Amateur archaeologist and flint meister extraordinaire Tony Baker discovered a copy of Emma Lou Davis' The Ancient Californians (1978) and is of the opinion that we ought to all go rediscover this insightful book. He sent along this latest essay into what's up with preclovis:
I Forgot to Remember to Forget, from Tony Baker
More on Preclovis culture, from me
Comments
Wheeeeeew! charts, graphs, thicknesses, as usual, i’m a little more enlightened but exhausted. Tony’s saying a whole lot to say clovis had to come from somewhere. Thanks Mr. Baker.
More specifically, Tony is offering up the hypothesis that fluted points evolved from refurbished bipointed projectiles (Agate Basin, El Jobo, Hueyatlaco, and Monte Verde types) that had snapped in two.
While i respect Tony’s opinions, and especially his dedication i disagree totally with his current train of thought that clovis technology originated from refurbished thick-bodied projectiles.Thinning a biface longitudinally {fluting}is the same process as striking a blade from a blade core.Therefore, it makes sense that blade-makers originated the clovis fluting technique.Tony repeatedly states his opinions on “old clovis”-who he says were not blade-makers and are found in the west(although clovis blades are well described at the clovis type site at Blackwater draw)and “new-clovis”who were blade-makers and were found in the eastern u.s..Also, many times more clovis artifacts have been found in the south-eastern usa than in the west,indicating that the epi-center of clovis technology is located in the southeast, the land of”blade-makers”.Recently,Dr.Barbara Purdy and Dr Blaine Ensor both paleoindian lithic specialists have described lithics found in Alabama and central Florida made using the oldest of the prepared core techniques, the Levallois technique.These are the Capps site and the C.C.A . site.Don Dragoo, back in the 70′s commented on the” Mousterian” affinities of early clovis based on his excavations.The Levallois component described by Dr. Purdy is definitely from a pre-clovis strata, and the antiquity of the lithics was further verified by patination studies which estimated an age of 20 to 30 thousand years.Did Clovis originate from a previously unknown Levallois-leptolithic industry in the deep south?