As usual, I have many more ideas for things to write about than I have time to write.  There's a backlog of material related to giants and plenty of other stuff I'd like to write about related to my research plans in the Southeast, interesting things about South Carolina, teaching, etc.  This post is just to mention a few things relevant to previous posts.

Haplogroup X2a

Based on the metrics I have access to (Facebook likes/shares, Twitter data, and the page view metrics that Weebly provides), the post I wrote on the new paper by Jennifer Raff and Deborah Bolnick was one of the more popular things I've written recently. I think the paper is very nice, and I'm glad for anything I can do to encourage people to read it.  Yesterday, Raff wrote a post addressing some questions about the paper.  I highly recommend it to anyone interested in this topic (professional or otherwise). When I looked at where my post was posted on Facebook, I was a little dismayed by some of the comments.  It is evident (and interesting) that a lot of people react to the headline and the image without even reading the content.  Anyway, I encourage you to read the original paper and Raff's answers to common questions.

Hutton Pulitzer Claims He Made Me Famous, Threatens to "Out" Professional Archaeologists

My posts about the various silly activities and statements by Hutton Pulitzer (there's a listing here) appear to be gaining a fan base. A post from September titled "The Philyaw Follies, Fall 2015 Edition" attracted Pulitzer as well as several individuals who he has apparently tangled with online before.  And I've been getting emails from some Pulitzer detractors. 

Among other strange things, Pulitzer made the following comment on my blog:

"Hey Andy, yes saw this and me calling you the "4A" made you quite famous. LOL, but yes archaeologists tend to not let themselves be interviewed. We did in fact offer you a spot to go on record with Wayne May, but yes you did decline. However, some of our new recordings are outing people like you and University coverups."

While I will eagerly await whatever "outing" he's talking about, I won't be holding my breath. If there's one thing that I can confidently identify as part of Pulitzer's M.O., it's the lack of follow-up to his grandiose statements. Anyway, his comments on my blog are worth reading, as are the comments of readers on Jason Colavito's post about a recent interview between Pulitzer and Scott Wolter.

Which brings us to the next tidbit.

Scott Wolter Is Still Participating In My Class

My plans for teaching a class about "fringe" ideas in archaeology (working title: "Forbidden Archaeology") in the Fall of 2016 are moving forward. The paperwork is currently working its way up the various steps in the chain.  I just got here, so the process is somewhat mysterious to me.  But I don't have any reason at this point to think that I won't be able to teach the course.

As I wrote in this post, Scott Wolter responded to my open invitation for "fringe" theorists to step up to the plate and participate in my class. An alert reader emailed me the other day to point my attention to Wolter's blog, where someone had made a comment about my website and Wolter had replied with something like "Who is Andy White?"  The reader questioned if Wolter would still be participating in the class.

The answer to that is "yes."  I had a cordial email exchange with Wolter and the plans for his participation in the class are still on.

I'm still looking for one or two more who like to be involved - I'd love to have a person talk abut giants and a person to make a case for any aspect of claims related to Ice Age civilization.  Send me an email if you're interested: aawhite@mailbox.sc.edu.

Boycotting Discovery and the History Channel?

I think many of my readers will agree that the overall quality of programming on The Discovery Channel and The History Channel has gone downhill in recent years. I don't have anything new to say about why that's a bad thing, but I wanted to direct your attention to a blog post by Gordon Bonnet at Skeptophilia calling for a boycott. Here is a bit of what he says:

"Look, it's not that I'm against speculation.  Sometimes people doggedly pursuing ideas that everyone has thought ridiculous has paid off in the end.  But there is nothing to be gained by formerly reputable channels airing fiction passed off as truth, and fantasy passed off as documentary.  In the end, it makes everyone's job harder, from lowly science teachers like myself who are trying to get kids to learn how to sort fact from bullshit, to the honest researchers who would like to investigate fringe claims and do so in a rational, evidence-based manner.

So it's time to turn off The History Channel and Discovery.  They've been veering off course for a while, but it's getting worse, and it's time to send a message.  Stop watching this garbage, and better yet, send a letter or an email to them telling them you're doing so.  It's time to get some good science and history programming back on the air."

Yeah . . . believe it or not there is a distinction to be made between programs honestly investigating ideas at the "fringe" and programs presenting outright fantasy that is disguised as documentary.  It's the turn toward that second kind of programming that irks a lot of us, I think.  Mermaids, anyone?  

I really think there has to be a way for media to tap into the public's interest in the human past (and a spectrum of ideas about it) without resorting to just making things up. 

The purported pre-Clovis assemblage from Topper is entirely stone, consisting of items described as cores, blades, flakes, gravers, spokeshaves, scrapers, etc. Bifaces are absent, which, I think, is one of the aspects of the assemblage that gives many North American archaeologists pause. You can see images of some of the pre-Clovis material here and in Doug Sain's dissertation (discussed more below). You can also read Goodyear's 2009 update on work at the site here.

The questions about the Topper pre-Clovis assemblage boil down to two main issues:

• Is the material cultural?
• Is it really that old?

Both of those issues are much simpler to raise then they are to answer.  

Is It Cultural?

The "is it cultural" question is Question Number 1: if it's not cultural, then it doesn't really matter how old it is. Some archaeologists (such as Michael Collins in this Popular Archaeology article and this CNN story)  have stated that the the pre-Clovis materials from Topper are the result of some natural process rather than the products of human behavior (i.e., they're "geofacts" rather than artifacts). If the Topper pre-Clovis "artifacts" are just a bunch of rocks, the rest of the story doesn't really matter.

Yesterday I looked at some of the material from Topper that is displayed at USC's Salkehatchie campus. I wasn't doing a systematic analysis, and I didn't actually handle the material (I was just looking through the glass like everybody else), so I'm not yet ready to offer a strong opinion of my own.  I will say, however, that at least some of the objects displayed surely looked like good candidates for human-made stone tools and cores to me. There were several pieces that appeared to have fairly clear unifacial retouch, one flake with a very clear bulb of percussion, large "cores" that appeared to have multiple flake removals, etc.

In my opinion, several of the pieces from the Topper pre-Clovis assemblage that I saw (the only ones I've looked at recently) show characteristics that appear to be consistent with human manufacture. Does that mean they couldn't have been produced by some sort of natural process? Good question. Doug Sain's recent (2015) dissertation on the pre-Clovis assemblage from Topper attempted to address that issue by developing several lines of analysis (experimental archaeology, attribute analysis, refitting, etc.).  Sain concluded (on page 567) that:    

"Evidence from this study supports King’s (2011) findings and demonstrates a human origin for the pre Clovis conchoidal flake assemblage at the site. However, this assemblage likely resulted from flake core and flake tool manufacture as opposed to biface manufacture and furthermore does not reflect bioturbation as an agent responsible for deposition. The assemblage is at minimum 14,000 BP and possibly much older. The bend break assemblage from the Lower Pleistocene Sands and Upper Pleistocene Terrace at Topper are also considered products of human agency based on the presence of specific technological attributes (compression rings, lips), retouch modification, and lack of differentially weathered scars." 

I confess that I have only skimmed through Sain's dissertation at this point (it is 2400 pages).  It's clear, however, that he's done a lot more than simply look at some pieces of stone and say "yup, looks like an artifact" or "nope, doesn't look like an artifact." He has looked more closely at the material than (I would guess) anyone else at this point.  Thus his conclusions are an important data point suggesting that we shouldn't be so quick to dismiss the materials from Topper just because they are difficult to reconcile with the "knowns" of North American prehistory.

Is It Really That Old?

If the pre-Clovis materials from Topper are legitimate products of human behavior, can they really be 50,000 years old?

It looks to me like there is little question that the sediments (writ large) from which the Topper materials were excavated really do date to several tens of thousands of years ago.  This (2009) paper by Michael Waters et al. discusses the geoarchaeology and dating of the Topper sediments, if you want to wade into the particulars.

Even if the general sediment stratigraphy is understood and well-dated, however, it is fair to ask if younger artifacts might have been introduced into older sediments through some sort of natural process - tree roots? animal tunnels? cracks in the earth?  I wasn't present at any of the Topper excavations, so I can't really add anything about the possible role bioturbation might have played in moving artifacts around. Again, there is discussion in Sain's dissertation about whether some kind of bioturbation could explain how much younger (i.e., Clovis age) artifacts were introduced into such old sediment.

What If?

Healthy skepticism is an important part of doing good science. I'm as skeptical as the next person, and I think the extraordinary nature of the claims being made about Topper warrant significant scrutiny.  What I (and many others, I think) are anticipating is the definitive publication by Goodyear that lays out the evidence and the argument in a succinct, clear way.  That will let us evaluate the totality of the claim and find a path forward for future inquiry.  The Topper site is still there, and new excavations could be conducted to target questions that develop from analysis of what has been done so far.

But take off the skeptic's hat for a minute and put on the "what if" hat: how cool would it be if there was an archaeologically-recognizable occupation of eastern North America pre-dating the Last Glacial Maximum? Where did those people come from? What were their societies like? What happened to them? Humor me for a minute here.

The time period between about 60,000 and 30,000 years ago (i.e., the time period that is claimed for some of the pre-Clovis materials from Topper) saw the movements of human groups into several previously-unoccupied parts of the world, including northern Asia, Japan, and Australia. What if an early wave of colonizers reached the New World? What if the 33,000 year-old remains from Monte Verde (Chile) were left behind by people in this first wave? What if the 48,000-32,000 year-old remains from Pedra Furada (Brazil) were also left by those early settlers? What if the stone tool technologies of these early settlers, like those of many Paleolithic groups in the Old World, were not based heavily on bifaces? What if a lack of formal bifaces in these early pre-Clovis technologies means that the lithic tools and debris left behind by these early settlers is "hiding in plain site," the nondescript assemblages of pre-Clovis flakes and unifacial tools blending in with the lithics left by much later peoples?  What if that earliest occupation was ultimately unsuccessful, leaving behind no survivors and presenting no evidence for a historical connection between the technologies of its people and those of the people who followed?

That's a lot of "what ifs," but I think that's okay.  "What ifs" are free.

If the pre-Clovis lithics from the Topper site were really produced by a very early human occupation of eastern North America, there is quite a story that remains to be told in this part of the world. And if that story is true, maybe Topper won't even be the site that can tell it the best. If there were people in the Southeast 50,000 years ago, it will ultimately be possible to find other examples of sites that they produced.  Perhaps a systematic look at buried deposits predating the LGM will help produce some information (positive or negative) that can help us understand what Topper means.  After visiting Topper and having a cursory look at some of the materials myself, I'm looking forward to watching the debate play out and seeing what happens next. Who knows -- I may get in on the action myself someday.  

This week, Darrin Lowery responded to questions raised about the circumstances of the discovery of the Cinmar biface, a bi-pointed stone tool that resembles, at least superficially, artifacts made and used by the Solutrean peoples of Upper Paleolithic Europe.  The point was reportedly dredged up in 1970 by a scallop boat named the Cinmar (hence the name) operating off the Atlantic coast of North America, and associated with mastodon bones that were radiocarbon dated to 22,760 +/- 90 RCYBP (UCIAMS-53545).  The Cinmar biface has assumed a prominent place in the debate about the Solutrean hypothesis (the idea that Upper Paleolithic peoples from western Europe colonized eastern North America sometime between about 21,000 to 17,000 years ago), even gracing the cover of the 2013 book about the idea by Dennis Stanford and Bruce Bradley, its two main advocates.

The circumstances of the Cinmar discovery were called into question in a paper by Metin Eren, Matthew Boulanger, and Michael O'Brien titled "The Cinmar Discovery and the Proposed Pre-Late Glacial Maximum Occupation of North America," published in the Journal of Archaeological Science (JAS) in March of this year.  Eren et al. questioned the history and details of the find, focusing particularly on inconsistencies and omissions in the various accounts of the discovery.  The JAS is a high profile venue, and the paper by Metin et al. generated a significant amount of discussion among archaeologists interested in the peopling of the Americas.

Full disclosure: I consider Metin Eren a friend of mine.  We have some overlapping research interests, and have occasionally exchanged emails and papers.  I think we've even had beers together at one or two professional conferences.

I should also say that I'm very skeptical of the Solutrean hypothesis.  The claim of a trans-Atlantic colonization of North America during the Last Glacial Maximum is an extraordinary one, and I have seen nothing so far that convinces me it is correct. I'm not alone.  The Solutrean hypothesis does not enjoy widespread support among North American archaeologists for a number of reasons (see this 2014 exchange for some summary arguments).  Unfortunately, it has captured the imaginations of some ugly elements outside of the professional community, serving as the basis for white supremacist and neo-Nazi fantasies about the importance of white people to North American prehistory.  That's not the fault of the developers and proponents of the idea, but it's a social dimension to the Solutrean hypothesis that is nonetheless worth being aware of and keeping an eye on.

After reading through both the JAS paper and Lowery's self-published response, I can't say much has changed for me.  The discussion about the circumstances of the Cinmar discovery is an interesting one (especially if you like to see an argument), but it's a debate about the details of a single discovery that, in my opinion, doesn't have the power to "prove" anything either way. Despite its appearance on the cover of a book and a charged exchange about the credibility of the artifact and those who are interested in it, the Cinmar biface doesn't really matter. 

Let me explain what I mean by that.

On the one hand, what if the case for the Cinmar biface is materially flawed and you just have to throw it out?  Eren et al. ask several pointed questions about the discovery, any one of which could potentially sink it as a reliable piece of evidence. Maybe we can't be sure it was in the same dredge load as the mastodon bones, or maybe we can't be sure the artifact was even recovered at sea.  So maybe the Cinmar biface means nothing in archaeological terms because we just can't trust it. 

But, on the other hand, what if everything about the Cinmar discovery is "best case scenario" for the Solutrean hypothesis? Let's the say we can be sure the point was dredged up in 1970 in the same immediate area as some mastodon remains - what does that actually get us? The "association" between the point and the fauna (on which the age estimate is based) is still incredibly weak, leaving us still with just a single stone point largely without context.  Is that the kind of "site" that will change anyone's mind about something as significant as the first colonization of the Americas?  I don't think so, and history agrees with me. Think about the sites that have been pivot points in our acceptance of alternative ideas about prehistory in the western hemisphere: L'Anse aux Meadows, Monte Verde, Folsom . . . those were all sites with clear evidence that falsified an existing model. Proponents and skeptics could stand there together and look at the deposits and have a meeting of the minds about what they meant.  That's never going to be the case with something like the Cinmar biface.  A point that "resembles" a Solutrean artifact with a provenience of "same dredge load as some mastodon bones" is not at the level of a site like Monte Verde - not even close.  Under the most charitable reading it doesn't have the power to move the needle on acceptance of the Solutrean hypothesis.  By itself it's just not a game changer.

What would be a game changer? Proponents of the Solutrean hypothesis are going to have to find, excavate, and document a real site: good artifacts in good contexts with good dates. Period. If the hypothesis is correct, those sites should be identifiable.  The Cinmar biface was made from an inland raw material source, so there should be some sites on dry land with clear evidence of a Solutrean occupation.  All you need is one. One good site trumps dozens of finds of purported Solutrean or Solutrean-like artifacts with poor or no context.  Think about how many sites with "associations" between stone projectile points and extinct fauna were dismissed in North America prior to the acceptance of the antiquity of humans in the New World demonstrated by careful excavations at the Folsom site.  The Solutrean hypothesis will ultimately need something similar.

The burden of proof in this situation pretty clearly has to be on the advocates of the Solutrean hypothesis: it is impossible to use material evidence to prove that Solutrean peoples did not make it to North America (just as we cannot prove they are not currently orbiting the sun in a teapot). The falsifiable hypothesis in this case is that there was no colonization of North America by Upper Paleolithic peoples from Europe.  That's what would need to be proved wrong. Does the Cinmar biface, even under the best of circumstances, do that?  I would say no.  And I would also say that eliminating the Cinmar biface as a piece of evidence doesn't "disprove" the Solutrean hypothesis. Basically, I think that with or without the Cinmar biface the Solutrean hypothesis remains an idea based on an assemblage of circumstantial evidence, none of which at this point appears to be critical to whether the hypothesis is viable or not.  I think the Cinmar biface would not change that equation for me even if I had plucked it from the dredge myself.  It's just not enough.

Other than it's relevance to archaeology, the Cinmar discussion is interesting because of the speed and openness with which it's taking place.  The JAS paper was published open access, so it's available to everyone. Lowery published his response less than two months later on Academia.edu (again, available to everyone).  I'm not sure if there's a precedent for this sort of thing - we may be watching something new.  It will be interesting to see if the discussion continues and, if so, at what pace and in what format. 

Even though I don't think the Cinmar biface is as crtitical to the viability of the Solutrean hypothesis as it has been made out to be, I do welcome the vigorous questioning of evidence.  I think it tells you something important about where the debate about the Solutrean hypothesis is at the moment: it's a lot of energy expended over the minutiae of an artifact that greatly diminishes in perceived importance if a single "good" site can be located.  That's what I'll be watching for.

A recent paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy Sciences (O’Shea et al. 2014) describes a collection of stone structures at the bottom of Lake Huron purportedly related to caribou hunting.  The paper uses ethnographic analogy and computer modeling results to build a case that the structures were related to seasonal hunting of caribou that were migrating across the Alpena-Amberly Ridge (AAR).    

This paper has gotten a lot of attention in the popular media: it has been discussed in stories in Science News, livescience, Huffington Post, and Popular Archaeology, among others.  The New York Times generously upgraded the structures from modest hunting blinds, proclaiming the discovery of a “9000-Year-Old Hunting Cabin, Underwater.”

The age estimate of 9000 years is based on several radiocarbon dates on preserved wood and some charcoal associated with a small stone circle.  This age – about 7,000 BC – falls squarely in the Early Archaic period.  If the 9000 BP age accurately reflects the age of the structures and if the structures actually were used for caribou hunting, we’re talking about the Early Holocene rather than the Late Pleistocene. 

To me, the young age of the purported hunting structures is the important part of the story.  Herds of caribou migrating to southern Ontario at 7000 BC?  While there have been numerous discussions of the potential importance of caribou hunting in this region during the earlier Paleoindian period (ca. 11,200-9500 BC), I don’t recall ever reading a paper about seasonally-scheduled hunting of migratory caribou during the Early Archaic period this far south in the Great Lakes (if you know of one, please share it).    The idea that Early Archaic settlement/subsistence in this region was at least partially tuned to the pursuit of migratory herd animals has broad implications for understanding the structure and organization of those societies.

Why haven’t we spent more time thinking about Early Archaic caribou hunting?  One reason, perhaps, is the weakness of the direct evidence for the presence of large numbers of caribou in southeastern Ontario and the lower peninsula of Michigan subsequent to 10,000 BP (i.e., ca. 9500 BC).  The PNAS paper doesn’t spend a lot effort to build the case that caribou were a potentially significant resource at that late date, simply stating that “The environment . . . would have been ideal for migrating caribou and for their human pursuers” (O’Shea et al. 2014:1).  But what direct evidence is there for the presence of caribou in this region at 7000 BC?  Not a whole lot that I know of.  An earlier paper (O’Shea et al. 2013:37) attributes the scarcity of preserved caribou remains to the presence of acid soils. But caribou remains dating to the earlier Late Pleistocene have been documented in the region, both in cultural contexts at Paleoindian sites and as inclusions in natural deposits, so we know they can survive.   In a 1988 paper, Lawrence Jackson cataloged caribou remains from southern Ontario and concluded that the remains of caribou pre-dated 11,000 BC: “No Early Holocene records of caribou are known” (Jackson 1988:35). A later paper by Jackson and McKillop (1991) discussed the possibility of a northern range shift (i.e., out of southern Ontario) of caribou following the Early Paleoindian period.  If herds of caribou were pouring across the AAR into southern Ontario well into the Early Archaic period, they do not seem to have left much physical evidence.  Or maybe they did and we just haven’t looked in the right places yet.  That's a question for someone other than me to attempt to answer.  Perhaps there are newer data of which I am not aware.

The picture is a little brighter on the Michigan side, where there is physical evidence of caribou in the lower peninsula well into the Archaic and beyond.  Simons (1997) discusses a caribou antler from central Michigan dated to about 4800 BC, and living caribou were present in the upper peninsula of Michigan in the twentieth century.

In order to incorporate the behaviors suggested by the AAR data into our conceptions of Early Archaic societies in this region, I think we’re going to need to know more about the nature of the caribou presence in the region and how that changed through time.  And we’re also going to need to tie the AAR sites to a larger social/settlement/subsistence system.  The PNAS paper doesn’t spend much ink pondering how scheduled caribou hunting would have fit in with the rest of an Early Archaic settlement/subsistence system in the region:  unfortunately, one thing we apparently don’t know yet is exactly who was responsible for building and using these structures.  There are several possibilities that have very different implications.  The AAR is at the northern periphery of several hafted biface forms that are common in the Midcontinent and could date to around 7000 BC (i.e., Kirk Corner Notched cluster, large lobed points like MacCorkle, small bifurcate points like LeCroy, etc.). Groups using those points are a possibility, but, I think, an unlikely one.  Although Hi-Lo has not been directly dated, it is generally considered a Late Paleoindian form that probably pre-dates 9500 BC (and hence is probably too early to be associated with the 7000 BC structures).  Plains-related lanceolate/plano point types occur in the upper Great Lakes and were probably in use by groups in the region during the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene . . . maybe the structures will be found to be associated with those groups.  That’s where I would put my money at this point, anyway.  We’ll have to wait until the researchers find some diagnostic artifacts.

We learn new things all the time, and I’ll be watching carefully for further results from this work.  I will be very curious to see the data incorporated into and interpreted in light of a broader chronological, biogeographical, and cultural-historical framework. In the meantime, I'll work on my puns so I have a better title for the next Rangifer-related blog post.

Jackson, Lawrence J. 1988.  Fossil cervids and fluted point hunters: a review from southern Ontario.  Ontario Archaeology 48:27-41.

Jackson, Lawrence, and Heather McKillop.  1991.  Approaches to Palaeo-Indian economy: an Ontario and Great Lakes perspective.  Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology 16(1):34.

O'Shea, John, Ashley K. Lemke, Elizabeth Sonnenburg, Robert G. Reynolds, and Brian D. Abbott.  2014.  A 9,000-year-old caribou hunting structure beneath Lake Huron.  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1404404111.

O'Shea, John, Ashley K. Lemke, and Robert G. Reynolds.  2013.  “Nobody knows the way of the caribou”: Rangifer hunting at 45 North Latitude.  Quaternary International 297:36-44.

Simons, Donald B. 1997. The Gainey and Butler sites as focal points for caribou and people.  In Caribou and Reindeer Hunters of the Northern Hemisphere, edited by Lawrence Jackson and Paul T. Thacker, pp. 105-31. Avebury, Aldershot.