New Interpretations of the Clovis Anzick Site, 50 Years after Its Discovery

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Paleo Lithics to Legacy Management: Ruthann Knudson—Inawa’sioskitsipaki" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Over 100 lithic tools accompanied the burial of a two-year-old Clovis boy. While this assemblage has been called a cache by some, these artifacts appear to have been left as grave goods, so the child would have needed tools in the next life. Some artifacts have nicks and breaks, or have been resharpened suggesting that this collection was gathered from materials at hand from friends and family and were not specifically prepared as grave goods. The general 100-mile radius around the site is rich in source locations, and I suggest these quarries are the source of most raw materials. In 1980, the Smithsonian Institution funded a backhoe investigation by John Albanese into the geoarchaeology of the site. Trenches were about 1.6 m deep and stopped when water was encountered. No archaeological materials were identified, supporting a conclusion that there were no Clovis camps in the immediate vicinity of the burial.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Paleo Lithics to Legacy Management: Ruthann Knudson—Inawa’sioskitsipaki   •
• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32055