El Fin del Mundo

A Clovis Site in Sonora, Mexico

Vance Holliday, Guadalupe Sánchez, Ismael Sánchez-Morales

• Publisher: University of Arizona Press
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN:
  9780816552993
• eBook ISBN:
  9780816553006
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Geology & Earth Sciences
• Index: Social Sciences

In a remote desert corner of Sonora, Mexico, the site of El Fin del Mundo offers the first recorded evidence of Paleoindian interactions with gomphotheres, an extinct species related to elephants. The Clovis occupation of North America is the oldest generally accepted and well-documented archaeological assemblage on the continent. This site in Sonora, Mexico, is the northernmost dated late Pleistocene gomphothere and the youngest in North America. It is the first documented intact buried Clovis site outside of the United States, the first in situ Paleoindian site in northwestern Mexico, and the first documented evidence of Clovis gomphothere hunting in North America. The site also includes an associated upland Clovis campsite. This volume also describes a paleontological bone bed below the Clovis level, which includes a rare association of mastodon, mammoth, and gomphothere.

El Fin del Mundo presents and synthesizes the archaeological, geological, paleontological, and paleoenvironmental records of an important Clovis site.

Contributors
Joaquín Arroyo-Cabrales
Jordan Bright
James K. Feathers
Edmund P. Gaines
Thanairi Gamez
Gregory W. L. Hodgins
Vance T. Holliday
Susan M. Mentzer
Carmen Isela Ortega-Rosas
Manuel R. Palacios-Fest
Guadalupe Sánchez
Ismael Sánchez-Morales
Kayla B. Worthey
Kristen Wroth

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• About the Authors
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Background to the Research at El Fin del Mundo
• 2. Stratigraphy and Geochronology
• 3. Soil and Sediment Micromorphology
• 4. Excavations in Locus 1, Upper Bonebed
• 5. The Clovis Lithic Assemblage from El Fin del Mundo and Early Paleoindian Land Use in North-Central Sonora and the Upper San Pedro River Valley
• 6. The Faunas of the Upper and Lower Bonebeds, Locus 1
• 7. Palynological Evidence of Paleoenvironmental Changes
• 8. Phytolith Analysis
• 9. Diatom Paleoecology
• 10. Ostracodes
• 11. Discussion and Conclusions
• Appendix A. Dating Bone and Teeth from the Upper and Lower Bonebeds
• Appendix B. Luminescence Dating of Sediments from El Fin Del Mundo
• Appendix C. Metric and Descriptive Data of the Clovis Lithics from El Fin del Mundo and the San Pedro Valley Sites
• Appendix D. Upper and Lower Bonebeds, Raw Data
• Appendix E. Diatom Data
• References
• Index
• Abstract/Resumen