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Cactus Hill earns its name from the prickly pear cacti found there and nearby. It is an important archaeological site in Virginia. Providing evidence of pre-Clovis human occupation. Clovis culture, characterized by distinctive stone tools, is often cited as one of the earliest well-established human cultures in North America. However, findings at Cactus Hill suggest human presence in the region thousands of years earlier. Potentially as far back as 16-20,000 years ago.

The site gained prominence because of its deep stratigraphy, or layers of human activity, which reveal evidence of both Clovis and pre-Clovis cultures
Artifacts from Cactus Hill include stone tools, such as blades and projectile points, that differ from typical Clovis technology, indicating a unique cultural tradition that predates it.

Prior to the mid 1990s, most people believe the clovis were the first people in the western hemisphere. Representing the so-called Clovis culture. These people were believed to have crossed the Beringa land bridge from Siberia to north America

Discoveries at Cactus Hill have sparked ongoing debates. It has supported theories early humans might have arrived on the continent earlier than previously believed. Possibly via coastal or inland migration routes along the Pacific or Atlantic coast, or even paddling across it.

Bibliography: Macphail, Richard; McAvoy, Joseph (August 15, 2008). “A micromorphological analysis of stratigraphic integrity and site formation at Cactus Hill, an Early Paleoindian and hypothesized pre-Clovis occupation in south-central Virginia, USA” (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/gea.20234). Geoarchaeology. 23 (5): 675–694. doi:10.1002/gea.20234 (https://doi.org/10.1002%2Fgea.20234). S2CID 130567737 (https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:130567737).

Meltzer, David (2009). First Peoples in the New World. University of California Press. p. 188. ISBN 9780520267992.

Johnson, Michael F. (11 July 2012). “Cactus Hill Archaeological Site” (http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org Cactus_Hill_Archaeological_Site). Encyclopedia Virginia. Virginia Foundation for the Humanities.