R S MacNeish &J C Libby edited the "Pendejo Cave",2003.
Has there been any peer review of this archaeology study?It contains a significant number of anomalies.For example:Level H,[C14,31-29Ka] includes feature 19--rocks >30cm in size form a semi-circle with burnt material [ash,charcoal and wood] and the" hearth "area exhibits appreciably greater burn marks than the adjacent surface,[page 453].Nearly half the lithic material has a foreign source.The latter might [?] be attributed to mixing.However the evidence for the dated hearth is more difficult to discount.Has anyone read the book?
I haven't read the book, either. But there is a critical review in:
Dixon, E.J. (1999). Bones, Boats, & Bison: Archaeology and the First Colonization of Western North America. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
from which the following is abstracted verbatim:
The cave was occupied by humans during Archaic (later than circa 8,000 B.P.) And possibly Paleoindian times (between 11,500-8,000 B.P.). However, the evidence for occupation prior to 11,500 B.P. rests on the discovery of fractured and modified bones of Pleistocene animals, human fingerprints and handprints preserved in fire hardened clay, and burned zones interpreted as hearths or culturally generated fires. The cave deposits contain seven to nine major, and many more minor, periods of packrat occupation. Packrat nests contain large amounts of vegetation including grasses, sticks, twigs, and other organic debris. Many of the burned zones thought to be cultural in origin are actually burned packrat middens. They were probably ignited by noncultural fires spreading into the cave from adjacent areas. These burned areas contain charred macrofossil remains that include packrat feces and other packrat midden material and do not appear to be anthropogenic (pp. 79-80).
To compound the interpretive difficulties at Pendejo, the deposits have been extensively bioturbated (the churning or mixing of sediments by animals or plants (Dincauze 1997) during thousands of years of packrat nesting and burrowing. Despite descriptions suggesting the stratigraphic units are well defined, not mixed, and that they demonstrate “acceptable geological and stratigraphic integrity” (Chrisman et al. 1996:362-64, 373; Chrisman et al. 1997), many units have been repeatedly crosscut by rodent burrowing and nesting (Stafford, personal communication 1995).........
........In the absence of clearly identifiable bone tools, such as awls or projectile points, a complex taphonomic setting such as Pendejo Cave requires detailed bone by bone description and analysis that analytically excludes other possible means of noncultural alteration. Although Pendejo Cave contains a wealth of archaeological and paleoecological data, evidence of human activity prior to 11,500 B.P. cannot be documented satisfactorily. Noncultural taphonomic processes, noncultural fires, bioturbation, weathering, and rockfall best explain the earliest suite of specimens and other evidence from Pendejo Cave (p. 81).
Dar
