1936:
Portales Daily News. Note that there was no “Clovis” cultural group yet…\
Click HERE for the pdf, with bonus Coronado article OR link below:
http://theclovissite.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/pdn1936.pdf
The Mitchell Locality is a large portion of the Clovis Site (LA3324) lying along the northwest margin of the prehistoric pond and extending into the slight upland rise to the west. Over the last few years, we have been fortunate to extend our researches in this direction primarily through geologic coring. The best available overview of the Mitchell Locality is Anthony Boldurian’s summary in Plains Anthropologist 1990. The area is primarily known for the extensive Folsom-age materials found there but has a smattering of older and younger artifacts scattered throughout.
Primary localities within the Clovis site.
Vance Holliday and Shane Miller coring the south bank.
There was an intent to core more in this area but the soft sand created problems for both the machine and vehicle access. Devising Plan B for the autumn.
Coring in the paleo arroyo of the Mitchell Locality.
Up on the Mitchell Locality, the sparse cover wheat allowed clear view of the surface with many small flakes visible.
C. Vance Haynes overlooking the mine pit.
We were fortunate that the great wealth of geoarchaeological knowledge of the southern high plains was present in the form of Haynes and Holliday.
Core sample laid out for recording.
The fine sand overburden varies throughout the site and can be over 4 meters deep. In this area, it is only about 40 centimeters outside the arroyo.
Dr Holliday working at the rig.
Examining the sediments.
I’ll keep posting as we learn more.
Photo courtesy of Tandy Bozeman.
Photo courtesy of Tandy Bozeman.
Photo courtesy of Tandy Bozeman.
Photo courtesy of Tandy Bozeman.
Lots of activity at the site. Preparing to open for the season, giving guided tours to visitors, working on the analysis and re-writing our story. We also had some professional photography done recently and will add those images in the following days.
In January of 1967, an episode of Star Trek entitled “The Galileo Seven” aired, and caught the attention of Dr. George Agogino, a past Director of the Paleo-Indian Institute at Eastern New Mexico University. In the episode, Spock and his crew crash-land on a hostile planet with “caveman” like creatures lurking around, and throwing spears at the crew. Dr. Agogino saw a morphological resemblance between the spear points used in the episode and Folsom points, so he decided to send a letter and request that the spears that were used in the television show be donated to the Blackwater Draw Museum. A few months later Robert Justman, the associate Producer of Star Trek received Agogino’s request, and was enthused to answer it.
Justman noted that the spears were based on the Folsom points that had originally been found in New Mexico in the late 1920s, but he made sure to address the “dramatic license” that was practiced by enlarging the spears to 15 feet in length. Nonetheless, Agogino was still thrilled at the possibility of having Folsom themed Star Trek memorabilia on display.
Below is a scene out of the episode featuring the spears:
Many letters went back and forth between Agogino, Justman, and NBC, mainly addressing shipping and logistics of mailing 15 foot spears, but eventually the spears made their way to Portales, New Mexico, and then to the Blackwater Draw Museum where they are still proudly on display.
Star Trek prop spears on display in the Blackwater Draw Museum.
LA3324/25285
LA3324/25285
Gray chert Folsom point (catalog number 25285) recovered 15 August 1985. Discovered on the east side surface of the South Bank. The specimen appears in Boldurian’s (1990; pp 70-71, Figure 38A) Plains Anthropologist Memoir 24 on Lithic Technology at the Mitchell Locality of Blackwater Draw. Click the image for a higher resolution.
“Climate Change in New Mexico” is a new class offered by Dr. Kilby at ENMU for undergraduate students to directly participate in the scientific study of the effects of long-term climate change by focusing on the Pleistocene-Holocene transition (about 12,000 years ago).
The class is attended by students from Anthropology, Geology, and Biology departments, who actively participate in collecting field samples, analyzing results, and reconstructing past environmental changes from the Ice Age to the present.
The Clovis site provides a stratigraphically ideal opportunity for students to learn the basics of collecting samples for radiocarbon and OSL dating, as well as sediment, pollen, phytolith, diatom, and stable isotope analysis.
The slideshow documents the class taking samples from the east profile of Isequilla’s Pit on the South Bank of the Clovis site.
This class is supported by an NSF New Mexico EPSCoR grant.
Folsom ultrathin biface from the Clovis site North Bank.
Ultrathin bifaces are a recently recognized element distinctive to the Folsom toolkit. Ultrathin bifaces are found at many Folsom sites including those in North Dakota, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas. Ultrathin bifacial manufacturing technology appears consistent between numerous sites recognized by distinctive, opposed diving bifacial thinning flakes (Root et al. 1994).
Morphologically, the Folsom ultrathin biface is broad in width, has finely retouched excurvate margins, and is extremely thin (Boldurian 1999:111). Functionally, its use is generally interpreted as a non-hafted knife or cutting implement used for butchering and processing game. Pegi Jodry (1998) has suggested that ultrathin bifaces were used and maintained by women for specialized butchering required for drying strips of meat.
Comments welcome.
Boldurian, Anthony T. 1999 Clovis Revisited:New Perspectives on Paleoindian Adaptations from Blackwater Draw, New Mexico. University of Pennsylvania Museum, Philadelphia.
Jodry, Margaret A. 1998 The Possible Design of Folsom Ultrathin Bifaces as Fillet Knives for Jerky Production. Current Research in the Pleistocene 15:75-77.
Root, Matthew J., J. D. William, Marvin Kay, and L. K. Shifrin 1999 Folsom Ultrathin Biface and Radial Break Tools in the Knife River Flint Quarry Area. In Folsom Lithic Technology: Explorations in Structure and Variation, edited by D. S. Amick, International Monographs in Prehistory, Archaeological Series, Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Recently, I found myself searching through the internet looking at various archaeology websites and I stumbled across one named Archaeology Wordsmith. It is sort of like a dictionary.com for archaeology words. It seems like they have a definition for seemingly every word I could think of, such as this one on Blackwater Draw:
So, if you ever find yourself wanting a definition for an archaeology word, or if you’re just bored and need something to pass the time, check out archaeologywordsmith.com.
The Geoarchaeology class had two assignments from last week:
1) Updating and validating plan view maps from the previous excavation efforts of the Folsom wedge in 2009.
Once the plan views were updated and the initial identifications made, a preparatory cleaning of the bison bone and matrix was conducted to prepare for removal of the stabilized bone.
2) Beginning the granulometric analysis from auger tests at LA3324 Locality X.
The granulometric analysis refers to the measurement of sediment grains with regard to the distribution of particle sizes in a sample. Particle size distribution aids the interpretation of conditions under which sediments were deposited, including the strength and variability of the transport agent (Kilby 2011).
Students prepared sediment samples by first removing extraneous particles, disaggregating consolidated sediments, then size grading through a nested set of sieves. Most of the size grading work was performed by the mechanized Ro-Tap shaker. Once the individual levels of sediment were size graded and weighed, a microscopic analysis of each size class was conducted to record observations of texture, sphericity, organics, and micro-artifacts.
