Editing Clovis culture (section)

==Discovery==
On August 29, 1927, the first evidence of [[Pleistocene]] humans seen by multiple archaeologists in the Americas was discovered near [[Folsom, New Mexico]]. At this site, they found the first ''[[in situ]]'' [[Folsom point]] with the bones of the extinct bison species ''[[Bison antiquus]]''. This confirmation of a human presence in the Americas during the Pleistocene inspired many people to start looking for evidence of early humans.<ref>{{cite web |year=2004 |title=America's Stone Age Explorers |url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/stoneage/ |website=[[Nova (American TV series)|Nova]] |publisher=PBS TV }}</ref>

In 1929, 19-year-old Ridgely Whiteman, who had been closely following the excavations in nearby Folsom in the newspapers, discovered the Clovis site near the [[Blackwater Draw]] in eastern New Mexico. Despite several earlier [[Paleo-Indians|Paleoindian]] discoveries, the best documented evidence of the Clovis complex was collected and excavated between 1932 and 1937 near [[Clovis, New Mexico]], by a crew under the direction of Edgar Billings Howard until 1935 and later by [[John L. Cotter]] from the [[Academy of Natural Sciences]] at the University of Pennsylvania. Howard's crew left their excavation in [[Burnet Cave]], the first professionally excavated Clovis site, in August 1932, and visited Whiteman and his Blackwater Draw site. By November, Howard was back at Blackwater Draw to investigate additional finds from a construction project.<ref name="Mann20052">{{Cite book |last=Mann |first=Charles C. |author-link=Charles C. Mann |title=1491: New revelations of the Americas before Columbus |title-link=1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus |publisher=Knopf |year=2005 |isbn=978-1-4000-4006-3 |oclc=56632601}}</ref>

The ''[[American Journal of Archaeology]]'', in its January–March 1932 edition, mentions Howard's work in Burnet Cave, including the discovery of extinct fauna and a "Folsom type" point 4&nbsp;ft below a [[Basketmaker culture|Basketmaker]] burial. Reference is made to a slightly earlier article on Burnet Cave in ''The University Museum Bulletin'' from November 1931.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Heffner |first1=Edward H. |last2=Blegen |first2=Elizabeth Pierce |last3=Burrows |first3=Millar |year=1932 |title=Archaeological News |url=https://doi.org/10.2307/498270 |journal=American Journal of Archaeology |volume=36 |issue=1 |pages=43–73 |doi=10.2307/498270 |jstor=498270 |s2cid=245265264|url-access=subscription }}</ref>

The [[Dent site]] in Colorado was the first known association of Clovis points with mammoth bones, as noted by [[Hannah Marie Wormington]] in her book ''Ancient Man in North America'' (4th ed. 1957).<ref>{{Cite book |last=Wormington |first=H.M. |title=Early Man in North America |publisher=Denver Museum of Natural History |year=1957 |edition=4th |location=Denver, CO |publication-date=1957 |pages=43–44}}</ref> Gary Haynes, in his book ''The Early Settlement of North America'', suggested the type of [[wikt:fluted|fluted]] point thereafter associated with megafauna (especially mammoths) at over a dozen other archaeological sites in North America would have been more appropriately named "Dent" rather than Clovis, the town near Blackwater Draw that gave the type of point its name.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Haynes |first=Gary |title=The Early Settlement of North America: The Clovis Era |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=2002 |isbn=9780521524636 |location=Cambridge, U.K. |page=56}}</ref>