Clovis Technology

Abstract

Colonising hunter‐gatherer populations in North and Central America at the end of the Pleistocene utilised Clovis technology. Clovis technology is known for ‘fluted’ flaked stone points that were used to hunt prey and served as knives, but it also included the production, use and discard of a diversity of other implements made from stone, bone and other materials. Clovis technology lasted for several centuries, perhaps as long as a millennium and a half. Clovis technology shares some similarities with Siberian Paleolithic technology, which is consistent with current genetic evidence, indicating that ancestors of the people using Clovis technology originated in Asia. Clovis technology, as archaeologists generally recognise it, likely emerged piecemeal as people dispersed into the New World – some aspects of it can be tied to ancestry in Siberia, while other aspects are likely indigenous to North and Central America. Several studies have shown that Clovis technology was subjected to both micro‐ and macroevolutionary forces. Key Concepts ‘Clovis technology’ is just an archaeologist's shorthand to refer to what is in actuality an inferred, fuzzy set of human–tool interactions found across North and Central America during the terminal Pleistocene. There is a diversity of Clovis tools made from stone, bone and other materials. Evidence for Clovis technology can be found across the lower 48 states of the United States, throughout southern Canada, and Central America. The ancestors of people who used Clovis technology came from Asia. What archaeologists generally recognise, and refer to, as Clovis technology likely emerged piecemeal as people from Asia dispersed into the New World. Clovis technology evolved at both the micro‐ and macroevolutionary scales.

The age of Clovis—13,050 to 12,750 cal yr B.P.

“…For decades, Clovis was considered to represent the basal archaeological horizon in North America and that later technologies in North and South America were believed to be derived from it. Clovis is characterized by a tool assemblage that includes bifaces and a distinctive lanceolate fluted projectile point, blade cores and blades, and osseous points and tools (1)(2)(3). The belief that Clovis tools were left behind by the first people to enter the Americas has changed with the discovery of sites predating Clovis in North and South America, and genetic studies that show North America was occupied a few millennia before Clovis appeared on the landscape (4).…”

Was Welling, Ohio (33-Co-2), a Clovis Basecamp or Lithic Workshop? Employing Experimental Models to Interpret Old Collections

“…Finally, we note that there are a handful of "typical" Clovis reduction strategies across North America, including, but not necessarily limited to, bifacial, prismatic blade, bipolar, and amorphous (Bradley et al 2010;Eren and Buchanan 2016;Jennings and Smallwood 2019). Indeed, certain reduction strategies, such as prismatic blade reduction, are mostly Western or Southern Clovis phenomena, having mostly disappeared by the time Clovis foragers colonized parts of Great Lakes and northeastern North America (Eren 2013;Eren, Chao, et al 2016;Kilby 2015).…”

“…Specifically, we used experimental stone tool replication on the same stone raw materials used by the Welling Clovis Paleoindians to better understand the size distribution of Clovis bifacial debitage on the assemblage level (e.g., Ahler 1989; Andrefsky 2007; Bradbury and Carr 2004, 2009; Bradbury and Franklin 2000). One of us (Eren) used hard and soft hammers to reduce nodules of Upper Mercer chert via archaeologists’ current understanding of Clovis biface reduction (e.g., Bradley et al 2010; Eren and Buchanan 2016; Jennings and Smallwood 2019; Smallwood 2010, 2012; Smallwood and Jennings 2015). We then compared the debitage size distributions of the experimental model assemblage against that of the Welling Clovis debitage.…”

Setting the Stage: The Late Pleistocene Colonization of North America

“…The Clovis techno-complex is marked by a number of distinctive tool types, including bone and ivory rods [36], large prismatic stone blades [26], and bifacially chipped and fluted stone weapon tips, referred to as "Clovis points" [26,[37][38][39][40]. Because of significant regional variation in the toolkit, Eren and Buchanan [41], (p. 1) make the excellent point that what archaeologists refer to as "Clovis technology" is better thought of as a shorthand reference to "a fuzzy set of human-tool interactions found across North and Central America during the terminal Pleistocene. "…”