Blackwater Draw (ca. 9500–3000 B.C.)

Eleven thousand years ago, a small spring-fed lake or marsh near what is now Portales, New Mexico was populated with extinct forms of elephant, wolf, bison and horse, and the people who hunted them. At Blackwater Draw, generations of the earliest occupants of the New World lived, creating a layer cake of human settlement debris including Clovis (radiocarbon dated between 11,600-11,000 years before the present), Folsom (10,800-10,000 years BP), Portales (9,800-8,000 years BP), and Archaic (7,000-5,000 years BP) period occupations.



Clovis archaeological sites are dated between 11,000-10,800 RCYBP (which converts to circa 12,500-12,900 calendar years before the present) and they are found pretty much throughout North America. The point and culture are named after the town in New Mexico near where it was first identified, although the name of type site is officially Blackwater Draw Locality 1.

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Point type