The Peopling of the Americas: A Brief Synopsis on the Status of the Current Debate With a Focus on North America - Couverture souple

Crook III, Wilson W.

Couverture souple

ISBN 13 : 9798621139353

Editeur : Independently published, 2020

Synopsis

In January 2020, I gave a presentation on the current status of the issue of the Peopling of the Americas at a monthly meeting of the Houston Archeological Society (HAS). A number of the members of the society asked for copies of my presentation deck which, while I was more than willing to share, was so large that it was unfeasible to email via my server. Placing the presentation on flash drives and handing them out was also not very cost effective for me. As a result, it was suggested that I condense my comments into a brief summary and publish it as a special HAS Report for distribution to the membership. This brief synopsis thus serves to fulfill that request.In this regard, I will proceed along the lines of my oral presentation which began with the discovery and recognition of the Clovis culture and its rise to the status of being the oldest recognized human occupation in North America. This ultimately led to the belief that the Clovis people were indeed the first settlers in North America, which became known as the “Clovis First” theory. Somewhat concurrent with the development of the Clovis First theory, a number of sites were discovered that produced geologic and/or radiometric evidence for occupations potentially preceding Clovis. While some of these have since been discredited, others stubbornly persisted through scientific debate and continued to put forth claims for an older-than-Clovis culture across North America. I will discuss some of these early older-than-Clovis claims and how it led to a discussion of what a Pre-Clovis lithic assemblage might look like. I was fortunate to be sitting at a table in the Gault Project lab in 2007 with a number of recognized experts on the issue who were debating the claims of these Pre-Clovis sites. After several hours of intense discussion, Michael Collins, head of the Gault Project, stopped the talk and simply stated that before we start guessing what a Pre-Clovis tool kit might look like, we need to first definitively establish the Clovis tool assemblage. Then we can clearly recognize when artifacts are Clovis or something completely different.Over the last 35 years, I have participated in excavations at a number of Clovis sites – two in Virginia and another five in Texas. Moreover, I have participated in a year-long study aimed at analyzing the trace element geochemistry of chert artifacts from over 40 Clovis sites in Texas. This study included some 453 Clovis tools covering the entire range of the known Clovis assemblage (projectile points, preforms, bifaces, macro and microblades, blade cores, adzes, scrapers, gravers, and worked flakes). So in the second part of this paper, again following the outline of my January 2020 presentation, I will discuss what it means to be Clovis.Lastly, I will briefly discuss 20 of the best documented older-than-Clovis sites in North America which will include all the data up to the time of this writing. While there are many intriguing Pre-Clovis site in South America, for the purposes of brevity I am only focusing on the sites in this continent.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Independently published
• Date d'édition: 2020
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 13: 9798621139353
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 99
• Coordonnées du fabricant: Manufactured by Amazon on behalf of the author; https://www.amazon.fr/hz/contact-us; ; c/o Amazon Media EU S.à.r.l., 38 Avenue John F. Kennedy; Luxembourg; L-1855; Luxembourg