ALLENDALE - In a sunlit forest of oak trees, four scientists photograph and ponder deep sandy pits scattered along the bank of the Savannah River. In these pits perhaps lie clues to one of the great mysteries of time: How did people first come to America? Where did they come from? And how long ago? Textbooks say that during the Ice Age some 11,500 years ago, they crossed a land bridge from Asia to what is now Alaska. From there, they spread across the continent.
This theory has prevailed since the 1930s, when in Clovis, N.M., archaeologists unearthed evidence of an ancient tribe that had passed through the area. But a small, archaeological dig here in the rolling hills near Allendale is yielding evidence that challenges the belief in that theory. In archaeology, time is measured by depth. The deeper something is buried, generally, the older it is. So when Dr. Albert Goodyear, an archaeologist at the University of South Carolina, discovered Clovis artifacts at the Allendale site three years ago, he asked himself why dig deeper? After all, he had found evidence of what was then believed to be the oldest culture of the Americas.
But encouraged by a dig in Chile that had hinted at a people older than the Clovis, Goodyear decided to dig deeper. And then, a meter below the Clovis artifacts, he struck what archaeologists consider gold: hundreds of flakes of stone chipped by hand from a prehistoric limestone quarry. Because these "strange little tools," as Goodyear calls them, were found below the Clovis artifacts, they had to have been fashioned by people who had passed through the area before the Clovis. To Goodyear, they represented a new, first chapter of American history. And he was the author. The question is: How much older were these artifacts?
Scientists pored over the Topper dig site near Allendale last week in search of the answer. "This site is obviously earlier than Clovis. The question is, is it a day older or 1,000 years, or more? That's what we don't know," said Goodyear. Goodyear estimates the artifacts range from 13,500 years old, the date of the Clovis materials, to 18,000 years old. If the latter date is confirmed, Topper may be evidence of the earliest known occupation of the Americas. The deep rectangular pits dug into forest floor so far have revealed frustratingly few clues. Goodyear and his mostly volunteer supporters have yet to find charcoal to radio-carbon date the site. Dark round stains uncovered in the soil last year, initially suspected to be remnants of a wooden structure, turned out to be inconclusive. To help date the site, Goodyear has turned to geologists who can estimate the age of something by the layer of earth in which it is found.
By the end of the year, he also hopes to have results from tests of quartz found with the artifacts. Geologists roughly can gauge the age of a site by measuring the energy from sunlight stored in the mineral. The tests would indicate how long the quartz was buried, presumably alongside the pre-Clovis stone chips. This dating method, however, is unreliable and not widely accepted. The Savannah River flowing nearby adds to the complexity of the Topper site. Goodyear believes the Clovis would have arrived at Topper at the end of the Ice Age, just after the river had receded. Artifacts from the earlier occupants are higher up a bluff, evidence they occupied the site while the river was high.
While the river may help distinguish the two different sets of artifacts, it also may have redistributed them. "The perplexing part is that we don't have a way of measuring the time that elapsed," Goodyear said of the rise and fall of the river over time. Goodyear acknowledges that absent a fire pit with charcoal, it may be decades before Toppers is fully accepted among his peers. By subscribing to the pre-Clovis theory, Goodyear is bucking archaeological orthodoxy.
For 70 years, archaeologists have held fast to the Clovis theory, which remained unchallenged until discoveries in the mountains of Chile and in Virginia and Pennsylvania. At each of these sites, archaeologists believe they have uncovered clues that reveal a culture that peopled the Americas thousands of years before the Clovis. While these sites erode established beliefs, many archaeologists still hold firmly to the Clovis-first theory. During a visit to the Topper site last year, one leading researcher chided Goodyear for chasing after will-of-the-wisps. "The word `Clovis' is a lightning rod. If you say you have something older than Clovis, you join the ranks of people who have not fared well professionally," Goodyear said, referring to archaeologists who are still defending their suspected pre-Clovis sites decades after they were discovered.
Topper and the other sites have attracted national attention, in part, because of the bitter dispute between Clovis-firsters and pre-Clovis camps. Before, it seemed, archaeologists thought they had all the answers. Now, with sites like Topper, no one seems certain of anything. In recent national publications, Topper has been labeled a pre-Clovis site, placing it in the ranks of the more famous Cactus Hill site near Richmond, Va., and Meadowcroft stone quarry in Avella, Pa. But Topper doesn't quite fit into the pattern of the other sites. It remains a quirky, puzzling discovery.
The pre-Clovis artifacts at Cactus Hill and Meadowcroft included an abundance of stone spear points. Topper has revealed few. Tools at the other sites were large, nearly the size of a hand. At Toppers, they are small. Some archaeologists have noted similarities between tools found at the Cactus Hill and Meadowcroft sites and tools found in France and Spain. This evidence in hand, they advanced the controversial theory that the first occupants of North America crossed over a land bridge from Europe, not Asia. In other words, the ancestors of modern American Indians were of European stock, not Asian. This European culture would have migrated from East to West, which may explain why the Eastern artifacts are older than those found in the West. Or, it may turn out, there were two migrations.
But which came first?
Topper muddles the picture further. Tools found at Topper more closely resemble those found in Asia than those at Cactus Hill or Meadowcroft, Goodyear said. Perhaps the Topper people were contemporaries of those at Cactus Hill and Meadowcroft. Perhaps those at Topper were much older, Goodyear said with a smile. Even more intriguing is that Topper produced a preponderance of small tools, called burins, that were not found at the Meadowcroft and Cactus Hill sites, Goodyear said. This chisel-shaped stone tool, about the size of a thumb, would have been used to groove or splinter bone or antlers, scale fish and sharpen spears.
The people at Cactus Hill and Meadowcroft may have used stone spear points to kill large game. Those at Topper may have been fishermen and small game hunters, Goodyear said. Scientists who studied the site last week reserved judgment, but they said the artifacts found appear to be pre-Clovis. "It's peculiar," said Michael Waters, an anthropologist at Texas A&M University. "It's an unusual assemblage of material." "We don't have the answers," he said. "That's what makes this so much fun."