The Murray Springs site is a Paleoindian site located in the San Pedro Valley of southeastern Arizona, and it is an early Clovis site where ancient forms of bison (buffalo), mammoth, horse, camel, and wolf were butchered about 11,000 years ago.
Sites associated with human occupations in evidence at Murray Springs include a mammoth kill, a bison kill and an associated hunting camp site, all buried beneath about 2.5 meters of alluvium. Three Clovis point fragments, thousands of wasteflakes and and a curious bone implement interpreted as a 'wrench' to straighten atlatl dart shafts were recovered from around the carcass of an elephant that had been partly disarticulated.
At least one prehistoric well is known from the site; excavator C. Vance Haynes Jr. believed this well to be elephant-made, however. Mammoth footprints extend from the prehistoric well to the skeleton of a young mammoth, although no human prints have been found.
Over the top of the well and the mammoth footprints was identified a 1-2 centimeter layer of black organic clay believed by Haynes to represent an algal mat, similar to those found at other Paleoindian sites; recent research suggests it may have resulted from a comet explosion.
The site was excavated in the 1960s by C. Vance Haynes, Jr. It is currently managed by the US government's Bureau of Land Management.
Sources
Haynes Jr., C. Vance. 1991. Geoarchaeological and Paleohydrological Evidence for a Clovis-Age Drought in North America and Its Bearing on Extinction. Quaternary Research 35:438-450.
Pigati, Jeffrey S., Jay Quade, Timothy M. Shahanan, C. Vance Haynes Jr. 2004. Radiocarbon dating of minute gastropods and new constraints on the timing of late Quaternary spring-discharge deposits in southern Arizona, USA. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 204(1-2):33-45.
