Clovis Lithic Technology: The Devil Is in the Details

Abstract

Clovis is the best known early development in North America buts its lithic technology is poorly documented and often from animal kill sites. This evidence has been used to picture Clovis peoples as mobile, colonizing, big-game hunters and explanations of lithic technological practices have been framed largely in materialist terms. Increasing documentation suggests views about how the complex Clovis biface and blade production strategies relate to subsistence, land use, and specific kinds of mobility patterns are questionable and often difficult to test with archaeological data. We need to seriously consider the role of Clovis people's worldview in structuring their thought and technical actions.

A New View on the Late Pleistocene Lithic Remains from Pikimachay Cave, South Central Peru

“…The archaeological record shows that there was cultural and adaptive diversity in terms of subsistence and technological pursuits (Dillehay, 2008a(Dillehay, , 2008b(Dillehay, , 2009Meltzer, 2009;Nami, 2014Nami, , 2019Politis et al, 2016;Politis & Prates, 2018). In that period, with a broad distribution all across non-glaciated North America up to northern Mexico, Clovis was the oldest fluted point manifestation (Bradley et al, 2010;Ellis 2013). Almost coeval in its origins, and probably beginning in eastern North America, the "fishtail" or Fell points had an extraordinary distribution from Mesoamerica to the southern tip of South America (see Nami, 2021, and references cited there).…”

Clovis Stone Tools from El Fin del Mundo, Sonora, Mexico: Site Use and Associations between Localities

“…Clovis is the earliest recognizable techno-complex in northwestern Mexico and the southwestern United States (Hamilton et al 2013). Clovis lithic technology has been characterized as containing complex biface and blade technologies, multiple flake and blade tools such as end scrapers and spokeshaves, and distinctive patterns of raw material selection (Bradley et al 2010; Collins 1999; Ellis 2013; Goodyear 1979; Huckell 2007; Huckell and Kilby 2014; Kelly 1988). However, most of what we know about Clovis stone tool technology comes from surface finds, including isolated Clovis points, and from buried contexts, most of which represent megafauna kill sites (Grayson and Meltzer 2002; Haynes and Huckell 2007; Surovell and Waguespack 2008; Waguespack and Surovell 2003).…”