About 13,500 years ago, near the end of the last Ice Age, the Clovis people of North America developed distinctive fluted-stone spear points and other tools that allowed them to dominate the continent for 1,000 years. They are named after the eastern New Mexico town near the site where their artifacts were first identified. Often thought of as the ultimate Paleo-Indian big game hunters, the Clovis people in as little as three centuries spread from southern Canada to Panama and from sea to sea, slaughtering bison, mammoths, and mastodons.
Fifty years ago, archaeologist identified a cache of Clovis stone tools at a locale in southern Idaho, the Simon site. Described as “an extraordinary collection of chipped stone artifacts,” the Simon cache contained five fluted points, 20 bifaces, and four other items. That same year (1963), another cache containing 27 tools was discovered at Blackwater Draw, the original Clovis site. Both sites were revealed by heavy equipment operations.
Since the 1960s 23 caches of Clovis stone tools have been identified on the central and northern Great Plains. The largest had 165 tools. All of them were disturbed by modern human activity (heavy equipment operations, farming, landscaping), thus stratigraphic information is typically poor. Some were discovered years ago and not recognized as Clovis caches until recently, making their study even more difficult.
Archaeologists can now add the information of Clovis lithic technology from the caches to that from camp and kill sites. The caches also provide invaluable understanding of Clovis land use strategies by telling us what materials were most important to people who traveled great distances in a difficult environment.
In Clovis Caches, 12 stimulating essays describe the caches and what they have to tell us about one of North America’s earliest and most enigmatic cultures. Well illustrated and well organized, it gives important insights to a fascinating subject.
—Mark Michel
