On Fluted Point Morphometrics, Cladistics, and the Origins of the Clovis Culture

ABSTRACT

Nine decades after the discovery of the Clovis type site, Blackwater Draw Locality No. 1, we are getting closer to solving the perplexing mystery of Clovis origins. Working together, geneticists and archeologists are closing in on the ancestral Northeast Asian and Beringian homelands. We can anticipate that future archaeology will fill in the details about the emergence of Clovis lithic technology, south of the ice sheets, from its Beringian precursors. Morphometric analysis of fluted points is increasingly used to address the origins of Clovis and the “mutation” of the Clovis form into other fluted point types. Since the early 2000s, cladistics, a technique borrowed from biology, has been employed in such analyses; the results are computer-constructed cladograms that purport to illustrate pseudo-genetic phylogenies of fluted points. Here, I critically examine the utility of cladistics for addressing the issue of Clovis origins and the stylistic or functional evolution of fluted points.

KEYWORDS:

• Clovis
• Gainey
• fluted point morphometry
• Clovis origins
• lithic technology

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Heather Smith and Jesse Tune for asking me to comment on the fluted point morphometry papers which were presented at the 2018 Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology in Washington DC. Thanks to Stuart Fiedel, Heather Smith, and Ted Goebel for making my ideas intelligible. Thanks to Jonathon Lothrop for aiding my research on Clovis and Chris Ellis for sharing information and ideas. Thanks also to my colleagues at the Arkansas Archeological Survey and the many avocational archaeologists for loaning me Paleo points from their collections. Special thanks to Sarah D. Stuckey who assisted with digital production of figures.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Julie Morrow (MA Zooarchaeology, PhD Anthropology, Washington University) served as a principal investigator for Louis Berger and Associates, Inc. from 1991 to 1992 and project archaeologist for the Office of the State Archaeologist-University of Iowa from 1992 to 1997. She currently serves as station archeologist for the Arkansas Archeological Survey where she manages collections, teaches, and conducts public archaeology, research, and site preservation in northeast Arkansas with assistance from the Arkansas Archeological Society, Native American tribes, public agencies, and private entities.

ORCID

Juliet E. Morrow http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4865-4762