Archaeological Research Facility

The analysis here of eight obsidian artifacts so far recovered from the newly discovered Blue Canyon Clovis archaeological site southwest of Socorro, New Mexico indicates a diverse provenance assemblage including sources from the Mule Creek Source Complex in western New Mexico that must have been originally procured at the source, and Jemez Lineament sources from northern and northwest New Mexico, some probably procured from Rio Grande Quaternary gravels nearby, although the cortex on Samples 27 and 66 appears to be angular and not water eroded (see discussion below; Church 2000; Shackley 2005, 2009, 2012; Shackley et al. 2018)