information:extraction, structural:reformatting
Discovery

On August 29, 1927, the first evidence of Pleistocene humans seen by multiple archaeologists in the Americas was discovered near Folsom, New Mexico. At this site, they found the first in situ Folsom point with the bones of the extinct bison species Bison antiquus. This confirmation of a human presence in the Americas during the Pleistocene inspired many people to start looking for evidence of early humans.

In 1929, 19-year-old Ridgely Whiteman, who had been closely following the excavations in nearby Folsom in the newspapers, discovered the Clovis site near the Blackwater Draw in eastern New Mexico. Despite several earlier Paleoindian discoveries, the best documented evidence of the Clovis complex was collected and excavated between 1932 and 1937 near Clovis, New Mexico, by a crew under the direction of Edgar Billings Howard until 1935 and later by John L. Cotter from the Academy of Natural Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania. Howard's crew left their excavation in Burnet Cave, the first professionally excavated Clovis site, in August 1932, and visited Whiteman and his Blackwater Draw site. By November, Howard was back at Blackwater Draw to investigate additional finds from a construction project.

The American Journal of Archaeology, in its January–March 1932 edition, mentions Howard's work in Burnet Cave, including the discovery of extinct fauna and a "Folsom type" point 4 ft below a Basketmaker burial. Reference is made to a slightly earlier article on Burnet Cave in The University Museum Bulletin from November 1931.

The Dent site in Colorado was the first known association of Clovis points with mammoth bones, as noted by Hannah Marie Wormington in her book Ancient Man in North America (4th ed. 1957). Gary Haynes, in his book The Early Settlement of North America, suggested the type of fluted point thereafter associated with megafauna (especially mammoths) at over a dozen other archaeological sites in North America would have been more appropriately named "Dent" rather than Clovis, the town near Blackwater Draw that gave the type of point its name.