I'm sorry I may have misunderstood, but you found a clovis point that is definitely 3800 years or younger?

You would really need to spend time looking at Clovis manufacturing debitage- LOTS of it, like at Gault, or the Little River, KY sites to see the amount of set up that went into intentionoally producing some of these massive overshots- Really I would prefer to not worry about overshots per se as much as the pattern of Beyond Midline flaking to thin and shape. If you have ever looked at unfinished Simpson points or the few recognizable preforms you see a different approach with broad thin flakes that often hinge at the midline- creating the thinnest spot at the widest spot out in front of the haft. The debitage piles show the patterned behavior- overshots do not just happen time after time after.... you might look at my reply upthread about essentially this same issue.

@paleotopioneer7779 Debitage is incidental, not intentional.

KJC, you don't believe that for one second. By that logic all Levallois points, Clovis blades, Paloeoindian point Flutes, Waller knives, and any other "flakes" that come off in or near their final form are "incidental, not intentionoal". Do you actually mean to say you just set up a platform and hope for the best with no idea what the outcome will be like? Your reductio ad absurdum clearly flies directly in the face of your skill as a knapper. I don't mean for a second to say every debitage flake shape is some calculated thing but Some certainly are- and Clovis outre passe flakes sure seem to be if you look at enough of the archaeological record. The care in platform preparation, force and performance needed to remove them, are not accidents. There are a couple overshot batwing termination (took off a wide swath of the far biface edge) flakes from Gault that were actually Flute Termination Removal Flakes. Everything about them was intentionally selected and set up before removal.

@paleotopioneer7779 As a knapper, yes, I hope for the best and make do with the results. In flintknapping and in logical analysis, the result does not reliably indicate the intent. I never benefit from an overshot (or any other flake) except when the results are within my tolerance, by coincidence, or by luck. Additionally, overshots are wasteful, and I always take measures to avoid them. Furthermore, to intentionally pursue overshot flakes is to flirt with the most unpredictable portion of the flake: the termination. Unpredictability reduces success. This is basic knowledge and is fundamental to the proper understanding of lithic reduction. Unfortunately, this lack of understanding is common.

It's a shame trying to have a discussion through messages and I think we have reached the point where we are going to talk past eachother. Perhaps if you really want to talk about Marcus Aurelius we could switch to that. Correct me if I am wrong but you do not knap with traditional instruments right? I only watched a handful of your videos but focused on your recent Clovis point. What you are able to do with metal tools, particularly with mid-grade stone materials, is influencing your understanding of the past in ways that do not bear on the actual archaeological record- something that you seem very reluctant to address. Again I would say look at some of the sites around you in Texas- the manufacturing information preserved at Pavo Real, Kincaid Rockshelter, and of course especially Gault tells you exactly what they were doing and how. But you need to look at debitage, early bifaces, preforms, late unfinished points, and especially the failures. A lot of what I've said in this and the Clovis Biface video comes out of the Clovis Technology book and really things that Mike Collins, Bruce Bradley, and Dennis Stanford beat into my head over a number of years. All of it based on looking at the Clovis archaeological record as thoroughly as you can. Everything I am saying here has been published a number of times by all of them, and me as well. You got one thing right though- Intentional overshot flaking is very wasteful of material. And when unconstrained by material quality and package size- Clovis people did NOT care- they maximized performance of their weaponry over any other considerations that we know of. If you are making 'clovis points' and avoiding overhsot and/or regular beyond midline flaking you are not really making Clovis points. You might get close morphologically but technologically you are doing something else entirely. If you are interested in stone fracture mechanics more than the prehistoric aspects (well those too but he got off into other stuff a lot) you might like Tony Baker's work. After he passed his website was archived for a long time- ele.net I'll see if I can find a link for it... gotta run, some idiot is shooting out by my cows at 11pm....

will do... I get to Mt View every now and then

Thank you so much for your very kind words. They are greatly appreciated... and true.. it's all true. 😁😁😁 Pete has made a spectacular array of casts over the years. About half of mine are from him. The rest are other folks making their own, a few from Mike Frank (sometimes through the Smithsonian) and a bunch made at the Florida Museum or at U Texas that I either made entirely or helped with when I was learning.

Hey CT sorry I just saw this. K got it and doesn't remember where I mean wear aaaah...

As any fool can plainly see the arm set goes with the hat..... Come on rookie... Does Tom know how to use the keypad now?

Hi Bob, You've hit on an incredibly complex geology problem here. Pretty much everywhere cycles back and forth between periods of accumulation and erosion of sediments. The specific sequence of those events are exactly what we try to determine when we find artifacts "in place" . What that place really means makes all the difference in the world. I think I ought to do a video on just Clovis contexts probably but I'll give one good example. At Blackwater Draw #1- the Clovis type site between Portales and Clovis- the dust bowl era of erosion was responsible for exposing artifacts and animal remains all over the place (all over the plains really). Whatever sediments had been deposited over them had been at least partially eroded and then heavy equipment used to gather gravel at the site dug them out even more. The Clovis artifacts nearby were completely exposed at the surface and even though there had been 13,000 years of these cycles with enough sediment to cover them winning out... that battle was lost in the 1930s. A particularly tantalizing aspect at Clovis is the fact that those 13,000 year old artifacts are sitting on top of a 17,000 year old land surface- meaning there had been a period of erosion that ended right about the time the Clovis people got there so their stuff gets buried in time for it to be preserved. This is really just a partial answer- think I will work on outlining a new video. thanks for the inspiration, Andy

Thanks..... I can't not tell that joke.... I'm so ashamed

Hiya, happy to tell you what I can- email is best [email protected]

Sent some photos

Hiya, Happy to take a look, email is best [email protected]

Hi Kelley, I have to admit I still need to finish going through all the papers on the new finds at White Sands- especially before I do my Sloth video. Glad you like the videos! If you have pictures I'd be glad to tell you what I can about your pieces- or put you in contact with NM folks to for that matter. Andy

Thanks, The next group of them on all the animals should be a lot of fun.

Hi Mike, I agree they are not required but, there is at least one Clovis billet. A mammoth(>) ivory billet was found at Blackwater Draw #1 many years ago. There was an article in American Antiquity in the 1980s I think. I have a cast of it. There is a mastodon ivory piece from TN, maybe Trull Site? that was said to be a billet as well but not so clearly manufactured into its shape. In Florida there are at least 2 ivory pieces that might have been used as billets, and one spineous process of a mastodon from Sloth Hole that has that characteristic pattern of pitted battering on the top of it. Admittedly several maybes with one clear example but I would suggest its more a question of preservation and discovery than absence in the Clovis tool kit. Frankly I think there is more evidence of Clovis people using limestone cortex covered chert cobbles as a version of a soft or softer hammer- akin to a billet.

please check this video about flintknapping tools kzbin.info/www/bejne/qHeVXqt_YpiKhqc

Lol

Let's not!

Hi Jim, [email protected]

Do you have photos of these? I would love to see them, I can share my email if you do. Thanks

@@artifactsantlersoh I am working on getting the drawings published.

@@artifactsantlersoh For all flintknappers tired of breaking Clovis. Get 2 pieces of oak yardstick 10 to 12cm long. Pitch two buttons of wood to one end of each. Wrap the tip of you clovis in a 1 inch wide strip of leather, then sandwich the point between the wood slats with the tip and base wrapped tightly with string- the base is now ready for fluting between the buttons-looks like a giant wood staple puller. They don't break anymore. Good Luck all.

If you know who made those I'd sure be interested in trying to find them. Maybe someone downloaded a copy if I don't know the person?? thanks, Andy

Look up Lucas Nicholson on KZbin, he was amazing at utilizing overshots to make some amazing preforms. I felt that he really proved that with enough skill, intentional overshots were a useful strategy for Clovis manufacture

@@humperdink46 Thanks!

Thanks, will be making some more shortly.

Hiya, A number of people have said similar things over the years. in the 1950s when Naco, AZ was excavated- a single mammoth with 8 Clovis points, it was suggested there were 2 calibers. The size range of points recovered at the famous Clovis kill sites is 25mm to 125mm. The smallest one came from the Mammoth kill at Blackwater Draw dug by the El Llano arch society in 62/63. From all the experimenting I've done, and read about, my take is the point has 1 single job. That is to open a hole and the kinetic force of the atlatl dart does the work- Mass and speed really matter, the point itself- not so much If you think of the point as the leading edge of the weapon system, rather than as a projectile by itself, it should come pretty clear that the point just needs to open a hole bigger that the diameter of the dart shaft and the KE is what really causes the damage.

I agree. As a big game bow hunter, there’s no way I would shoot (or throw) a spear with a massive point. There is a reason why smaller Clovis points are typically found in association with big game finds such as mastodon.

Thanks, working on the next run of videos on all the animals and plants at Clovis and earlier sites at the end of the Pleistocene across North America

Clovis Technology 2010 Bruce Bradley, Michael Collins, and yours truly Unfortunately there are not a lot of them around most of the time but... www.amazon.com/Clovis-Technology-Archaeological-Bradley-2010-12-01/dp/B01F9G87I6 whoa- Found it free as a pdf file:///C:/Users/User/Downloads/ClovistechnologyBook.pdf