Washo Archaeology: Clued In by Clewlow

This paper concerns C. William (Billy) Clewlow's contribution to archaeological ideas and their development relative to the prehistory of the Sierra Nevada around Lake Tahoe and the western Great Basin between the mid-1960s and early 1970s. The work of Clewlow and his fellow U.C. Berkeley graduate student James F. O'Connell was crucial to the solution of typological problems I faced in trying to organize a large collection of projectile points from the east slope of the Sierra Nevada. Clewlow's work with point typology was important far beyond the east slope, however; it contributed to the development of Great Basin/Sierran point keys still in use today. Clewlow was the first Great Basin archaeologist to recognize in print the utility of named point types with known temporal ranges for the study of disturbed deposits and surface archaeology.