In this episode of ETV Classics, the ETV crew joins with archaeologists on a virtual field trip to the Topper archaeological site to learn more about the Clovis people who lived in SC and much of the eastern and western United States around 13,000 years ago, near the end of the last Ice Age. The Clovis hunted bison, mastodon, and mammoth and used tools that they created from stone located near the Savannah River.
At the dig site, the archaeologists describe the various periods as they excavate. They describe the Woodland, Early Archaic, Archaic, and about 1 meter down and 13,000 years ago, Clovis period. Artifacts from Clovis usually are found in the same layer as the extinct animals such as the mammoths and mastodons.
The process of mapping and the tools used for excavating are described in detail. Clovis technology was bifacial, meaning that the tools were chipped or flaked on both surfaces to create a thin, flat, sharp object, which would create a good, broad, flat hafting surface. The Clovis point would be put on short, tapered fore shafts so they could be removed. These, in turn, would be inserted into a larger shaft where they could have been thrown with a spear-thrower or used as thrusting spears.
Textbooks say the first Americans crossed over a land bridge from Siberia as the melting glaciers presented an ice-free corridor, however, there are other routes they might have chosen. The golden age of Clovis lasted no more than 300 years, and its culture vanished. Questions remain as to their sudden disappearance.
