Archaeological Research Facility

The two artifacts from the Clovis site of Las Tortugas, Gran Desierto, northern Sonora are from one known and one as yet unlocated source: one piece of debitage from the Sauceda Mountains source in southwest Arizona, and one matching the composition of a single artifact recovered from the upper Rio Sonora in northern Sonora (Shackley 2005, 2019a). The biface, a possible Clovis fragment, produced from the source matching the one artifact from the Rio Sonora region is likely from a locality in northern Sonora, the location of which remains unknown. It does not match any known source in the Skinner/Shackley database of North American obsidian sources, including those in northwest Mexico (see Shackley 2005; Vidal-Solano et al. 2020; Table 1, Figures 1 and 2, see also cover image).