Category Archive 'Clovis Point'

29 Feb 2012

Evidence Increasing That North America Was First Settled From Europe

, , , ,

The Daily Mail reports that discoveries of more sites and more artifacts are continuing to undermine the “Clovis First” theory. Evidence for what is being called the Solutrean Hypothesis keeps piling up.

America was first discovered by Stone Age hunters from Europe, according to new archaeological evidence.

Across six locations on the U.S. east coast, several dozen stone tools have been found.

After close analysis it was discovered that they were between 19,000 and 26,000 years old and were a European-style of tool.

The discovery suggests that the owners of the tools arrived 10,000 years before the ancestors of the American Indians set foot in the New World…

Finding the tools is being heralded as one of the most important archaeological breakthroughs for several decades.

Archaeologists are hopeful that they will add another dimension to understanding the spread of humans across the world.

Three of the sites were discovered by archaeologist Dr Darrin Lowery of the University of Delaware, while another one is in Pennsylvania and a fifth site is in Virginia.

Fishermen discovered a sixth on a seabed 60 miles from the Virginian coast, which in prehistoric times would have been dry land.

28 Feb 2009

Major Clovis Cache Found Last Spring in Boulder

, , , ,


Douglas Bamford and Patrick Mahaffy with artifacts

LA Times:

Landscapers excavating for a koi pond in Boulder, Colo., found a cache of blood-spattered weapons and tools, but instead of calling the police, they summoned an archaeologist from the University of Colorado, six blocks from the site.

Douglas B. Bamforth initially thought the stone implements might have been a few hundred years old, but further studies showed that they were left behind about 13,000 years ago, making them one of only two caches of tools from that period known to exist, the university announced Wednesday. The other cache was found in Washington state.

An analysis by anthropologist Robert Yohe of Cal State Bakersfield showed that the blood came from horses, sheep, bears and a now-extinct camel — the first time a camel’s blood has been found on such a tool.

Workers building the pond for Pharmion Corp. founder Patrick Mahaffy discovered 83 items packed into an area about the size of a shoe box.

The find was made in May, but was not announced until the blood was analyzed. …

Among the flint implements were a salad-plate-size bifacial knife; a tool resembling a double-bitted ax; small blades; and flint scrapers.

Bamforth initially suspected that the tools were ceremonial, but the blood indicates that they were used for more practical purposes.

“It looks like someone gathered together some of their most spectacular tools and other scraps of potentially useful material and stuck them into a small hole in the ground by a stream, fully expecting to come back at a later date and retrieve them,” Bamforth said.

University of Colorado press release

Hat tip to Reid Farmer.

09 Apr 2007

Farpoint: A Possible California Clovis Point Site

, , , , , ,

Malibu Times reports a vexing case featuring unseemly conflict between the rights of the owner of a piece of astronomically expensive California private property and science.

The discovery of a Clovis spearhead, believed to be thousands of years old, at a local home construction site has the homeowner and an archeologist at odds on what should be done with the site. The property owner wants to finish her home and move in, the archeologist wants to preserve the site, called Farpoint, and be allowed to conduct further research.

In September of 2005, Gary Stickel was the archeologist of record at the Farpoint site, then being developed by the private homeowner, and hired to oversee excavation at what was known as an “architecturally sensitive site.”

“Other objects, scrapers and micro-tools, had been found on the property,” Stickel said. “So we knew it was a culturally sensitive site. Then we found the spear point.”

The approximately 8-inch long, stone spear point is a tool produced by the Clovis people, believed to be the first human inhabitants of the Americas.

Not only does that date the piece to more than 11,000 years ago, the site of its location is the farthest point west in North America that the Clovis tribes can be traced, thus the designation “Farpoint.”

Dennis Stanford, director of the Paleoindian/Paleoecology Program at the Smithsonian Institute, in a written affidavit that authenticated the spearhead, said “… until the discovery of the Clovis occupation level at the Farpoint site, no “in situ” Clovis age sites are known along the West Coast of the Americas.”

The property owner, who is not identified to protect her privacy and the integrity of the archeologically sensitive site, has been cooperative through the last few years of research, but is ready to occupy her new house. And, Stickel said, she has shut down any further excavation.

Read the whole thing.

Wikipedia: Clovis point article.

If that Clovis Point is a legitimate artifact, and was not simply planted by an enterprising neighbor who prefered the site undeveloped, then there is a significant public interest in investigating, possibly in preserving, the site. But satisfying that public interest is indubitably a taking, and if the public wants to dig in that land, or to own that land, it ought to pay for it, not simply pass some regulations.


Your are browsing
the Archives of Never Yet Melted in the 'Clovis Point' Category.
/div>








Feeds
Entries (RSS)
Comments (RSS)
Feed Shark