Local find to be included in scholarly journal
BOTKINS — Dave Mielke never told his wife about the time he found his first Clovis point.
“Nope, I never told her,” he said with a grin. “She’ll hear about it now with you writing a story.”
Mielke was an arrowhead hunter from way back; the retired history teacher recalled finding his first arrowhead at age 5. Now, more
than a few years later, he is thrilled that his work on uncovering evidence the Clovis people were living or passing through Botkins is going to be published in a professional journal.
Here’s a little background to put this event in perspective.
First, the Clovis culture is a prehistoric Paleoamerican culture, named for distinct
stone tools found near Clovis, New Mexico, in the 1920s and 1930s. The tools are characterized by the manufacture of Clovis points and distinctive bone and ivory tools. Archaeologists' most precise determinations at present
suggest this radiocarbon age is equal to roughly 13,200 to 12,900 calendar years ago.
Second, there were Clovis point arrowheads =found on a farm in Botkins, now known as
the Mielke site. It is at the north end of Shelby County, roughly in the center of the drainage
divide of the Great Miami, Scioto and Wabash rivers.
The farm belonged to Mark and Paul Buehler, who gave Mielke permission to hunt in the fields.
“They allowed me to collect anytime,” he said. “They were the generous ones who helped make this happen.”
Mielke was still a youngster when he was inspired to find a Clovis site after reading about the Folsom people, another Paleo group
of prehistoric inhabitants of Colorado and New Mexico, in a National Geographic.
“They were thought to be related to the Clovis people,” Mielke said. “My dream was to find a Clovis site. Well, in 1971, that’s what I did.”
His first find was a distinctive Clovis point — he could feet the flutes when he pulled it out of the ground and confirmed it once he washed it clean of the mud.
“I knew exactly what I had before I ever saw it, just by feeling it,” Mielke said. “The first one (found) was the best one I ever found.”
That find led to more discoveries in the area — because there had to be three to five finds for
it to be considered a true site — and that drew the attention of Bob Converse, known to be the leading amateur archaeologist in Ohio.
“He realized the site was significant,” Mielke said, pointing to where the site and photos of the different Clovis points and tools are includ-
ed in Converse’s book, The Archaeology of Ohio.
Converse tried for years to get professional and scholarly archaeologists interested in Miel- ke’s finds, but was repeatedly unsuccessful.
That changed when Metrin Eren visited the site.
Eren, an associate professor at Kent State Uni- versity, has plans to include the Mielke site in
his article that will be published in the Mid- Continental Journal of Archeology, the official
publication of the Midwest Archaeological Con- ference, Inc. The journal publishes original pa-
pers on the archaeology of the region between the Appalachian Mountains and the Great Plains, and from the Boreal Forests to the midsouth.
Inclusion in the journal means the site and the story “become part of the scientific record,” Mielke said. “This assemblage can be studied by any archeologist any time.”
Mielke’s collection was donated to the Cleveland Museum of History; the artifacts had to be
included in a museum prior to the article being published.
The Clovis culture remains a topic worthy of study not only because of the evidence they traveled from west to east cross North America,
but because the culture seemed to vanish some 13,500 years ago.
“Everything about them seemed to disappear,” Mielke said, adding archeologists and scientists
have found no evidence of genetic material in the cultures that came after the Clovis people.
“There’s a lot of research that needs to be done,” he said. “It’s a very special culture.”
Eren is coming to Botkins Friday for an 8 p.m. program at Botkins Local School. He plans to
discuss the history of the site and what it means for the area and on a larger scale.
Mielke encourages area residents to bring their own Clovis-point artifacts to be evaluated during the presentation.
“That would be great — for people to come in with what they’ve found,” Mielke said. “I hope Metrin (Eren) gets an idea of where we are in
the migration of the Clovis people. The St. Johns Moraine was surely a highway for the Paleo people.”
Oh — and that story he didn’t tell his wife? Back in 1971 he had left her at home typing exams for him on that stormy night in May ostensibly to get more ditto copy forms so she could finish the task. He made a quick stop at the Buehler field, even though he told his wife
he wouldn’t, “because she knew what I was up to.” He took three steps, “saw a glint of flint under the water,” which was standing in the field after the thunderstorm, stuck his hand in the muck, and came up with the Clovis point.
“I never told her what I had in my pocket,” Mielke said, laughing out loud. “And that was
my best find.”