Well, if you say so -- you probably have more info about it than me. But I work with quartz materials like agate, chert, flint and chalcedony on a regular basis and count me skeptical, at least based on the image. I see no evidence of knapping and the piece's blunt edge shows little sign of the sharp conchoidal cleavage "blade" most scrapers I've seen display.
As for using the volcanic ash for dating it should be mentioned that streams flood (there's one nearby) and winds blow. Both can redistribute sediments, especially light ones like volcanic ash. The discovery will be exciting if it proves out but extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
I agree about pre-Clovis artifacts. Many more will likely be found when the oceans again start receding in the coming ice age.
Thanks Bernard. Winds may blow ash around, but they don’t work worth a dang on stone artifacts, and this one was under the ash, hence it antedates the ash, unless one wants to posit ash that blows around for three or four thousand years. And the stone still had traces of blood.
> extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence
That’s an old Saganism, it just meant that Carl classified anything he didn’t already believe as an extraordinary claim. In fact, AFAIC, that particular Saganism is literally the only extraordinary claim ever made, apart from “the debate is over”.
Prior to radiocarbon dating, it was extraordinary to claim that artifacts in the Americas were older than 3000 years — even though that was starting to change, it took RC dating to finally pull out the rug. Science progresses just like one funeral following another.
But the new floor was about 9,000 years, and then later 11,000 years (Atlantis age, ironically enough).
Now that has increased to perhaps 14,000 years — that’s the conventional low chronology that has been retroactively applied to Meadowcroft and Monte Verde.
It remains mysterious (koff koff) that a single group of a few thousand, or some say only a few hundred, prehistoric hunters managed to stampede across Beringia during a short window when it could still be reached on foot, but before it flooded, and then waited around for some generations until the glaciers melted and they could explode across the 10,000 mile length of two continents, arriving everywhere at once.
And all during those millennia, they were completely alone and undisturbed by anyone else. :’)