Naco Mammoth Kill Site

The Naco Mammoth Kill Site is an archaeological site in southeast Arizona, 1 mile northwest of Naco in Cochise County. The site was reported to the Arizona State Museum in September 1951 by Marc Navarrete, a local resident, after his father found two Clovis points in Greenbush Draw (eroded by the Greenbush Creek, a tributary of the San Pedro river), while digging out the fossil bones of a mammoth. Emil Haury excavated the Naco mammoth site in April 1952.[2][3][4][5] In only five days, Haury recovered the remains of a Columbian Mammoth in association with 8 Clovis points (including the 2 originally found by the Navarettes). The excavator believed the assemblage to date from about 10,000 Before Present. An additional point was found in the arroyo upstream.[6][7] The Naco site was the first Clovis mammoth kill association to be identified. [5] An additional, unpublished, second excavation occurred in 1953 which doubled the area of the original work and found bones from a 2nd mammoth. In 2020, small charcoal fragments were found adhered to a mammoth bone from the site. AMS radiocarbon dating produced a mean date of 10,985 ± 56 Before Present.[8]

  • Emil Haury (right) at Naco mammoth kill site, 1952, photograph courtesy Arizona State Museum, University of Arizona.
    Emil Haury (right) at Naco mammoth kill site, 1952, photograph courtesy Arizona State Museum, University of Arizona.
  • A Clovis point in situ amidst mammoth bones at the Naco site, 1952, photograph courtesy Arizona State Museum, University of Arizona.
    A Clovis point in situ amidst mammoth bones at the Naco site, 1952, photograph courtesy Arizona State Museum, University of Arizona.

Naco Mammoth Kill Site
Nearest cityNaco, Arizona
NRHP reference No.76002285[1]
Added to NRHPJuly 21, 1976

See also

References
  1. "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. March 13, 2009.
  2. Haury, Emil W., "Artifacts with Mammoth Remains, Naco, Arizona : Discovery of the Naco Mammoth and the Associated Projectile Points", American Antiquity 19, pp. 1–14, 1953
  3. ERNST ANTE, "Artifacts with Mammoth Remains, Naco, Arizona : Age of the Clovis Fluted Points with the Naco Mammoth", American Antiquity 19, pp. 15–18, 1953
  4. JOHN F. LANCE, "Artifacts with Mammoth Remains, Naco, Arizona : Description of the Naco Mammoth", American Antiquity 19, pp. 19–24, 1953
  5. Paleoindian Studies and Geoarchaeology at the University of Arizona, Department of Anthropology, University of Arizona
  6. Haury, Emil W., "The Naco Mammoth", Kiva, vol. 18, no. 3/4, pp. 1–19, 1952
  7. Naco Mammoth Kill Site - The Southeast Archeological Center - National Park Service
  8. Huckell, Bruce B., et al., "The Naco Clovis Site: Old Excavations and New Dates", PaleoAmerica, vol. 8, iss. 3, pp. 1-13, 2022 https://doi.org/10.1080/20555563.2022.2058903

Further reading
  • Haury, Emil W., E. B. Sayles, and William W. Wasley, 1986, "The Lehner Mammoth Site Southeastern Arizona". In Emil W. Haury's Prehistory of the American Southwest, edited by J. Jefferson Reid and David E. Doyel, pp. 99–145. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.
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