Clovis Caches: Recent Discoveries and New Research

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“A UNIQUE, SIGNIFICANT CONTRIBUTION to our maturing studies of the Clovis era.” —Gary Haynes, author of The arly Settlement of North America: The lovis Era “SUCCESSFULLY BLENDS NEW DATA with broad syntheses and offers fresh insights into the role of caches in Clovis adaptations. It will serve as a reference to anyone interested in Paleoindian archaeology.” —Frederic Sellet, University of Kansas CLOVIS CACHES recent discoveries & new research Edited by bruce b. huckell and j. david kilby The Paleoindian Clovis culture is known for distinctive stone and bone tools often associated with mammoth and bison remains, dating back some 13,500 years. While the term Clovis is known to every archaeology student , few books have detailed the specifics of how Clovis groups adapted to the climatic and environmental conditions of late Ice Age North America . The essays collected in this book investigate caches of Clovis tools, many of which have only recently come to light. Such caches are time capsules that allow archaeologists to examine Clovis tools at earlier stages of manufacture than artifacts typically recovered from other sites, which have been broken and discarded. Artifacts from caches offer a glimpse of Clovis tools in their useful form. The contents of caches thus offer archaeologists an unparalleled source of information to complement assemblages from kill and camp sites. They are a critical source of information about the ways ancient hunter-gatherers exploited the late Pleistocene landscape. The studies in this volume treat methodological and theoretical issues including the recognition of Clovis caches, Clovis lithic technology, mobility, and land use. The contributing authors include outstanding researchers in the fields of Paleoindian studies and prehistoric lithic technology. Some of the contributors present caches that have not been previously described in print. The authors address the critical question of how a cache assemblage can be reliably identified as Clovis if it lacks fluted points or other obvious diagnostic traits. They also address the organization of lithic artifact production—who made these technically challenging bifaces and other artifacts? What roles did the artifact caches play in prehistoric subsistence economies? Were there flint knapping specialists during Clovis times? Caches reveal what Clovis foragers saw as the most important artifacts to transport in their movements across the landscape. They also provide insights into the kinds of products created at lithic quarry sites and in what forms they were transported, thereby offering a sense of Clovis decision-making and planning. The geologic sources of the materials used in caches allow the reconstruction of movements across the interior of Pleistocene North America. 9 0 0 0 0 9 780826 354822 > huckell and kilby CLOV IS C ACHES university of new mexico press unmpress.com | 800-249-7737 • BRUCE B. HUCKELL, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of New Mexico, is the senior research coordinator at the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology. He has authored or coauthored/coedited nine books, among them Murray Springs: A Clovis Site with Multiple Activity Areas in the San Pedro Valley, Arizona. J. DAVID KILBY is an associate professor of anthropology at Eastern New Mexico University. His doctoral dissertation represents the first large-scale comparative study of Clovis caches, and he is currently conducting new research at the Clovis-type site of Blackwater Draw, New Mexico. archaeology • anthropology ISBN 978-0-8263-5482-2 CLOVIS CACHES ...