One of the less-discussed but scientifically important aspects of the Spirit Cave burial was the stone tools found in association with the remains — tools that placed the Spirit Cave Man in a specific archaeological tradition and that raised important questions about the relationship between the earliest well-documented Americans and the patterns of stone tool technology that have been used to trace migration routes.

The Spirit Cave Man was associated with the Western Stemmed Tradition — a stone tool technology characterized by projectile points with a distinctive stemmed shape, very different from the fluted Clovis points that defined the most famous early American archaeological tradition.

The relationship between the Western Stemmed Tradition and the Clovis tradition has been a significant question in American archaeology.

Clovis is well-dated to approximately 13,000 to 12,600 years ago and has a broad geographic distribution across North America.

The Western Stemmed Tradition appears in the Great Basin and surrounding areas at roughly similar times — some Western Stemmed Tradition sites have produced dates comparable to or slightly earlier than the earliest Clovis dates.