#aFactADay2026
#1860: but what is the point of all this fluted base nonsense! some people say they were decorative, or fashionable, or ritual, or something. after all, rituals are powerful things in history, and Clovis points were often found with traces of red ochre dye on them. and there's the factor of inertia: people fluted the base, because that's what their foreparents did, and so on.
yet Clovis points were certainly multi-tools, and the fluted base was such a costly addition, that it must have had some use? the first hypothesis, when Clovis points were first categorised about a hundred years ago, was that it sped up bleeding in a wounded animal - compare to the grooved bayonets of WW1, which was a recent memory at the time.
but that also can't be right because a Clovis point would've been hafted with sinew to a shaft (attached with strings to a stick). the shaft often had a groove that the base would sit in, nullifying the damage done by the base. the bottom third of the shaft was also usually blunted round the edge, so the base was clearly not really meant to do damage.
