'Clovis Not-First' in journal Science this week

[Daryl Habel]

This should make the day for a few folks:

Experts doubt Clovis people were first in Americas
By Will Dunham
Thu Feb 22, 6:42 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Clovis people, known for their distinctive spear points, likely were not the first humans in the Americas, according to research placing their presence as more recent than previously believed.

Using advanced radiocarbon dating techniques, researchers writing in the journal Science on Thursday said the Clovis people, hunters of large Ice Age animals like mammoths and mastodons, dated from about 13,100 to 12,900 years ago.

That would make the Clovis culture, known from artifacts discovered at various sites including the town of Clovis, New Mexico, both younger and shorter-lived than previously thought. Previous estimates had dated the culture to about 13,600 years ago.

These people long had been seen as the first humans in the New World, but the new dates suggest their culture thrived at about the same time or after others also in the Americas.

Michael Waters, director of Texas A&M University's Center for the Study of the First Americans, called the research the final nail in the coffin of the so-called "Clovis first" theory of human origins in the New World.

Waters said he thinks the first people probably arrived in the Americas between 15,000 and 25,000 years ago.

"We've got to stop thinking about the peopling of the Americas as a singular event," Waters said in an interview.

"And we have to start now thinking about the peopling of the Americas as a process, with people coming over here, probably arriving at different times, maybe taking different routes and coming from different places in northeast Asia."

Waters and co-author Thomas Stafford, a radiocarbon dating expert, tested samples from various Clovis archeological sites to try to get a more accurate accounting of their age. Technological advances enabled them to more precisely pinpoint dates for some Clovis sites excavated in North America....(MORE)

Read the full story from Reuters HERE.

And a slightly different take from LiveScience HERE.

The website for the journal Science is temporarily not available, so I'll post that information later.

Dar

[Robert Henvell]

This should make the day for a few folks:

Experts doubt Clovis people were first in Americas
By Will Dunham
Thu Feb 22, 6:42 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Clovis people, known for their distinctive spear points, likely were not the first humans in the Americas, according to research placing their presence as more recent than previously believed.

Using advanced radiocarbon dating techniques, researchers writing in the journal Science on Thursday said the Clovis people, hunters of large Ice Age animals like mammoths and mastodons, dated from about 13,100 to 12,900 years ago.

That would make the Clovis culture, known from artifacts discovered at various sites including the town of Clovis, New Mexico, both younger and shorter-lived than previously thought. Previous estimates had dated the culture to about 13,600 years ago.

These people long had been seen as the first humans in the New World, but the new dates suggest their culture thrived at about the same time or after others also in the Americas.

Michael Waters, director of Texas A&M University's Center for the Study of the First Americans, called the research the final nail in the coffin of the so-called "Clovis first" theory of human origins in the New World.

Waters said he thinks the first people probably arrived in the Americas between 15,000 and 25,000 years ago.

"We've got to stop thinking about the peopling of the Americas as a singular event," Waters said in an interview.

"And we have to start now thinking about the peopling of the Americas as a process, with people coming over here, probably arriving at different times, maybe taking different routes and coming from different places in northeast Asia."

Waters and co-author Thomas Stafford, a radiocarbon dating expert, tested samples from various Clovis archeological sites to try to get a more accurate accounting of their age. Technological advances enabled them to more precisely pinpoint dates for some Clovis sites excavated in North America....(MORE)

Read the full story from Reuters HERE.

And a slightly different take from LiveScience HERE.

The website for the journal Science is temporarily not available, so I'll post that information later.

Dar

Hi Dar,
It would be nice to have the article and see how M Waters determined the Clovis chronology.
Bob

[Daryl Habel]

The article in Science is:

Waters, M.R. & Stafford, T.W., Jr. (2007). Redefining the age of Clovis: implications for the peopling of the Americas. Science 315 (5815): 1122-1126.

ABSTRACT: The Clovis complex is considered to be the oldest unequivocal evidence of humans in the Americas, dating between 11,500 and 10,900 radiocarbon years before the present (14C yr B.P.). Adjusted 14C dates and a reevaluation of the existing Clovis date record revise the Clovis time range to 11,050 to 10,800 14C yr B.P. In as few as 200 calendar years, Clovis technology originated and spread throughout North America. The revised age range for Clovis overlaps non-Clovis sites in North and South America. This and other evidence imply that humans already lived in the Americas before Clovis.

Abstract available with links to the pdf, text, and free supplementary information: CLICK HERE.

Also in Science this week, an accompanying news article:
Clovis Technology Flowered Briefly and Late, Dates Suggest, by Charles C. Mann: CLICK HERE.

I don't have online access to the articles in Science, but my local library carries the journal.  Problem is, it won't be on my library shelf until mid-next week, at which time I can scan it and make a pdf copy to send you.  But maybe it will mysteriously appear in my email (things like that happen) before then.  In the meantime, there is a good news story from news@nature.com: HERE.

Who were the first Americans?
Dating study suggests it wasn't the makers of the Clovis culture.
Heidi Ledford

Without quoting the beginning, this news@nature.com story has some information relevant to your question.  It seems Waters and Stafford used data from only 11 selected sites, I'd guess from the American  Great Plains and Southwest, and they omitted dates from  the Aubrey site (which has the oldest 14C dating) because they consider it unreliable.  Here is the essential criticism quoted from Heidi Ledford's news@nature.com story:

The re-analysis is a landmark finding, says archaeologist Donald Grayson of the University of Washington in Seattle. But, he adds, Waters and Stafford's arguments would be stronger if they had analysed material from more sites — many were excluded out of concern for the quality of the artefacts.

"The bigger your sample, the wider the spread of dates is going to become," says Grayson. "As long as their sample is only 11 sites, it stands to reason that the time period is more constrained than it could be if we had more sites."

The exclusion of the Aubrey site in Texas — believed to be one of the oldest Clovis sites — is particularly worrying, says C. Vance Haynes of the University of Arizona, Tucson, who has studied Clovis culture for more than 40 years. Waters and Stafford excluded that site because the samples may have been contaminated.

Haynes agrees with this decision, but points out that excluding the site might have affected the results.

Cheers,
Dar