Archeological Site In Michigan Finds Artifacts Over 13,000 Years Old

An issue in the United States is that life before the US is rarely acknowledged, with many forgetting that people have lived in North America for nearly 13,000 years when Michigan was still covered in ice. Evidence for these early Americans is rare, and any artifacts that date back to this period are considered to belong to Clovis peoples.

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These peoples were known to have settled throughout the Midwest in Ohio and Indiana and south in New Mexico, however, a discovery three years ago completely flipped what archeologists thought they knew about these First Peoples, and it happened on a small farm in Southwest Michigan.

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The Belson Site

The Belson Site in Southwestern Michigan has completely redefined what archeologists thought they understood about Clovis peoples. The team is led by Tom Talbot, who discovered the first Clovis point in 2008 and is joined by Brendan Nash and Henry Wright from the University of Michigan. The team published their findings in 2021.

Talbot knew the site he was on was special when he discovered a Clovis point, a stone tool that was uniquely designed to hunt the larger animals of that period like Wooly Mammoths and Mastodons. These points are identified by two qualities:

• Made out of a high-quality stone called chert
• Made using a "distinct method" of flaking stone until it is at a point and with an indent that allows it to be notched onto a spear shaft.

These artifacts were found under what is called the "plow zone", or the top layer of soil plowed in farming. These artifacts are undisturbed and preserved under layers of soil and rock and have resulted in multiple artifacts being discovered and continue to be discovered.

READ MORE: Here Is How Much Of Michigan Is Native American Reservations |

Why This Site Is So Significant

Until this discovery, evidence of Clovis people had never been seen in Michigan before and has drastically redefined the timeline of when people began to inhabit the Great Lakes region. According to Brendan Nash,

The peopling process of the Great Lakes was always thought to have been later...Now what we’re seeing is that we’ve got a presence that is as early as other sites in North America, and it has the same technology.

If you want to learn more about the Belson Site, the findings of this dig site were covered in Scientific America, which you can view here or below, or you can read a summary of the findings from the University of Michigan, or read the entire in-depth research findings here.