| Pre-Clovis Sites Oct 25th 2011, 10:03 The Pre-Clovis culture, also spelled Preclovis and sometimes PreClovis, is the name given by archaeologists to the people who colonized the American continents before the Clovis big-game hunters. The existence of Pre-Clovis sites has been widely discounted up until the past fifteen years or so, although evidence has slowly been growing and most of the archaeological community support these and other such dated sites. Cactus Hill is an important Clovis period site located on the Nottaway River of Virginia, with a possible pre-Clovis site below it, dated to between 18,000 and 22,000 years ago. The PreClovis site is redeposited, apparently, and the stone tools are somewhat problematic. 
courtesy Michael R. WatersThe Debra Ll. Friedkin site is a redeposited site, located on a fluvial terrace close to the famous Clovis and pre-Clovis Gault site. The site includes occupation debris beginning in the Pre-Clovis period of some 14-16,000 years ago through the Archaic period of 7600 years ago. 
© Edward A. Jolie and Phil R. GeibGuitarrero Cave is a rockshelter in the Ancash region of Peru, where human occupations date to approximately 12,100 years ago. Fortuitous preservation has allowed researchers to collect textiles from the cave, dated to the Pre-Clovis component. 
Image courtesy of Center for the Study of the First Americans, Texas A&M UniversityThe Manis Mastodon site is a site in Washington State on the Pacific Coast of North America. There, some 13,800 years ago, Pre-Clovis hunter-gatherers killed an extinct elephant and, presumably, had bits of it for dinner. If Monte Verde was the first site seriously considered as Pre-Clovis, than Meadowcroft Rockshelter is the site which should have been seriously considered. Discovered on a tributary stream of the Ohio River in Pennsylvania, Meadowcroft dates to at least 14,500 years ago and shows a technology which is decidedly different from traditional Clovis. 
Image courtesy of Tom D. DillehayMonte Verde is arguably the first Pre-Clovis site to be taken seriously by the majority of the archaeological community. The archaeological evidence shows a small group of huts were built on the shoreline in far southern Chile, about 15,000 years ago. This is a photo essay of the archaeological investigations. Paisley is the name of a handful of caves within the interior of the American state of Oregon in the Pacific northwest. Fieldschool investigations at this site in 2007 identified a rock-lined hearth, human coprolites and a midden dated to between 12,750 and 14,290 calendar years before the present. Pedra Furada is a rockshelter in northeastern Brazil, where quartz flakes and possible hearths have been identified dated to between 48,000 and 14,300 years ago. The site is still somewhat controversial, although the later occupations, dated after 10,000 are accepted. Tlapacoya is a multicomponent site located in the basin of Mexico, and it includes an important Olmec component site. Tlapacoya's Pre-Clovis site returned radiocarbon dates between 21,000 and 24,000 years ago. The Topper site is in the Savannah River floodplain of the Atlantic coast of Virginia. The site is multicomponent, meaning that human occupations later than Pre-Clovis have been identified, but the two Pre-Clovis component date to 15,000 and 50,000 years ago. The 50,000 is still fairly controversial. 
Image courtesy of Ben A. PotterThe Upward Sun River Mouth Site has four archaeological occupations, the oldest of which is a Pre-Clovis site with a hearth and animal bones dated to 11,250-11,420 RCYBP.  | |
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