So this is the sub-plow sediment
from unit 133 and
anything in here will have
will be undisturbed
for about 13,000 years.
Really looking
for the smallest flakes.
And then you've got
to get your face in there
real good
because these
things are tiny.
We have here
represents a
biface refurbishment flake.
Generally what's happening is
people are bringing
their hunting weapons
out here
after they've been used
and they're refurbishing them
for another round of hunting.
This is a flake fragment
of Attica Chert.
That is
exactly what
we're looking for.
I became aware of the site back
probably in the mid-seventies
as I was surveying the
and identifying sites
around this large
glacial marsh
and the Belson site sits on
the north side of that marsh.
I'd walked into the
field and found this
this bottom section.
I knew exactly what it was.
I got right
back in the truck
and came home.
And this time...
The first Clovis point
turned up in 2006.
And I picked it up.
I identified it.
It's laying there for,
you know, 13,000 years.
First, I thought it was
kind of a fluke
because Clovis
was never discovered
here in Michigan before.
The theory is Clovis
wouldn't be found here
because by the time
that fluted point
technology reached
the Great Lakes Basin,
it had morphed
into a different style.
We opened up the site
and we're very pleased
at what we've found.
The big question was
underneath the plow zone,
in the subsoil, was there
undisturbed Clovis material?
And yeah,
we're recording a whole
layer of Clovis material
that's undisturbed.
It's laying there for,
you know, 13,000 years.
So what we're doing
is mapping each one of these,
and we find it in the ground,
creating a data map
of exactly
where all these little pieces
of debris fell.
And hopefully
we can start to understand
how people
were using their space.
7.8 in length.
We think we're
pinpointing places
where they were carving up
game,
we're pinpointing places
where they were scraping
hides, pinpointed places
where they were
resharpening their tools
or making tools
with some of the larger
flakes.
All those little details
indicate different,
different things that
were going on on the site.
Clovis People were
constantly traveling.
They were constantly
following the herds.
Probably twice a year
they were harvesting
migratory animals.
Whether it would be
large megafauna
like the wooly mammoth
or mastodon.
More probable
would be caribou.
For some time
I actually
worked on the drawings,
those original
drawings are right here.
Clovis is normally considered
to be a plains way of life.
Did these guys
come off the plains
as, late Clovis
bison hunters,
and they then switch
readapt to
the hunting
of the caribou?
Or did they realize
that they were moving
to the environment
and immediately
engage in a different kind
of technological
and social organization?
And, oh, well, see,
we have a lot of
work to do yet.
I think the most
important thing is
it shows
Clovis had actually traveled
this far north
up into the Great Lakes basin.
You know,
Clovis has been studied
in the southwest
and in the southeast
extensively.
But to find him
here in Michigan
is is
really
an extraordinary thing.