#howard bison

[athleticperfection1]

Howard Lacrosse

[misterjt]

[bongaboi]

Howard: 2023-24 Mid-Eastern Men's Basketball Champions

NORFOLK, Va. -- Jordan Hairston scored 18 points and Bryce Harris and Seth Towns each scored 16 points as Howard beat Delaware State 70-67 on Saturday in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference tournament championship to secure an NCAA tournament bid.

Harris' jump shot broke a 60-all tie with 4:18 remaining and the Bison led for the remainder, but not without late drama.

Hairston made two free throws with six seconds left for a 70-66 lead. Off the inbounds, Delaware State's Deywilk Tavarez dribbled at a full sprint up the floor and with 2.2 seconds launched a 3-point attempt and was fouled by Jelani Williams.

Tavarez made the first foul shot and missed the second, and his attempt to deliberately miss the third for a desperation rebound and 3-point heave attempt failed when his shot attempt ricocheted off the backboard and failed to touch the rim. Howard inbounded to end the game.

Marcus Dockery scored 15 points for fourth-seeded Howard (18-16), which is headed to the NCAA tournament for a second straight year for the first time in school history. Howard upset top-seeded Norfolk State on its way to the championship game.

Jevin Muniz scored 24 points and Martaz Robinson 16 for the sixth-seeded Hornets (15-18) which saw its improbable MEAC run end.

The Hornets last beat Howard on March 5, 2020. Delaware State entered having beaten second-seeded North Carolina Central and third-seeded South Carolina State.

The Hornets were seeking their first conference championship and NCAA tournament berth since 2005. Delaware State ended the regular season having lost four of five games.

The Bison were without Dom Campbell, Shy Odom, Ose Okojie and AJ Magbegor because of injuries. For the season, Howard's rotation players missed a total of 78 games, which was among the top five in the country.

Howard led 40-34 at halftime on the strength of 8-for-17 shooting from 3-point range. With the exception of a 2-0 deficit, the Bison led for 19:09 of the first 20 minutes. Towns' layup with 3:59 left before halftime gave Howard a 33-23 lead, the only double-digit lead either team held.

Towns, 26, is an eighth-year senior and has had a career marred by injury. His playing career started at Harvard in 2016-17 before the Columbus, Ohio, native transferred to Ohio State and suffered a series of season-ending injuries before transferring to Howard.

[pixelsproject]

『SVC Chaos∶ SNK vs. Capcom』 Chun-Li & Kim Kaphwan

Chun-Li's animations in SVC Chaos - SNK vs. Capcom appear to be based on her animations from Street Fighter III - Third Strike and Capcom vs. SNK 2 - Mark of the Millennium 2001.

---

SOURCES ↴ SVC Chaos∶ SNK vs. Capcom (NEO•GEO) Power Generation Room uploaded by @the2dstagesfg (Tumblr) SVC Chaos∶ SNK vs. Capcom (NEO•GEO) Chun-Li & Kim Kaphawn sprites (Emu Gif Animation)

[neonixcon]

One is not like the other

[incorrectsmashbrosquotes]

Bison's come back. Heiachi's come back. What's next? Geese Howard comes back in the next Garo?

Video game status quo, my friend. Video game status quo.

[devileaterjaek]

Capcom vs SNK 2: Millionaire Fighting 2001

[blueeyeddarkknight]

Val and Warwick on the W.I.L.L.O.W 🌠 (1988) set being so cute and wholesome! (and so fudgin hot) 😭❤️👑🗡️🧙🪄🔥

Bonus

You're welcome 😉

[mariacallous]

Imani Smith, a rising senior at Howard University, was out grabbing food with friends when her group chats with her sorority sisters “started blowing up.” Smith, on a social media break at the time, rushed to re-download Instagram to see article after article about Vice President Kamala Harris running for president. She called her parents, excited.

“Representation is so important,” she said. “Just as a fellow Bison, just as young Black women, being able to see someone who looks like us rise to this level … seeing her take this on, it’s really inspiring. When we look at her, we see ourselves, we see our mothers, our grandmothers.”

Smith sees herself in Harris not just as a student at Howard, the historically Black university Harris attended. Smith is also the president of the Alpha chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha, a Black sorority more than a century old with chapters across the country. Harris joined AKA as a student in 1986 and has been an active presence in the group ever since.

Smith isn’t the only AKA member celebrating—and organizing. The sudden ascent of Harris to the top of the Democratic ticket has been met with enthusiasm from many Black women, not least of all her “sorors,” as AKA members call one another.

The sorority, founded at Howard, is part of the Divine Nine, a group of nine historically Black sororities and fraternities with vast networks across the country. Their up to two million members could prove a powerful force to galvanize Black and young voters—whose support for President Biden’s re-election had appeared to slip before he dropped out—to go the polls in November.

Black Greek life organizations are nonpartisan and nonprofit, so they can’t and don’t endorse candidates. But individual students and alumni involved are throwing their support behind the Harris campaign. Many AKA members convened on a Zoom call of roughly 44,000 people for the group Win With Black Women, which met the day Biden dropped out of the race. The group raised $1.5 million for the Harris campaign in one sitting, The New York Times reported. The Zoom inspired a spate of similar calls since that have raised millions of dollars for Harris. Social media has been buzzing with posts from sorority members calling on each other to organize and canvas and advertising get-out-the-vote swag in the sorority’s signature colors, pink and green.

“Seeing her rise to the possibility of holding the highest position in the land, you’re almost unable to even put it into words,” said Deidra Davis, graduate adviser to the Alpha chapter and a member of Xi Omega, Washington, D.C.’s Alpha Kappa Alpha chapter. “We have worked so hard for so many years for equal rights, for women’s rights, for civil rights. And to see this come to fruition, we are just bursting with pride and hope and just overall elation.”

Donna Miller, a county board commissioner for Cook County, Ill., who’s an AKA member, was at a party with friends from the sorority when she heard the news that Biden had endorsed Harris. Miller also attended the Win With Black Women call.

“We just all immediately said, ‘OK, now we have to get busy,’” she said. “We have to get to these swing states and volunteer and knock on doors and talk to voters.”

Harris is a regular at AKA events and spoke earlier this month, before Biden left the race, at the sorority’s annual Boulé, a national gathering. She gave a shout-out to those who attended Howard with her and spoke of how the organization influenced her since her “earliest days,” given her aunt joined AKA in 1950.

“Sorors, all of us here are clear: While we have come a mighty long way, we have more work to do,” she said. “For 116 years, the members of our sorority have been on the front lines of the fight to realize the promise of America. This year, let us continue that work.”

She was also greeted with enthusiastic applause when she addressed Zeta Phi Beta, another sorority in the Divine Nine, at their Boulé on July 24 after becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee.

“In this moment, our nation, as it always has, is counting on you to energize, to organize, and to mobilize; to register folks to vote, to get them to the polls; and to continue to fight for the future our nation and her people deserve,” Harris told the Zeta Phi Betas. “And we know when we organize, mountains move. When we mobilize, nations change. And when we vote, we make history.”

During Harris’s vice presidency, leaders of the Divine Nine have visited the White House on multiple occasions, including a visit to the Oval Office in May. At that meeting, Harris recounted thanking the organizations in a speech after her selection as Biden’s vice president and reporters asking what the Divine Nine was.

“And to myself I say, ‘You’re about to find out,’” she quipped.

‘Anticipation and Expectation’

Danette Anthony Reed, international president and CEO of Alpha Kappa Alpha, said the sorority plans to focus on registering voters and “supporting and advocating for justice,” but “without centering on any particular individual.” Before the big news about Harris, it had already launched a campaign, called “Take 4 or more in 24,” which encourages each of its members to get at least four people to vote. The group is also asking members to canvass and make phone calls to register voters and walk them through their voting options. The sorority further plans to help would-be voters address any obstacles to voting, such as “transportation barriers and voter suppression tactics.”

Reed said that as the first Black sorority, the group sees itself as “at the forefront of breaking glass ceilings.” AKA members are meeting Harris’s campaign with “a mix of anticipation and expectation.”

Reed also emphasized that the sorority, which has upward of 300,000 members, and the Divine Nine as a whole have long been a political force to be reckoned with, “despite often going unnoticed.” They regularly lobby federal and state lawmakers in support of policies and raise significant amounts for causes to benefit Black communities. She pointed out, for example, that AKA once raised $1 million for HBCUs in a single day.

Meanwhile, the leaders of the Divine Nine, the National Pan-Hellenic Council of Presidents, were planning a major get-out-the-vote effort, which they announced the day after Biden left the race.

“We, the Council of Presidents of the National Pan-Hellenic Council (Divine 9), have met and agreed to meet this critical moment in history with an unprecedented voter registration, education, and mobilization coordinated campaign,” a statement from the council read. “This campaign will activate the thousands of chapters and members in our respective organizations to ensure strong voter turnout in the communities we serve.”

Davis said the Divine Nine are in lockstep, or “all singing from the same hymn book,” when it comes to focusing on “making sure that people are getting out and exercising this right that so many of us were denied just a few decades ago.” She noted that the Alpha chapter plans to launch an informational campaign to ensure out-of-state students at Howard understand the absentee ballot process.

Students are also mobilizing. Smith said her chapter hosts an annual event called Freshman Move In where members of the sorority bring water and help Howard freshmen move their belongings into their dorms as they settle in on campus. This fall, that event is going to include a voter registration drive for both the first years and their parents.

Tyrone Couey, founding member and president of the National Historically Black Colleges & Universities Alumni Associations Foundation, expects Divine Nine voter registration efforts will particularly pay off with young voters, both at HBCUs and the many predominantly white institutions with active chapters. He emphasized that this kind of activism from the Divine Nine isn’t new, but noted the groups are enjoying a new spotlight, given Harris’s proud affiliation with them.

Some aspects of that limelight have been fraught. For example, Fox news commentator Brian Kilmeade drew backlash from HBCU alumni and others for allegedly calling Zeta Phi Beta a “colored” sorority when discussing the recent event Harris attended. (Kilmeade claims he actually said “college sorority.”) Renewed attention to these groups has also prompted social media discussions about whether non-Black Harris fans should avoid using AKA symbols, like donning pink and green garb, doing signature step routines and invoking the sorority’s classic “skee-wee” call.

Davis sees this spotlight moment as a “great opportunity to educate” people about who these groups are, what they do and their history. “We’re not new on the scene,” she said.

Miller has no doubt the groups’ prominence and power will soon become clear. She believes the organizations’ get-out-the-vote initiatives and members’ personal efforts to support the Harris campaign are going to make a difference.

“There are so many individuals who are members of the Divine Nine in so many different capacities, whether they’re elected officials, whether they’re leaders in corporate America, whether they’re entrepreneurs. All of these different entities coming together … is what’s going to make a huge impact,” she said, “because they are organizing like never before.”

[bogusfilth]

The late Senator Howard Baker said of the CIA during the Watergate scandal that “there are animals crashing around in the forest. I can hear them but I can’t see them.” Carlos Marcello and the Chicago Outfit, and their friends in the defense contracting world, were hardly the only ones with grudges against John F. Kennedy, nor would they have had the means to act against him alone. The training at the Pontchartrain property was publicly exposed by the Kennedys’ mid-1963 turn against the CIA’s anti-Castro Cuban training program, and between the TFX contract, the new post-Crisis retreat in the fight against communism, the Kennedys’ tentative support for civil rights, and the possibility of indictment in a second Kennedy term under newly enhanced prosecution statutes, the Kennedy administration was kicking up a great deal of shit with its ostensible coalition allies despite its continued relative popularity with the public. 

By the time Kennedy visited the South in the fall of 1963, credible plots against his life were tracked in Miami and Chicago; the Secret Service still permitted an open-air motorcade, despite an increasingly long and obvious enemies list. 

[...]

The murdered prospector’s ex-employer, General Dynamics, and other military contractors have prospered in the 2020s just as they did in the 1980s. While the Dow Jones has been down six percent over the last 12 months, and the U.S. is still under threat of economic recession, GD stock is up more than 17 percent. On Jan. 4, Toronto’s National Post reported that “Super Bison” armored vehicles had arrived in Ukraine after manufacture by GD in London, Ontario. On Jan. 6, Secretary of State Tony Blinken announced $3.75 billion in new military aid for Ukraine that includes missiles co-produced by Raytheon and General Dynamics, which can now be fitted for use on ex-Soviet launchers used by Ukraine. Jack Kennedy is long dead, but Convair is doing just fine, as are all of its friends.

[moneeb0930]

Congratulations to the ladies of Howard golf on winning the 2024 National Women’s Collegiate Golf Championship!

The Bison outshot the competition by 40 points with first-year Emily Mayne earning top honors shooting 224 at the Golf Club at Cinco Ranch!

[bongaboi]

Howard: 2022-23 Mid-Eastern Men's Basketball Champions

NORFOLK — Kenny Blakeney couldn’t stop crying. It was 3:30 on Saturday afternoon at Scope Arena, Howard had just ended a 31-year NCAA tournament drought with a heart-stopping 65-64 victory over Norfolk State in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference tournament final, and the tears were flowing everywhere.

But Blakeney was the leader in waterworks.

Each new hug produced another torrent of tears. When freshman Shy Odom, the MVP of the MEAC tournament, wrapped him up, screaming, “Coach, I love you, I love you!” Blakeney couldn’t even respond. A moment later, when Howard President Wayne A.I. Frederick came over, it took Blakeney a few seconds to stand up. When he did, he wept on Frederick’s shoulder and said, “Thank, you, thank you, thank you.”

It was Frederick who told Athletic Director Kery Davis to hire Blakeney four springs ago, even though Blakeney had never been a head coach. “As soon as I met him, I said, ‘Hire him,’ ” Frederick said. “I knew he was our guy the minute he walked in the door.”

Saturday was a long time coming for Blakeney and for Howard. The Bison were 4-29 his first season and only got to play five games in the coronavirus-plagued 2020-21 season. But Blakeney’s recruiting began to kick in a year ago, and Howard went 16-13. This season has produced 22 wins, a MEAC regular season title and now — finally — the tournament title and the first trip to the NCAA tournament since Butch Beard was Howard’s coach in 1992.

“Wow,” Blakeney said softly standing in front of his team, the net around his neck and the MEAC trophy next to him. He paused and started to choke up again. “Just wow. I mean, holy s---. Everything you’ve gone through, the 6 a.m. practices, getting thrown out of the locker room — all of it — was for this.”

This was an extraordinary basketball game. Norfolk State had won the past two MEAC titles and has been the class of the conference along with North Carolina Central for most of Coach Robert Jones’s 10 seasons at the school. Howard went into halftime with a 33-27 lead, but the Spartans scored the first five points of the second half and neither team led by more than four the rest of the way.

In the final 20 minutes, there were six ties and 11 lead changes. Two straight baskets were as close to a run as anyone came.

“It was everything we expected,” Howard’s Jelani Williams said. “It was what a championship game is supposed to be.”

Williams and Odom were the final pieces Blakeney added this season. Williams came to Howard as a graduate student after four years at Pennsylvania. Earlier this season, Williams said he decided to play at Howard because he wanted to be the leader on a team that had a chance to win a championship.

That dream became real Saturday, although it looked for a while as though the Bison would come up just short. Two free throws by Norfolk State’s Joe Bryant Jr. with 23.7 seconds left gave the Spartans a 64-60 lead. But Marcus Dockery drained a three-pointer — Howard’s only three-pointer of the second half — with 13.2 seconds left, and Blakeney called his final timeout.

The Bison came out in their “41” defense, meaning they were trying to deny any inbounds pass. It worked. The Spartans had a miscommunication, and the inbounds pass ended up going past everyone and out of bounds.

The clock never moved. When Howard inbounded, there was no doubt where the ball was going: to Williams. He already had 18 points — the only Howard player in double figures — and he had been the Bison’s rock down the stretch.

“I’m supposed to be the tough guy, especially in close games,” he said. “I understand that role, and I want that role.”

Williams caught the ball at the top of the key and drove into the teeth of the Norfolk State defense. As the Spartans collapsed on him, he twisted his body and drew a foul. The Spartans had complained about fouls early and often, but this time there was no arguing.

Williams drained the first shot to tie the score at 64. Jones called a timeout to make him think about the second one.

He did. “I thought, ‘This is why I came to Howard,’ ” Williams said, still clutching the ball he made the shots with. “I’ve waited all my life for a moment like this. I’m never letting go of this ball. I knew this was my last chance to go to the NCAAs, and I was going to make it happen.”

He made the free throw for a 65-64 lead with 6.1 seconds left. NSU got the ball to midcourt and called its final timeout with 4.3 seconds to go. The inbounds came to Kris Bankston, and he drove the baseline. But the Bison defense came to meet him, and his shot hit the bottom of the rim as time ran out.

Heartbreak for the Spartans. Euphoria for the Bison. It took several minutes for the Norfolk State players to find their legs to walk to the locker room. The Howard celebration was well underway by then. Former Howard players flooded the floor. Former coach A.B. Williamson, who guided Howard to its first NCAA tournament bid in 1981, stood and watched as the nets came down.

“I remember Kenny at DeMatha when he played for Morgan [Wootten],” he said with a smile. “Then he went to Duke and played for [Mike Krzyzewski]. I guess he learned a few lessons from those two.”

Even 30 minutes after the final buzzer, standing in front of his players with the net draped around his neck — “My new necklace,” he said — Blakeney was having trouble drinking it all in.

“It’s surreal, isn’t it guys?” he said. “It’s one thing to dream about doing something like this. It’s another thing to actually do it. I mean, it’s real. We really did it.”

It is entirely possible Howard, with a 22-12 record, will be sent to Dayton, Ohio, as a No. 16 seed for a play-in game. Blakeney could not care less. “Wherever they tell us to go, we’ll just get on the bus and go,” he said.

Wherever the Bison go, it won’t be by bus. When you make the NCAA tournament, you travel by charter plane. The last time Blakeney did that was 1994, when he was a Duke junior. He’s 51 now and, like his school, has been down a lot of roads to get back to where he was Saturday.

“I’m speechless,” Blakeney said to his players, who laughed because he is almost never speechless. “What a run.”

And what an ending.

[rygoespop]

The King of Street Fighters: Pao Pao Cafe Special (Chapter 19)

Scene opens up at the Pao Pao Cafe, that was recently built in Metro City, where 7 of the Street Fighters (Dee Jay, Zangief, Rashid, Luke, Jamie, Manon, and Marisa) and Terry were enjoying it

Luke: Wow, I’m surprised that this Pao Pao Cafe is quite a success here in Metro City

Terry: You have to believe it Luke, Pao Pao Cafe is quite popular in South Town

Jamie: South Town?

Terry: Yeah, I was hailed a hero for defeating Geese Howard dozens of times

Flashback Footage shows Terry’s fight with Geese at Geese Tower

Luke: Dozens? Damn, you are a legend!

Terry: Yep, so it’s no surprise that the people of Metro City would make a Pao Pao Cafe as a gratitude of saving the city from Bison and Shadaloo

Jamie: You sure did, and I guess they heard about that Nayshall Tournament

Terry: True, if anyone is strong to take on me, then I say, hey come on!

The 3 heroes laugh, as soon came an announcement

Pao Pao Cafe Bartender: Attention all patrons of the Pao Pao Cafe, it’s time for the Pao Pao Special, a match that is!

Luke: A match?

Jamie: Is that normal in the Pao Pao Cafe?

Terry: Of course, I myself am a VIP of the one in South Town

Pao Pao Cafe Bartender: The Match Special is.. Terry Bogard vs Zangief!

Terry: Hey come on!

Zangief: Me? Fight against the Legendary Wolf? Sounds like a good match!

Soon, Terry and Zangief got onto the center logo of the Pao Pao Cafe

Zangief: The Red Cyclone vs The Legendary Wolf

Terry: May the best fighter win

Zangief: And I wish you the best of luck, comrade

Both Terry and Zangief got in their fighting stances

Zangief: Horatio! *uses Double Lariat on Terry*

Terry: Whoa! *evades*

Zangief: That was an impressive evasion comrade, but try and evade this! *uses Russian Suplex on Terry and throws him*

Terry: Whoa! *gets thrown but slides as he lands* Damn, that was a tough move!

Zangief: What do you expect?

Terry stood with confidence ready for his next move, as the other Street Fighters observe

Luke: Terry, let me fight you next!

Manon: I want to fight you next

Terry: Ok! Now it’s my turn! Power Wave! *uses Power Wave to disorient Zangief*

Zangief: *stumbles* Not bad, but it takes more than-

Terry: Buster Wolf! *uses Buster Wolf*

Zangief: Is that all?! *tries to block the attack*

But Zangief was wrong, Terry was able to use Buster Wolf to beat Zangief

Zangief: Oh nooooo! *defeated*

Pao Pao Cafe Bartender: KO! Ladies and Gentlemen, the winner of the Pao Pao Cafe Special is the Legendary Wolf, Terry Bogard!

The patrons cheer

Terry: Ok! *tosses his hat in victory*

Luke: Alright Terry!

Jamie: Hmph, I’m impressed

Terry picks up his hat and puts it back on

Zangief: That was a great match Comrade Terry *gets back up* I’m impressed by that match, I guess the Red Cyclone is unable to beat a wolf

Terry: Hey, I had a great match too Zangief

Zangief: We should do it again, although at least for a tournament

Terry: I agree

Terry and Zangief fist bump

Luke: So, who’s next?

Pao Pao Cafe Bartender: Ooh, sorry to say this but I’m afraid that the Pao Pao Cafe Special is a Daily Event

Luke: What?!

Pao Pao Cafe Bartender: But hey, there’s always next time

Luke: Oh, ok then

Terry: Now then, what’s next?

Scene cuts to black

To be continued

[leeltalk]

A More Complete History of America

Section 1 - When to Begin?

Folsom, Clovis and The First Debate

Part 2 - Clovis

There is some dispute on the true type site of the predecessor of Folsom. The Type Site, the first site to be formally described to a scientific audience, often dictates naming rights. This leads to some academic saltiness and state rivalry. In the interest of fairness, we’ll actually start in Colorado.

Along the South Platte River, southwest of the small town of Milliken, Colorado once stood the Dent Railroad Depot. In 1932, strong Spring rains exposed several very large bones in a sandstone gully west of the tracks.

The son of the Depot’s manager informed his geology professor, Jesuit priest Conrad Bilgery. He took some of his students to the site in September of that year, where Father Bilgery determined the bones were that of a mammoth and contacted Jesse D. Figgins.

Yes. The same Figgins that was the Director of the Colorado Museum of Natural History.

Figgens sent a museum staff member to excavate the remains, though Father Bilgery and his students were allowed to assist. In the end, 13 partial skeletons from 5 adult females and 8 young mammoths were sent to Denver, along with two intact stone points.

Figgins published the find in the Proceedings of the CMNH in 1933 - the museum bulletin essentially - describing the points as belonging to a Late Ice Age culture.

Sadly, internal museum publications don’t count. I don’t make the rules.

In 1929, EB Howard was part of Alden Mason’s Southwestern Expeditions as a representative of the University Museum of Philadelphia. They had come to the Guadalupe Mountains west of Carlsbad, NM to search for archaeological sites, and were quickly directed by local Bill Burnet to a cave locally known for its artifacts.

It's unclear how long the predominantly white local population had known about the cave. Burnet reported it had once been sealed, but he and his brother had busted through the stacked stone wall. At some point, they had dug 3 or 4 holes,each about a yard deep. Beads, pieces of sandals, hide, and several baskets, one containing charred bones (which may have been human remains as cremation was practiced in the region at various times in the past) were all removed.

Still, the site was relatively intact. The pits had been dug straight down, and, aside from stones and debris being moved at the surface, most of the ground appeared undisturbed.

Excavations began in 1930. As Howard and the team had hoped, by the time their trench hit that 3 ft deep mark, they were in undisturbed soils. Like most caves and rock shelters, Burnet had little stratigraphy, or distinct soil layers, to go off of and they were about 30 years from widespread radiometric dating, so they attempted to date the cave using the common method of the day: identifying Cultural Horizons.

This meant, quite simply, looking at whatever turned up in their trench and trying to identify the age of that layer by the artifacts it contained. More baskets, sandals and bags found in those between about 1.5 and 3ft down indicated a Basketmaker Culture (an uncreatively named Pueblo precursor). They found several burials, which were likely the reason the cave had been sealed.

Above the Basketmaker layers were no distinctive artifacts beyond what had been scattered near the surface by looting. Again, the fact that the cave had been closed off to all but pack rats and other rodents had stopped later people from using it.

It was about 2 feet below the burials, however, that EB Howard made a more unexpected discovery. Among the bones of bison and musk-ox, some of them charred, were thick lenses of ash and charcoal. Hearths. Along one of these rested a fluted stone point that Howard described as Folsom-like. Several bone awls for sewing hides or making beads were also recovered.

Howard was very careful in his initial report of the site in 1931. He made a point of describing the interior of the cave, its geology, condition, and included multiple sketches of the layout. He reiterated that the cave had been sealed, hiding it for generations. He discussed how pack rats could have gotten in and built nests and middens at the surface, but that there was no evidence of burrowing or middens near the remains or below them. It was doubtful, Howard expressed, that the stone point or awls could have been deposited so deep by rodents.

EB Howard took that point to the 1931 Pecos Conference. Among the people he showed it to was Frank Roberts of the Smithsonian.

Cannon AFB was once a small local airstrip. By the early 1930s, it had been named the Clovis Air Field and was expanding. Some of the gravel for the new road construction came from nearby Black Water Draw, a seasonally dry valley crossed by small channels from the infrequent rains located along the Llano Estacado Plateau. The Dustbowl had already stripped away some of the surface layers, and while quarrying workmen revealed, you guessed it, large animal bones. They also turned up a large tooth and a stone point.

In 1932, as he was finishing work at Burnet Cave, it came to the attention of EB Howard that points like those at Folsom had been found in the area. He and his team swung by Clovis to look around, guided by locals AW Anderson and George Roberts, who themselves had taken a keen interest in the site.

The first point had been found by a workman with the gravel company, along with a mammoth tooth, when they had first reached the blue-gray layer at the gravel pit. This was the point that George Roberts had notified Howard about. Roberts had secured the point from the workman and shown it to Howard when he arrived in Clovis.

“The workman, whose honesty I do not question, showed me the spot where he had ploughed up the tooth and this artifact, and there is no doubt in my own mind that they both came from the blue sand on the west side of the gravel pit.” EB Howard

The point itself had been broken long ago, before the workman had uncovered it, as evidenced by the lime crust and was similar to the points from Folsom and about 4 inches long and 2 ¼ in wide, and “extraordinarily thin - ⅛ in at its maximum thickness”.

The summer field season was almost over, but Howard had the opportunity to explore Black Water Draw and view some of the artifacts and bones that had been found. That fall, machinery uncovered another mass of bones in a layer of blue-gray sands below the gravel layers.

Like at Burnet Cave, Howard made detailed notes of the site and its surroundings. Black Water Draw as a whole was dotted by the remains of ancient lakes, ponds and channels. On its western edge and near the Texas border, there were still a few alkali spring ponds. Likely, the Draw had once been a tributary of the nearby Brazos River, or at least drained into it. Where the gravel pits had been dug revealed a clear view of the geologic layers or strata to well below the bone bearing layers.

The bone layers, blue-gray sandy clay, were near, but not at the top. These were water deposited and held many species of diatoms, tiny water dwelling animals, which still live in fresh and saline waters. These diatoms, and the bones of the mammoths and bison, allowed Howard and his team to determine that the blue-gray sands had been deposited in the late Pleistocene, near the end of the Ice Age.

Howard could not begin a full excavation until the summer field season of 1933 and spent the next 4 years in Clovis. On the east side of the gravel pit a flint scraper and charcoal, presumably from a campfire, were among the bones of extinct bison, the first in situ objects found. More scrapers and knives were uncovered near the pit. In a section of Blackwater Draw Howard named the Anderson Lakes, a thick lense-shaped layer of charcoal contained the charred bones of bison (found all over the Lakes), small mammals and birds and a selection of blades and shapers. None of the Anderson Lakes artifacts appeared to be of the “Folsom-type”, even though they came from the same deposits of blue-gray sands.

No mention of a new “Clovis-type” appears in Howard's 1935 report. Instead it included a great deal of discussion of the geology, such as the diatom studies, and theories of how such a site could have come to be. It's here that Howard relays a story from Prentiss Gray, who had studied bison and in 1887 had observed a herd of some 4000 attempt to cross the South Platte River when it was low. “Soon the leaders were stuck in the mud, those behind, pressed forward by the herd, trampled over their struggling companions until the whole bed of the river a half mile wide was filled with dead and dying buffalo. This habit of stampeding was a habit of the wild buffalo.” Howard also shared similar accounts of antelopes in the Congo and Guanacos in Patagonia who had trampled each other or become trapped in frozen mud.

Howard also devoted part of his report to explaining honestly that he, his team and even the other prominent scientists they had brought to Clovis or otherwise consulted, can't say for certain that there had been no mixing of artifacts and layers at the site. Firstly, at and near the windblown surface, were scattered Yuma style points. These were known to be old - no contemporary peoples were known to use points quite like them, but they were from long after the Ice Age. Other points, some Yuma, some of other styles but all of that same old but still recent manufacture, and some pot sherds had been recovered from layers above and within the blue-gray sands. While never found directly alongside the older, unidentified and Folsom-like tools, these finds cast a shadow of doubt as to the antiquity of the flints.

It was in 1937 that JL Cotter, Howard's primary partner on the excavation, published the final report on the The Occurrence of Flints and Extinct Animals in Pluvial Deposits near Clovis, NM (part IV). Though he did not formally classify the points as a new type, this is where they start being referred to as a distinct style that had only been reported before from the Dent Site and Burnet Cave.

By the 1950s, the fluted points had become called Clovis Points and their style and method of manufacture was known to be a precursor to Folsom technology. Radiometric dating, though it would need future calibration and refinement, would first be done in the 1950-60s, returning dates of nearly 10,000 years before present, well within the known range of the late Ice Age.

Hrdlicka died in 1943, and would never accept the findings at Folsom, Clovis or anywhere else.

Sources and further reading/listening:

“THE INITIAL RESEARCH AT CLOVIS, NEW MEXICO: 1932-1937.” Plains Anthropologist 35, no. 130 (1990): 1–20. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25668959.

Cotter J. L. 1937 The Occurrence of Flints and Extinct Animals in Pluvial Deposits near Clovis, New Mexico, Part IV: Report on the Excavations at the Gravel Pit in 1936, Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, 89, pp. 1–16

Jesse D. Figgins, “A Further Contribution to the Antiquity of Man in America,” Proceedings of the Colorado Museum of Natural History 12, no. 2 (1933).

Brunswig, R. (2016) The Dent Site: A Late Ice Age Encounter on the South Platte River

for the online Colorado Encyclopedia

Steeves, P. F.C. (2022) The Indigenous Paleolithic of the Western Hemisphere University Press Audiobooks

Meltzer, D.J. (2011) First Peoples in A New World: Colonizing Ice Age America University Press Audiobooks

Adovadio, J.M., Page, J., (2022) The First Americans: In Pursuit of Archaeology’s Greatest Mystery Tantor Audio

Hamalainen, P. (2022) Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest for North America

Howard, Edgar B.. "Burnet Cave." The Museum Journal XXIV, no. 2-3 (June, 1935): 62-79. Accessed March 13, 2024. https://www.penn.museum/sites/journal/9515/