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-7272
Tuesday, February 6, 2001
TECHN
THE BATTALION
SPEARHEADING HlSTO
A&M anthropologists in search of America’s earliest settlers
By Stuart Hutson ■
The Battalion
As Michael Waters gently thumbs a piece of flint that
may appear to be no more than a simple arrow head to
the average observer, his eyes take on a deep gaze, re
vealing that a few simple lines cut in stone tell a greater
story than a thousand lines of text.
For Waters and his colleague Harry Shafer, both pro
fessors of anthropology at Texas A&M, this story is of
the first human settlements in America, and it is written
in a collection of artifacts from the heart of Texas.
Waters and Shafer,
along with researchers
from the University of
Texas-Austin and sev
eral other institutions,
are halfway through a
three-year-long exca
vation of Gault Site, a
30-acre area in Bell
County, Texas. The
area’s limestone hills
and bubbling creeks
made an ideal site
11,500 years ago for
the early inhabitants of
the New World to stop,
take a breather and
make a few tools.
“This is possibly the
largest concentration of
artifacts from this
group ever found,”
Shafer said. “Normally,
small kill sites are
found that reveal one or
two artifacts, often on
the ground’s surface,
maybe resulting from
one of these guys
throwing a spear at a
mammoth, missing and
What did they
look like?
The only complete skele
tal remains found of Clovis
hunters were of two small
children, so no direct evi
dence is present as to what
these early residents of
North America looked like.
However, Waters and Shafer
said that if modern people
were to see a Clovis hunter
walking down the street to
day, they probably would
not recognized them.
“They probably just had
smaller and skinnier skulls
with more rugged features
— like those of a NFL line
backer,” Shafer said.
The skull to the right is a
replica of a skull of a woman
who lived at the end of the
Folsom period that immedi
ately followed the Clovis
period. The woman’s face
below is a researcher’s in
terpretation of how the Fol
som woman’s face may
have looked.
then running away
yeah, like he’s going back for his spear.
“These people seemed to think that this was an ide
al staging ground, where they could rest, have babies,
make tools and socialize. And, evidently they thought
it was a really, really ideal setting, because they kept
returning for thousands of years. Today, it is one of our
greatest opportunities to rediscover some things about
these ancient people.”
The people are named the Clovis hunters, after a site
in New Mexico where arti
facts from their culture
were first found. Waters said the
group lived between 11,500 and
10,900 years ago in North Ameri
ca, surviving largely by hunting
herds of mammoths and bison.
“This is a truly unique cul
ture,” Shafer said. "The elements
of the culture are shared by mem
bers all across thescountry, and
they were masters of craftsman
ship, especially when it came to
making spear points, because
they were such an intricate part of
their lives.”
COME HERE OFTEN?
“The Clovis hunters were
pulled across the land by the herds
of animals which they were hunt
ing,” Shafer said. “So they proba
bly spent much of their lives trav
eling in order to follow the
seasonal migrations of the mam
moths or bison.”
He said this nomadic lifestyle
resulted in an extremely rugged
and dangerous routine for the
Clovis, who needed places to rest
and recuperate.
“This site is really just a stag
ing point B for a trip to point A,
which in this case was hundreds of
miles away into what is now
Kansas,” Shafer said. “This area
had vast supplies of what they
needed, and most of all, flint for
the tools they would use for the
trip. ... We know that they stuck
with the same tools because we
have found worn spear tips that
originated in Kansas.”
Waters said the Texas site was
visited regularly for 9,000 years,
offering invaluable clues to the
evolution of the area’s cultures.
“It helps us put things in more
of a timeline perspective where
we can say that this particular tool
and the people that used it came
after this other one,” he said. “It
also helps us understand how
technologies (how the cultures
made tools) changed and when
they changed.
“Spear points made in the fash
ion of the Clovis hunters are here,
but so are those of the Folsom (the
next cultural category of people,
ranging from 10,300 to 10,800
years ago) as well as those of oth
ers that followed.”
6,
O
0
O
l J
G
a
p
s
ARCHAIC
ings at the Gault site
may provide evidence
for the first theory.
“The excavation of
this old site didn’t find
any spear points that
would indicate a cul
ture before the Clo
vis,” Waters said.
“But what we may
find is that the technol
ogy we find as pre
dominant in this area is
the same as is found in
Alaska near the Bering
Strait. This, then, could
mean that the culture
was carried across from
the Old World.”
FOLSOM
CLOVIS
SO, WHAT'S YOUR POINT?
Being able to sequence the technological changes
(especially those involving making spear tips) may
help to form a more decisive picture of how the
original human inhabitants of North America first
conquered the land. Waters said.
There are several theories of early inhabita
tion of North America. Waters said a common
theory is that people with the culture of the
Clovis migrated across a temporary ice
bridge that formed across the Bering Strait
(the gap between Alaska and Asia). These
people then migrated down through
North America, traveling between two
gigantic sheets of ice that covered
much of the continent.
Other theories, however, depict a
culture of hunters predating the Clo
vis, who migrated to North Ameri
ca through means other than across
, the Bering Strait, such as by boat.
This culture then evolved into the
Clovis hunters.
Waters and Shafer said find-
SHARPENING
THEIR SKILLS
Shafer said the Clovis methods
of making spear heads not only
make the culture stand out, but may
also link them to the Old World.
. “You can tell that the later spear
points were made in a much more
cavalier way,” he said. “The later cul
tures were more stationary around ar
eas where they could just pick up an
other piece of flint and make a knife
or spear head if one broke, but the Clo
vis had to design their tools to be
durable and high-quality.... They were
real craftsmen who would start with a
piece of flint the size of a brick and, in a
few minutes, chisel it down to an artfully
crafted, durable spear head.
“The later cultures would just take shards
from the flint and then just shape those into
spearheads. The Clovis method is a school of
technology that was probably taught to children
— I think this because we have found spear
heads with really basic mistakes — and had a
2,000 year-old history back in the Old World.”
Shafer said part of the skill put into making
the spearheads may also come from a respect
for the beasts the Clovis hunted.
“These people lived in a world where
everything was mystical and magical,” he said.
“They could have put a crude point on a sim
ple rock and I assure you that it would have
been just as deadly, but these people chose the
best, most decorative materials and took care
in the design.
“I would think, though, that it wouldn’t be
EDGE SEIARPEMED
w i ih quartzite limestone
tone
any less or any
more significant than a
farmer who goes to church praying for rain. These peo-ij
pie were dependent upon nature, and were therefore Ih;
tune with it in a way that we lost thousands of years agb.:
This may have been a way of mapping themselves in.
with the natural clockwork.”
DULLED EDGES
THICK
CEMTER
for extra
strength
ELUTED IMDEnTIOM
for insertion into end of spear
PHOTO ILLUSTRATIONS BY STUART VILLANUEVA & RUBEN DELUNA/The Battalion
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