At the end of the Pleistocene, the region was impacted by the last gasp of the ice age. During a prolonged 1000-year cold episode that began ~12,700 years ago, wind transported vast quantities of sediment (silt and sand) over the region’s denuded landscape. As a result, much of the region’s ~13,000 year-old Clovis-age archaeological remains were buried beneath loess. Several sites have been investigated that have produced diagnostic Clovis points beneath eolian sediments.