Southwestern Paleo Stuff

[uniface]

http://drarchaeology.com/culthist/paleo/paleo.htm

 

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[Tnmountains]

You would think at some point paleo remains would be found? Good read I want to find some points like those,,old.... Thanks Uni
TnMtns

 

[bravowhiskey]

I don't understand Clovis points, being pretty danged sophisticated and difficult to produce (with the fluting) being older than other artifacts that look, even to the neophyte, so much less sophisticated and clumsily made. It is like grade school children (the first ones here, supposedly) making grandfather clocks in shop class and then the seniors (or ones that followed) making ash trays.
Were the Paleoindians so much better knappers than the ones that followed? Seems backwards.
It would seem that artifact production would only improve from Clovis onward. That apparently is not the case. As in fluting, being dropped for the most part, from projectile manufacture.
Can someone please explain this seemingly contrary phenom
Ready to be educated.

BW

 

[uniface]

Full channel fluting (Folsom, Cumberland) is a pretty tricky manoevre, granted. But Clovis-style fluting is just base thinning from the base rather than from the sides -- a flake's a flake -- and it did persist for a while (in places) into the Early Archaic era. You'll find it sometimes on Charleston points, for an example.

Overall, semantics are muddying the water here. People use "Paleoindian" to cover a lot of time. The Folsoms, Agate Basins, parallel-flaked Scottsbluffs, Edens and their relatives come relatively late (although Clovis apparently persisted into the time Folsoms were being made). Elsewhere, similarly refined points were being made back east (Dovetails, Thebes, et al.) in the Early Archaic era. So many (probably, most) of the real masterworks people have in mind when they think of "Paleo points" are from the Plano and Early Archaic periods rather than Paleo.

The best examples of any number of later points compare pretty favorably with the earlier ones, but they are made along different lines. Plus, many of the points of people find are used-up stubs, crudely re-edged to get one last use out of them before they were pitched. Comparing these to as-made or first re-sharpening older points is an apples & oranges case.

 

[pickaway]

Great link thanks...