Post Clovis Fluted Point Types?

[chase]

Post Clovis cultures
Last night I have a saved link to my web browser, which I inadvertently clicked on, showing maps of distribution of Paleo-Indian occupation. Here   http://pidba.utk.edu/maps.htm  Most all agree that the Clovis culture was the predominated start to Paleo-Indian occupation throughout North and South Americas , with Pre-Clovis occupation only beginning to grab traction in archaeology circles, such as Garscales, Sloth Slayers site and others. What gets more confusing is the post Clovis culture of Paleo-Indian occupation. Folsom http://www.arrowheads.com/folsom/410...olsom-mystique , Cumberland http://www.lithiccastinglab.com/gall...ointspage1.htm , Gainey http://www.ssc.uwo.ca/assoc/oas/points/gainey.html , Barnes http://www.ssc.uwo.ca/assoc/oas/points/barnes.html , Crowfield http://www.ssc.uwo.ca/assoc/oas/points/crow.html , Redstone http://allendale-expedition.net/publications/23-131.pdf and Suwanee/Simpson (no linkwith information) fluted point types. (If you know of a point type, one I have missed please share)(I also think that another topic should be on the none fluted point types such as Hi-Low, Goshen, Midland…ect.) Each has a more limited distribution area/region but all seem to end around the major river valleys with overlaps. All have similar traits with unique feature to all. I guess the question I have, is that after Clovis, did all these fluted point types become separate cultures or variants of a collective culture? I am interested in hearing what the members have on this?
Thanks in advance!

[JoshinMO]

I had an overstreet with a chapter in front that mentions something about cumberlands possibly being earlier than clovis or along side/same era. I cant say myself but its an interesting read, good post!

[kreative]

Posted by [GarScale]:

San Patrice and Early Triangular are both fluted by definition.

[CliffJ]

GarScale wrote:

San Patrice and Early Triangular are both fluted by definition.

By whose definition??- only in Overstreet that I can find. In both Perino's and Justice's fine typologies, it is correctly called basal thinning on those and other Early Archaic types. So, that statement really depends on the true definition of fluting IMO.

[Ftperry]

Early in the 1950's Cumberland seems to have been "assigned" a post Clovis timeframe without any supporting  evidence. Since then, numerous site reports contain ages for Cumberland preceeding Clovis by as much as 2500 years. These reports were largely ignored since they conflicted with the popular "Clovis First" theory at the time. Now that science has recognized Clovis was preceeded by other cultures, the next few years will likely show Cumberland preceeded Clovis and most probably continued to exist right up till Clovis times.

[Ron Kelley]

I am using an outdated copy of Overstreet (Twelfth Edition)
and it shows Cumberland predating Clovis by 150 years.

[clovisoid]

[QUOTE]CliffJ wrote:

San Patrice and Early Triangular are both fluted by definition.

By whose definition??- only in Overstreet that I can find. In both Perino's and Justice's fine typologies, it is correctly called basal thinning on those and other Early Archaic types. So, that statement really depends on the true definition of fluting IMO.
  I'd agree with Cliff.  I've probably got about 350 San Pats or so from Tx -and- Louisiana, and most of them would be best described as basally thinned.   But I can see where Garscale is coming from as well. There is the odd piece out there that shows clear fluting prep (preparation of a "nipple" platform off the center plane of the biface.)  Those came from a couple of camps that Mark Adams dug down in your area Garscale, and I wouldn't be surprised if they were on the earlier end of the spectrum (just conjecture on my part.)
Early triangles are an odd bag.  Some aren't thinned very much, others are basally thinned, and some others almost remind me of a triangular Redstone and look very fluted.  I'm not sure all of them are the same point type.

[cgode]

Ftperry wrote:

Early in the 1950's Cumberland seems to have been "assigned" a post Clovis timeframe without any supporting  evidence. Since then, numerous site reports contain ages for Cumberland preceeding Clovis by as much as 2500 years. These reports were largely ignored since they conflicted with the popular "Clovis First" theory at the time. Now that science has recognized Clovis was preceeded by other cultures, the next few years will likely show Cumberland preceeded Clovis and most probably continued to exist right up till Clovis times.

  "Clovis first" and earlier dated material is still a controversial subject despite what some say is factual data, others say the data is skewed. I get the feeling the more senior (older) archaeologists that have based their entire career and reputation are not too quick to "accept" the notion that they may be wrong.
It's an interesting subject and will probably be controversial for some time to come.

[clovisoid]

Chase, awesome idea for a thread.  It would be neat to see a cleaned up one with examples.  One of the most popular pages on Tony Baker's site (ele.net) was the single page reference with C-14 days from different sites, it was accessed from all around the world by both amateurs and professionals, linked to in hundreds of sites, etc.  These types of one stop references are very powerful ways of sharing info.
You start getting into splitting which I despise in the archaic, but I love in the paleo time frame.  There were two victims of Clovis-First.  The first victim, and now a celebrity, is anything Pre-Clovis.  Pre-Clovis is being vindicated and will get awards for pain and suffering via lots of publication and research.  The second victim, and the one that will probably never be recognized fully, are all the non-Clovis fluted points that were just clumped into Clovis or pushed to post Clovis without any real evidence for being younger.  Gainey, Crowfield and others were long recognized, but almost treated as less interesting, others were just called Clovis variants.  Cumberland may or may not be older, but not many archaeologists were interested in them because sites aren't common and they were presumed to be guilty of being younger.
I'd add Holcombe from Michigan without question, but some people have split out the fluted points from non-fluted points from the Holcombe site.  I'd personally add in Wheeler, but again not everyone would.  I'd add Lamb -and- Derbert as a single type.  Bull Brook is an often over looked type, but it is as distinct from Clovis as Redstone or Cumberland from the way the bifaces were made to the tool kit found a the type site.
Just based on visual appearance here are at least 10 different type of fluted points from South America, but the research is so sparse and scattered that it's hard to make heads or tails of it.  Some look like heavily fluted Daltons, thre are a couple of types of fluted Simpson -and- Fishtail looking points, some are my Clovis -and- Clovisoid points, others are perfectly fluted Pedernales looking things.  True Clovis, appears to have made it into Panama and then over to my site on the Caribbean coast.  Not much evidence for Clovis beyond there.

[kreative]

Posted by [GarScale]:

Fluted ETs

[CMD]

A suggested sequence for the Northeast:

http://arrowheads.com/forums/northeast/78282-new-englandnortheast-paleo-point-sequence

Variability of Debert fluted points via re tipping and rebasing:

http://anthropology.uwo.ca/cje/Publicationpdfs/Debert%20Fluted%20Points.pdf

[JoshinMO]

"Fluted" Cobbs (or possibly other type like Stansfield)  :dunno: . No, Thinned.

[kreative]

Posted by [GarScale]:

I think the tricky deal here is trying to separate whats basal thing from fluting since they served the same purpose.  If you are trying to study the transition from Clovis to later types, I think you have to consider them as an evolution of the same ideal.

[clovisoid]

GarScale wrote:

I think the tricky deal here is trying to separate whats basal thing from fluting since they served the same purpose.  If you are trying to study the transition from Clovis to later types, I think you have to consider them as an evolution of the same ideal.

  Heads up, I was just listening in on a long conference call, so I had about two hours to kill here...  It's wordy.
Gar, I'll agree and disagree.  As a concept, I agree that aggressive thinning of the base in the paleo and early archaic are all part of the same group of things. It might be flute, or multiple thinning strikes, or even the poorly named side flutes seen in some Midlands and overshot created pseudo flutes seen in some Hazel variety Clovis.
I'll disagree to the extent that the differences in flutes are very interesting.   The oldest fluted point dates known are well documented, and are what I think of as Clovis. However within a couple of hundred years there was an explosion of fluting and thinning that lasted for about 600 to 800 years. I think those flutes tell us a lot about the spread of technology via communication and interaction between paleo peoples, but I've had smarter people than me laugh at my ideas.  We now know that there were existing people living in the Americas when fluted points spread, and that makes it easier to explain how quickly they spread.  Clovis was a whole package vs just a point (the point, foreshaft, atlatl, types of flakes, cores, red ochre, etc.) that for some reason worked better than what locals had, or was perceived to work better for some reason.  People using Sloth Slayer, Haskett, Jobo, Bone Pin, and other technologies probably stopped and adopted Clovis technology.  Some might have adopted a full lifestyle of megafauna/migratory hunting where they might have originally been limited to non-migratory animals like Sloths, Elk, Deer, seafood, etc.  Others might have just picked up the new fashion and kept their basic way of life.
My opinion is that some of the fluted point groups learned how to do it from a common teacher (not a single person obviously, but direct interaction by observing someone trained by a 'culture'), and others didn't.  I think small groups probably met up at quarries, watering holes, etc. and instead of being blood thirsty killers, they probably enjoyed the company and chance to share some DNA.  These friendly groups probably learned first hand, and then variations emerged as generation and decades of individual expression spread.  Other groups might not have been as friendly and only saw finished pieces not the relaxed process of making it, or maybe they back filled an area after Clovis moved through and only saw finished points at kills, or perhaps they saw rejects and broken bifaces and the quarry.  But the point is they didn't get to watch people make Clovis directly in all the steps.  They reverse engineered the technology vs being taught how to make it.  The clearest example of this is my Clovis stuff in South America and fluted fishtails.  They are both fluted points that occupied the same area, used the same resources and probably the same time, but things like overshots, core blades, types of bifaces are missing.  Simply put a fluted Fishtail was made by someone who didn't know the ins and outs of Clovis technology.  A modern example is with the Toyota car.  The engineers that Toyoda (the family name) hired didn't have access to the Ford -and- Chrysler factories and ways of doing things, so they took a Chrysler Airflow sedan and some used Fords, broke them down, and built the Toyota AA that looks like Chrysler but Ford like in many features.
The four extremes  of fluting are Folsoms, Cumberlands, Classic Clovis, and fluted Dalton.  All are fluted very differently.
1. A Folsom flute is usually flatter and probably required an indirect technique because they didn't rework the bases as extensively as many modern knappers do.  The makers could make a perfectly thin point that didn't need fluting, and the flute was almost always taken at very specific stages in the biface.  They didn't really use fluting in early stage biface work to thin the piece, they used other strategies. 
2. A classic Clovis can be fluted with direct percussion, and  flutes were taken whenever the maker decided to thin the biface (early stage, mid stage or last step on a finished piece.)
3. A Cumberland has a very deep flute and almost certainly needed some type of special brace to make them. I don't think they carried a jig with them, but the point needs to be supported and isolated in a way that can't be done with a piece of leather and your leg.  Without the support you get ripples in the flute that ancient pieces simply do not have.  (Maybe they bound them in sinew, used wooden blocks, cut antler cradle/vices, used forks in trees, needed two people with one essentially standing on the piece, etc.)
4. Dalton makers often fluted their bifaces early like Clovis makers, but the flute is always erased by later flaking.  Lots of broken Dalton bifaces were originally thought to be Clovis because of the fluting.  Occasionally they refluted pieces with a non-functional flute that doesn't really reduce the thickness of the biface, it just barely peels off the surface flaking in a narrow channel from the base.  It's very intentional and requires some special flaking to set up a ridge and a small platform that was usually removed by a pressure flake.

[clovisoid]

GarScale wrote:

 

  GarScale,
Some of your Early Triangles look really out of place with the Middle Archaic pieces from Central Texas.  Are you digging them up at an earlier layer?  There is no doubting the age of the CenTex pieces, lots of dates and multiple sites, but a lot of collectors still call all of them Paleo.  Yours actually look kind of paleo-ish to me (or early Archaic.)
You've mentioned it before, but some of those tips have Cody like flaking.  One of the ideas that Tony Baker liked was that that fluting developed as strategy to rebase broken thick bodied points.  Some of your pieces look like that, but with Sloth Slayer or Cody points instead of Hasketts, Mesa and Jobo.
Here is the link, you need power point to see it and see the animation.
PowerPoint presentation on rebasing pieces with flutes