A PLAN FOR THE FUTURE - CLOVIS
An exploration into the past
From the Coastal Plain to the High Desert
August 8, 2014
THE CLOVIS SITE
A REVOLUTIONARY DISCOVERY
A REVOLUTIONARY DISCOVERY
After completing my planned exploration into the past of the ancestral people of the Trans-Pecos area I realized that I needed more time. There are three areas of interest that I could not include because of logistics. One is the site of the Clovis people, in New Mexico. It is a major archaeological site that caused a revolution in the accepted thinking about the origin and dates of the early Americans. After Clovis, a new vision of the past developed that is still in evolution. I plan to visit this site and its museum in the future. It relates directly to Texas and its ancient people as the site is a dry river bed that drains into the Brazos River basin. During the ice ages, and during other times when the climate was not as dry as it is now, this is one of the points where the headwaters of the Brazos begin. It is New Mexico, but only a few miles from the Texas border and the city of Lubbock. It was a road into the Texas plains.
The second site is the ancient Puebloan city of Paquime, "Casas Grandes", in the Chihuahua desert, a few miles from the U. S. border. It is intimately linked to the Chaco period, it is a major site, not only in importance but also in size, and it may the trade link between the people of the four corners region and the highland cultures of Mesoamerica. This may have been the source of maize and its companion crops of beans and squash. It may have been where cotton, weaving and pottery came into the present U. S. territory.
The third site is the lower Pecos basin, site of a multitude of "cave paintings" dating from the very early times of human occupation of the area. One site is the Seminole Canyon State Park. Early man first visited this area 12,000 years ago, a time when now-extinct species of elephant, camel, bison, and horse roamed the landscape. By 7000 years ago, the region had undergone a climatic change that produced a landscape much like today's. A new culture appeared in this changed environment. The distribution of this distinct style is limited to a district which includes a portion of the Rio Grande, Pecos, and Devils River. More than 200 pictograph sites are known to contain examples of their style of rock paintings ranging from single paintings to caves containing panels of art hundreds of feet long.
The second site is the ancient Puebloan city of Paquime, "Casas Grandes", in the Chihuahua desert, a few miles from the U. S. border. It is intimately linked to the Chaco period, it is a major site, not only in importance but also in size, and it may the trade link between the people of the four corners region and the highland cultures of Mesoamerica. This may have been the source of maize and its companion crops of beans and squash. It may have been where cotton, weaving and pottery came into the present U. S. territory.
The third site is the lower Pecos basin, site of a multitude of "cave paintings" dating from the very early times of human occupation of the area. One site is the Seminole Canyon State Park. Early man first visited this area 12,000 years ago, a time when now-extinct species of elephant, camel, bison, and horse roamed the landscape. By 7000 years ago, the region had undergone a climatic change that produced a landscape much like today's. A new culture appeared in this changed environment. The distribution of this distinct style is limited to a district which includes a portion of the Rio Grande, Pecos, and Devils River. More than 200 pictograph sites are known to contain examples of their style of rock paintings ranging from single paintings to caves containing panels of art hundreds of feet long.
BLACKWATER DRAW
THE CLOVIS SITE
As the last ice age began to decline about 13,000 years ago some Paleo-Indian cultures began to develop more efficient weapons to kill Pleistocene megafauna and their 'kill sites' left more definitive evidence. The first these Big Game Hunting traditions is referred to as Clovis, named after a site near Clovis , NM, and is dated at around 13,000-11,500 years ago.
 |
| Fig. 3 - Site Logo |
 |
| Fig. 2 - Entrance to the site In charge of ENMU |
Since its discovery, the Blackwater Locality No. 1 Site has been a focal point for scientific investigations by academic institutions and organizations from across the nation. The Carnegie Institute, Smithsonian Institution, Academy of Natural Sciences, National Science Foundation, United States National Museum, National Geographic Society and more than a dozen major universities either have funded or participated in research at Blackwater Draw.
 |
| Fig. 4 - A band of hunters following a herd of woolly mammoths |
 |
| Fig. 5 - The chase |
 |
| Fig. 6 - The kill |
USING ATL-ATL VIDEO
This short video shows the Clovis point attached to an Atl-atl short spear and how to use it.
The importance of Blackwater Draw was first recognized in 1929 by Ridgely Whiteman of Clovis, New Mexico. The Blackwater Locality No. 1 Site (located within Blackwater Draw near Portales, New Mexico) is one of the most well known and significant sites in North American archaeology. Early investigations at Blackwater Draw recovered evidence of a human occupation in association with Late Pleistocene fauna, including Columbian mammoth, camel, horse, bison, sabertooth cat and dire wolf.
 |
| Figure 7 - Lithic samples from Clovis |
 |
| Fig. 8 - the Atl-atl Empowering the ancient spear |
 |
| Fig. 9 - Parts of the Atl-atl |
These Native American hunters used a special spear thrower, called an atlatl, that had a large 6'' + fluted point designed to kill mainly mammoths and mastodons. This technology spread throughout the Americas rather quickly, but was short lived as the climate saw an increase of temperature and decrease in precipitation as the current inter-glacial period increased in effect. These changes brought about a global extinction of many mega fauna or reduction in size as in the case of the American bison.
 |
| Fig. - 10 - Throwing the Atl-atl from a safer distance |
The Blackwater Draw Museum first opened to the public in 1969 primarily to display artifacts discovered at the Blackwater Locality No. 1 Site. Artifacts and displays describe and interpret life at the site from Clovis times (over 13,000 years ago) through the recent historic period. This museum, owned by Eastern New Mexico University, is under the direction of Mr. George Crawford of ENMU in Portales.
 |
| Fig. 11 - Exhibit at the actual site, artifacts and bones in situ at Clovis |
The site is also famous for its stratigraphic record in the sediment layers giving a unique rain-gauge for the last 13,000 years of cultural sequences. The site is unsurpassed for cultural sequences reaching from earliest New World peoples to the Archaic and Ceramic times. Each level in this sequence contains critically important evidence, representing one of the best sequences of Paleoindian to Archaic deposits. In addition the strata show 2 million years of the Quaternary in the walls of the deep pits.
 |
| Fig. 12 - Megafauna bones in situ showing butchering process |
 |
| Fig. 15 - Archaeologist at work |
The famous multicomponent site's cultural sequence is dated to 13,300 to 13,000 years before present (B.P.) at the lowest level, Clovis. The Folsom level is directly above the Clovis occupation, followed by the Portales Complex (representing cultures with unfluted parallel-flaked projectile points), and then an Archaic level. In "radiocarbon years"-which do not precisely correspond with normal calendar years-the Clovis site is dated from 11,300 to 11,000 radiocarbon years before the present (RCYBP). The Folsom occupation was 10,800 to 10,000 RCYBP, Portales from 9,800 to 8,000 RCYBP, and Archaic from 7,000 to 5,000 RCYBP. These cultural sequences are visible with mammoth and bison bones on display inside the Interpretive Center's building on the south bank at the site.
 |
| Fig. 14 - Bones and artifacts mixed in the find |
Due to its tremendous long-term potential for additional research and to public interest, the site was incorporated into the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. More recently, it was declared a National Historic Landmark.
Key words: Texas 4th-7th grade Social Studies, Native American tribes, habitat and life-zones, cultural adaptation, Anasazi, Ancestral Pueblo, Rio Grande cultures, New Mexico and Colorado tribes, Paleo-Indians, Archaic and Classic Indians of the Southwest, Geography of the Rio Grande, Mesa Verde, Chaco, Taos, Acoma, Indian ruins, archaeological artifacts, teacher resources, Fund for Teachers, Texas.
No comments:
Post a Comment