Cactus Hill is an archaeologically stratified, multicomponent site discovered in 1993 on an interior coastal plain terrace adjacent to the Nottoway River in southeastern Virginia, USA. Utilized by humans over a period of many thousands of years, the site is most known for its buried Paleo-Indian occupations, one of which is indisputably of the Clovis culture and another, lying below the Clovis, interpreted to be of an origin predating Clovis. Several lines of evidence support a pre-Clovis component: (1) A sterile 7–20 cm zone of vertical separation lies between Clovis and underlying pre-Clovis materials; (2) different lithic assemblages are distinguished – imported cryptocrystalline rock types (such as chert and chalcedony) are exclusive to the Clovis level, while locally obtained quartzite was used by the pre-Clovis; (3) a distinctive core blade artifact technology for the pre-Clovis occupation; and (4) 14C charcoal ages of 10,920 BP for the Clovis but as early as 16,670 BP for the...
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Feathers, J. K., Rhodes, E. J., Huot, S., and McAvoy, J. M., 2006. Luminescence dating of sand deposits related to late Pleistocene human occupation at the Cactus Hill Site, Virginia, USA. Quaternary Geochronology, 1(3), 167–187.
Macphail, R. I., and McAvoy, J. M., 2008. A micromorphological analysis of stratigraphic integrity and site formation at Cactus Hill, an early Paleoindian and hypothesized pre-Clovis occupation in south-central Virginia, USA. Geoarchaeology, 23(5), 675–694.
McAvoy, J. M., and McAvoy, L. D., 1997. Archaeological Investigations of Site 44SX202, Cactus Hill, Sussex County, Virginia. Richmond, VA: Virginia Department of Historic Resources. Research Report Series, Vol. 8.
Wagner, D. P., and McAvoy, J. M., 2004. Pedoarchaeology of Cactus Hill, a sandy Paleoindian site in Southeastern Virginia, USA Geoarchaeology, 19(4), 297–322.
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Wagner, D.P. (2017). Cactus Hill, Virginia. In: Gilbert, A.S. (eds) Encyclopedia of Geoarchaeology. Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-4409-0_72
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