Is There a Regional Variability Within Clovis Fluted Points in North America Influenced by Raw Material Selection?: An Analysis of Basal Concavity Shape

At some time around the end of the last ice age, around 11,500 P14PC yr BP / 13,300 Cal yrs BP, the first human hunter-gatherer groups entered North America where they encountered diverse environments and climates. These groups once separate and exploring these landscapes in a vast continent were hunting and killing the same megafauna; perhaps for the first time, they would have encountered mammoth, mastodon, gomphothere, giant sloth and camel etc. Other smaller, more recognisable species were also present and hunted; elk, deer and caribou and bison for example. Clovis fluted points were long regarded as the hallmark of the first humans to occupy the Americas. The different environments and landscapes encountered by these separate groups may account for the extent of the variability of these points that are so characteristic of this period. In this thesis research I suggest that Clovis was not the first stone tool technology in North America and that fluted points evolved from an earlier technology, and that Clovis was a localised fluted form that evolved regionally as these first groups spread out across the continent.In a previous study I asked the question "what is Clovis", perhaps after the present study "what is not Clovis" may be more appropriate