The Plainview Site: 1962 Discoveries

Abstract

The Plainview site, in Running Water Draw of northwest Texas, was excavated in 1945 and is the type locality for the Plainview artifact style. The artifact assemblage was associated with a bone bed of Bison antiquus which likely resulted from at least two kills. The Plainview style is one of the best known of the unfluted Paleoindian artifacts, but much remains unknown about the site itself. A visit to the site by C.V. Haynes and J.J. Hester in 1962 provides a few additional clues about the site. Active quarrying southeast of the original excavations yielded more probable B. antiquus remains and two Plainview artifacts from the same stratigraphic position as the original finds. The artifacts fit well into the type assemblage. The possibility that the artifacts were associated with bone separated from the original finds hints at repeated Plainview-age use of a larger area for harvesting bison.

Keywords:

• Plainview
• bison
• southern High Plains

Acknowledgements

The set of black and white photos taken by Haynes during the 1962 field tour to Plainview and other sites in the region is now housed in the Department of Anthropology at Southern Methodist University. We thank David Meltzer for allowing access to the negatives and for scanning them. Three anonymous reviewers read the manuscript and one provided helpful comments and questions. We dedicate this paper to the memory of our colleague and friend Jim Hester.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Vance T. Holliday

Vance T. Holliday received his PhD in Geosciences from the University of Colorado in 1982. He was on the Geography faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (1986–2002) and is now in both Anthropology and Geosciences at the University of Arizona. He is Executive Director of the Argonaut Archaeological Research Fund, devoted to exploring the early peopling of the greater Southwest. His interests include Paleoindian archaeology and geoarchaeology as well as Quaternary soils and paleoenvironments, and Paleolithic geoarchaeology of eastern Europe.

C. Vance Haynes

C. Vance Haynes Jr received his PhD from the Department of Geosciences at the University of Arizona in 1965. He was on the Anthropology faculty at SMU (1968–1974) and then in both Anthropology and Geoscience at the University of Arizona from 1974 until retirement in 1999. His research has included Paleoindian archaeology and geology and late Quaternary geology across the US, Paleolithic archaeology and geology of the eastern Sahara of Egypt and Sudan, radiocarbon dating, US military ordnance 1860–1898, and historic archaeology of the US Indian wars.

Ruthann Knudson

Ruthann Knudson completed a PhD in Anthropology from Washington State University in 1973. She has worked with Plainview site/assemblage material since 1968. She is now a semi-retired independent researcher working with Paleoindian materials in the Southern, Central, and Northern Plains and Plateau.