The Archaeology of Clovis Landscape Use at the Mockingbird Gap site, New Mexico and Surrounding Regions

Summary

In this paper we discuss recent work at the Mockingbird Gap Clovis site, New Mexico, and the surrounding region, designed to understand how Clovis hunter-gatherers utilized and adapted to the regional landscape and its available resources. Focusing on lithic raw material use, we show that the Clovis occupants of Mockingbird Gap had access to a wide diversity of high quality raw materials from a large area of the Southwest. Moreover, Clovis raw material network analysis across the continent suggests that Mockingbird Gap was an important link between the Southwest and Southern Highs Plains. This work shows that Clovis people in this region of the Southwest had an extensive and specific knowledge of the landscapes around them, and may well have had connections to other Clovis peoples in neighboring regions. Further, this pattern of landscape use and regional adaptation is more consistent with models that suggest Clovis hunter-gatherers used established regional home ranges rather than those that suggest Clovis populations swept across North America rapidly and non-redundantly.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Crossing Frontiers of Disciplines and Countries. A Symposium Honoring Eileen Johnson

Keywords

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