Clovis points are stone tools that were made and used by some of the earliest people to inhabit North and South America. These long, thin, and fluted stone points are named after the town of Clovis in New Mexico. Archaeologists uncovered these stone artifacts at a basin called Blackwater Draw near Clovis, where the points were found buried next to the bones of megafauna, such as mammoths and other large animals that lived during the Ice Age. This find demonstrated that people who were living in this area several thousands years ago, called Paleo-Americans, had used the spear points to hunt these animals. Clovis points are some of the earliest evidence of people living in North and South America.
Clovis points were not originally discovered at Blackwater Draw. They had been found previously across North America, including in the North Carolina Piedmont. The archaeological excavation at Blackwater Draw was significant because those Clovis points were found with other evidence (the megafauna bones), and because they allowed archaeologists to date Clovis points that had been found in other parts of North America. Archaeological dating techniques used to analyze Clovis points found in North Carolina dated Paleo-American people to living in the Piedmont area around 9500 BCE. These Paleo-Americans were hunters and gatherers, and likely used Clovis points as spearheads attached at the end of a long wooden stick.