Michael B. Collins

The Buttermilk Creek Complex and the Origins of Clovis at the Debra L. Friedkin Site, Texas

A large artifact assemblage dating to 15,000 years ago lies beneath a Clovis assemblage in central Texas. Compelling archaeological evidence of an occupation older than Clovis (~12.8 to 13.1 thousand years ago) in North America is present at only a few sites, and the stone tool assemblages from these sites are small and varied. The Debra L. Friedkin site, Texas, contains an assemblage of 15,528 artifacts that define the Buttermilk Creek Complex, which stratigraphically underlies a Clovis assemblage and dates between ~13.2 and 15.5 thousand years ago. The Buttermilk Creek Complex confirms the emerging view that people occupied the Americas before Clovis and provides a large artifact assemblage to explore Clovis origins.

New Archaeological Evidence for an Early Human Presence at Monte Verde, Chile

Questions surrounding the chronology, place, and character of the initial human colonization of the Americas are a long-standing focus of debate. Interdisciplinary debate continues over the timing of entry, the rapidity and direction of dispersion, the variety of human responses to diverse habitats, the criteria for evaluating the validity of early sites, and the differences and similarities between colonization in North and South America. Despite recent advances in our understanding of these issues, archaeology still faces challenges in defining interdisciplinary research problems, assessing the reliability of the data, and applying new interpretative models. As the debates and challenges continue, new studies take place and previous research reexamined. Here we discuss recent exploratory excavation at and interdisciplinary data from the Monte Verde area in Chile to further our understanding of the first peopling of the Americas. New evidence of stone artifacts, faunal remains, and burned areas suggests discrete horizons of ephemeral human activity in a sandur plain setting radiocarbon and luminescence dated between at least ~18,500 and 14,500 cal BP. Based on multiple lines of evidence, including sedimentary proxies and artifact analysis, we present the probable anthropogenic origins and wider implications of this evidence. In a non-glacial cold climate environment of the south-central Andes, which is challenging for human occupation and for the preservation of hunter-gatherer sites, these horizons provide insight into an earlier context of late Pleistocene human behavior in northern Patagonia.

The Palaeoindian-Archaic transition in North America: new evidence from Texas

The transition from Palaeoindian to Archaic societies in North America is often viewed as a linear progression over a brief but time-transgressive period. New evidence from the Wilson-Leonard site in Texas suggests social experimentation by Palaeoindians over a 2500-year period eventually resulted in Archaic societies. The process was neither short nor linear, and the evidence shows that different but contemporaneous lifeways existed in a variety of locales in the south-central US in the Early Holocene.

CONTROLLED OVERSHOT FLAKING: A RESPONSE TO EREN, PATTEN, O'BRIEN, AND MELTZER

A recent article by Eren et al. () is the latest criticism of the hypothesis that some Late Pleistocene Solutrean groups from western Iberia came to the New World and that lasting vestiges of this contact can be seen in close similarities between Solutrean and Clovis biface and blade technologies. Eren et al.’s primary argument is that overshot flaking, one of many technological characteristics shared in common by Clovis and some Solutrean cultures, was an accident that both cultural systems happened to have made and should be interpreted as cultural convergence rather than evidence for cultural connections or influences. We find their article and the experiment used to support it deeply problematic for several reasons. Indeed, the flawed logic employed in their study and the distortions of earlier versions of the Ice Edge Hypothesis are so egregious that we question how the manuscript passed through the peer-review process into publication in a venue as highly regarded as the Journal of Archaeological Science. Here, we address some of Eren et al.’s most obvious errors, misrepresentations, and over statements. In addition to correcting the record, we are motivated by a desire to see scientific discourse, particularly on an issue as important as understanding the New World’s earliest occupants, conducted in a scholarly, professional manner that involves fair and honest evaluation of appropriate data. The Ice-Edge Hypothesis (IEH) states that some unknown number of Solutrean peoples came in watercraft across the Northern Atlantic from western Iberia to the New World during the Last Glacial Maximum. Furthermore, the contributions of these peoples to early stone tool technologies can be seen in Clovis and possibly pre-Clovis biface and blade manufacture, along with other traits. While the idea that people from Upper Paleolithic Europe came to the New World is not new (see Straus ), details of the IEH have recently been elaborated by Bruce Bradley and Dennis Stanford (Bradley and Stanford , ; Stanford and Bradley ), who note significant similarities between Clovis and Solutrean flaked stone and other technologies. The argument has been critiqued (Balter ; Straus ; Straus et al. ), sometimes using a derisive style of commentary (Meltzer : –). The recent article by Eren, Patten, O’Brien, and Meltzer, “Refuting the technological cornerstone of the Ice-Age Atlantic crossing hypothesis,” (Eren et al. ) is the latest effort to debunk this idea while again employing an unprofessional tone. The IEH has been proposed as, and is best considered to be, a working hypothesis (see Stanford and Bradley : ) explaining some of the New World’s cultural origins. We see the settlement of the Americas as a complex issue requiring advances in many lines of study, throughout the Americas, for years if not generations to come. When it comes to conducting academic discourse on topics of high importance we agree with Straus (: ) with respect to the importance of “standards of argument proof.” We feel strongly that the recent article by Eren et al. is so deeply flawed that it contributes very little to the topic it purports to address, or even to studies of Clovis, Early Paleoamericans, Pleistocene North America, or nearly any other issue. In this rebuttal, we address what we feel are some of the more outstanding problems. According to Eren et al.’s summary of the IEH, controlled overshot (also known as outre passe) flaking, the removal of flakes spanning the width of a biface and removing a small amount of mass from each margin, is presented as the single most important trait shared by Clovis and Solutrean (Eren et al. : ). They claim that the key testable component of the IEH is whether

EARLY ART IN NORTH AMERICA: CLOVIS AND LATER PALEOINDIAN INCISED ARTIFACTS FROM THE GAULT SITE, TEXAS (41BL323)

Abstract Engraved and carved bone and stone artifacts capture our imaginations and are known worldwide from archaeological contexts, but they are seemingly rare and oftentimes difficult to recognize. While preservation issues play a role in the limited recovery of early art objects, research on incised stones and bone from the Gault site in Texas demonstrates that an expectation to find such artifacts plays a key role in their identification and recovery. The presence of incised stones found by collectors at Gault alerted archaeologists to the potential for finding early art in systematic excavations. To date, 11 incised stones and one engraved bone of Paleoindian age (13,000–9,000 calibrated years before present) have been recovered and of these, the Clovis artifacts are among the earliest portable art objects from secure context in North America. The presence of incised stone and bone at Gault led to the development of an examination protocol for identifying and analyzing engraved and incised artifacts that can be applied to a wide variety of archaeological contexts.

Correction: New Archaeological Evidence for an Early Human Presence at Monte Verde, Chile

The images for Figs ​Figs77 and ​and88 have been incorrectly swapped. Please view the correct Figs ​Figs77 and ​and88 here. Fig 7 Serpentine pebble tool from Unit 17, MV-I, showing bifacially knapped and retouched edge. Serpentine is a raw material available in the coastal cordillera west of Monte Verde. Fig 8 Basalt wedge showing seven facets on obverse face (one of which is cortex) and three on the reverse face.

Evidence of an early projectile point technology in North America at the Gault Site, Texas, USA

Human presence in North America before ~16 thousand years ago is confirmed by age measurements from Area 15 of the Gault Site. American archeology has long been polarized over the issue of a human presence in the Western Hemisphere earlier than Clovis. As evidence of early sites across North and South America continues to emerge, stone tool assemblages appear more geographically and temporally diverse than traditionally assumed. Within this new framework, the prevailing models of Clovis origins and the peopling of the Americas are being reevaluated. This paper presents age estimates from a series of alluvial sedimentary samples from the earliest cultural assemblage at the Gault Site, Central Texas. The optically stimulated luminescence age estimates (~16 to 20 thousand years ago) indicate an early human occupation in North America before at least ~16 thousand years ago. Significantly, this assemblage exhibits a previously unknown, early projectile point technology unrelated to Clovis. Within a wider context, this evidence suggests that Clovis technology spread across an already regionalized, indigenous population.

Words Without the Music: A Response to Patterson

ABSTRACT In his review of Clovis Blade Technology, Patterson commits precisely the errors whose avoidance was stressed in the book.