The Naco Mammoth Kill Site is an archaeological site in southeast Arizona, 1 mile northwest of Naco in

Cochise County Cochise County () is a county in the southeastern corner of the U.S. state of Arizona. It is named after the Native American chief Cochise. The population was 125,447 at the 2020 census. The county seat is Bisbee and the most populous city is ...

. The site was reported to the

Arizona State Museum The Arizona State Museum (ASM), founded in 1893, was originally a repository for the collection and protection of archaeological resources. Today, however, ASM stores artifacts, exhibits them and provides education and research opportunities. It ...

in September 1951 by Marc Navarrete, a local resident, after his father found two Clovis points in Greenbush Draw (eroded by the Greenbush Creek, a tributary of the San Pedro river), while digging out the fossil bones of a

mammoth A mammoth is any species of the extinct elephantid genus ''Mammuthus'', one of the many genera that make up the order of trunked mammals called proboscideans. The various species of mammoth were commonly equipped with long, curved tusks an ...

Emil Haury Emil Walter "Doc" Haury (May 2, 1904 in Newton, Kansas – December 5, 1992 in Tucson, Arizona) was an influential archaeologist who specialized in the archaeology of the American Southwest. He is most famous for his work at Snaketown, a Hohokam ...

excavated the Naco mammoth site in April 1952. In only five days, Haury recovered the remains of a

Columbian Mammoth The Columbian mammoth (''Mammuthus columbi'') is an extinct species of mammoth that inhabited the Americas as far north as the Northern United States and as far south as Costa Rica during the Pleistocene epoch. It was one of the last in a line ...

in association with 8 Clovis points (including the 2 originally found by the Navarettes). The excavator believed the assemblage to date from about 10,000

Before Present Before Present (BP) years, or "years before present", is a time scale used mainly in archaeology, geology and other scientific disciplines to specify when events occurred relative to the origin of practical radiocarbon dating in the 1950s. Becau ...

. An additional point was found in the arroyo upstream. The Naco site was the first Clovis mammoth kill association to be identified. Paleoindian Studies and Geoarchaeology at the University of Arizona, Department of Anthropology, University of Arizona
/ref> An additional, unpublished, second excavation occurred in 1953 which doubled the area of the original work and found bones from a 2nd mammoth. In 2020, small charcoal fragments were found adhered to a mammoth bone from the site. AMS radiocarbon dating produced a mean date of 10,985 ± 56 Before Present.Huckell, Bruce B., et al., "The Naco Clovis Site: Old Excavations and New Dates", PaleoAmerica, vol. 8, iss. 3, pp. 1-13, 2022 https://doi.org/10.1080/20555563.2022.2058903 Image:Haury at Naco.jpg, Emil Haury (right) at Naco mammoth kill site, 1952, photograph courtesy Arizona State Museum, University of Arizona. Image:Naco1952point in place.jpg, A Clovis point ''in situ'' amidst mammoth bones at the Naco site, 1952, photograph courtesy Arizona State Museum, University of Arizona.

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