Info On Pre Clovis Sites

monsterrack

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Apr 15, 2013
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Didn't have a lot to do yesterday had to take day off already had worked my 72 hrs and D.O.T. shuts you down after that and it's was raining ,so I did a little looking and hunting some info, thought some of you might like it.

Meadowcroft Rockshelter in western Pennsylvania is located in Avella, Independence Township, Pennsylvania on Cross Creek, a tributary to the Ohio River. This site officially became a National Historic Landmark on 5 April 2005. The Statement of Significance (as of designation - April 5, 2005) is recorded thus: "This site contains evidence of some of the earliest human occupations in Eastern North America. Meadowcroft Rockshelter demonstrates that humans have been in the Americas since at least 16,000 years before the present. The site was periodically utilized and reoccupied from the earliest Paleo-Indian times through the Archaic and Woodland periods by Native American peoples, and during the Historic period by European Americans. It has provided one of the longest, if not the actual longest, stratified sequence of cultures in the United States, and evidence for some of the earliest domesticated crops in the northeastern United States. Meadowcroft has revolutionized how archeologists view the peopling of the New World."

Cactus Hill, Virginia located on the Nottoway river near the small town of Stony Creek also had artifacts below the clovis level. A clovis and pre-clovis occupation present in the natural strata used raw materials primarily of quartzite and chert. Radiocarbon data that matched Meadowcroft Rockshelter made the prickly pear covered sand dunes a clear contender as one of the oldest archaeological sites in North America.

Saltville, Virginia salt marshes attracted inhabitants and wildlife dating to the Pleistocene epoch. A pre-clovis worked tibia possibly from a musk-ox, and other finds include 200 clam shells, 500 pieces of small vertebrate remains, charcoal and 125 pieces of leftover chipped stone waste.

Topper, South Carolina situated on the Savannah River in Allendale county produced blades and flakes matching those recovered at Cactus Hill and Saltville, Virginia. Below the pre-Clovis stratum was the "topper chopper," an abstract animal, in this case in bird form, classic in design and common as an artifact in North American and European paleolithic works.

Sheridan Cave, Ohio is a significant sinkhole excavation site that extended about 50 feet underground beneath a dolomite ridge near Carey, Ohio. The record produced exceptional biodiversity in plant and animal remains of the Ice Age including rare and extinct species such as the giant beaver, the stag or elk moose, the short-faced bear and the peccary. The human record is among the earliest known evidence of man in this region.

Buttermilk Creek site in Salado, Texas is located just 250m downstream from the Gault Site where so much of the Clovis culture has been defined. Here, below the clovis level, a previously undisturbed strata disclosed a large and varied collection of some 15,528 stone artifacts. OSL mineral dating of the assemblage places it between ~13.2 and 15.5 thousand years ago. These finds offer considerable archaeological evidence to support the theory of human habitation in the area prior to Clovis technology; also adding important data for researching the origins of the Clovis culture.

The Manis site located in the Sequim-Dungeness valley, Washington inspired early inhabitants of the S'Klallam tribe long before the coming of the European to name the location east of Sequim "place for going to shoot." It was great hunting for elk and waterfowl, but 800 years before the even earlier Clovis people, men were hunting mastodon. An osseous projectile point made of mastodon bone was found embedded in a rib of another mastodon. Due to additional bone growth around the projectile, it was determined not to be the wound that killed the animal. When analyzed, the unnatural position of the 14,991lb. fossil and other evidences suggested that it had been tampered with by man, making it one of the earliest locations evidencing mastodon/man interaction. Two other mastodon remains were also found to have been butchered at this 2-acre site.

Kenosha county, Wisconsin in the great lakes region of the midwest delivered mammoth discoveries on two adjacent farms in Paris Township. By 1992, after years of hunting, David Wasion put together clues that led to the rediscovery of mammoth bones once displayed and then packed away, lost to the knowledge of the community in the basement of the local Historical Society. The rediscovery and new observations of the clear cut and hack marks on the bones was a find of major importance. By 1994, subsequent digs brought to light a more complete picture of the Schaefer mammoth and a new Hebior mammoth that were ostensibly butchered by pre-clovis people. This electrified some in the scientific community because the Kenosha county digs dated much earlier than the 12,000 year Beringia barrier and the land bridge between Siberia and Alaska was broadly believed to have been inaccessible before that date. Other sites in Kenosha county contain unexcavated mastodon/mammoth remains in the area. The Mud Lake mammoth and the Fenske mastodon are among the "kill sites."
 

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Cool information! Thanks for taking your time and research!
 

Very nice info MRack
 

...I'll second, third & fourth that "great information" monsterrack...thanks for sharing it...:) Can't count, guess I'm the seventh....so I'll seventh it! Or is it the eighth...I give up...I just like it! lol
 

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Thanks for this information. I'm new at artifacts and haven't hunted for any yet, but I have a question. Was the Clovis point found in certain parts of the country or was it used throughout the United States? If I remember correctly, it was first discovered in New Mexico or somewhere out west.
 

Thanks so much great read !!!! It wasn't easy typing all that and it's greatly appreciated ;)
 

Thanks for sharing monster! Makes you think, if there are THAT many pre Clovis ALL OVER the u.s, they must have been around for quite sometime to spread out that far. Something tells me that there are a group of archeologists somewhere with a cache of Clovis points that just don't want to admit it! There is no way the Clovis points came before some of the crude tools and weapons that have been found BELOW the Clovis as well as all over the U.S at different layers of the earth depending on location. Thanks again for sharing this information, I just hope you got to copy paste some and didn't have to type it all!!
 

Thanks for this information. I'm new at artifacts and haven't hunted for any yet, but I have a question. Was the Clovis point found in certain parts of the country or was it used throughout the United States? If I remember correctly, it was first discovered in New Mexico or somewhere out west.

The Clovis point was first ID in Clovis New Mexico, I don't believe that was the first ever found, just the first place they got a name put to them JMO. This is JMO that Clovis was used all over the North America, it has just been found more abundant in some areas. Like where I live the layer of soil that you could find a Clovis, may be 30 are more feet deep. I find mastodon pieces where the creeks and washes have cut that deep thru that zone and I would bet the bank that Clovis people are the people before them where here at the same time.
 

Here's a link where you can read much of the book, "Across Atlantic Ice", by Dennis Stanford etc (head of archaeology at Smithsonian Natural History Museum). Its a pretty controversial theory, but they put together a strong case for a much earlier occupation of North America via Europe instead of Asia.

BN.com | NOOK Book (eBook) Sample of Across Atlantic Ice: The Origin of America's Clovis Culture by Dennis J. Stanford

I'm smack in the middle of the several of the pre clovis sites, a 2 or 3 hour drive to the PA, MD and VA sites. I can only imagine what it would feel like to pull out of of those killers. Sounds like some good road trips.
 

Some what makes these sites "pre Clovis"? A layer of artifacts under a Clovis layer? For arguments sake let's just say that Clovis people visited one of these sites 13,500 years ago and then revisited the same site 12,000 years ago. So, we have 1,500 years of erosion between layers and some think that it's a different people? The artifacts that I've seen below the Clovis layers don't look much different than the Clovis layers, just hasn't been a fluted point found in the "pre Clovis" layer. We should consider that perhaps Clovis technology evolved from 13,500 to 12,000 and maybe early Clovis just didn't have a need for fluted points at that time.

Personally, I believe it's all Clovis but they were here much earlier than current science will have us believe.

Monte Verde - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 

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Thanks for the information, MR. I'll check out the links from DR and 1320 and see what I can learn.
I watched antiques roadshow on pbs last night and this man had some artifacts. Seems like one looked like a bird or something and the guy doing the appraisal said there were lots of fakes out there, but his was real. Maybe he called it a snow bird or something. I had a phone call while this segment was on and missed a lot of it and I don't remember where it was at. The artifact was worth 4-5,000 dollars I believe. It's hard to try and listen to tv and talk to somebody at the same time.
It was a show where somebody bought an old record for 50 cents and found Marvin Gaye's passport in it and it was worth lots of money. I probably got it all wrong. Did anybody watch it besides me and could explain what it was.
 

I always wished I could use a blower and blow the sand away from around Springs under the Gulf of Mexico
 

Here is an interesting graphic.
Seems it would be pretty interesting around the Gulf Stream ledge close to Miami also.

fig16.gif
 

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I have seen similar graphics of super-early shorelines, and have heard and read about the multiple theories on how and when people first got to North America. Depending on water levels- dictated by either a big freeze or a warm period- seafaring peoples could very easily have crossed the Atlantic, hugging the shore from northern Europe to N. America. And as far as depth of finds- 'a layer below Clovis'... well I guess it really is all about the style of manufacture, no? Are the older pieces more like European models or Russian-Mongolian-Chinese models- and how. Being an amateur, I wouldn't know where to being to study, but there are good arguments for the Atlantic crossing to be earlier than the Bering Sea/Ice Bridge. From what I understand, there have been more 'Clovis' style pieces found in the eastern U.S. than the western. Anyone? Thoughts?

And Gator- I'm w/ you. I WISH I could gently filter out all the artifacts in the Chesapeake Bay. I literally have dreams about that...
Yak
 

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