A Clovis/Pre-Clovis power point presentation written and given by Mike Kunz at the 38th annual meeting of the Alaska Anthropological Association (March 9-12, 2011). It uses projectile point style as a cultural and chronologic diagnostic over an extensive geographical range. Click here to see the entire presentation. Read the entire webpage.

A number of readers of my web pages have referred to some of them as rants and this one definitely meets this definition.

This paper is written for the initiate to archaeology.  It is about the personal paradigm one develops overtime by pursuing studies and research in the discipline.  I define personal paradigm as the understanding and beliefs, held by a single individual, about a specific subject.  In different words, it is the individual’s bias.  Read the entire webpage.

In my webpage Clovis First / Pre-CIovis -- Revisited 2004 I argued that thick-bodied points were Pre-Clovis and that Old Clovis, which are thick-bodied Clovis Points (see The Clovis/Folsom Transition), developed from these thick-bodied points. John Garrett, a friend and colleague, took this idea and created an animated presentation in Power Point demonstrating how thick-bodied points relate to Old Clovis. Additionally, this excellent tool demonstrates how a refurbished thick-bodied point, which has been basally thinned during re-basing, can be misidentified as an Old Clovis point. Click here to download John's presentation (1.2megs). Comments?

So besides both occurring in the Lower Paleolithic, what is the connection between this cut-mark “disorder” and handaxes? To answer this question I point the reader to The Acheulean Handaxe paper I wrote in 2006. In this paper I proposed the handaxe was a large flake core, the by-product of flake extraction, and not a desired end-product. Additionally, because of its width-thickness ratio and large size, I wrote:

“Homo erectus did not select small cores from which to extract flakes (make handaxes). I propose he chose large cores because he did not have the manual dexterity to externally support them and, therefore, he had to rely on the inertial support.”

In different words, the mass of the core resisted the percussion blow and not the hand that was holding the core.

I know that most anthropologist believe the large handaxe is a cultural phenomenon and would see no relationship between it and this cut-mark “disorder.” That said, to me they represent the same thing, the lack of the manual dexterity that we modern humans have. Manual dexterity means not only thumb and fingers, but also eye and brain involvement.

1 – Stiner, Mary C., Ran Barkai, and Avi Gopher. 2009. Cooperative hunting and meat sharing 400—200 kya at Qesem Cave, Israel. PNAS 106(32) 13207-13212.

Mesa Point Alaska

Sluiceway fragment Alaska

Haskett Point California

El Jobo Point Venezuela

In 1992 I got the opportunity to go to Russia with a group of American archaeologists who all belonged to the Society of American Archaeologists (SAA). This opportunity wasn’t because I was handpicked or anything like that, instead it was offered to all members of the SAA and all we had to do was pay our way. During this two week trip we interfaced with Russia archaeologists from different parts of the Country and, of course, I was asking if they had any Clovis points. I was told there are no Clovis points in Russia. I followed the Russia trip with a tip to France to see the Solutrean in 1993 and to Italy in 1996 to see the Middle Paleolithic. These three trips, plus the knowledge my father imparted to me, were the bases of my 1997 webpage The Clovis First / Pre-Clovis Problem.

Unfortunately, this 1997 webpage was problematic because of a wrong assumption on my part. I proposed that the New World was populated by people from Asia crossing the Bering Strait. Yet, the lithic technology in the Upper Paleolithic in Asia was blade/micro-blade, while the Paleoindian technology in the New World was biface/flake. I couldn’t convince myself that the Asia people changed their technology when they enter the New World, so I had to propose that the Asia people came very early on with a Middle Paleolithic technology. Additionally, I proposed that a few Solutrean people somehow found they way to the New World and brought some of the Clovis/Solutrean similarities, i.e. overshot flaking. I have since learned that the Upper Paleolithic technology east of the Ural Mountains in Russia was in fact a biface/flake technology¹. Therefore, the Asia immigrates did not have to arrive in the New World as early as I proposed in 1997.

Significant events in research or paradigm building do not always occur in logical order. Such an event occurred in the summer of 1999 when Julie Morrow and I discovered there were two different types of Clovis points. Basely, they differed from each other in cross-section. One type had a lenticular (lens-like) cross-section discounting the effects of the flute. In the other type, the “cross-section was rectangular (plate-like).” Since the plate-like cross-sections were technical closer to Folsom, we decided they were also chronological closer and so we call them New Clovis. The lenticular ones were termed Old Clovis. At the time we didn’t consider calculating the width/thickness ratios of the points in the two types, we just separated them visually. These concepts were reported in The Clovis/Folsom Transition webpage in December of 2000.

The year 2000 also was the year that I began doing archaeological survey work for the BLM on the North Slope of Alaska. Working the Slope was a paradigm buster for me, because we were finding Mesa/Sluiceway points and not the typical Paleoindian types I was accustom to in the Southwest of the 48 states. In 2004 my 5^th summer on the Slope, we moved our base camp to a new drainage, which is in the image at the top of this blog. Our camp is in the lower left corner where one can see four large white tents and five smaller yellow tents. This drainage turned out to be the mother-load for Sluiceway and to a lesser extent Mesa. 2004 was also the summer that I developed the ideas I published that fall in my webpage Clovis First / Pre-Clovis Problem --Revisited 2004. In that webpage I argued that thick-bodied points similar to the ones in the images on the left were Pre-Clovis. Additionally, Old Clovis developed from these thick-bodied points and ultimately evolved into New Clovis and finally Folsom. During this time people making thick-bodied points were contemporaneous with those making fluted points. In that webpage I argued that thick-bodied points similar to the ones in the images on the left were Pre-Clovis. Additionally, Old Clovis developed from these thick-bodied points and ultimately evolved into New Clovis and finally Folsom. During this time people making thick-bodied points were contemporaneous with those making fluted points.

In 2009 I wrote I Forgot to Remember to Forget: 1st Peoples in the New World, which was mostly a summary of my previous web pages on Pre-Clovis. Basically, it was a longer version of this blog. I did include some statistics on width-to-thickness ratios, and suggested that some previously identified as-Clovis-points were in fact rebased thick-bodied-points. However, my position on Pre-Clovis had not changed. And today, it is still the same. The first peoples in the New World were making thick-bodied-points.

I want to thank Eric Oatman for the image of the Haskett point and Arturo Jaimes Quero for the image of the El Jobo.