Compelling archaeological evidence of an occupation older than Clovis (~12.8 to 13.1 thousand years ago) in North America is present at only a few sites, and the stone tool assemblages from these sites are small and varied. The Debra L. Friedkin site, Texas, contains an assemblage of 15,528 artifacts that define the Buttermilk Creek Complex, which stratigraphically underlies a Clovis assemblage and dates between ~13.2 and 15.5 thousand years ago. The Buttermilk Creek Complex confirms the emerging view that people occupied the Americas before Clovis and provides a large artifact assemblage to explore Clovis origins.
Humans first left Siberia and colonized the Americas perhaps around 16,000 years ago, and the Clovis archaeological complex in North America has traditionally been linked to this migratory pulse. Archaeologists searching for evidence of Clovis technological antecedents have focused their attention on the Beringian and Siberian archaeological records. Growing evidence for the pre-Clovis occupation of North America provides a possible alternative source for the origins of Clovis. In this paper, we present new data on the pre-Clovis lithic assemblage from the Debra L. Friedkin site, Texas, and compare Clovis and pre-Clovis lithic technological signatures. We show that while Clovis and pre-Clovis share some important technological traits, they also differ in important ways. We conclude that the pre-Clovis assemblage from Debra L. Friedkin cannot be called “Clovis,” but it could represent a technological antecedent of Clovis.
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