Dot Connecting Possibilities

Those who play connect the dots find the experience relaxing or agitating, depending on the outcome. Some see relationships between one idea and another despite having too little information to clearly link them. To complicate matters, lack of resources can limit time or money investments even though strong interest in a subject exists. I know this sense of tension well, especially after reading recent articles about Clovis Caches found in America.

I suspect few care much about Clovis culture let alone have a burning interest in stashes of stone tools ancient inhabitants concealed and didn’t retrieve. While made of common, not precious, materials, these relics equal buried treasure for those who love archeology and connecting to ancient humans.

The term Clovis Culture came into existence when a sharp-eyed New Mexican noted artifacts formed using a particular bi-faced fluting between Clovis and Portales. Since that discovery, scientists identifying stonework designed with this pattern characterize them as Clovis points. Scholars attribute the style to bison antiquus and mammoth hunters who lived at the end of the Pleistocene era about 13,000 years ago.

The article that started my exploration mentioned the Busse Cache that contained Clovis bifaces made of Niobrara or Smoky Hill Jasper. Anyone who’s walked country roads or plowed fields in Northwest and North Central Kansas has seen this frequently ochre-hued, silicified stone even if they didn’t know what to call it. Researchers have identified prehistoric quarries containing outcroppings of this desirable knapping material in Trego, Gove, and Graham Counties in Kansas and Fremont County Nebraska. That tidbit has me trying to connect points in history based on limited knowledge.

Interestingly, these western Kansas excavations produced desirable knapping material early hunters used for thousands of years. Oklahoma archeologists have found it in sites from east to west. To entice further, prehistoric mammoth and bison bones found during work on roads, bridges, dams, or other such dirt shifting activities occupy shelves and dark corners in regional museums and personal collections.

This combination makes me wonder how many Pleistocene hunters wandered this way in search of game and resources to make dinner-capturing tools. After all, the Great Plains supported modern bison and native cultures who depended on them for survival. This information increases my curiosity about how often their ancestors roasted a mammoth haunch under prairie skies.

Keep in mind state borders are fairly modern concepts so migratory people would’ve wandered from one watershed to another without worrying about taxes, land ownership, or other recent complications.  Nearly a decade ago, Dan Busse in Northeastern Colorado worked a field and noted a fingernail-size bit of Smoky Hill jasper that wasn’t native to his area. Upon further investigation, he dug up a hunter’s pack of fluted Clovis-style stones. Among them are several manufactured from Niobrara or Smoky Hill jasper, commonly found in western Kansas and Nebraska.

Add to this data information about KU professor Rolfe Mandel’s 2014 dig near Tuttle Creek. His team specifically searched for evidence of Clovis and pre-Clovis inhabitants in what is now Kansas. Their efforts are in the hands of lab analysts who work to verify their findings.

Though few Clovis Cache finds are documented in the U.S., such articles offer hope that any day now a Kansan could be turning over soil and make a discovery like a landscaper in Boulder, CO.  He recently found a stash of 80 artifacts used to butcher prehistoric camels and horses in his yard.

Though I doubt I’ll find such treasure, the combination of connecting dots leads me to expect I’ll soon read about the person who does.