Clovis Points Served Many Purposes

News September 10, 2013

SHARE:
Clovis2
(Courtesy Michael Waters)

COLUMBUS, OHIO--New research suggests that Clovis points, thought to have been crafted for hunting mammoths, actually served as all-purpose knives. When Mark Seeman was at Kent State University, he and his colleagues identified rabbits’ blood residue on Clovis points from Ohio. Now Logan Miller of Ohio State University has examined ten stone tools under high-powered magnification, and found evidence that a Clovis point from Ohio was used to cut meat and soft plants, and another was used to kill an animal. “Such a versatile tool would have been handy for hunter-gatherers, who had to carry all their possessions around with them as they roamed across their Ice Age world,” commented Bradley T. Lepper of the Ohio Historical Society.

  • Features July/August 2013

    The First Vikings

    Two remarkable ships may show that the Viking storm was brewing long before their assault on England and the continent

    Read Article
    Courtesy Liina Maldre, University of Tallinn
  • Features July/August 2013

    Miniature Pyramids of Sudan

    Archaeologists excavating on the banks of the Nile have uncovered a necropolis where hundreds of small pyramids once stood

    Read Article
    (Courtesy Vincent Francigny/SEDAU)
  • Letter from China July/August 2013

    Tomb Raider Chronicles

    Looting reaches across the centuries—and modern China’s economic strata

    Read Article
    (Courtesy Lauren Hilgers, Photo: Anonymous)
  • Artifacts July/August 2013

    Ancient Egyptian Sundial

    A 13th-century limestone sundial is one of the earliest timekeeping devices discovered in Egypt

    Read Article
    (© The Trustees of the British Museum/Art Resource, NY)