Thorel (Clovis) 1833–1911

Clovis at the end of the world.

Of the scores of North American archaeological sites claimed to provide evidence of human hunting of now-extinct Pleistocene mammals, only about a dozen have compelling evidence of such predation. In all instances, the animals involved were mammoth and mastodon (1). In PNAS, Sanchez et al. (2) contend that a third genus of proboscidean (elephants and their near relatives), the gomphothere Cuvie...

Isotopic paleoecology of Clovis mammoths from Arizona.

The causes of megafaunal extinctions in North America have been widely debated but remain poorly understood. Mammoths (Mammuthus spp.) in the American Southwest were hunted by Clovis people during a period of rapid climate change, just before the regional onset of Younger Dryas cooling and mammoth extirpation. Thus, these mammoths may provide key insights into late Pleistocene extinction proces...

Ice Age Atlantis? Exploring the Solutrean-Clovis ‘connection’

Bradley and Stanford (2004) have raised now, in several instances, the claim that European Upper Paleolithic Solutrean peoples colonized North America, and gave rise to the archaeological complex known as Clovis. They do so in the face of some obvious challenges – notably the several thousand miles of ocean and the 5000 radiocarbon years that separate the two. And yet they argue in their recent...

Still an Open Book: Analysis of the Current Pre-Clovis vs. Clovis Debate from the Site of Meadowcroft Rockshelter, Pennsylvania and Monte Verde, Chile

A Morphometric Assessment of the Intended Function of Cached Clovis Points

A number of functions have been proposed for cached Clovis points. The least complicated hypothesis is that they were intended to arm hunting weapons. It has also been argued that they were produced for use in rituals or in connection with costly signaling displays. Lastly, it has been suggested that some cached Clovis points may have been used as saws. Here we report a study in which we morpho...