The Fox site (5WL8848): A Clovis occupation on the Kersey Terrace, northern Colorado

Abstract

The Fox site (5WL8848) is a collection of Clovis artifacts from the Kersey Terrace in northern Colorado. In the early 1970s, land-leveling for the construction of a large turkey farm near the town of Kersey revealed chipped stone tools in eolian sand dune sediments at the southern margin of the Kersey Terrace of the South Platte River. Max Fox and other employees of the turkey farm collected three complete Clovis projectile points, several fragmentary points, bifaces, and flake tools at the site. Fox forwarded information about the site to professional archaeologists in the early 1990s, but it was largely ignored after a brief geoarchaeological investigation. The Fox site contains a moderate frequency of chipped stone tools relative to other known Clovis assemblages in Colorado’s South Platte River basin, and it is located within a concentration of Paleoindian kill-butchery sites on the Kersey Terrace. Despite several contextual issues the Fox site is a significant contribution to the Clovis record of Colorado.

Keywords:

• Paleoindian
• Clovis
• Colorado
• lithic technology
• artifact collectors

Acknowledgements

I would first like to thank Rick Miller for providing access to study the Fox site assemblage, and for supporting academic research of private collections. This work would not have been possible without the advisement of Jason LaBelle, who encouraged and guided this descriptive research project of Clovis materials and fostered connections with the collection holder. The Office of Archaeology and Historic Preservation (OAHP) supplied data regarding Clovis site distributions in northern Colorado. Sincere appreciation is extended to Brendon Asher, Robert Hoard, and Mary Hoard for their thoughtful review of this paper. The Center for Mountain and Plains Archaeology at Colorado State University contributed essential resources for this study, and the Jim and Audrey Benedict Fund provided financial assistance. The author would also like to thank Alvin Plucker and Chris Zier for sharing information about the Fox site.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Note on Contributor

Kelton Meyer recently graduated with his Master’s degree in Anthropology from Colorado State University. His research interests include Paleoindian lithic technology, digital methods, spatial organization, and communal hunting.