Alexandria's Oldest Artifact: A Clovis Point from the Freedmen's Cemetery Site

Archaeology at Freedmen's Cemetery

A 13,000-year-old Clovis Point was found at the Freedmen’s Cemetery Site in August 2007. This is the first time that Archaeologists have found a Clovis Point in Alexandria. The Clovis Point is a diagnostic marker for an era known to archaeologists ast he Paleoindian period that lasted from as early as 18,000 to about 12,000 years ago. The Clovis Point provides the first concrete evidence that Native Americans were present in Alexandria during the Paleoindian period.

Until this discovery, the oldest-known Alexandria artifact was a 9,000-year-old Kirk point, from the Archaic period, found at Jones Point. Both of these prehistoric artifacts were found during archaeological excavations conducted as part of the Wilson Bridge project.

 

The Alexandria Clovis Point

 

The Alexandria Clovis Point, made of quartzite, was broken during manufacture. According to Fairfax County Senior Archaeologist Mike Johnson, who first identified the point, the tip broke off during late stage lateral thinning, when the knapper was trying to remove a small lump near the tip. Clovis points are usually made of high-quality chert or jasper, but the tool-makers of this period were highly competent and could adapt their technology to other stone which is harder to work, such as local quartzite cobbles.

Clovis is identified by its ground, concave base, bifacial blade, and the fluted channel, which allowed the point to be hafted or attached to a spear. Clovis points were manufactured and used by bands of hunters as they roamed the grasslands and open conifer forests that would have been present in Northern Virginia as the glaciers from the last Ice Age began to melt. The McCary Fluted Point Survey records every occurance of this important artifact type in the Commonwealth. To date, around 1,000 Clovis points have been found, including seven in neighboring Fairfax County. Most were made chert and other imported stone rather than the local quartzite.

The early date, ca. 13,000 BP (Before Present), comes from a new look at radiocarbon dates related to other Clovis sites in various parts of the country. Clovis is named after a site in Clovis, New Mexico, where a distinctive fluted point and other tools were found in 1932, in association with a woolley mammoth kill. Clovis sites were until recently dated to ca. 11,200 BP, but new research has pushed these dates back by nearly 2,000 years. Other sites, such as Cactus Hill, point to the presence of pre-Clovis sites in Virginia.

• Alexandria Archaeologists Discover 13,000-Year-Old Artifact. Office of Historic Alexandria News Release, August 9, 2007
  

More on Virginia's Prehistory

• Prehistoric Alexandria
• First People: The Early Indians of Virginia (VDHR)
Cactus Hill and Pre-Clovis (Science News Online)

Some Prehistoric Sites in Alexandria

The Freedmen’s Cemetery Site, on a bluff overlooking Hunting Creek, was a major prehistoric site, periodically visited by different groups of native peoples for thousands of years. Paleoindians left the Clovis point 13,000 years ago. In the Archaic period, 10,000-3,000 years ago, several stone tools and thousands of quartz and quartzite flakes from the tool-making process were left on the site. A few Woodland period artifacts were also found, from 3,000-400 years ago. During the Civil War, the graves of the Freedmen’s Cemetery were dug through the prehistoric site. The site will become a Memorial Park.

Other tools from the Freedmen's Cemetery Site have been identifed as Middle Archaic Morrow Mountain II and Halifax points, a possible Middle Archaic Rice Lobed point, and LAte Archaic Savannah River, Hellgrammite and Calvert points.

The Jones Point Site, also on the banks of Hunting Creek, was inhabited in the Archaic period, but Woodland Period artifacts (3,000 to 400 years ago) were more prevalent. The most important find from this site was the discovery of two Woodland period dwellings -- the only prehistoric structures yet found in Alexandria. In the historic period, this was the site of an 18th century ropewalk and quarantine house, and of early 20th century shipyards. Jones Point, http://oha.alexandriava.gov/archaeology/jonespoint/ now a park, includes a cornerstone for the District of Columbia, a lighthouse built in 1852, and the Margaret Brent Memorial.

The Stonegate Site, at a townhouse development on the western part of Braddock Road, includes prehistoric toolmaking complexes, with the most intensive occupation dating to the Holmes phase of the Late Archaic period (ca. 3,800 to 2,200 years ago).

• Stonegate Development - Parcels A and B (44AX166 and 44AX167)
• Stonegate Development - Parcel C (44AX176 and 44AX177)