Clovis Lifeways Set in Stone: The Contribution of Fluted-Point Morphological Variation

ABSTRACT

Over the past century, researchers have found variation in fluted-point shape and size to be patterned in the Americas. Many of these patterns can be organized by geographical, ecological, and behavioral variables, and have helped formulate our current understanding of some of the earliest cultures to live in the Western Hemisphere. This paper reviews how researchers have assessed patterns in Clovis point morphological variability over the last three decades and discusses types of data used to formulate and test hypotheses concerning how Clovis peoples moved or transmitted cultural information across the landscape, organized, manufactured, and used fluted-point technology, and related to later Paleoindian groups. It concludes by summarizing the contribution studies of Clovis-point form have made to our understanding of Clovis adaptation as part of a greater body evidence that includes genetics, faunal and botanical remains, toolstone characterization, assemblage structure, site formation processes, and paleoenvironmental data.

KEYWORDS:

• Clovis
• fluted points
• Paleoindian
• morphological variation
• lithic analysis

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Zeljko Rezek for inviting me to participate in the 2023 SAA symposium focused on interpretations of variability in the archaeological record, and to Ted Goebel and Ashley Smallwood for the invitation to participate in this volume. Thanks also to two reviewers whose thoughtful comments helped improve this manuscript. I am grateful to the researchers who inspired this review and the many colleagues with whom I have had the opportunity to brainstorm what we can learn from fluted points.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

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Heather L. Smith

Heather L. Smith received her PhD in Anthropology from Texas A&M University in 2015 and now serves as an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Texas State University. Her research interests include human adaptation and dispersals in the late Pleistocene, the adaptive role of lithic technology during the Pleistocene-Holocene transition, and quantitative methods of material culture analyses with an emphasis on geometric morphometrics, GIS, geoarchaeology, evolutionary archaeology, and cultural transmission. Smith specializes in the transmission of Paleoindian lithic technology between areas south of the late Pleistocene icesheets and the Arctic.