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'Clovis points' are the oldest projectile points associated with the North American Clovis culture. They date to the Paleo-Indian period around 13,500 years ago. They are named after the town of Clovis, New Mexico, where the first examples were found in 1932. They have been found within the remains of ice age animals.
The points are thin, fluted projectile objects created from bifacially percussion flaking and later, sometimes finished with smaller pressure flake pressure flaking removals around the edges on flint, chert or other materials. Clovis points have a concave groove running longitudinally along them which archaeologists think permitted them to be fastened (hafted) to wooden spears, or short shafts which were then mounted into sockets on heavier spear shafts. This provided for reloadable spears, of which, there is NO archaeological evidence during Clovis. The spear could be thrown by hand or with the aid of the atlatl, or spearthrower.
They have been found over most of North America and as far south as Panama. Significant Clovis finds include the Anzick site in Montana; the Colby site in Wyoming; the Simon site in Idaho; the East Wenatchee Clovis Site in Washington; and the Fenn cache, which came to light in private hands in 1989 and whose place of discovery is unknown.
Whether Clovis points were devised in the Americas and evolved from a pre-Clovis society or came there through influences from elsewhere is a contentious issue amongst archaeologists. However, at this time, Clovis points appeared in the New World, with no forerunner to its lithic knowledge in the Old World.
Around 10,000 BCE, there was a new type of fluted projectile points called Folsom.
Besides its function as a tool, Clovis technology became a lithic symbol of a highly mobile culture who exploited faunal resources during the Pleistocene. As Clovis technology expanded, there could be a possible relationship with resources, as it being a contributor to the extinction of megafaunal resources. Clovis technology has also proven to have a significant role in determining when the earliest colonists ventured into North America.
There are two different opinions about how the Clovis point first came to be. The first is that there were Pre-Clovis people in the New World whose roots were made in the Middle Paleolithic and Clovis traditions in which were developed from them. The other opinion is that the first inhabitants in the New World were the Clovis from the Upper Paleolithic who reverted back to the flake technology. Both of these opinions mean that the Clovis point was developed in the New World, but the pre-Clovis opinion requires that a very early entry into the New World was formed, the Clovis opinion does not show this. At this time, there have been no Clovis points found in the Old World or in Alaska. However, the Solutrean hypothesis suggests that Clovis Culture developed from the similar Solutrean of southwestern Europe, and that the technology may have been brought to America through migration along the Atlantic pack ice edge using survival skills similar to that of modern Inuit people.

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External links

★ Informative page on Clovis Points, with photos