Clovis culture

Clovis culture

Geographical range	North America
Period	Paleoindian
Dates	13,050 to 12,750 BP (11,100-10,800 BC)
Type site	Blackwater Draw, New Mexico
Followed by	Folsom tradition (among others)

The Clovis culture is an archaeological culture from the Paleoindian period of North America, spanning around 13,050 to 12,750 years Before Present.^[1] Found in localities across the continent,^[1] the type locality is Blackwater Draw locality No. 1 near Clovis, New Mexico, where stone tools were found in association with the remains of Columbian mammoths in 1929.^[2] The most distinctive part of the Clovis culture toolkit are Clovis points,^[3] these fluted (having a flake removed from the base, either on one or both sides) lanceolate points are typically large in size, the largest exceeding 10 centimetres (3.9 in) in length. Other stone tools used by Clovis culture include knives, scrapers and bifacial tools, with bone tools including beveled rods and shaft wrenches, with possible ivory points also being identified. The Clovis culture is suggested to have also heavily utilized hide, wood and natural fibres, though no direct evidence of this has been preserved. A distinctive feature of the Clovis culture is the deposition of "caches", which are sets of artifacts that were deliberately deposited with the expectation of being later retrieved. Over 20 Clovis caches have been identified.^[4]

The Clovis culture is thought to been created by highly mobile hunter-gatherer populations.^[5] It is generally agreed that the producers of the Clovis culture were reliant on hunting big game (megafauna),^[6] having the strongest association with mammoth, mastodon and bison,^[7] alongside consuming smaller animals and plants.^[6] Due to the close temporal association between the Clovis culture and the Late Pleistocene megafauna extinctions in North America, suggestions have been made that big game hunting by Clovis hunters may have been a contributory factor in the extinctions, though this has been subject to controversy.^[7]

The only human burial that has been directly associated with tools from the Clovis culture included the remains of an infant boy found in Montana that researchers named Anzick-1.^[8][9][10] Paleogenetic analyses of Anzick-1's ancient nuclear, mitochondrial, and Y-chromosome DNA^[11] reveal that Anzick-1 is closely related to some modern Native American populations, including those in Southern North America, Central America, and South America.^[12][10]

In South America, the similar related Fishtail or Fell projectile point style was contemporaneous to the usage of Clovis points in North America,^[1][13] and possibly developed from Clovis points.^[14]

The Clovis culture represents the earliest widely recognised archaeological culture in North America.^[15] While historically many scholars held to a "Clovis first" model, where Clovis represented the earliest inhabitants in the Americas, today this is largely rejected, with several generally accepted sites across the Americas like Monte Verde II being dated to at least a thousand years older than the oldest Clovis sites.^[16]

The Clovis culture was succeeded by more local traditions such as the Folsom tradition beginning around 12,750-12,600 years Before Present, following the onset of the Younger Dryas.^[17]