Clovis Technology and Settlement in the Southern Bonneville Basin of Utah

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Papers in Celebration of Bruce B. Huckell, Part 1" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Bruce Huckell was a leader in the study of Clovis and Paleo-Indigenous technology in North America, and his research has strongly impacted our thinking on the subject, the lead author for 35 years. Here we present results of our ongoing study of the Clovis occupation of the southern Bonneville basin, Utah. First, at the Hell’n Moriah site, located in Tule Valley of the Western Bonneville sub-basin, our test excavations confirmed a surficial Clovis context, with most artifacts lying on an exposed and deflated surface of the late-Pleistocene lakebed, except for a few pieces that occur buried at the contact between this surface and overlying isolated coppice dunes. Second, at the Milford Flats sites in the Sevier sub-basin, our test excavations indicate similar settings, with Clovis loci in surface or near-surface contexts where thin mantles of loess are actively deflating. The single exception may be site 42MD2645, where a test pit led to the recovery of 116 artifacts in a ~20-cm thick sandy-silt deposit. Besides detailing these contexts, we describe the lithic assemblages recovered from these Clovis sites, interpreting Clovis technology and settlement in this region of the arid west, drawing heavily on Huckell's pioneering work on Clovis in the Southwest.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Papers in Celebration of Bruce B. Huckell, Part 1   •
• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 52487