Replies

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)

Dillehay is claiming another site not far from Monte Verde will date in the 35,000-50,000 range. Of cource, all is disputed.

The 50,000-Year-Old Americans Of Pedra Furada

Calico: A 200,000-Year-Old Site In The Americas?

Rainforest Researchers Hit Paydirt (Farming 11K Years Ago In South America)