Landscaping Reveals Clovis Cache
Posted on 26. Feb, 2009 by Shannon Graham in Archeological Excavations, Artifact Finds, Flint Artifacts
A routine landscaping job turns up a cache of 83 Clovis related artifacts. Approximately just 18″ below the surface lay a Paleoindian tool kit, undisturbed for 13,000 years. Undisturbed that is, until it was time for spring planting in Boulder, Colorado.
Patrick Mahaffey contacted Colorado University after a landscaping crew struck flint artifacts while working. When dozens of stone relics were removed from a concentrated area, Mahaffey initially thought them to be several hundred years old. After engaging CU, he was astonished to learn the significance of his find now referred to as the ‘Mahaffey Cache’.
What makes this find unique is that it was a utilitarian versus a ritualistic cache. Specifically, Douglas Bamforth of CU performed a protein analysis on the butchering tools which revealed traces of camel, sheep, bear and horses that roamed the area near the end of the last ice age.
Bamforth sent the stash of tools, which were left neatly in a shoe-box-sized hole by people who probably intended to return for them later, to Robert Yohe at California State University in Bakersfield for chemical analysis. The proteins on the artifacts, which were tested three times to ensure accuracy, were compared against the known biological makeup of mammalian families.
Another interesting feature of the Mahaffey cache is the striking similarity between large bifaces found here with ones found within the Fenn Cache. So striking that it appears they could almost have been made by the same hand.
Check out the full article and latest news on the find here.
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One Response to “Landscaping Reveals Clovis Cache”
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Anonymous
09. Jul, 2010
What,….MM hasn’t got his greedy hands on this yet?