A Clovis Projectile Point from the Kansas River

Abstract

The presence of a Clovis projectile point near Bonner Springs, Kansas, indicates that Clovis people occupied the area between the Clovis site at Twelve Mile Creek in Western Kansas and the Clovis site at Kimmswick near Saint Louis, Missouri. The Symbos-Cervalces fauna from the Kansas River suggests that the Clovis occupation of the Bonner Springs area was probably ecologically more similar to the Clovis occupation in the vicinity of Kimmswick than to the Clovis occupation in the vicinity of the Twelve Mile Creek site in Western Kansas. The evidence of human occupation of Kansas during the Pleistocene is very sparse. This is ironic because the first scientifically recovered proof of man's association with extinct Ice Age animals in the Western Hemisphere was found at the Twelve Mile Creek site in western Kansas in 1895 (Osborn, 1910). A fluted projectile point was found in association with Bison antiquus at the Twelve Mile Creek site. This style of projectile point was later found in a number of other sites in North America, frequently in association with the bones of extinct elephants. Recently a Clovis projectile point was recovered from a gravel bar on the Kansas River near Bonner Springs, Kansas.