Report
on the Paleoamerican Odyssey Conference, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 10/16 –
10/19/2013
This week we will report on a
conference attended by a member of our staff, Senior Curator of Archaeology,
Kurt W. Carr. One of his main research interests is the Paleoindian Period
beginning with the entrance of humans into the New World. Last weekend, October
16th -19th, he had the privilege of representing The State Museum of Pennsylvania at a meeting
in Santa Fe, New Mexico that was devoted to Paleoindian studies. Since 1987
five international conferences were held that address significant issues on the
peopling of the New World. These include presentations by experts from North
and South American and East Asia. Their focus is on archaeology but include environmental
studies, linguistics and DNA studies. The earliest example was the Columbian
Quincentenary Symposium sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution in 1987. Later
conferences were sponsored by the Center for the Study of the First Americans;
The First World Summit in 1989; Clovis and Beyond in 1999, Southeastern
Paleoamerican Survey in 2005 and Paleoamerican Odyssey in 2013.
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These conferences have followed a
similar format that includes thirty minute oral presentations in a large
auditorium by professionals, poster sessions and an exhibit room featuring
significant artifacts and faunal remains. Interest in this conference has grown
significantly over the past 25 years, with over 1200 in attendance this
year. Participants reviewed more than
190 posters in an open forum which allowed them to engage in lively discussion
with researchers. Conference presentations and discussion frequently extended
into the evening. . Obviously, professional archaeologists represent the
majority of attendees but students and amateur archaeologist are also present
in large numbers. Amateur archaeologists are also in attendance and many have
made significant contributions to Paleoindian studies. They frequently are
credited with discovering important archaeological sites.
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| Dr. Kurt Carr with friend and colleague, Kirk Spur discussing Kurt's poster. |
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| Jon Lothrop presents his poster on Paleoindian artifacts from New York state. |
Although the state of knowledge
concerning the first Americans has evolved, the main themes in these meetings
are paleo-environmental reconstruction, the archaeology of Siberia, the migration
routes taken by the first Americans to get to North America, the dating of the
earliest human expansion out of Siberia (20,000 or 12,000 years ago) and the
rate of movement once in the New World (moving to the tip of South America in
1000 years or 5000 years). Focus is also drawn to the evolution of technology between the Old
and New World (flake tools or blade tools), the Clovis adaptation (one culture
or many cultures sharing a distinctive artifact type), and subsistence
(specialized big game hunters or generalized foragers, the biology of the first
Americans and lastly, the evolution of Indian languages.
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| Map illustrating the various routes into the New World |
Many Russian archaeologists attended
the conference in 1989 and everyone was anxious to learn if fluted points had
been discovered in Siberia. It turns out that no fluted points have been found
west of Beringia. Beringia
is an area of our world that is partly in Russia, partly in Alaska and partly
in Canada. Archaeologists
have determined that the fluted points discovered in Alaska were brought by
groups migrating from the south.
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| Clovis Fluted point from the Shawnee-Minisink site in Monroe county, Pennsylvania |
The consensus is that fluting was invented
either in the Southwest or the Southeastern United States. At the 1999
conference, there was considerable and sometimes acrimonious debate concerning
the entrance date of people into the New World (Pre-Clovis vs. Clovis). At the
2013 meeting, there seems to be a general consensus that humans were expanding
out of Siberia into North America by at least 14,000 years ago and probably as
early as 18,000 years ago. Some of these groups may have failed or became
extinct. For decades the “ice free corridor” located between the Rocky Mountains
and the Laurentide Ice Sheet over Hudson Bay was the favored route south from
Alaska and emerging onto the northern Great Plains. This assumption fell out of
favor at the 1999 conference and was replaced by a Pacific coastal route involving
travel by boats. This year, it was suggested that both routes may have been
used by North America’s first inhabitants.
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| Conference attendees listened to over 50 presentations. |
The auditorium could seat all 1200
attendees who listened to over fifty oral presentations. The following is a
short summary.
Vladimir Pitulko et al. reported on the Yena site in
Siberia. This is the oldest site above the Arctic Circle and dates to 30,000
BP. It is characterized by a blade tool technology and also illustrates a very
sophisticated bone, antler and ivory technology including a rhinoceros horn
foreshaft for a spear. This is one of the earliest sites in Siberia and marks
the earliest date for when the expansion into Beringia may have begun.
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| Spear foreshafts found at Yana, a site 500 km(about 300 miles) north of the Arctic Circle in eastern Siberia. these rhino horn foreshafts were fitted to the front end of the spear. If a hunter struck and animal without killing it, he could remove his spear, fit a second foreshaft to the spear, and reuse it. Credit- The Yana RHS site:Humans in the Arctic before the last glacial maximum, Science, 303:52-56. |
During the Ice Age, sea levels
dropped over two hundred feet, exposing much of the continental shelf along our
coastal margins. This would have been occupied by the first people entering the
New World and may have been their main entrance route down the Pacific coast. In
fact, there has been some success at finding Paleoindian materials along the
coast of Florida. Quentin Mackie et al. discussed
the search for submerged sites along the Northwest Coast of North America which
has not yet been successful.
Dennis Stanford et al. reported on five sites in the Chesapeake Bay area that date
to over 20,000 years ago. He believes these archaeological sites demonstrate a
migration of people from Europe. His presentation was followed by Connie
Mulligan and Andrew Kitchen who used DNA analysis to develop a model for human
expansion out of Siberia and into North America. Contrary to Stanford et al. they did not recognize any
biological connections with Ice Age European populations. David Anderson et al. has been mapping the distribution
of fluted points in North America and used the data base (Paleoindian Database of the Americas which is available on-line) to develop a number of possible migration routes
into North and South America.
| Artist Kim Krammes rendition of the arrival of man to the New World |
A common theme that has been
repeated at all four of the Paleoamerican conferences is that the data from
South America, documented by South America archaeologists is ignored by North
American archaeologists. The reasons include the language barrier (more
Americans need to be bilingual) but clearly; North American archaeologists do
not respect their colleagues south of the border. By all accounts, the
Paleoindian period in South America is represented by different types of tools
and the oldest sites clearly date prior to many of the fluted point sites to the
north. There is no question that there were people here prior to Clovis based
on the South American sites and those archaeologists are curious as to why it
is even a point of discussion among North American archaeologists.
For decades, archaeologists have
pondered the function of fluting. Why spend so much time fluting projectile
points when this results in as much as a 20% failure rate. Bruce Bradley and
Michael Collins gave one of the most controversial but innovative
presentations. They characterized fluting as part of a revitalization movement.
It had a purely symbolic meaning and was part of a response to stress caused by
climate change. The Paleoindians were responding to increasing sea level rise and
the extinction of the megafauna which had been an important food source. Sounds
familiar and who says that archaeology can’t make a contribution to our modern
world.
This presentation was followed by Nicole
Waguespack who discussed the various hypotheses concerning the Pleistocene
extinction and concluded that it was driven by human predation. Finally, Jim
Adovasio from Mercyhurst College, who has conducted extensive research at
Meadowcroft Rockshelter in southwestern Pennsylvania, reviewed the evidence for
a Pre-Clovis occupation in the New World. Based on analysis of the most recent
discoveries dating to this time period, he concluded that people were in North
America by at least 16,000 years ago.
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| Dr. Jim Adovasio at Madowcroft Rocksheler site |
The Paleoamerican Odyssey conference
was remarkable in many ways, not the least of which is that all of the papers presented
were published in book form and was available at the conference. Considering
that procrastination is a common characteristic of many archaeologists, this
was amazing. In retrospect, archaeology is truly making progress in the search for
answers concerning the culture of the first people in the New World. The
opportunity to share and discuss research with other scientists is essential for
the advancement of our investigations into migration and settlement of the
Americas. We have a long way to go but conferences like these help to summarize
this progress and add direction for future research.
Bibliography
Adovasio,
J. M., D. R. Pedler
2013 The
Ones that Still Won’t Go Away
Anderson,
David G., Thaddeus G. Bissett, Stephen J. Yerka
2013 The
Late Pleistocene Human Settlement of Interior North America: The Role of
Physiography and Sea Level Change
Bradley,
Bruce A., Michael Collins
2013 Imagining
Clovis as a Cultural Revitalization Movement
Mackie,
Quentin, Loren G. Davis, Daryl Fedje, Duncan McLaren, Amy E. Gusick,
2013 Searching
for Pleistocene-Aged Submerged Archaeological Sites along Western North
America’s Pacific Coast
Mulligan,
Connie, Andrew Kitchen
2013 Three
Stage Colonization Model for the Peopling of the Americas
Pitulko,
Vladimir, Pavel Nikolskiy, Aleksandr Basilyan, Elena Pavlova
2013 Yana
RHS Site, Earliest Occupation of Beringia
Stanford,
Dennis, Darrin Lowery, Margaret Jodry, Bruce Bradley, Marvin Kay, Robert J.
Speakman
2013 The
Chesapeake Bifaces: Evidence for an LGM Occupation of the Mid-Atlantic region
of North America?
Waguespack,
Nicole M.
2013 Pleistocene
Extinctions: the State of Evidence and the Structure of Debate
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| Center logo of the 2013 Paleoamerican Odyssey Conference |
