with the fluting typically running up a third of the length of the point. Clovis points are typically parallel-sided to slightly convex, with the base of the point being concave. Clovis points are commonly understood to serve as tips for spears or darts thrown with an atlatl for hunting, as well as serving as multi-tools for cutting and other tasks. Clovis points were at least sometimes resharpened, though the idea that they were continually resharpened "long-life" tools has been questioned. The shape and size of Clovis points varies signficantly over space and time. The largest points exceed 10 cm in length. The points required considerable effort to make, and often broke during knapping. They were generally produced from nodules or siliceous cryptocrystalline rocks. Clovis points were initially prepared using percussion flaking, with the point being finished using pressure flaking.

Blades
Clovis blades are part of the global Upper Paleolithic blade tradition, and are long flakes removed from specially prepared conical or wedge-shaped cores. Unlike bifaces, Clovis blade cores do not appear to have regularly transported long distances, with only the blades typically carried in the mobile toolkit.

Bifaces
Bifaces served a variety of roles for Clovis hunter-gatherers, serving as cutting tools, preforms for formal tools such as points, and as portable sources of large flakes useful as preforms or tools.

Other tools
Other tools found associated with Clovis culture are bone "shaft wrenches" (suggested to have been used to straighten wooden shafts), as well as bone "beveled rods" (of unknown but likely mutliple functions).

Caches
A distinctive feature of the Clovis culture is "caching", where a collection of artifacts (such as stone tools) were deliberately left at a location, presumably with the intention to return to collect them later. Over 20 such "caches" have been identified across North America.

Culture
A few Clovis culture artifacts are suspected to reflect creative expression such as rock art, the use of red ochre, and engraved stones. The best known examples of Clovis art were found at the Gault site in Texas, and consist of limestone nodules incised with expressive geometric patterns, some of which mimic leaf patterns.

Lifestyle
Clovis hunter-gatherers are characterized as "high-technology foragers" who utilized sophisticated technology to maintain access to resources under conditions of high mobility. The Clovis culture probably had a low population density, but had geographically extensive cultural networks. The Clovis culture is suggested to have heavily utilized hide, wood and natural fibres, though no direct evidence of this has been preserved. Clovis culture artifacts have often been found associated with big game, including bison, Columbian mammoths, mastodons, the extinct camel Camelops and the gomphothere (elephant-relative) Cuvieronius. However, the Clovis culture is not exclusively associated with large animals, with several sites showing the exploitation of small game like tortoises and jackrabbits. The degree to which Clovis hunters specialised on big game has been the subject of contention. The effectiveness of Clovis tools for hunting proboscideans (mammoths, mastodons and gomphotheres) has been contested by some authors, though other authors have noted that small groups of hunter-gathers in Africa have been demonstrated to have been capable of killing elephants using spears.

Megafauna extinction
Beginning in the 1950s, Paul S. Martin proposed the "overkill hypothesis", suggesting that the Late Pleistocene megafauna extinctions in North America were driven by human hunting, including by Clovis peoples, with the hunting and extinction of large herbivores having a knock-on effect causing the extinction of large carnivores. This suggestion has been the subject of controversy. The timing of megafauna extinction in North America also co-incides with major climatic changes, making it difficult to disentagle the effects of various factors in the megafauna extinctions. In a 2012 survey of archaeologists in The SAA Archaeological Record, 61% of respondents said that megafauna extinctions were likely the result of a "combination of factors".

Genetics
The only known Clovis burial is that of Anzick-1, an infant boy who was found near Wilsall, Montana in 1968. The body was associated with over 100 stone and bone artifacts, all of which were stained with red ochre. The individual dates to approximately 12,990–12,840 years Before Present. Sequencing of his genome demonstrates that he belonged to a population that is ancestral to many contemporary Indigenous peoples of the Americas, particularly those from Central and South America, and was related to Paleolithic individuals from Siberia, confirming the Asian origin of the Clovis culture.

Distribution and chronology
The Clovis culture is known from localities across North America, from the United States-Canada border to northern Mexico and across the east and west of the continent. The area of origin of the Clovis culture remains unclear.

Some authors have suggested that the Clovis culture lasted for a relatively short period of a few centuries, spanning from 13,250 to 12,750 years Before Present, ending around the onset of the Younger Dryas. Other authors have argued that some sites extend the range of the Clovis culture back to 13,500 years Before Present, though the dating for these earlier sites is not secure. Historically, many authors argued for a "Clovis first" paradigm, where Clovis, which represents the earliest recognisable archaeological culture in North America, were suggested to represent the earliest inhabitants of the Americas. However, since the beginning of the 21st century, this hypothesis has been abandoned by most researchers, as several sites, most notably Monte Verde II, in Chile are suggested to be considerably older, by at least 1,000 years, than the oldest Clovis sites.

The Clovis culture was succeeded by various regional point styles, such as the Folsom tradition in central North America, and the Cumberland point mid/southern North America. This is generally considered to be the result of normal cultural change through time. There is no evidence that the disappearance of the Clovis culture corresponds to the decline of Paleoindian populations in North America as a result of the Younger Dryas.

A number of authors have suggested that the Clovis culture is ancestral to other fluted point producing cultures in Central and South America, like the Fishtail or Fell projectile point style.