Revolutionizing First American Thinking: The Topper site has yielded a bounty of Clovis evidence. Will it also demolish the Clovis First model?

From the Winter 2005-06 issue of American Archaeology (a publication of The Archaeological Conservancy).

This is taken and re-written from an article by Jan Collins.

The Topper site is located in Allendale County, South Carolina. Much of the site is Clovis. It is believed that the people who were the Clovis people came here as big game hunters, about 13,500 years ago. They had the characteristic fluted "Clovis point" hunting arrowhead. However, there are indications that there were earlier people. At this Topper site, artifacts were pulled out that may indicate a simpler type of chert tool - made by the "bend-break" method.

However, some archaeologists think that these lower strata stoneworks might have been formed naturally. The photos of artifacts included in this article, however, are evocative of being worked by human hands. It seems no one is disputing the age of the strata these are coming from, simply their provinence. Soil strata date from 15,000 and earlier, in the regions where the questioned, potentially-worked stones, occur.

The Topper site was important to prehistoric people due both to its access to nearby water, and to its use as a chert quarry. Chert is a stone easily worked into sharp and useful points.