Clovis Point: the Grandfather of Indigenous Art

Original Clovis points from the Drake Cache: https://insider.si.edu/2012/05/3d-imaging-adds-remarkable-dimension-to-understanding-of-north-americas-clovis-stone-points/

For the past 4 years, I’ve been training to learn one of the most iconic Native American artforms of all time. It may be the only art that is a heritage shared by every single North American Tribe. This art is also the ultimate in terms of Indigenous connections with North America's landscapes. Still, it's something I have yet to see in a Tribal art show. What I'm talking about, of course, is the Clovis point. Through this post, I'm going to take 4 enjoyable years of learning, that I've approached through studying the ancient pieces and through doing hands-on experimental work at the farm, and condense it down into just about 15 minutes to share with you.

The base of an original Clovis point from Franklin Co. TN, broken during fluting. Thousands of years later, the lower left corner was re-chipped into a scraping tool by a Native person. Centuries after that, Davey Crockett made his home on the same property (1812-1815). The stone is patinated Fort Payne chert.

Near the end of the last Ice Age, about 13,100 years ago, communities living across the habitable parts of North America suddenly began using a new stone technology. People have been chipping sharp-edged tools from flint-like rocks for as long as there have been people, but this technology stands out. The Clovis point is a mid to large-sized leaf-shaped projectile point / knife blade that usually has flutes created by removing big chips of stone from both sides of the base. Often made of colorful and tough material, Clovis points are commonly conceived of as “master works” in stone. For hundreds of generations after Native artisans stopped making them, their descendants continued to occasionally find old Clovis points and pick them up to use. These ancient works in stone continue to draw the attention of archaeologists and collectors today. One exceptional, original Clovis point reportedly sold for $400,000.

A Clovis that I chipped when I was about 20. The shape and the flute are OK. The flake scars look nothing like the originals.

A few years ago, I realized that even though I’d been making what I called "Clovis points" since I was in junior high, mine resembled the originals only in a superficial way. I set out on my Clovis Point Challenge, to identify exactly what separated mine from them, and in so-doing to hopefully learn something about deep heritage that was new to me. I've continued to experiment and learn. Along the way, this journey has kept reinforcing something I already knew - traditional arts are all about process. Focusing too much on the finished product deprives you of almost everything that you actually need to know. To do the art of Clovis points like the original artists did, you have to get a handle on process, tools, and use - in other words, you have to understand not just the finished form, but the full tradition that the form is a part of.

A Clovis point that I chipped this summer from a melted glass cup purchased at the Salvation Army store. The flake scars on this piece and all of the ones shown hereafter in this post have the right look.

Glass is pretty easy to shape. Here is a point I made earlier this week from raw Ft. Hood chert, a tough material. Despite the material's toughness, it has the same flaking style as the glass point above.

Archaeologists have long known that a pristine Clovis point is just a single snapshot in a progressive stone art tradition. The ancients picked up big pieces of flint-like stone when they could find them. They reduced these by chipping off massive flakes. These big flakes were made into points, cutters, and other tools. As chips continued to be removed, the original piece was shaped and progressively reduced in size, transitioning from a chopper to a platter core, to a knife blade, to a fluted point. Clovis points were designed to be used and then resharpened. Sometimes, the entire point, including the flutes would be covered up in new flake scars as it continued through its use-life. Even when a worn-out point finally snapped in half, the straight broken edge might see continued life as a tool for planing down bone to make other tools. With this kind of efficiency in material, Clovis lithic technology was perfectly adapted for communities who regularly traveled long distances by foot, carrying their stone with them.

A piece I made to show how the originals might have been hafted. The idea is based on some scattered artifacts found out of context and the shape of the fluted point. Here, the ends of two finely shaped pieces of bison bone are put into the point's flute channels. The bone pieces can be slid up or down to accommodate different flute lengths. A wooden shim (not shown) goes at the base of the point between the two pieces of bone to keep the point from sliding backwards. Glue and sinew would be used to securely bind the pieces together. This setup protects all but the tip of the stone point from impact damage. The flutes make for a thinner haft, which promotes penetration. The composite foreshaft is stronger than solid wood, more adjustable than solid bone, and can be interchanged with other foreshafts without replacing the entire atlatl dart. This ingenious design could explain why the ancients went to the trouble of fluting.

An original Clovis point in the Florida Museum of Natural History. Other than the flute and edge-sharpening, this point only has two and a half big flake scars covering this face.

Clovis technology embodies genius-level efficiency in another way, too. You can see this in the distinctive scars left by the removal of flakes used to shape the original points. They are characterized by driving flakes. This means that the points tended to be shaped by removing flakes that were long and able to travel through a certain amount of surface undulations and flaws in the stone with a regularity that sets Clovis apart from most other lithic technologies. This is especially the case since Clovis knappers often used tougher rocks than later stone-working traditions. Regularly, the flake removals on Clovis points had so much power and precision that they traveled across the whole surface of the preform/point and clipped off a small part of the edge on the opposite side. This is called an "overshot". At the extreme, a few original Clovis points only have three massive flake scars covering each face. Clovis flake scars also have muted percussion bulbs and travel with a pretty flat trajectory. When a preform is chipped this way on both sides, it makes a biface with a flat cross section, which is characteristic of some forms of original Clovis points.

A Clovis knife that I chipped from tough, raw Florence B chert from the Kansas Flint Hills. The surface is covered in four overshot flakes.

Today, skilled modern flintknappers collectively churn out hundreds, maybe thousands of Clovis points every year. 90% use copper tools that were unavailable to the original Clovis artisans. Copper leaves bold flake scars, but they have deeper percussion bulbs than those created by the organic tools available to the original Clovis knappers. Percussion bulbs created by antler are more diffuse because the antler is less dense than copper. However, because antler is less dense, it also means that hand-held antler tools generally lack the momentum (read “power”) to consistently create driving flakes through tough stone. Even with something like a moose antler (which is solid throughout, as opposed to deer antlers, which have pith), you have to draw your billet back past your head to get a hard-enough swing on the tough stones. When you do that, you lose the accuracy necessary to properly detach the flakes.

The same piece as the one above, now resharpened into a projectile point. It is fully covered in new flake scars.

One made on my present journey from olive oil bottle glass.

So how did the original artisans make Clovis points? Hmmm… There is a certain mystique about Clovis as being almost superhuman. After all, they hunted mammoth, traveled seemingly impossible distances on foot, and interacted with giant bears along the way; maybe those life experiences imparted them with some superhuman strength and precision as flintknapers… I respect the original Clovis artisans immensely. Myths, even cool myths, detract from what they actually accomplished as real human beings.

There is definitely something special about Clovis flaking, though. The flaking on the original Clovis points is distinctive enough that you can use the flake scars to separate out the vast majority of the original Clovis points from the modern ones. A Clovis point made of raw stone, that was shaped by driving flakes with diffuse percussion bulbs has a high likelihood of being an original, rather than a modern piece. Once we exclude superhuman powers, looking for how the original Clovis points were actually made requires looking for a different set of tools. This is where I see genius again coming into play in Clovis lithic technology.

A piece I made from Raw Tuscaloosa chert gravel from the Choctaw homeland. Even the original Clovis artisans used this very tough and temperamental stone only occasionally.

For use, some Clovis points were attached to large, arrow-like darts that were launched with an atatl. For the uninitiated, the atlatl is a stick with a spur on one end that attaches to the base of the dart. The atlatl lengthens the arm. This simple invention provides a tremendous mechanical advantage, capable of launching a stone-tipped dart with greater close-range penetrating power than a bullet fired from a 30-06 riffle. What if there was a similarly simple set of flintknapping tools that provided enough of a mechanical advantage to allow a mere mortal to chip a Clovis point from tough stone that matches the originals?

Me, shaping a raw piece of stone with my heavy duty antler punch and mallet. Both are about worn out after months of use.

Marty Rueter, a skilled abo flintknapper, has developed just such a set of tools and has generously shared the technology with the flintknapping community. Instead of holding your antler billet in your hand and striking it against the stone preform, you attach it to the end of a stick. In a sitting position, you clamp the stick under your knee and use your knee to hold the billet (now a punch) against the spot on the stone where you want to detach a flake. You detach the flake by striking a mallet into the punch.

A 5-inch-long Clovis point I made from very tough, raw Alabama Coastal chert. The original Clovis artisans imported this same material into the Choctaw homeland. I could not have shaped this with a hand-held antler tool.

This setup, which Marty calls a horizontal punch, is genius. It’s precise - you never miss the target, because you set the tip of the punch right against the striking platform before you hit it with the mallet. It also introduces the mallet as a primary variable in determining the way that flakes travel across the stone. This is significant on several levels. Wood comes in bigger pieces than deer antler, and it was a whole lot easier to find and easier to shape than mammoth tusk back in the Clovis days. Marty’s invention makes it possible to take a relatively small antler percussor, pair it up with a big mallet, and supercharge the power of that antler as a stone-chipping tool. Of course, you can tinker around not just with the size of a wooden mallet, but also its shape and weight-loading in ways that effect the characteristics of the flakes that the punch detaches from the stone.

The area where Clovis sites are located in the Choctaw homeland corresponds to the area where Tallahatta sandstone outcrops. Making points from this grainy rock makes me feel closer to ancestors.

On a finished piece, the distinguishing signatures of horizontal punch flaking are driving flakes, overshots, and preforms with a flat cross section. This technology is particularly efficient in mid-to-late reduction. In other words, you start reducing a piece of rock using a hammer stone and then switch over to the punch as the preform takes shape. With the mechanical advantages of the horizontal punch technology, it becomes not just possible to fine shape the toughest flint-like rocks, it becomes desirable because the tough rocks can be made into much more durable tools than glassier kinds of stone. Does all of this sound familiar? Actually, after you’ve practiced with it a bit, it gets pretty hard to use a horizontal antler punch to end up with anything that doesn’t look like Clovis flaking.

Two raw Texas "rootbeer" Clovis points on the left and a Midland on the right that I made this month. You can see the difference between the punch finishing on the Clovis points versus the Midland, which is covered in fine flake scars from deer antler pressure.

Original Clovis points are famous for being imperfectly perfect, meaning that they are skillfully shaped, but have jagged edges and are not always completely symmetrical. Most modern artisans focus on the outline of the point. Looking at the old Clovis points, though, you can see that their makers prioritized edge sharpness over outline. The edges on an old Clovis point tend to be straight when viewed from the side, but undulating when viewed from the flat faces of the point. This characteristic also ties back to the horizontal punch. With a quick pass of the horizontal punch late in the manufacturing process, the edges of the biface can easily be made thin, straight, and sharp when viewed from the side, but they are usually undulating when viewed from the top. Rather than being an imperfection, this sharp jagged edge is superior for cutting. It also maintains its sharpness well, especially when made from tough stone. We use these punched stone edges to skin our bison. They outperform the metal knives for many tasks and do not require resharpening very often.

A Suwanee point (same flaking technology as Clovis), made of tough, raw Alabama Coastal chert, being used to skin one of our bison. This point has been used in skinning three bison and has only needed one minor resharpening. The edge is superior to metal in its ability to separate the hide from the underlying tissue without leaving score marks in it.

A Clovis point I recently made from KC area Winterset chert. This beautiful stone is from the county where I grew up.

Besides the percussion flaking that we have talked about so far, stone can also be shaped by applying pressure. If the pressure flaking tool is hand-held, something like a deer antler tine or an ulna bone, it is easy to use it to even up the edges of a percussion-flaked point. Some of the old Clovis points were pressur flaked that way, but not most. Pressure flaking takes extra time and it ultimately just creates a less durable cutting edge. Leaving the edges as they naturally are after punching, rather than evening them up, is a time-efficient way to make a superior and durable cutting tool. Once again, the punch seems to be the default for making points that resemble the originals.

Three Clovis points that I recently chipped from raw Burlington chert from Green County, MO. Yes, I have blue dye on my hand in this image.

Like the foreshaft on an atlatl dart, you can change out the punches on the stick. I use a punch made from the base of a deer antler shaft for heavier work, a punch made from a deer antler tine for finer work, and another punch for fluting, swapping them in and out on the same stick. I also have two different persimmon wood mallets (persimmon resist splitting) for doing heavy versus fine work. Clovis flintknapping tools have been found in the Aucilla River in Florida. Made of mammoth ivory, they are the type of short billets that work well as horizontal punches and less well held in the hand. These originals do not have holes drilled in the base to insert a stick, but there is more than one way to attach a billet to a stick (Duct tape works great!). There are also other types of horizontal punches besides ones that fasten to a stick.

Bison horn punch on glass. These flakes scars look different from the ones left by copper or even antler.

Another insight from Marty - The punch material itself can introduce interesting variables to the flintknapping process. Besides antler, effective punches can be made out of some types of hardwood, including fire-hardened dogwood. The wooden punches create flake scars with even more diffuse bulbs of force than the antler. Buffalo horn can also be used as a punch on the glassiest as well as some of the coarsest stones. Buffalo horn punches tend to remove very thin flakes, with muted bulbs of force. They can be particularly useful for fluting thin points.

Both faces of three points made from the same Saratoga water bottle.

It has long been hypothesized that fluting was developed in the American Southeast, because a larger number and greater diversity of fluted points are found there than anywhere else. Some of the original Clovis points have relatively small flutes, removed like any other shaping flake (see Winterset piece above). However, others have massive flute removals traveling half or more of the length of the point. Such big flutes are dangerous to remove. Without the right support, the strike to remove the flute causes end shock that can easily snap the point in half. If the striking angle isn’t just right, the flute can travel nowhere or it can plunge deeply into the preform, again, hinging the point in half. Original artifacts indicate that flute failures happened even to the original Clovis artisans. Clearly, they considered the risk involved and the practice time necessary to develop the skill needed to reduce that risk, to be worth the effort. This probably had to do with the technology that was used to attached the Clovis point to the projectile (see hafting image above).

An obsidian Clovis made on my journey.

Several factors influence how far you can drive flutes on a point preform. Flakes like to follow ridges. A thicker preform made with a lensatic cross section provides such a ridge and makes it less likely for the flute to run off the side of the preform and break it in half. Rises or dips on the preform surface will cause flutes to terminate. After the two flutes are removed, where they meet each other at the base of the point makes a knife-like edge. This knife-life edge was seemingly important in the way that Clovis points were hafted, because you rarely see originals with a thick juncture between the flutes. In preparation for flute removal, the base of most Clovis preforms was made wedge-shaped, when looking from the side. After flutes were removed it came down to form that knife-like edge. For some of the Clovis points with longer flutes, the preform base was made more rectangular in side view. After a massive flute removal from each face, short flutes were taken off within the existing flute channels to create the knife-like juncture.

My jig with a point ready to flute.

To support preforms for taking long flutes, I use a simple jig made by lashing three sticks together. Other than the addition of the third stick, it’s the same setup as the fire board that I have used for starting fire-by-friction for years. My fluting punch is made from the base of a hard, brown-colored deer antler that we found on the farm. I’ve filed its working end into a wedge shape to concentrate the force on the fluting platform and to be able to fit the punch between the ears of a deep-base fluted point without crushing them. The angle of the punch’s working end is important. After a certain number of flute removals, the angle will naturally change from wear. When it does, I usually can’t remove a flute to save my life until I get it back to the angle I’m used to.

Another Clovis point I made from my hometown stone. Like some originals, this one is touched up with antler pressure.

Side and top views of my fluting punch.

The mechanics of fluting also depend on the type of stone. Obviously, glassy stones tend to promote longer flutes, but are also easier to snap in half. Some specific stones have their fluting quirks. For example, I've found that fluting Tallahatta with an antler tine punch, reduces failure and increases flute length over using my heavier fluting punch. On any stone, you can seemingly set everything up right, and the flutes still sometimes just don't travel for you. The original Clovis artisans sometimes fluted, re-worked, and re-fluted the same side of a point multiple times. I often do that too. If the previous flute ends in a big hinge, you have to remove it from the side. Then, the angle is usually about right to drive a better flute. Usually... On occasion, after 5 failed attempts, I send my point sailing. I have little doubt that this sometimes happened 13,000 years ago as well.

Left: a beer bottle. Right: a bottle that has been cleaned, crushed, and is currently molten.

Over the past four years, I have made a lot of Clovis points testing out these different variables and improving my dexterity. The types of stone that the originals are made from are millions or hundreds of millions of years old. These are finite cultural resources, irreplaceable. Rather than waste a mountain of stone with my experiments, I do most of my practicing on glass, which chips the same way as brittle siliceous stone. At first, I melted down old bottles into suitable shapes for chipping using a simple kiln that goes inside any household microwave. When I was ready to start working with bigger pieces, I transitioned to a lower-end glass kiln. In it, I can melt down trash glass into ingots large enough to be chipped into a 6 1/2 inch Clovis point. One old beer bottle will make one point of this size. The re-melted glass represents a cheap, renewable, and unlimited practice resource. Some pieces of glass can also have deeper connections with people and places than you might think.

An olive oil bottle from our kitchen.

Another olive oil bottle original. Its thicker, more lensatic cross section made it possible to drive these longer flutes.

Indigenizing. Left: a beer bottle thoughtlessly dumped on a Choctaw sacred site in Mississippi. Right: discarded, broken fragments of glass from a 19th century Choctaw boarding school, saved from the dumpster.

Today or just 13,000 years? I made this piece from raw Tuscaloosa chert gravel. The mineral-rich waters from the creek right by our house flowing over this stone for just 6 months has aged its look thousands of years.

Ethics. When I joined one of the professional archaeologist organizations that I am part of, I signed a sworn statement that I will never help commercialize artifacts. I will always stand by that. Selling new ones as old would go against everything I stand for. I occasionally donate my points to good causes and have sold a few as new. When I do, I put permanent marks on them so they can never be confused with the originals. Collectors think that misidentified modern points sitting in a collector's frame damages the archaeological record. Far more damaging is when looters tear through ancient, sacred sites, causing irreparable harm just to find artifacts to hang on their wall or sell. My flintknapping work actively supports federal law enforcement. Don't be a looter.

Raw Jefferson City chert.

The archaeological record tells us that the pre-Clovis communities living in North America were using a diverse array of stone tool technologies. With the exception of the Western Stemmed Tradition, most of these technologies are so non-distinct that pre-Clovis points are unidentifiable unless they are recovered in a sealed, datable archaeological context. The original Clovis points appeared suddenly over a huge geographic area. I think this is because their appearnce was connected with a horizontal punch technology which, once developed, spread rapidly between communities because it was just so efficient. The Clovis point was an expression of this technology. Some different regional styles of original Clovis points exist. I'm sure not every single original was made using a punch. Still, modern experiments with horizontal punches produce precisely the same flaking characteristics that define the Clovis points.. By default, these tools also produce the same type of flake scars that separate modern points from the original Clovis points. By 12,800 years ago, no one was making Clovis points any more. The technology had served people for just about 10 generations. It seems to have gone away right at the time the mammoths and mastodons went extinct. Some of the most iconic North American lithic traditions that came after Clovis - Folsom, Cody, Hardin, and Dovetail - also have characteristics that strongly suggest they were made using punch tools.

A Cracker Barrel ginger beer bottle that sat on the lunch table at important inter-Tribal meeting. This piece, made using a buffalo horn punch, is approaching Folsom metrics.

Four years ago, when I started down the path of the Clovis point challenge, one of the things that drew me to this art is that it has a foundational approach exactly opposite from what comes naturally to me. I approach many things in life as though I was making pottery - build the thing and then spend a lot of time carefully re-doing, tweaking, and polishing to try to approach perfection. At its heart, Clovis technology is the extreme of bold, skillful, irreversible strokes. You get what you get and there is no going back. I’ve really been enjoying exploring this other approach to creativity.

The technology and artistry of Clovis fascinate me, but even more I think what continues to draw me is the world these ancestors knew. It was a place with immense creatures like the giant ground sloth, and it offered even bigger freedoms for people. Few of the constraints that society imposes on our time and space today were in place back then. No fences, no time clocks, no medical debt. 13,000 years is a little less than 5 million days. To my way of thinking, a modern Clovis point made like the originals is 5 million nights spent at the campfire in the woods; it's 5 million days spent with friends and family on both sides of life; it's 5 million sunsets over the prairie. For the art of Clovis points, it's not an unbroken line; it's a circle of continuance.

Two views of a Clovis I made last month from raw Pedernal Chalcedony from New Mexico. This was a favorite material of Paleo folks in the Rio Grande basin. I spent a couple of summers doing archaeological excavation at their sites. Like several other stones shown in this post, I can't effectively shape raw Pedernal without the mechanical advantage of the punch.