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To: Varda
"You may want to take a 'peek' at the latest on some of these sites, Monte Verde, Topper and Meadowcroft. (The Clovis Barrier has been broken)"

Scratch Meadocroft....I meant Cactus Hill.

48 posted on 02/24/2003 1:08:15 PM PST by blam
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To: blam
Well, you sent me to the library LOL! I love watching the scientific fur fly on these issues.

Looks like Cactus Hill is promising but not at the indesputable evidence level.

"Microscopic studies of soil structure at Cactus Hill, however, suggest that geological forces may have affected the artifact layers, assert Carole A. Mandryk and J. Taylor Perron of Harvard University. "I don't think it's been proved that these artifacts come from undisturbed locations," Mandryk says.

Vance Haynes of the University of Arizona in Tucson also views Cactus Hill cautiously. He awaits further radiocarbon tests before accepting the site's age estimates. Haynes says that it's "most unusual" that only 6 inches of soil separate the two occupation levels and so must cover a span of about 5,000 years.

Still, "Cactus Hill is the best candidate for a pre-Clovis site in a long time," Haynes remarks"
http://www.sciencenews.org/20000415/fob1.asp
57 posted on 02/25/2003 7:19:57 AM PST by Varda
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To: blam
Monte Verde is dated at 12,500 rcybp and really looks like a pre-Clovis settlement.

"Monte Verde and beyond
The most accepted pre-Clovis site--although it still has skeptics--is Monte Verde , in south-central Chile. It took 2 decades for it to be recognized, and its principal investigator, Tom Dillehay of the University of Kentucky, Lexington, campaigned hard to win converts. His work centers on what appears to be an ancient dwelling in an upland bog 56 kilometers from the Pacific coast. Beside a small creek, Dillehay and his group unearthed the remains of several primitive structures, stone and wood implements, fire pits, and chewed plant cuds. The quantity of evidence is massive, but the carbon dates were controversial: Some reviewers had balked at dates of at least 12,500 years BP--long before the Clovis people set foot in North America.

In 1997, Dillehay invited a panel of well-known archaeologists to the site, handing each of them a bulky site report published by his sponsor, the Smithsonian Institution. The members responded with a unanimous vote of confidence (Science, 28 February 1997, p. 1256). Even Haynes, who felt he was included as the odd man out on the panel, accepted the early date.

That acceptance, according to Meltzer, "broke the logjam" of skepticism about pre-Clovis dwellings. It also helped that Clovis-contemporary or pre-Clovis sites have popped up in Venezuela and Brazil (Science, 19 April 1996, pp. 346, 373 ). Considering all the evidence, Meltzer adds, "it's striking that there's so much material at 11,000 years BP in South America; it suggests that people had been there a long time."

But even Monte Verde has been challenged again. In 1999, archaeologist Stuart Fiedel, a pre-Clovis skeptic at the consulting firm of John Milner Associates in Alexandria, Virginia, blasted the quality of Dillehay's site report in a long critique published in the popular journal Discovering Archaeology. Fiedel found many glitches, noting for example that key artifacts were described as being unearthed in different locations (Science, 22 October 1999, p. 657 ). Although Meltzer and others say Fiedel's review was nitpicking and unfair, it had an impact. Haynes again began to raise questions about whether the artifacts might be younger objects mixed with older material and animal bones in a flood of glacial water." (Pre-Clovis Sites Fight for Acceptance, Science, 2 Mar 2001)
58 posted on 02/25/2003 7:22:41 AM PST by Varda
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To: blam
Topper likewise looks promising but...

" Goodyear was "shocked" by what his volunteers began to unearth from below the Clovis level: small blades of chert, chiseled stone "burins" or needles--possibly for decorating bone--and other fragments. His team found no biface tools or charcoal for dating, which would make the artifacts more convincing. But Steven Forman of the University of Illinois, Chicago, dated the sand just above these microlithics by optically stimulated luminescence to an age of about 15,500 calendar years or a radiocarbon date of about 13,000 years BP, says Goodyear--making them clearly pre-Clovis. These findings haven't been published, but skeptics tend to accept Goodyear's dates and geology; what they question is whether the stone pieces were made by humans."
(Pre-Clovis Sites Fight for Acceptance, Science, 2 Mar 2001)

The acceptance of these interpretations seems to change with the weather. Vance Haynes has done a back flip on Monte Verde. Oh well, it certainly makes for a great spectator sport.
61 posted on 02/25/2003 7:46:05 AM PST by Varda
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