This has been a busy couple of weeks and the blog writing has once again slipped down the priority list. Preparing two "extra" presentations this month (one for the Archaeological Society of South Carolina meeting last weekend and one for my talk at Mercer University tomorrow) were at the top of the list along with keeping the Kirk data collection going, teaching my class, and falsely promising to get caught up on emails.

The Mercer presentation is going to be fun. I'm sure I'm several standard deviations from the mean in terms of my interest in thinking and talking about anthropology and pseudoscience, so it will be a struggle to get my presentation down to length. I was told I would have to reduce the talk from its original 8 hours to about 45 minutes. My last counter-offer was to meet somewhere in the middle, say around 6.5 hours. I didn't hear anything back after that, so I think we've reached agreement.  The organizer (Craig Byron) is an old friend of mine, so I'm sure he'll understand if I have to go to 7 hours or so to make all my points.  That will still get us done before midnight, even allowing for a five minute bathroom break.

Don't worry, I'm kidding. You should still come to my talk, if only for my animations of flying watermelons. I promise I won't take up a single minute more than three hours of your time.

On another topic, I have been happily reading the comments on my blog post reacting to Chris Moore's American Antiquity paper. If you're interested in Paleoindian, hunter-gatherers, and/or the Pleistocene/Holocene transition in the Eastern Woodlands you should check it out -- it's nice to see professionals chime in and share information and ideas in a public setting like a blog. Hopefully we can get that happening more often. I want to respond to and/or follow up on several of the comments, but I've been forcing myself to take care of other business first (see above).

Here's another thing I'd like to have a good look at: this new paper on Fishtail projectile points from Brazil by Daniel Loponte, Mercedes Okumura, and Mirian Carbonera. It has metric data, nice images, maps, and a summary of what's known about dating.  I don't know much about Fishtails -- the last thing I can recall reading about them (some time ago) was the 1999 "Geographic Variation in Fluted Projectile Points: A Hemispheric Perspective" by Juliet Morrow and Toby Morrow (American Antiquity 64(2):215-230). It will be interesting to read the 1999 paper again and look at the new paper.

What if the Clovis adaptation in the Eastern Woodlands had nothing substantive whatsoever to do with mammoths and mastodons? 

What if all of those dioramas and illustrations of Paleoindian peoples swarming a mastodon mired in the muck are complete baloney?

What if one of our most popular baseline notions about Clovis in the east is totally wrong?

The thought isn't an original one, of course, but one that I've been thinking about since listening to a presentation by Christopher Moore (SCIAA colleague) at the Archaeological Society of South Carolina (ASSC) meeting on Saturday. Moore is the senior author of a recent American Antiquity paper (which is unfortunately behind a paywall) that presents protein residue analysis of 142 hafted bifaces (i.e., stone projectile points/knives) from the Savannah River area of South Carolina and Georgia.  Protein residue analysis uses chemical tests to identify trace residues left on stone tools through contact with the blood of various groups of animals.

Here is a summary figure from the published paper:

The results that Moore et al. present are striking for two main reasons. First, there is positive evidence for the exploitation of bison in the region during the Paleoindian through Middle Archaic periods.  Second, there are no indications that any of the Paleoindian tools they examined were involved with processing proboscideans (i.e., mammoths and mastodons).

As explained in the American Antiquity paper, the positive evidence for bison populations in the region in the Late Pleistocene is consistent with several other data points (including previous protein residue studies and radiocarbon-dated remains such as the Wacissa bison). The new residue data also support the continued presence of bison in the region into the mid-Holocene. That's pretty interesting to me, as it suggests that the exploitation of a large game animal that is more-or-less invisible in the faunal records (both archaeological and natural) may have been important to the food economies of the Archaic peoples I'm keenly interested in understanding.

And what about the absence of hits for proboscidean?  That's pretty interesting as well. Near the end of his ASSC presentation, Moore informally posed a great "what if" question (and I'm paraphrasing here): what if the evidence for human involvement with mammoths/mastodons in eastern North America actually pertains to pre-Clovis rather than Clovis peoples?

For me, pondering that question was one of those nice "wait a @#!%*$# second . . ." moments that happens every so often in science. What if we have not just exaggerated the embrace between Clovis and megafauna in the east, but allowed our romantic notions (and the very clear evidence of Clovis-age megafaunal predation in the west) to blind us to the real pattern that's present?

Impossible, you say?  Let's ask a series of questions. I'll give you the answers based on what I know off the top of my head and what I have time to assemble on Monday morning of a busy week.  Please correct me if I'm wrong on something or help me add things I've left out -- I'm not making any claim that this listing of evidence is exhaustive. Note: when I say "eastern North America" I mean east of the Mississippi River.

Question: Are there any direct associations between Clovis stone tools and mammoth/mastodon remains in eastern North America?

Answer: No. As far as I know, Kimmswick (Missouri) is the farthest east Clovis-associated megafaunal kill site.

Question: Are there any human-butchered mastodon/mammoth remains in eastern North America that have been dated to the Clovis period (i.e., 11,050-10,800 radiocarbon years before present [RCYBP]; ~13,250-12,800 Calendar years before present; ~11,300-10,850 BC)?

Answer: Not that I know of off the top of my head. The eastern cases of purported mastodon/mammoth butchery of which I am aware pre-date the known age range of Clovis. Here are some examples:

• Hebior mammoth (Wisconsin): ~12,500 RCYBP;
• Burning Tree mastodon (Ohio): ~11,500 RCYBP (Fisher et al. 1994);
• Aucilla River mastodon tusk (Florida): ~12,200 RCYBP;

Question: Is there any direct evidence that mammoths/mastodons survived into Clovis times in eastern North America?

Answer: Yes. There are directly-dated mammoth and mastodon remains that demonstrate that proboscideans survived into and beyond Clovis times. The period 10,500-10,000 RCYBP (i.e., post Clovis) is probably a reasonable extinction window for mastodons in the east.  Here, for example, is a report of a mastodon from northern Indiana dated to about 10,000 RCYBP. 

Question: Is there any direct evidence that Clovis peoples used parts of mammoths/mastodons obtained from recently deceased animals?

Answer: Yes, apparently. There are ivory and bone tools from Florida that are attributed to Clovis. Here is a quote from a paper by Bruce Bradley:

"While most of the known specimens were recovered from stratigraphically mixed deposits, recent archaeological excavations have found them in late Pleistocene deposits directly associated with extinct fauna, including mammoth and mastodon. Flaked stone projectile points and other tools are also associated with these artifacts. Projectile point types commonly include Clovis fluted and Suwanee."

​I don't have the time to delve into the literature right now and investigate the nature of the associations between the ivory tools and the Paleoindian points, or to see if any of the ivory tools have been directly dated. 

So there you go.

It seems pretty clear that Clovis peoples existed on the landscape (or were at least present in eastern North America at the same time) as proboscideans.  They apparently used parts of those animals to fashion tools. But the case for active Clovis-age predation of mammoths and mastodons continues to be based on circumstantial evidence. As more and more purported proboscidean butchery sites of pre-Clovis age are reported from the Eastern Woodlands, it seems less likely that the east-west contrast in megafaunal kill sites is solely the result of a preservation bias: it's not the elephants that are missing, but the direct evidence that Clovis peoples hunted them.

If we take mammoths and mastodons out of the Clovis picture, there's a lot of explaining to do. What was the point of all that beautiful technology? I was one of several junior co-authors on a paper (Speth et al. 2013) that attempted a political re-imagining of Early Paleoindian fluted point technologies. While I'm not convinced by all the arguments in that paper, I think it was a useful exercise. There are other alternatives to the dominant "Clovis meat machine" model that can be constructed.

And what if bison was an important game animal in some portions of the Eastern Woodlands into the Middle Archaic? What if bone preservation issues really are part of the problem for our interpretations of the Early and Middle Holocene and we've been unable to see (and therefore to factor into our models) a large herbivore that may have been a huge part of the subsistence economies of early hunting-gathering societies in the region? That deserves a very hard look.

I've used all the time I can spare to write about this today. I'm hoping some of you find this question interesting and point out things I'm not aware of. I'll be returning to this as I have time - it's a pretty cool set of questions to think about. 

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: [email protected].

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.