Tools

The Paleo people were extremely talented at making spear points and made some of the most beautiful points ever. Their points had unique flutes taken off the length of the point. Folsom and Clovis points are examples of points from this time. (The names Folsom and Clovis come from the location in New Mexico where these styles of points were first found.) Paleo people also used flintknapping to make other useful tools like scrapers for cleaning hides, and drills for making holes in hides for clothing and shelter.

The toolkits of early hunters would have included a variety of tools made from stone such as spears for hunting, scrapers and modified flakes for dressing hides, knives for cutting, gravers for engraving or incising and hammerstones used for making stone tools. They probably also used some bone and wooden tools.

Paleo people traded or traveled long distances to obtain different kinds of stones for their tools. They got some materials from hundreds of miles away. One important place where they found the stones they needed was at Silver Mound, in Jackson County, Wisconsin.