The Paleoindian and Early Archaic Southeast

19. A Stone's Throw from Kimmswick: Clovis Period Research in Kentucky

19 A Stone's Throw from Kimmswick: Clovis Period Research in Kentucky Andrea K. L. Freeman, Edward E. Smith, Jr., and Kenneth B. Tankersley Clovis peoples entered the region that would become Kentucky during a period of regional cooling and ice margin fluctuations that characterized the end of the Pleistocene (Wright 1991:124). The environmental settings of post-Clovis Paleoindian occupations during the interval circa 10,80010 ,000 B.P. (Deller and Ellis 1988:255-58) were characterized by extremely rapid and Widespread vegetational change (Jacobson and Grimm 1988:32). The structure and composition of species assemblages and their geographic ranges and relative abundance changed significantly and continuously ; in fact, it is unlikely that vegetational stability existed anywhere in eastern North America, even in the Deep South (T. Webb 1988:405-6). These biotic changes were the most rapid and profound since the glacial maximum circa 18,000 B.P. (Jacobson et al. 1987:277). Concurrent with these vegetational changes, faunal assemblages reorganized and shifted ranges, and a wave of extinctions biased against the mammalian megafauna occurred (Graham and Lundelius 1984:223; Graham and Mead 1987:371; Semken 1988:185-87). However, the timing of these extinctions (Grayson 1987; Mead and Meltzer 1984; Meltzer and Mead 1983), and the possible role played by Clovis peoples remain at issue (Martin and Klein 1984), particularly in the eastern United States, where megafauna-projectile point associations are rare (e.g., Webb et al. 1984) and where temporal data for the Paleoindian occupation are inadequate . Few archaeologists today would defend a single or simple-minded view of Clovis peoples as strictly big-game hunters. The composition of artifact assemblages (and their association with kill sites in the western United States) gives few clues as to what other subsistence activities Clovis groups may have participated in other than hunting and processing game (West 1983:372). However, the almost total lack of a direct association of megafauna and projectile points in the East, and the availability of other potential subsistence resources suggest that the Clovis economy was based on a mixed hunting-collecting strategy. Kentucky, especially the western portion of the state, lies along a geographic and conceptual boundary 386 The Paleoindian and Early Archaic Southeast between eastern and western North America provided by the Mississippi River. The Kimmswick site, the easternmost expression of the western proboscidean procurement pattern, lies tantalizingly along the western bank of the Mississippi River. Whether real or perceived, the Mississippi River forms a boundary that separates the nature of Clovis activities , east and west. LATE PLEISTOCENE PALEOENVIRONMENTS IN KENTUCKY Apart from extrapolation of paleoenvironmental data obtained in adjoining regions, paleoecological investigations in Kentucky have been limited . An exception to the overall lack of paleoecological data from Kentucky derives from the Jackson Pond site (Delcourt et al. 1986), located north of Mammoth Cave in Larue County, Kentucky. The site is situated along the Dripping Springs Escarpment near its concrescence with a northern extension of the karstic Mississippian Plateaus. These investigations resulted in a continuous radiocarbon dated sequence extending from circa 20,000 B.P. to the present. Delcourt et al. (1986) interpret the pollen record as indicating dominance of a closed spruce-jack pine forest between 20,000 and 17,000 B.P., corresponding to the Wisconsin glacial maximum. Sedges and grasses comprise less than 5 percent of the pollen sum during this interval. After 17,000 B.P., the association was modified to an open boreal woodland, which persisted until 11,500 B.P.; during this interval, sedges contributed up to 25 percent of the total upland pollen sum, while pollen of deciduous taxa remained consistently low. Beginning around 11,500 B.P., this assemblage was replaced by an open deciduous woodland; boreal conifers declined markedly, and there was a concomitant increase in pollen of deciduous taxa. It was presumably during this interval of especially dynamic vegetal reordering that the first Paleoindians entered Kentucky. THE CLOVIS TOOL KIT Clovis sites in Kentucky have been identified by the presence of distinctive artifacts (figures 19.1 and 19.2). The most diagnostic lithic artifact of the Clovis assemblage is the Clovis fluted projectile point (Agenbroad 1988:63; Frison 1991:324; Haynes 1982:385). Whereas Clovis points vary somewhat in their overall morphology, they display remarkable homogeneity in the method of manufacture. Clovis points are produced by percussion removal of large bifacial thinning flakes, which results in a parallel-oblique flaking pattern on the midsection of the point (Frison 1991:330). This pattern is...