New record clovis

[shorelinesearcher]

Saw this yesterday in the Murray Ledger & Times. Thought you guys would like to see this if you haven't already.

http://www.murrayledger.com/articles/2010/06/20/top_story/news01.txt

Any thoughts about authenticity?

mike

 

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[pointdlr]

White River Paleo,
I see and remember the modern nicks along the big paleo, but I cannot remember if they are one side or both. Miami Valley may remember. I plan on getting over to see it before the summer is over, and I will be sure to focus on that area.

Uniface,
I recieved your PM. Thanks! At no point did I intend to state that only collectors with high end pieces know what is correct. "Yugo" drivers and "BMW" drivers are all the same to me. I will be at the AACA show in Fort Mitchell, and you can bet I will be doing everything I can to get a long look at the recent Clovis. Probably snap some pictures also.

Jon.

 

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[Hippy]

At no point did I intend to state that only collectors with high end pieces know what is correct.

Jon.

LOL! There are plenty of "high end" collectors that have no idea what they are doing which is the scary part!

Hippy

 

[moundbuilder]

If anybody in the northern Kentucky/Cincinatti area's curious to see it, word is it'll be at the Fort Mitchell show, July 16-18.
http://www.theaaca.com/show/index.htm

Uniface, you are really keeping your cool with all of the naysayers. That is good, and bringing it to a major show makes me hope that you will consider the opinions of some of the more educated collectors such as yourself when you show it. I remember these huge white notched burial blades from the Olive Branch site that were unearthed by Dr. Gramley's team that "didn't look real"... MB

 

[uniface]

Hi, MB

I didn't mean to give the impression that it was mine -- it isn't. (In my dreams ! )

Just passing info. along. If I lived anywhere close, I surely wouldn't miss a chance to see it.

 

[Twitch]

Moundbuilding - I believe you're refering to the Neralich Cache. Two points, ~11-12" each, small notches? While they were very atypical blades they were excavated during a supervised excavation (albeit for an off the grid spot) from their insitu location. This is a different find story than the point that started this thread. True there can be fraud and deceit even in 'controlled excavations' and the presence of the railroad cut could cause someone to question the stratification in the area but I'm personally confortable with their story. And just a clarification - there was no indication whatsoever that they Neralich cache had any burial association. Gramly's statements that they were buried to represent ancestors or whatever to me seems a very premature and reckless assertation.

Just my thoughts, sure they were unusual but the whole picture off those points versus this one are quite different.

 

[Hippy]

Moundbuilding - I believe you're refering to the Neralich Cache. Two points, ~11-12" each, small notches? While they were very atypical blades they were excavated during a supervised excavation (albeit for an off the grid spot) from their insitu location. This is a different find story than the point that started this thread. True there can be fraud and deceit even in 'controlled excavations' and the presence of the railroad cut could cause someone to question the stratification in the area but I'm personally confortable with their story. And just a clarification - there was no indication whatsoever that they Neralich cache had any burial association. Gramly's statements that they were buried to represent ancestors or whatever to me seems a very premature and reckless assertation.

Just my thoughts, sure they were unusual but the whole picture off those points versus this one are quite different.

Sure they are different points and different situations but the end result was kind of the same. The broken biface of that cache got sold. I'm not real sure what happened to the whole one. It seems odd that a scientific excavation would lead to the finds eventually sold. I guess Gramly did own the site and it was his choice to do what he pleases with the points. The site was sold again and some huge dalton looking things were dug there too. I'm pretty sure the guy who purchased the Thebes Gap also has at least one of the Daltons in his possession as well.

That doesn't really pertain much to the big Clovis but there are plenty of skeptics of the Olive Branch stuff also.

Hippy

 

[cthulhu]

heres a bigger pic in frame

Thanks for the new desktop pic!

 

[joshuaream]

Sure they are different points and different situations but the end result was kind of the same. The broken biface of that cache got sold. I'm not real sure what happened to the whole one. It seems odd that a scientific excavation would lead to the finds eventually sold. I guess Gramly did own the site and it was his choice to do what he pleases with the points. The site was sold again and some huge dalton looking things were dug there too. I'm pretty sure the guy who purchased the Thebes Gap also has at least one of the Daltons in his possession as well.

That doesn't really pertain much to the big Clovis but there are plenty of skeptics of the Olive Branch stuff also.

Hippy

Hippy,

My comments have absolutely nothing to do with the big Clovis, but you did touch on an interesting difference in the world of Archaeologists. Archies who work primarily for museums (even University museums) are generally much more interesting than Archaeologists who are primarily tied to university lectures.

People like Dennis Stanford, Gramly, Hester, Collins, Sandra Olsen, Bruce Bradley, even old timers like Warren Moorehead and Greg Perino fit into a group of people who were based with museums that really pushed new theories versus repeating what was done before. If they hang around long enough (like Stanford, Hester, Collins) academia tends accept them, but most of the others are sort of black sheep in academia... Last year I read through a PhD thesis on the Derbert Clovis tradition in the North East US and South East Canada that didn't mention the Vail site in Maine or three other Derbert sites that Gramly dug. Considering the limited Derbert number of sites, that's kind of like writing an overview of the Chicago Bulls championship teams and never mentioning Michael Jordan or Scotty Pippen.

Joshua

 

[11KBP]

Hippy,

My comments have absolutely nothing to do with the big Clovis, but you did touch on an interesting difference in the world of Archaeologists. Archies who work primarily for museums (even University museums) are generally much more interesting than Archaeologists who are primarily tied to university lectures.

People like Dennis Stanford, Gramly, Hester, Collins, Sandra Olsen, Bruce Bradley, even old timers like Warren Moorehead and Greg Perino fit into a group of people who were based with museums that really pushed new theories versus repeating what was done before. If they hang around long enough (like Stanford, Hester, Collins) academia tends accept them, but most of the others are sort of black sheep in academia... Last year I read through a PhD thesis on the Derbert Clovis tradition in the North East US and South East Canada that didn't mention the Vail site in Maine or three other Derbert sites that Gramly dug. Considering the limited Derbert number of sites, that's kind of like writing an overview of the Chicago Bulls championship teams and never mentioning Michael Jordan or Scotty Pippen.

Joshua

In my opinion “hanging around academia long enough” is not why archaeologists like Stanford, Hester & Collins are where they are today. Their excavations are/were meticulous, the information they have published is impressive and they appear to be more interested in what information they can get out of a site rather than how a site might help promote their name.

As far as the Debert sites that Gramly dug not being mentioned in A PhD thesis -it is most likely related to what you call “black sheep in academia” …there must be a reason?

11KBP

 

[joshuaream]

11KBP,

True, I did not mean to insinuate that they are accepted only because they've hung around long enough... Their work is/was exciting, dynamic and in many cases diverges from the classic theories that all archies were taught in undergrad & grad school. What I wanted to express is that because of the quality of their work and the fact that they've been around so long, they've become recognized experts in their fields and have thus influenced newer generations of archies.

Joshua

 

[11KBP]

11KBP,
Their work is/was exciting, dynamic and in many cases diverges from the classic theories that all archies were taught in undergrad & grad school. What I wanted to express is that because of the quality of their work and the fact that they've been around so long, they've become recognized experts in their fields and have thus influenced newer generations of archies.

Joshua

Josh, thank you for your viewpoints, I always enjoy reading them. I think perhaps we are getting off of the main subject of this thread so I had better clam-up, lol.

11KBP

 

[uniface]

I may have woken up on the wrong planet again. You know -- the one where no matter how many times you point something out, and no matter how simple what you're saying is, people don't hear you because you're saying something they don't want to hear.

I'm currently immersed in the new book by Dr. Collins (TARL) and his friends, Clovis Technology. It's a soup-to-nuts survey of Clovis lithic technology across the board.

Here are some direct quotes from it that seem pretty relevant to what people have written about the Kentucky giant :

"Final shaping of late interval preforms into points was accomplished with every flaking technique we see in Clovis bifacing from invasive percussion (including controlled overshot), marginal percussion, invasive pressure and marginal pressure. In some cases, points were finished with little retouch at all." (p. 96)

"Retouching after fluting on Clovis points, or indeed when an end thinning scar was used as a flute, was highly variable. It ranges the whole spectrum from substantial percussion shaping and even thinning to marginal and sometimes abrupt percussion retouch. In many cases it is clear that care was taken not to have retouch invade the sides of the channel flake scars, while in other cases, retouch all but obliterated the fluting (especially on some cache points). Pressure flaking was also used for post-fluting retouch and it too ranged from invasive to abrupt marginal, continuous or discontinuous . . . The variability in retouch does not seem to be either chronological or regional (p. 101)

"While fluting was a specific method used, it was not always accomplished near the end of the flaking sequence and scars from earlier end thinning were sometimes used instead. Finishing flaking was highly varied . . ." (p. 106).

The conclusion I draw from this is that an opinion that a fluted point must be bogus because it's not like some other one is -- putting it as charitably as possible -- not a well informed one.

My dos centavos on this.

 

[uniface]

1) Seeing as it's just been published, the lack of citations is not surprising. The lead author's the big wheel at the Texas Archaeological Research Lab, and has been one of the three heavy hitters in Clovis technology for around twenty years now. His credibility is not an issue.

2) Being a summary of what's been found on (in this case) points from (mostly) excavated contexts, it's about as close to the Law and the Gospel as you're going to come.

 

[mootsman]

FWIW.....beyond book reviews and citations, Collins himself certainly seems to garner good reviews. A google of his name and "Clovis" yielded me enough information to take him seriously. I'm not alluding to the number of google hits per se but the information contained within many of them (more specifically his directorship of the Gault site). Heck, he gets a cred vote from me for being an early proponent of the Monte Verde pre-Clovis position.

 

[uniface]

Being a summary of what's been found on (in this case) points from (mostly) excavated contexts, it's about as close to the Law and the Gospel as you're going to come.

According to you.

Mike Collins has had Paleo dirt under his fingernails for the last thirty years. The books he's written on it are universally cited. By the professionals.

[. . . deleted by uniface . . .]

 

[11KBP]

What do you use for brains whenever you run out of manure ?

Now that wasn't very nice to say uniface, lol.

I have no problem with Collin's credibility and having your views challenged by others is certainty a part of being an archaeologist.

Anyway, one of your quotes was ...and it is relevant:

"Final shaping of late interval preforms into points was accomplished with every flaking technique we see in Clovis bifacing from invasive percussion (including controlled overshot), marginal percussion, invasive pressure and marginal pressure. In some cases, points were finished with little retouch at all."

I have read a number of posts on this forum and others by individuals stating the Clovis people did not use pressure flaking on their projectiles.

One such comment in this thread was: “I've looked at hundreds of Clovis and I have never seen one with secondary pressure flaking”

So who is right?

Are some of us expressing opinions on Clovis based on our own observations from our small portion of the U.S. rather than viewing Clovis points from across the nation?

 

[uniface]

Now that wasn't very nice to say uniface

Agreed.

 

[uniface]

I have read a number of posts on this forum and others by individuals stating the Clovis people did not use pressure flaking on their projectiles.

One such comment in this thread was: “I've looked at hundreds of Clovis and I have never seen one with secondary pressure flaking”

So who is right?

I asked (noted replicator) Bob Patten recently. His response :

It is possible that pressure flaking was seldom used to finish Clovis points, but I am not convinced that Clovis people were so obstinate as to avoid pressure at all costs.

Pressure flaking does tend to leave slight steps at the end of a flake scar and Clovis point lack those steps for the most part.

On the other hand, I can use pressure to leave flake scars you would swear were made by percussion.

BTW; I've been experimenting with a rocker system of indirect percussion that straddles the boundary between direct percussion and pressure. The bulb of force tends to be very slight and flakes can be long and narrow.

Bottom line: it's still a mystery.

 

[Th3rty7]

" Bottom line: it's still a mystery "

 

[uniface]

This just in from Vanessa (daughter of the guy who found it) :

The clovis does have a Rogers COA now. Dwain sent it to my dad about a month after temple with a very nice letter thanking him for allowing him to see the "best clovis he's ever seen."

http://arrowheadology.com/forums/arrowheads-indian-artifacts/4698-record-clovis-19.html#post45903