- A Cache of Clovis Points - USDA
According to the Colorado Historical Society, the earliest pre historic human remains in Colorado are around 12,000 years old. There are 680 Paleo Indian sites in the state, which include both Folsom and Clovis artifacts. Clovis sites are not as numerous as those from the Folsom Culture. Explanations for this range from scant migration to the area or that sites haven’t been found yet. Some possible Clovis sites are rejected by archaeologists because sites have failed to meet strict scientific criteria.
The first Clovis site discovered in Colorado was the Dent Site in the northeastern plains of Weld County near Greeley, a kill site dated at 9200 BC. Clovis points were found along with mammoth bones. Mammoth is thought to be the Clovis hunter’s main food source. Another site found along the South Platte, known as the Drake Site, furnished 13 points, a hammer stone, and ivory fragments. According to Kenneth Tankersley in his book Search of Ice Age Americans, some of the points were made from materials from the Alibates quarry near Amarillo, TX, some 500 miles to the south.
The climate in this area was 10 degrees colder than today. An earlier, short lived drought, possibly encouraged animals to congregate around water holes and streams, thus accounting for kill and cache sites around the South Platte and Cache La Poudre Rivers according to The Fort Collins History Museum’s “Fort Collins History Connection.” Caches unlike kill sites aren’t necessarily associated with animal kills. Some other Front Range Colorado sites are;
- Rocky Mountain National Park has provided some Clovis artifacts dated from 9,500-8500 before present (BP).
- Northeast of Rocky Mountain National Park near Fort Collins, another cache of points was found near the Poudre River.
- Lamb Springs site in Douglas County in the South Denver Metropolitan area: This site may be 2000 years prior to the rest of the Clovis sites scattered across the northern Front Range.
- Jefferson County: There are sites in Golden and Morrison in west and southwest Denver.(Van Ness)
Fewer Clovis sites are located on Colorado’s western slope. The largest numbers of those sites are located in the San Juan Valley in south central Colorado. The Durango area, close to Mesa Verde has only scattered remains of Clovis.
One of the biggest finds of Clovis artifacts, the Mahaffy Cache, was found by a landscaping crew in Boulder and named after the man in whose yard it was discovered. Protein residue found on these artifacts was analyzed and found to be related to the butchering of extinct camels, horses and mammoth. It is only one of two caches analyzed with such protein. Material for the points originated in the Steamboat Springs area in Middle Park on the western slope. One knife found in the collection is very similar to one found at the Fenn Cache near Yellowstone in Wyoming making it a possibility that the two points were made by the same person.
Clovis sites in Colorado, though not abundant, have shown that the culture was a part of Colorado’s past, giving us insight into migration patterns and the animals hunted by these early peoples.
Sources
Archaeology of the Rio Grande, accessed 7/12/2010.
Lee Ann Forrester - I discovered writing and history as a passion in high school. I became a published author my junior year with two poems published in a ...
