A Clovis Point from the Pacific Northwest Coast Philippe D

CRP 27, 2010 LETOURNEAU 115

A Clovis Point from the Pacific Northwest Coast Philippe D. LeTourneau

➤ Keywords: Clovis, Northwest

Fluted points are extremely rare in the coastal Pacific Northwest (western BC, WA, OR). There are no excavated fluted-point sites in the region; there are 13 fluted-point isolates reported from western Oregon (Connolly 1994; Ozbun et al. 1997; Ozbun and Stueber 2001), 7 from western Washington (Croes et al. 2008), and none from western British Columbia (Carlson and Magne 2008). Most of these artifacts are identified as Clovis points.

Philippe D. LeTourneau, Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, Box 353010, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195; e-mail: [email protected] 116 LETOURNEAU Archaeology: North America

One of the western Washington isolates is a complete Clovis point from Site 45KP139, also known as the Yukon Harbor Clovis site, on the Kitsap Peninsula, west of Seattle. In 1995, the landowner found the point (Figure 1) in backdirt on the edge of a pond that had recently been excavated in a wetland. Archae- ologists from the University of Washington Burke Museum conducted shovel-

Figure 1. Clovis point from 45KP139. Face A on left, face B on right. Illustration by Sarah Moore 05 from photographs by Roger Kiers. cm probe surveys in the vicinity of the Clovis-point find in February 2004 (Stein et al. 2004) and August 2008 (LeTourneau and Hodges in prep.); no prehistoric artifacts were found. The wetland is situated in a topographic low in the glacial (Vashon Stade) landscape. In the immediate vicinity of the Clovis-point find, glacial drift sand underlies a late-Pleistocene/late-Holocene peat sequence that includes a layer of Mazama O tephra (LeTourneau and Hodges in prep.). The point is high-quality reddish brown chert whose source is not known. It is 113.74 mm long. Maximum width is 36.87 mm, basal width is 29.36 mm, and maximum thickness is 8.51 mm (measured 60 mm from base). The cross section is biconvex, the base is concave, and the lateral margins expand toward the tip and then begin to converge at a distance of about 34 mm from the base. The basal margin is heavily ground, and both lateral margins have moderate grinding from the base to the widest part of the point. Each face has a single flute scar; on face A it is 48.46 mm long (measured from basal corners) and 15.43 mm wide, and on face B it is 43.86 mm long and 22.19 mm wide. Maximum thickness measured in both flute scars is 6.99 mm. Facial CRP 27, 2010 LETOURNEAU 117 flaking on both faces is largely obscured by the flutes and post-manufacture retouch. There are no clear overshot flake scars, although each face has one broad flake scar that extends well past the midline. The point was manufactured from an end-struck flake blank as evidenced by two areas of remnant original ventral surface on face B; rings of force on these remnants indicate that the flake’s proximal end was at the proximal (basal) end of the point. Resharpening is evident in the abrupt shoulders at the widest part of the point and steep retouch along the right margin of each face that creates an alternate bevel when viewed in cross section. The 45KP139 point is one of a number of western Washington locations with fluted points or other evidence of human activity associated with late- glacial peat bogs (Kenady et al. 2007, in press; Meltzer and Dunnell 1987). Late-Pleistocene landforms are common in western Washington, so the association with wetlands provides a good starting point in modeling locations of Clovis and other late-Pleistocene sites in that region. I greatly appreciate the assistance of Laura Phillips and Kelley Meyers of the Burke Museum in arranging for me to study the 45KP139 Clovis point.

References Cited

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