Artifacts

Interpreting the Clovis Artifacts from the Gault Site

by Michael B. Collins and Thomas R. Hester

Photographs by Milton Bell.

Clovis, that early Paleoindian cultural horizon generally believed to date between 10,900 and 11,200 years ago across much of North America, has recently come under intensive study by archeologists. Several factors probably account for this increase in research activity, but the principal one is a result of Clovis having long been accepted as the archeological evidence of the first people to live in the Americas. This view has often been challenged unsuccessfully, but in the past decade, numerous scholars have brought forth strong and exciting evidence that people were in the Western Hemisphere prior to Clovis times.

"PreClovis," as it has come to be called, is still a controversial topic and one that is being vigorously pursued by linguists, physical anthropologists, human geneticists, and archeologists. Linguists specializing in the evolution of language are using computers to probe deeply into comparative vocabularies and language structures and are finding that the immense range of languages (some 1500) spoken by American Indians includes a few that seem to have split off from their sister languages of Europe and Asia long before 11,000 years ago. Based on this, some linguists suggest that people came to the New World by 20,000 years ago. Genetics also shows that some American Indians are so distinctive from other populations that their reproductive separation must have occurred in the very remote past, certainly before Clovis times. A drawback with the linguistic and genetic lines of evidence is that while information on timing may be reasonably accurate, there is no way to know where the splits occurred.

Early human skeletons found in the New World, none of them dated definitively to preClovis times, nonetheless indicate some interesting facts about early populations in the Americas. The few human skeletons in the Americas that can be reliably dated as older than 10,000 years before present have features more in common with similar-aged Australian aborigines and South Central Asians than they do with the peoples of Siberia who have always been considered the stock from which the first colonizers of the Americas derived.

Archeologists have recently found and reported prehistoric sites from Alaska and Canada to southern South America with radiocarbon dates and other compelling evidence that people may have arrived in the New World by 18,000 or 20,000 years ago. One of the most widely discussed of these sites is Monte Verde in southern Chile where a dated occupation of almost 13,000 years ago has gained acceptance among many, but not all, archeologists. An earlier archeological stratum at the same site, dated to ca. 30,000 years ago, is still highly controversial.

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While Clovis seems to be losing its place as the oldest culture in the New World, important new ideas about the Clovis culture itself are developing. Earlier in this century, most known Clovis sites consisted of places where the distinctive Clovis projectile points (Figure 1) were found with the bones of large mammals, particularly mammoths. Most scholars concluded from this evidence that Clovis peoples were specialized, nomadic mammoth hunters. Recent discoveries and new analytical techniques, however, have shown that Clovis people were generalized hunters and gatherers who lived on everything from turtles and alligators to foxes and opossums along with an occasional mammoth, bison, or horse. The traditional view of Clovis culture has crumbled along with the iron curtain.

American scholars lacking detailed knowledge of the archeology of Siberia have long assumed that the origins of Clovis culture would be found in northeastern Asia. This assumption was a key piece in the prevailing interpretation that 11,500 years ago people migrated out of northeastern Asia, crossed the land bridge that formed between Siberia and Alaska during the last glacial lowering of sea level, and came down an ice-free corridor in western Canada into the vast unpeopled continents of North and South America. Lacking people but rich in big game unaccustomed to human hunters, the New World would have been a hunting people's dream-come-true. Clovis hunters were even thought to have been so effective that they caused the extinction of the mammoth and perhaps other animals.

Since glasnost [openness], it has been possible for archeologists on both sides of the Bering Sea to collaborate closely on the question of the peopling of the Americas, only to find no clear antecedents for Clovis culture in Siberia. A few archeologists, this author (Collins) included, have begun to look farther west into Europe for the origins of Clovis and find some very provocative similarities between certain Upper Paleolithic cultures of Western Europe and Clovis. These Paleolithic cultures include the Aurignacian (40,000-20,000 B.P.), Solutrean (20,000-16,000 B.P.), and Magdalenian (16,000-11,000 B.P.).

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Some of the better evidence for making those comparisons comes from the Gault Site. To generalize briefly, all of the Upper Paleolithic cultures of Western Europe share the traits of prismatic blades and burins made of flint along with various tools made of bone and antler. The well-known cave paintings of France and Spain are also the work of Upper Paleolithic people. Of more specific interest are (1) blades, blade cores and beveled-base bone and antler points found in Aurignacian sites; (2) large, thin bifaces and spear points of Solutrean affiliation; and (3) less well known aspects of Magdalenian art, including small, flat engraved stones called plaquettes. Some of these traits are shared with Clovis assemblages found widely across North America, some are restricted to only part of the Clovis range, and two are known almost exclusively from the Gault Site. Clovis flint knappers all across North America made the distinctive Clovis fluted points from equally distinctive preforms (Figure 2). One distinctive characteristic of these preforms is that flakes were often driven all the way across the face of the biface from one edge to the other--in fact sometimes even removing the opposite side of the biface in what is called an "overshot" flake (Figure 3). This peculiar fashion of making bifaces is shared with the Solutrean of France and Spain. Even though this pattern is seen in many Clovis sites, a number of outstanding examples have come from the Gault site. Clovis blades (Figure 4) and blade cores (Figure 5) are found abundantly in sites in the southeastern United States, moderately abundantly in Texas sites, and sparsely in the southwestern states and in the Great Plains. They are virtually absent in the northeastern states, around the Great Lakes, and in the far western states. Where they are found, Clovis blades and blade cores resemble similar artifacts from all Upper Paleolithic cultures, but especially those of Aurignacian, Solutrean, and Magdalenian affiliations. The Gault site has yielded the largest assemblages of such Clovis artifacts in Texas and one of the largest in North America.

Beveled-base points of bone and antler, similar to those found in the Aurignacian, have been found in a few Clovis sites on the High Plains, but none has yet been found in Texas. Another distinctive bone artifact, called a shaft wrench, found at a Clovis site in Arizona, is very similar to shaft wrenches of antler and bone from Magdalenian sites in Europe. In the areas of the Gault site investigated thus far, bone preservation has been very poor, and no artifacts of bone or antler have been found.

Clovis-age engraved stones are presently known from only two sites in the western hemisphere besides Gault, one specimen each from the Clovis site in eastern New Mexico and the Wilson-Leonard site just north of Austin. In contrast, at least 30 such stones have been found at the Gault site (Figure 6). Magdalenian engraved plaquettes generally depict animals such as reindeer, mammoths, and horses whereas those from the Gault site are almost exclusively of geometric patterns. However, geometric paintings and engravings are common in Magdalenian art on the walls of caves, especially at Lascaux. Portable art objects in most of the other Upper Paleolithic cultures of Europe are carved, three-dimensional human forms. In the upper Paleolithic of Siberia, similar carved objects depict animals (usually mammoths). These are unlike anything yet reported in Clovis context. All of these comparisons are intriguing, but at the moment they only raise interesting possible interpretations.

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In our view, there are enough similarities and they are close enough in certain details that we have to seriously consider the possibility that fairly close historical ties exist between Clovis and the Upper Paleolithic of western Europe. Details of that history will be learned only after long and intensive research by many investigators. So far, the evidence from preClovis sites in North and South America indicates cultures greatly different than Clovis that do not seem likely candidates as the origin of Clovis. This raises the possibility that peoples were in the Americas before the time of Clovis culture, but that the origins of Clovis may have been in western Europe - perhaps the result of multiple migrations.

Two other aspects of the stone artifacts from the Gault site deserve mention. Lacking direct evidence in the form of preserved plant remains, archeologists have been left to speculate on what uses Clovis peoples may have made of plants. Microscopic use wear study of four Clovis blades reveals that, among other tasks, these were used for cutting grass or other plants rich in silicate (see Inman and Hudler 1998).

Another intriguing problem is developing from comparative study of the lithic tools made by Clovis and Folsom peoples. Folsom (ca. 10,300-10,800 B.P.) is the culture that immediately follows Clovis on the plains and in the southwestern United States. It, too, is best known for its diagnostic fluted biface, the delicate Folsom point. But scholars in the past decade have also identified some very distinctive, thin flint knives, known as "ultrathin" bifaces, that were made and used by Folsom peoples. These highly distinctive ultrathin bifaces (so called because they are between 7 and 13 times as wide as they are thick) have been found at the Gault site (Figure 7). They have also been found at the Wilson-Leonard site as well as a site called Pavo Real (41BX52) in San Antonio. At these three sites, and only these three sites in North America, there is evidence that ultrathin bifaces are older than previously thought. At Gault, they have been found in the same deposits as the Clovis materials, but so far no Folsom points have been documented as having come from that same depth (although there is at least one Folsom point known to be from the site). At Pavo Real, Clovis and Folsom artifacts are found together. It has not been possible to radiocarbon date the Clovis deposits at either Pavo Real or Gault. At Wilson-Leonard, a very early Clovis horizon has been dated (ca. 11,500 to almost 12,000 B.P.) and just above it were found ultrathin bifaces (but no Folsom points) in a deposit dated between 11,000 and 11,500 B.P.). These findings raise the possibility that here in central Texas lie the origins of the distinctive ultrathin biface technology that later became a hallmark of Folsom culture.

It should be obvious from this brief discussion that the Gault site has much to offer scholars who are studying the early cultures of North America. It may well hold some clues to the origins of Clovis culture and the historical relationships between Clovis and Folsom. These are daunting questions and the research required to begin to answer them will take a long time. It will, however, be a most interesting time.

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