Center for the Study of the First AmericansDepartment of AnthropologyTexas A&M University4352 TAMUCollege Station, TX 77843-4352www.centerfirstamericans.com

Volume 23, Number 4 ■■■■■ October, 2008

he Center for the Study of the FirstAmericans fosters research and publicinterest in the Peopling of the Americas.T

The Center, an integral part of the Departmentof Anthropology at Texas A&M University,promotes interdisciplinary scholarly dialogueamong physical, geological, biological andsocial scientists. The Mammoth Trumpet,news magazine of the Center, seeks to involveyou in the peopling of the Americas by reportingon developments in all pertinent areas ofknowledge.

The Stuff Myths Are Made OfThree quarters of a century ago Junius Bird stunnedthe archaeological community when he found evi-dence of early Americans—as early as the newlydiscovered Clovis culture—as far distant from Clovis,New Mexico, as it’s possible to travel in the NewWorld: at the tip of South America, in caves atop a lavafield a stone’s throw from the Straits of Magellan.Despite footdragging and protests of disbelief from hiscolleagues over the years, Bird’s discovery has refusedto be silenced, and now plans are being made to forman international interdisciplinary team of scientists tocontinue Bird’s investigations. You can bet, though,that the modern-day expedition will be a dull enter-prise compared with Bird’s adventure. With his bride,Peggy, and their homely dog, Bird traveled the coastof Chile in a 19-ft sloop that looked too heavy to floatand too clumsy to sail. Their transport for crossing thePatagonian plains was a Model T Ford poweredvariously by gasoline, wind, and oxen. The openinginstallment of our series on this fascinating giant inAmerican archaeology starts on page 17.

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Volume 23, Number 4 Center for the Study of the First Americans Department of Anthropology

October, 2008 Texas A&M University, 4352 TAMU, College Station, TX 77843-4352 ISSN 8755-6898

World Wide Web site http://centerfirstamericans.org and http://anthropology.tamu.edu

5 A Clovis campsite in the NewMexico desertExotic toolstone reveals thatClovis foragers traveled hundredsof kilometers to visit MockingbirdGap, where today a shallow drawmasks what was then a 30-ft-deep waterway.

8 Probing a New Mexico caveonce touted as home to theearliest AmericansModern technology delivers amixed answer on animal bonesfound in the ’40s in SandiaCave—humans were here, but sowere carnivores.

13 What’s the verdict on theClovis Comet?The final chapter of our seriespolls scientists for their reaction tothe proposed cometary impactthat terminated the Clovis cultureand ushered in the Younger Dryascold snap. As you might expect,it’s a hung jury.

17 Trying to keep up with JuniusBirdHis exploits, which read like theadventures of a dime-noveldaredevil hero, obscure hisremarkable achievements in first-rank scientific inquiry.

OR NEARLY A CENTURY, one of theguiding precepts of Paleoamerican stud-ies has been that the First Americans

PaleoamericanSubsistenceand Folsom

in the RockiesKornfeld in the field at Black Mountaincamp, the location of Two Moon Shelterand BA Cave, 2007.

Marcel KornfeldMarcel Kornfeld

FFwere primarily big-game hunters. After all,the evidence is right there in front of ournoses: big, well-crafted projectile pointsfound in association with—indeed, some-times imbedded in—the skeletal remains ofbison, mastodons, mammoths, and othermegafauna. While such sites are somewhatrare, they do offer high-profile examples ofPaleoamerican subsis-tence practices. Thisbeing the case, itwasn’t long beforesome influential re-searchers began todeclare that big-gamehunting was the defin-ing factor of any paleosite. If a site appeared

to be the same age as Clovis but lackedClovis points or mammoth bones, for ex-ample, it was generally ignored. In recentyears, however, researchers like archaeolo-gist Marcel Kornfeld have begun shakingfree of this mindset.

Dr. Kornfeld andlike-minded colleagueshave turned their at-tention to the less-dra-matic aspects of Paleo-indian subsistence,demonstrating in theprocess that the earli-est Americans weren’tnecessarily big-gamehunters after all. Onthe contrary, they

were more likely to be broad-spec-trum generalists, who hunted andgathered what they could, when theycould. If anything, large-animal pro-

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Mammoth Trumpet, Statement of Our PolicyMany years may pass between the time an important discovery is made and the acceptance of researchresults by the scientific community. To facilitate communication among all parties interested in stayingabreast of breaking news in First Americans studies, the Mammoth Trumpet, a science news magazine,provides a forum for reporting and discussing new and potentially controversial information importantto understanding the peopling of the Americas. We encourage submission of articles to the ManagingEditor and letters to the Editor. Views published in the Mammoth Trumpet are the views ofcontributors, and do not reflect the views of the editor or Center personnel.

–Michael R. Waters, Director

The Mammoth Trumpet (ISSN 8755-6898) is published quarterly by the Center forthe Study of the First Americans, Department of Anthropology, Texas A&M University,College Station, TX 77843-4352. Phone (979) 845-4046; fax (979) 845-4070; e-mailcsfa@tamu.edu. Periodical postage paid at College Station, TX 77843-4352 and atadditional mailing offices.

POSTMASTER: Send address changes to:Mammoth TrumpetDepartment of Anthropology, Texas A&M University4352 TAMUCollege Station, TX 77843-4352

Copyright © 2008 Center for the Study of the First Americans. Permission is herebygiven to any non-profit or educational organization or institution to reproduce withoutcost any materials from the Mammoth Trumpet so long as they are then distributed atno more than actual cost. The Center further requests that notification of reproductionof materials under these conditions be sent to the Center. Address correspondence to theeditor of Mammoth Trumpet, 2122 Scout Road, Lenoir, NC 28645.

Michael R. Waters Director and General Editore-mail: mwaters@tamu.edu

Ted Goebel Associate Director and Editor, Current Research inthe Pleistocenee-mail: goebel@tamu.edu

James M. Chandler Editor, Mammoth Trumpete-mail: wordsmiths@touchnc.net

Laurie Lind Office Manager

C & C Wordsmiths Layout and Design

World Wide Web site http://centerfirstamericans.com

The Center for the Study of the First Americans is a non-profit organization. Sub-scription to the Mammoth Trumpet is by membership in the Center.

tein provided a limited percentage oftheir dietary needs.

One paradigm, shiftingAs Director of the George C. Frison Insti-tute of Archaeology and Anthropology atthe University of Wyoming, Kornfeldknows whereof he speaks: Havingworked at more than his share ofPaleoamerican sites, he takes exceptionto the idea that Clovis, Folsom, and otherearly cultures focused on big game at all.Rather, he says, “It appears that earlyAmericans ate everything. Voles, turtles,pack rats, birds, lizards, probably in-sects, roots, fruits, and many other re-sources—and, yes, large animals aswell.”

Kornfeld’s interest in Paleoamericansubsistence has its roots in his first fieldseason, back in 1974. He spent that sum-mer working at the Jones-Miller site, aHell Gap bison bonebed in Colorado. Ashe recalls, “It was a time of great bisonbonebed excavations [Olsen-Chubbuck,Horner, Glenrock, etc.], all interpretedas ‘bison kills,’ but the logic of interpreta-tion wasn’t very powerful. Basically, alarge pile of bones equaled a kill, ormaybe a processing location. We’vesince learned that bonebeds may repre-sent middens, or the archaeological by-products of many different types of kills.”Some bonebeds may even mark non-ar-chaeological mass deaths; this is one ofthe competing interpretations for the fa-mous Hudson-Meng site in Nebraska(MT 22-3, “Is It or Isn’t It? The QuietControversy Over the Hudson-MengSite”).

“In that context,” continues Kornfeld,“I wondered, ‘What else were these pre-historic people doing?’ The plant andsmall-animal remains just don’t survivein the archaeological record . . . or theydo so only in some cases.” Ground-breaking ethnographic research, includ-ing that presented at the influential Manthe Hunter symposium at the Universityof Chicago in 1966, had begun to make itclear that historic and modern foragingsocieties generally depended on a di-verse range of food sources. Why notprehistoric ones? “Only in restricted, ex-treme environments such as the Arcticwas dependence skewed towards alarge-animal, meat diet,” Kornfeld pointsout, “and even then plant products were

in high demand, often extracted fromsea mammal and caribou stomachswhere they were concentrated. So thequestion was, and still is: If Paleoindiandiets included a variety of resources andall we find is bonebeds, how do we inter-pret this very biased archaeologicalrecord?”

Set in stoneThe big-game mindset seems to have itsroots in the classic quandary that archae-

ologists have faced since Day 1: differen-tial preservation. Organic material canonly last so long in the ground, whilestone lingers forever. Large bones dodecay, but they tend to be preservedmuch longer than small bones, fishscales, wood, seeds, and other plant mat-ter. So when we see stone tools in asso-ciation with large mammal bones andlittle or nothing else, it’s easy to assumethat it’s because the people who leftthose tools behind based their subsis-

October ■ 2008 3

tence economy entirely on big, meat-rich animals. But accord-ing to Kornfeld, that’s a false assumption. “[Due to] a variety ofsocial and scientific circumstances, the milieu within which weall do research created a myth that likely never existed,” heasserts. “The systematic under-investigation, non-publication,or under-publication of thousands of Paleoindian sites that arenot bone middens has undoubtedly affected our understandingof Paleoindian lifeways.” Even some well-known early sites,such as Hell Gap, Allen, and Lindenmeier, have only recentlybeen reexamined and the findings published—often for thevery first time, sometimes decades after the sites were exca-vated, simply because they didn’t initially fit the old paleo bone-midden paradigm. As a result, Kornfeld says, “All arebeginning to give us an alternative perspective on Paleoindiansubsistence.”

Part of this transformation, Kornfeld believes, is also dueto the development of taphonomic studies in the 1970s and1980s. Taphonomy is the study ofthe ways that once-living remainsare transformed by natural pro-cesses after deposition; these natu-ral processes can include decay,trampling, bioturbation, erosion,ice-heaving, geological events, andmore. Kornfeld begins with Rus-sian paleontologist Ivan Efremov’sdefinition of taphonomy as thestudy of death assemblages, andmodifies it to “anything that falls out of a living system—thatbeing a biological organism, like a mammoth, or a culturalorganism, like a forager group’s material culture. This isprecisely why all archaeology must begin as a study of deathassemblages; a bonebed doesn’t become a midden until it’sdemonstrated to be such.” It only becomes evidence of pastevents and cultural behavior when cultural dynamics are

breathed into it, Kornfeld insists, “andthis requires analysis, not a seat-of-the-pants field interpretation.”

Kornfeld is skeptical of the much-pub-licized recent conclusions by Waters andStafford that the Clovis culture was muchshorter lived and occurred somewhatlater than previously thought (MT 22-3,“Clovis Dethroned: A New Perspectiveon the First Americans”). Why? “First,what they dated directly was generallybone, and generally mammoth bone, soyou can perhaps see that this alone mightraise my ire, given my issues with big-game specialization,” notes Kornfeld.“To be fair, they don’t tackle the issue ofClovis subsistence in their article. Theassumption they’re making, with a fewrare exceptions when an osseous artifact

was dated, is that the mammoths are behaviorally associatedwith humanly produced artifacts.” Kornfeld isn’t convincedthat a direct link exists between human artifacts and mam-moth remains at all the dated sites. “Perhaps Waters andStafford are dating mammoth die-offs at the end of the Pleis-tocene,” he suggests, “not the Clovis technocomplex that’spresent at those same sites.”

Mountains of evidenceIn addition to his reputation as a scholar of Paleoamericansubsistence, Kornfeld is known for his work on early sites inthe Rocky Mountains. One current focus of his research is theintriguing Two Moon Shelter (48BH1827), a rockshelter lo-cated in the Bighorn Mountains of north-central Wyoming.Two Moon is a rare find indeed: Not only has it producedevidence of multiple occupations dating back to Folsomtimes—making it one of just a handful of known rockshelter

sites with intact fluted-point depos-its—its cultural sediments are un-usually well preserved. This allowsresearchers to address site forma-tion and paleoenvironmental topics

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Sunrise over the 2007 Black MountainArchaeological District field camp, withWhite Creek Canyon in the background.

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that usually aren’t possible in a montane rockshelter environ-ment.

A rockshelter is basically a rocky overhang that lacks anextensive interior cave system. In the case of Two Moon Shelter,the protected interior covers just 45 square meters (m2), withanother 30 m2 of flat area located immediately outside thedripline. Fieldwork there began in 1993, and has been carried

Fragmentary Paleoamericanprojectile points from TwoMoon Rockshelter: A–B, Folsom;C, Foothill/Mountain.

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EEEEExcavations at Two MoonShelter, 2007. At work are

Nicholas Naudinot (foreground)and Yoann Cantreau, both of the

Université de Rennes, France.

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out carefully and deliberately over the 15 years since. The long-term nature of the project was the goal from the beginning.“When we began testing,” Kornfeld explains, “we felt that theusual procedure of putting in a quick test unit would ultimatelybe counterproductive for a small shelter. That is, it would likelyproduce holes, spaces without data, because it was shoveled outin 10-cm levels instead of point-provenienced. We’ve seen this innearly all archaeological site reports—archaeologists are impa-tient! So we opted for something closer to a standard full-fledgedexcavation right from the start.”

Two Moon Shelter, part of the Black Mountain Archaeologi-cal District, is located on the foothills of the Bighorns at anelevation of about 2,040 m abovesea level. The site may be small,but the amount of data collectedso far has been impressive.Seven cultural strata have beendefined, extending to 60 cm be-low the surface; the contactboundaries of these strata aredescribed as “exceptionallyclear” in a 2005 Plains Anthro-pologist article. In addition to afew pieces of ground stone,ocher, and charcoal, more than

Proceed with cautionArguably, Marcel’s Kornfeld’s approach to archaeology can beboiled down to this: As explicators and conservators of thepast, we have to learn to pay better attention to the details, ifonly because we’re focused too tightly on what currently is, notwhat logically should be. That is, when we’re in a hurry (orwhen we’ve already made up our minds about things), we onlyfind the durable items that survive the ravages of time, not thetraces of fragile things that do not; as a result, some of usconclude that those fragile things were never there in the firstplace. Admittedly, as both our technology and archaeologicaltheory advance, this is becoming less of a problem; but it still

leaves us facing certainparadigms that we mayeventually need to aban-don.

Kornfeld hasn’t beenshy about arguing thatour concept of Paleo-americans as big-gamehunters is one such para-digm. The evidence isstarting to tip in his favor,now that paleo-era siteslacking bone middens arebeing either reexaminedor more carefully exca-vated in the first place. Itseems that the originalPaleoindian subsistenceparadigm was formulatedwithout taking all the data

into account. Later taphonomic experimentation and observa-tion have confirmed what some researchers had already sus-pected, based on existing ethnological evidence and, frankly,sheer logic.

Another example of Kornfeld’s focus on detail lies in thesimple fact that he’s taken 15 years (thus far) to excavate TwoMoon Shelter, reaping a rich harvest of data in the process—including items that more-hurried archaeologists might havemissed. The lesson in all this? “Theoretically reasoned dirtarchaeology is probably the best way of learning about the pastin general,” Kornfeld reasons. “I would hope that people arenever, never, never afraid to try new and (hopefully) innovativeparadigms, theories, and methods. They may stick or they mayfall, but we’ll never know unless we try.”

–Floyd Largent

How to contact the principal of this article:Marcel Kornfeld, DirectorGeorge C. Frison Institute of Archaeology and AnthropologyUniversity of WyomingAnthropology DepartmentDept. 34311000 E. University AvenueLaramie, WY 82071e-mail: Anpro1@uwyo.edu

33,000 chipped-stone artifacts have been recovered from thecultural strata—almost all debitage and angular fragmentsmade from local Phosphoria chert. Initial analyses revealedfewer than 60 tools, mostly informal utilized and retouchedflakes; however, there was a sprinkling of formal tools, includ-ing a few late-Archaic and Prior Stemmed projectile points—and two Folsom point fragments. This general scarcity of toolsseemed to confirm the original assessment of the site as alithic-reduction station, but later discoveries painted a moredomestic picture. “Our most recent analysis identified approxi-mately 350 chipped-stone tools in the assemblage, indicating awide variety of sewing, cutting, and scraping tasks,” Kornfeldsays. Add the dozen hearths discovered since 2005, and it’sclear that Two Moon Shelter was more than just a lithic-reduction site.

Radiocarbon assays have yielded dates of 3860 ± 40,8570 ± 60, and 10,060 ± 60 RCYBP, confirming the known agesfor the formalized tools recovered. The dating also reveals thatsome 4,500 years worth of deposits are missing entirely, prob-ably due to erosion; fortunately, this doesn’t affect the integrityof the Paleoindian occupation one bit. In Kornfeld’s opinion,that’s the most important result of the work at Two MoonShelter. Given the excellent contexts and the site’s unusuallyclear stratigraphy, Two Moon’s Folsom assemblage repre-sents “one of the most intact and pristine fluted-point occupa-tions ever recovered from a rockshelter.”

October ■ 2008 5

T WAS THE LATE ’FIFTIES, the roads were ruled by carswith giant fins and flashy chrome, the airwaves were domi-nated by Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley; and Jerry Lee Lewis;

the site for the first time and were blown away by the sheer sizeof the site. Scattered over about 800 m on a north/south axis,on a low ridge bordering Chupadera Wash, are at least a dozenspacially discrete clusters of Clovis artifacts. Huckell explainsmost of the loci “were detected primarily from surface expo-sures and appear to represent either discrete campsites ofsmall social groups of Clovis that came together for shortperiods of time or perhaps repeated occupations of the site bya single group, probably on a seasonal basis, camping atslightly different places each time.” The attraction of this site iselusive. Holliday describes the area as “a big desert basin in

central New Mexico called the Jornada delMuerto, or Journey of the Dead Man . . .fairly typical of basins in the area. The site

is along a drainage way that flowed to thevery floor of the basin where there was anold lake in the late Pleistocene and probablyeven when Paleoindians were around, butit is about five miles away from the site.”Definitely not Club Med, but the team,through archaeological and stratigraphicalanalysis of the area, is revealing its prehis-toric appeal.

In 2005 Drs. Huckell and Holliday, in co-operation with Weber and with fundingfrom the Maxwell Museum of Anthropol-

ogy of the University of New Mexico (UNM), and the ArgonautArchaeology Research Fund (University of Arizona Founda-

Mockingbird Gap

A Mid-A Mid-A Mid-A Mid-A Mid-cccccentury Discoveryentury Discoveryentury Discoveryentury Discoveryentury DiscoveryGets Another SpinGets Another SpinGets Another SpinGets Another SpinGets Another SpinA Mid-A Mid-A Mid-A Mid-A Mid-cccccentury Discoveryentury Discoveryentury Discoveryentury Discoveryentury DiscoveryGets Another SpinGets Another SpinGets Another SpinGets Another SpinGets Another Spin

Looking across Chupadera Wash toward the coring operation.The Mockingbird Gap site is on the crest and far side of thesage-covered ridge beyond the truck.I

Sputnik I and II were launched, and we all liked Ike and lovedLucy. During this time there was a hunt being conducted, aone-man hunt. That man was the late Robert (Bob) Weber (MT23-3, “Remembering Robert H. Weber”), and his quarry wasnew Paleoamerican sites in the basins and plains of NewMexico. He found many Clovis, Folsom, and later-Paleo-american sites as well as Archaic sites, but perhaps the mostimportant was Mockingbird Gap, a Clovis site located in thedesert grasslands at the north end of the Jornada del Muertoand less than 25 miles from Socorro, New Mexico. How fittingthat during the Atomic Age one of the most important Clovissites in the region was found on the door-step of the site where the first atomicbomb was tested in 1945!

Dr. Weber almost immediately beganmapping and surface-collecting at the site.In 1966–68 East New Mexico University(ENMU) had their summer field workthere under the direction of Dr. GeorgeAgogino. Unfortunately, no extensive pa-pers were published on that work and thesite remained, except for Weber’s dili-gent topographical mapping, largely ig-nored for the next 35 or so years.

The torch is passedIn 2004 Drs. Bruce Huckell and VanceHolliday, accompanied by Weber, visited

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tion) established by Joe and Ruth Cramer (MT 18-1, “ACampaign to Find the First Americans”), began conductingtests in the area bordering Chupadera Wash on the east side. Aswale divides the site into northern and southern portions.Most of the southern part of the site, where the 1966–1968ENMU summer field schools concentrated their efforts, wasfound to have been exposed and then reburied sometimeduring the Holocene. This combination of erosional exposureand reburial, along with disturbances such as burrowing ro-dents, acted to disperse the Clovis artifacts vertically throughabout 30-40 cm of sediment. At risk is the stratigraphy of thesite, and to an archaeologist stratigraphy is precious.

At the Mockingbird Gap site the roll-ing topography is covered by eoliansand. Over time the site has becomedeflated: As the sand has blown away,artifacts have settled slowly onto thesurface of resistant layers of gypsumand calcium carbonate. This is why itwas so exciting to find, during testing in2006, some materials at the margins ofthe site just beginning to be exposed.According to Huckell, “the north end ofthe swale, at the base of the north ridgehad not had that same history of ero-sional exposure seen up on the ridges.”

The UNM 2007 summer fieldschool, with the support of the Depart-ment of Anthropology at UNM, exca-

vated an area (Locus 1214) in the northern edge along a lowridge next to Chupadera Wash on the east side. With Huckellas the archaeology point man and Holliday as the stratigraphicexpert, over 60 flaked-stone artifacts, almost a thousand piecesof debitage, 28 small pieces of tooth enamel (presumably frombison, although it’s possible the teeth are from camels orhorses), and 13 large-mammal bone splinters were excavatedand examined. Holliday conducted stratigraphic studies at thesite, utilizing a Giddings soil-coring rig and producing 4 coresfrom the wash reaching almost 11 m deep. Analysis of thecores suggests the wash was a stream or marsh at the time itwas visited by Clovis campers. Consequently the team con-cluded that the site, attractive to both humans and animalsbecause of abundant water and plant material, was used as a

food-processing area and short-term camp. (No evidence ofClovis hearths has been foundat the site; burnt waste flakeswere found, but these couldhave resulted from a post-occu-pational grass or brush fire.)Sourcing studies of the variedchert and obsidian found atMockingbird Gap indicateClovis people traveled from anorthwesterly area as far as 200miles away.

Clovis technological lithicorganizationThe technological organizationat Mockingbird Gap has muchto tell. Consider the curiouslack of blades in the assem-blage. Both Weber’s collectionand the excavations in 2007show negligible evidence ofblade manufacture. This is un-usual, since other nearbyClovis sites, such as Blackwa-ter Draw, supported a thriving

A stratigraphic profile of the Mockingbird Gap Clovis site.

Holliday taking notes on a core.Standing is Matt E. Hill, formerly oneof his graduate students and now on

the Anthropology faculty of theUniversity of Iowa. Chupadera Washlies just this side of the sage-coveredridge in the background, where the

site proper is located.

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blade industry. Is it pos-sible blades, which aren’tseen in Folsom, had al-ready been dropped fromthe toolkit in what mayhave been a late-Clovissite? Without any radio-carbon dates from thespecific area showingClovis occupation, it’s dif-ficult to say if the site wasoccupied late in theClovis period or not. Un-fortunately, obsidian hy-dration dating (OHD), ananalytical method thatdates the age of chipped-obsidian tools (MT 23-3, “Through aGlass Darkly: Dating Obsidian Points”),can’t be used at Mockingbird Gap. A validOHD date estimate, Huckell explains, re-quires assumptions about unknown vari-ables that affect the amount of moistureabsorbed by the artifact, such as artifactexposure, temperature, and soil moistureover time. These factors have varied so widely over the past11,000 years that any dates derived from OHD measurementswould be questionable.

Few blades, but lots of scrapers and pointsBlades may be in short supply at Mockingbird Gap, butendscrapers are plentiful. Those in Weber’s surface collectionnumber over 100. They are morphologically similar toendscrapers found at Plains sites and were presumably usedfor working hides.

Ample evidence at Mockingbird Gap for flaking bifaces isconsistent with Clovis technological organization at sites foundin Blackwater Draw and theSan Pedro Valley. Huckellnotes that the MockingbirdGap lithic assemblage re-flects the ongoing task of thePaleoamerican hunter to re-place and rework stonepoints. “Projectile points arethe things that are going toget damaged and brokenfrom hunting,” says Huckell,“and Bob Weber’s collectionof points from the entirety ofthe Mockingbird Gap site isdominated by basal frag-ments, the portion of thepoint that would remain inthe spear haft after the bladeportion is broken off.” Alsofound at the site were small,sharp flake tools likely used

for butchering and possibly forwoodworking. The use, however,for the many gravers found at thesite has yet to be determined. “It isgoing to take a fair bit of morework,” Huckell says, “before thenature of what is going on withtechnological organization as rep-resented at Mockingbird Gap be-comes clear.”

Toolstone sourcing clarifies Clovis movementsand land useWork in the 2007 season included X-ray fluorescencesourcing of obsidian Clovis points in Bob Weber’scollection as well as obsidian from recent excavations.A distinctive chert, whose color varies from lightgreen to dark green to black, dominates the collection

at a whopping 49.2 percent of specimens. Based on the over-whelming volume of artifacts made from this chert, thetoolstone source, as yet unknown, is presumably nearby. Redrhyolite (a.k.a. Socorro Jasper), which outcrops 55 km west ofMockingbird Gap in the Chupadera Mountains, is the materialof 15.9 percent of specimens. Another 4.1 percent of specimens

are made of pinkish orangeChuska chert, quarried inthe Chuska Mountainsabout 400 km northwestnear the Arizona/NewMexico border. Artifactsmade of Correo Chinachert, named for its lus-trous opaque appearanceand white to yellowishwhite hue, make up 2.7 per-cent of specimens; CorreoChina chert comes fromthe eastern Zuni mountainsnear Mount Taylor. Two

Obverse and reverse faces ofa Clovis point base found in aburied context excavated bythe UNM field school at theMockingbird Gap site,summer 2007.

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Principal investigators of the Mockingbird Gap site:Huckell (above) in the field in North Dakota,summer 2008; Holliday (left) at El Fin del MundoClovis site in Sonora, Mexico, November 2007.

flakes of Mt. Taylor obsidian, whose source is almost200 km to the northwest, and a single flake of CerroToledo obsidian, probably from the Jemez Moun-tains 250 km to the north, are further testimony tothe great distances Clovis people traveled.

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ANDIA CAVE, a National Historic Landmark in centralNew Mexico, once was hailed as the earliest archaeologi-cal site in America. Traces of human occupation in the

rean points from Spain and France [MT 17-1, “Immigrantsfrom the Other Side?”]. Hibben claimed that radiocarbon datesindicated that the Sandia people lived in Sandia Cave between17,000 and 20,000 years ago, making them “almost certainlythe first Americans.”

Almost as soon as the claim was announced, however,Hibben’s discovery became mired in controversy. The integ-rity of the stratigraphy was questioned, the radiocarbon dates

were rejected as problematic, and some even have suggestedthat Sandia points are forgeries. In a study of the controversy,Eastern New Mexico University archaeologists DominiqueStevens and George Agogino determined that “all conclusivestatements” concerning the putative Sandia culture are “basedon insufficient and/or uncertain data.” As a result, the sitelargely has been dismissed and forgotten.

Nevertheless, C. Vance Haynes, Jr., University of Tucsongeoarchaeologist, and Agogino, in their study of the geochro-nology of Sandia Cave, acknowledged that it is “one of the mostimportant sites to American archaeology and to Pleistocenegeology.”

A new look at an old siteIn the April 2008 issue of American Antiquity,Jessica C. Thompson, an archaeologist with

the School of Human Evolution and SocialChange at Arizona State University, NawaSugiyama, from Harvard University’s Depart-ment of Anthropology, and Gary S. Morgan, ofthe New Mexico Museum of Natural History,reexamined the Sandia Cave faunal assemblagewith three sets of questions in mind.

First, what kinds of animals have been identi-fied in the bones from Sandia Cave? In particular,they sought to “provide comprehensive taxo-nomic and taphonomic data that go beyond thesimple taxonomic list” in Hibben’s original publi-cations.

A long view down Las Huertas Canyon. The insetshows the spiral staircase constructed by the

U.S. Forest Service that leads to Sandia Cave.

New Study of Animal Bonesfrom Sandia Cave Sheds Light

on 70-year-old Controversy

Sdeepest levels of the cave appeared to be ironclad evidence ofa pre-Folsom culture with its roots in the Solutrean culture ofthe Old World Paleolithic. In the decades since its discovery,however, “Sandia Man” has fallen under a shadow of increas-ing doubt and suspicion. Recently, researchers from ArizonaState University, Harvard Uni-versity’s Peabody Museum, andthe New Mexico Museum ofNatural History teamed up totake a new look at the mammalbones from the site in an attemptto sort out the controversy.

Is Sandia Cave a key to un-locking the mysteries of the firstAmericans? Or are the data hope-lessly compromised by incompe-tence or even fraud?

The controversySandia Cave is a tunnel-like solu-tion cavity in the limestone faceof Las Huertas Canyon on theeast side of the Sandia Moun-tains northeast of Albuquerque.Former University of NewMexico archaeologist FrankHibben, who directed the early excavations at the site, wrote in1946 that the “question of the day is, ‘Who were the earliestAmericans?’ ” Based on his work in Sandia Cave, he claimed tohave found the answer.

Hibben had uncovered a layer containing classic Folsompoints along with the “shattered bones of the horse, the bison,and the camel!” At the time, Folsom represented the earliestknown culture in America, so it was gratifying to find suchearly traces in the cave, but Hibben continued to dig in pursuitof a bigger prize.

Below the Folsom layer, Hibben and his team encountereda layer of yellow ochre, which he claimed was “unbroken,effectively sealing off whatever lay beneath it.”

Once they were through the yellowochre, Hibben hit the archaeologicaljackpot! He found stone tools, thebones of Ice Age animals, and pre-pared fire pits—from an unknown cul-ture that appeared to be demonstrablyolder than Folsom.

Many of the stone tools were simi-lar to those found in the Folsom layer,but instead of the classic Folsom pro-jectile points, Hibben found a dis-tinctly different style of spear point,which he named “Sandia points.”Sandia points are single-shouldered,leaf-shaped flint spear points some-what like Upper Paleolithic Solut-

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Second, what processes produced these accumulations ofbone? Did humans use the site as a base camp, or was it insteada carnivore den?

Finally, is there any evidence in the faunal collection thatcan contribute to resolving the controversies swirling aroundthe site?

In addition to the bones collected by Hibben,Thompson and her colleagues had access to an impor-tant comparative collection excavated in 1984 by RichardSmartt and David Hafner of the New Mexico Museum ofNatural History. This material, collected with modern recoverytechniques, adds to Hibben’s collection, and, more impor-tantly, it is an independent record untainted by concerns raisedover the original investigation.

Sandia Cave bestiaryThe original faunal collection reported by Hibben included 16species of mammals, 7 of which areextinct: mammoth, mastodon, twovarieties of horse, camel (giantllama), Bison antiquus, and groundsloth. The total number of specieswas raised to 41 with the addition ofspecies added by Smartt andHafner’s excavations, which in-clude the large-headed llama, flat-headed peccary, dwarf pronghorn,and Stocks pronghorn. In addition,Smartt and Hafner recovered sixspecies of mammals that are “ex-tralimital” (species that, althoughnot extinct, are no longer found inthe region around Sandia Cave).These extirpated species includethe snowshoe hare, mountain cot-

tontail, yellow-bellied marmot, northern pocket gopher, moun-tain vole, and bushy-tailed woodrat.

This large and diverse assemblage of extinct mammals andspecies with ranges now limited to colder regions of NorthAmerica makes Sandia Cave an unquestionably important pale-ontological locality. But, of course, much of the significance for

American archaeology was theclaimed association of these IceAge critters with the stone toolsof ancient humans.

For this reason, a major objec-tive of Thompson and her co-re-searchers’ reanalysis of theSandia Cave mammals was to“establish if humans were in-volved with accumulating andmodifying” the bones.

Does the collection includebones from other sites?Thompson and her colleaguesexamined the mammal bonesthat Hibben claimed had beenexcavated from Sandia Cave,checking for evidence that someof the bones might be out ofplace. There had been accusa-tions that bones from other siteshad been added to the Sandia

collection, whether deliberately or through sloppycuration procedures. Fortunately, the majority of the

bones were found to be in the “original, unwashed state.”This was important because, although fewer than half thebones in the collection still had information indicating the levelin which they had been found, sediment adhering to a ques-tionable bone could provide clues about its provenience.

All the bones were covered with the “fine, golden-yellowochre” that permeated the lower layers of the site. This ochre,not simply covering the bone surfaces, also “filled small cracksand irregularities,” indicating the ochre hadn’t been brushed

casually onto the bones tomake them appear to havebeen come from SandiaCave.

Thompson and herteam also compared thebones excavated byHibben’s crews with thoseexcavated in 1984 bySmartt and Hafner to de-termine whether anyseemed odd or out ofplace. They found that“none of the specimens

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The view from the mouth ofSandia Cave.

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were distinctively different in terms of color, fossilization, ormatrix from those that were recovered in 1984 under con-trolled conditions.” In other words, there’s no evidence thatbones in the original collection from Sandia Cave were deliber-ately or inadvertently mixed with bones from other contexts.

Stratigraphy—do the sedimentlayers have integrity?Hibben originally argued that the“well-defined stratigraphy of SandiaCave is one of its outstanding fea-tures.” Yet Haynes and Agogino, intheir meticulous reexamination ofthe cave, found clear evidence ofmixing between all the major strata.Even Hibben acknowledged that aground sloth claw had been foundon the modern surface, but he

from either the Folsom or recent layers. The team recordedmineralization as “heavy,” “light,” or “none.”

They found that “there are similar proportions of heavily andlightly fossilized bone in the bottom (Sandia) and top (Recent)layers.” This corroborates the claim that there has been consid-

erable mixing of the bonesbetween these levels,which undermines Hib-ben’s claim about the in-tegrity of the levels.

Curiously, the bonesfrom the Folsom layerstand out as “statisticallyvery different” from boththe recent and Sandia lay-ers. This may be due sim-ply to sampling error, butit’s also possible that theconsolidated nature ofthe Folsom layer kept itmore intact than the moreloosely compacted layers

above and below it.

Excavation and curation biasesThompson, Sugiyama, and Morgan meticulously comparedthe bones collected by Hibben and his crew with the morerecent material excavated by Smartt and Hafner to determinethe quality of Hibben’s excavation and curation methods. ToHibben’s credit, they found he was ahead of his time in terms ofsaving the tiny bones of microvertebrates, which were usuallydiscarded by his contemporaries as uninteresting, and in col-lecting and saving fragmentary bones. Although the relativelylarge mesh of the screen Hibben used biased against bones ofthe smallest microvertebrates, Thompson and her colleagueswere nonetheless relieved to find that the original assemblage

included bones of rabbits andlarger rodents. Their pres-ence verified that the assem-blage hadn’t undergonemajor sorting or analytic bias.They conclude that com-pared with other archaeolo-gists of his generation,Hibben’s “excavation and re-covery methods were excel-lent.” And the Sandia Cavefaunal assemblage “is strik-ing in its completeness and

suitability for modern study.”

How did the bones come to be in thecave?The most important question to be answered,of course, is, What role, if any, did humanhunters play in bringing the bones to SandiaCave? If Hibben is right, many if not most of thebones were brought to the cave by Folsom and

Large mammal bones fromSandia Cave showing evidence

of human activity. A, stone toolcutmarks; B, percussion mark

made by a hammer used tobreak open the bone for

extracting the marrow; C, a cutand shaped bone tool fragment.

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thought that showed that ground sloths had survived intorelatively recent times. Subsequent years of discovery anddating, however, have shown that ground sloths died with theother megafauna at the end of the Pleistocene. Likewise, thepresence of mammoths—now known to have become extinctprior to Folsom times—in the Folsom layer of Sandia Cave isanother indicator of mixing between layers.

Thompson, Sugiyama, and Morgan studied bones to deter-mine whether there were corresponding degrees of boneweathering for each of the three general time periods—recent,Folsom, and Sandia. (Their conclusions are tentative, sincethey had to rely on a label on each bag of bones that defined theorigin of the specimens; the provenience, although probablyroughly indicative of the location from where Hibben and histeam thought the ma-terial derived, isn’tnecessarily reliable.)If Hibben was rightand the layers weredifferent in age and un-mixed, then bonesfrom the deep Sandialevel, having lain in thesoil for several addi-tional millennia, likelywould be more highlyfossilized than bones A B

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Sandia hunters. The bones represent the animals that werekilled, butchered, and cooked at the site. And the bones werebroken by people in order to extract the nutrient-rich marrow. Isthere evidence in the faunal data to corroborate or refute thisscenario?

According to Thompson and her colleagues, there are twomain lines of evidence that can shed light on this question:surface modifications, including animal tooth marks and stonetool cutmarks; and skeletal element representation, which re-fers to the kinds of bones that are preserved at the site.

Surface modificationsTo prove or disprove Hibben’s claim that Sandia Cave con-tained evidence for human hunting and butchering of Ice Agemegafauna turned out to be a task that eluded a definitiveanswer.

element, seems to have kept everything. His compul-sion to retain even apparently useless materials made itpossible for Thompson and her colleagues to identifythe few human modifications present in the assem-blage. Although there is no evidence of human interac-

tion with Pleistocene mammals at Sandia Cave, we at least knowthat humans occasionally butchered some large mammals andleft bone tools at the site at some point in its history.

“Sandia Man”—fraud or First American?Hibben’s research has been controversial for decades. AlthoughThompson, Sugiyama, and Morgan have shown that the collec-tion of animal bones from Hibben’s excavations at Sandia Cavestill has great value for answering questions of paleontologicaland archaeological interest, their faunal analyses make a strongcase for rejecting many of his most important claims.

The animal-bone data show clearly that humans occupiedSandia Cave only infrequently and then only for brief periods.

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Large mammal bones from Sandia Cave showingdamage from carnivores and rodents. A, carni-vore tooth marks; B, “gastric etching”—damageto the bone from acids in the stomach of a

carnivore; C, rodent gnawing marks overliecutmarks, evidence that bones butcheredby humans were later gnawed by rodents.

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Skeletal element representationThompson, Sugiyama, and Morgan report that the bulk of thelarge-mammal bones from Hibben’s excavations consists of“high-density elements such as teeth and long bone shafts,” acomposition consistent with carnivore action. Moreover, evi-dence of gnawing is found throughout the assemblage andseveral bones appear to have passed through the digestivetract of carnivores. Comparing the incidence of tooth markswith that of modern experimental bone assemblages that havebeen butchered by humans, then fed to carnivores, Thompsonand her coauthors conclude that large carnivores “were theprimary agent for accumulating most of the fauna includingextinct Pleistocene species.”

It’s worth noting that the inventory of skeletal elements con-firms that Hibben, contrary to the traditional practice of discard-ing long bone shafts that cannot be identified to skeletal

None of the small-mammal bones bore un-questionable evidence ofhuman modification. Only2 percent of the bonesfrom larger mammals hadsurface modifications thatcould be attributed to hu-man activity—possiblecutmarks on a few bones,percussion marks possi-bly made by stone ham-mers used to break openbones, and a few ex-amples of tools madefrom the animal bones. Unfortunately, definite human modifica-tion was only identified on bone fragments and long bone shaftsthat couldn’t be traced to a skeletal element or species.

Many of the bones with evidence of human modification arethe most heavily fossilized specimens, which suggests that atleast some of the human-modified bones “may have consider-able antiquity.” Nevertheless Thompson and colleagues foundno evidence of any kind of human modifications on any bonefrom an animal “positively identified as [an] extinct Pleistocenespecies.” Absent human-modified bones of an extinct or extral-imital species, it is impossible to confirm Hibben’s interpretationof Sandia Cave as an Ice Age hunting station or even as a shelteroccasionally visited by terminal-Pleistocene Early Americans.

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Most of the animal bones in the cave represent the meals oflarge carnivores that used the site as a den. Of paramountimportance is the fact that contrary to Hibben’s appraisal, the“Sandia” layer was not sealed off from the upper layers by acontinuous pavement of yellow ochre; extensive burrowing byrodents throughout the history of the site has jumbled materi-als from recent cave deposits with those from the deepestlevels. But do these findings indicate that Hibben’s “SandiaMan” was a fraud?

After examining the animal bones inHibben’s collection, Thompson and her co-authors are grateful that Hibben curatedthe entire fossil assemblage. It’s likely he

fluted like a Clovis point, which suggested it was a technologi-cal bridge between Sandia points and the presumably laterClovis style of point. Hibben worked at both sites. But wereSandia points intentional frauds, or were they simply Folsom orClovis knives that rodents dragged down into the deepestlayers of the cave and that Hibben misinterpreted as the re-mains of a separate and distinctive culture?

Six decades after Frank Hibben wrote that “the question ofthe day” was “Who were the earliest Ameri-cans?” that question still begs an unequivo-cal answer. Granted, “Sandia Man” mightnot have been an intentional fraud, but

Suggested ReadingsHaynes, C. V., Jr. and G. A. Agogino 1986 Geochronology of Sandia

Cave. Smithsonian Contributions to Anthropology, Number 32.

Hibben, Frank C. 1946 The Lost Americans. Thomas Y. Crowell,New York.

Preston, Douglas 1995 The Mystery of Sandia Cave. The NewYorker 71(16):66–83.

understood that parts of the assemblage considered unimpor-tant at the time might in the future become significant when newanalytical methods appeared. Whatever his motives, the factremains that he left a valuable faunal collection from SandiaCave that’s usable by modern researchers. But what about“Sandia Man”?

Except to show that humans had little to do with bringingthe animal bones to the site, the faunal data don’t contribute toproving or disproving the authenticity of “Sandia points,” thesingle-shouldered echo of the Old World Paleolithic that wasexactly the sort of “missing link” sought by archaeologists inthe 1930s. It’s worth noting that Sandia points have been foundprincipally at only two sites, Sandia Cave and the Lucy site, asite in the Estancia Valley about 30 miles southeast of SandiaCave, where Frank Hibben, and his student William Roosafound Sandia points and bones of mammoth and bison, alongwith other artifacts. One of the Sandia points from Lucy was

Thompson, Sugiyama, and Morgan found no evidence to sup-port the claim that he was the First American.

–Bradley Lepper

How to contact the principals of this article:Jessica C. ThompsonSchool of Human Evolution and Social ChangeArizona State UniversityJcthom1@asu.eduNawa SugiyamaHarvard UniversityPeabody Museumnsugiyam@fas.harvard.eduGary S. MorganNew Mexico Museum of Natural Historygary.morgan1@state.nm.us

Stevens, D. E. and G. A. Agogino 1975 Sandia Cave: A Study inControversy. Eastern New Mexico University, Contributions to An-thropology, Vol. 7, Number 1.

Thompson, J. C., and G. S. Morgan 2001 Late-Pleistocene Mam-malian Fauna and Environments of the Sandia Mountain, NewMexico. Current Research in the Pleistocene 18:113–15.

Thompson, J. A., N. Sugiyama, and G. S. Morgan 2008 TaphonomicAnalysis of the Mammalian Fauna from Sandia Cave, New Mexicoand the “Sandia Man” Controversy. American Antiquity 73:337–60.

Principal investigators (left-right)Thompson, Sugiyama, and Morgan.

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ID A COMET CRASH into North America 12,900 years ago?The jury’s not yet in on that possibility, but according to onegroup of scientists, that’s exactly what must have hap-

knee-jerk responses any controversial theory invites—includingan insinuation that Firestone’s largely discredited hypothesisthat a supernova explosion in Paleoindian times was responsiblefor resetting the radiocarbon clock (MT 16-2, “TerrestrialEvidence of a Nuclear Catastrophe in Paleoindian Times”) hasrendered all his work suspect—some observers wonder whythis sensational announcement has been allowed to overshadowother exciting research being conducted on Paleo sites all overthe Americas. A few critics have even taken the time to peerclosely at and pick apart the data, providing alternative explana-

tions for arguments offered as evidence by proponents of thetheory—exactly the kind of “loyal opposition” a theory like thisneeds, in order to sink or swim on its own merits.

On the side of cautionMost Paleoamericans researchers have adopted a wait-and-seeattitude about the Clovis Comet theory, looking forward toelaborations on and reasoned rebuttals to the basic researchbefore they draw any conclusions. They’re keenly interested inthe subject, but consider themselves little more than specta-tors at this point—“watching the story unfold from the side-lines,” as CSFA director Mike Waters puts it, unsure of whatthey can really contribute. The major science journals, includ-

ing Science and Nature, seem to be quite careful not totake sides.

THE

CLOVIS COMETPart IV:The Scientific Community Responds

Dpened. In October 2007, a 26-person team led by physicistRichard Firestone and geophysicist Allen West outlined thepossibility in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Acad-emy of Sciences, citing more than a dozen lines of evidence.They’ve even tentatively identified the culprit, the parent body ofComet Encke.

In the previous articles of this series, we’ve introduced you tothe Clovis Comet theory (MT 23-1,“The Clovis Comet: Evidence for a Cos-mic Collision 12,900 Years Ago”), dis-cussed the relevant data (MT 23-2, “TheClovis Comet, Part II: What the Data TellUs”), and explored the implications ofsuch a comet strike (MT 23-3, “TheClovis Comet, Part III: The Implica-tions”). In this fourth and final install-ment, we’ll take a closer look at how thescientific community has responded tothe theory itself.

A monumental mysteryThere’s no doubt that something hap-pened at the tail-end of the Pleistocene,something so huge it triggered an anoma-lous 1,000-year cool spell we now call theYounger Dryas (YD) interval. Suspi-ciously enough, at the same time manylarge-animal species became extinct inNorth America and the Clovis peoplerather suddenly gave way to descendent cultures. But it’s hard totell exactly what the triggering event for the YD might havebeen; what’s more, who can say whether the extinctions and theClovis demise were, in fact, related to the YD at all? Granted thatthe evidence for a cometary impact is intriguing and plentiful, itnonetheless remains circumstantial: There’s no smoking gunanyone can point to and say, “Here’s irrefutable evidence, be-yond a shadow of a doubt.”

Needless to say, the conclusions drawn by the PNAS teamhave met with a mixed response. The prevailing viewpointseems to be cautionary: Many researchers find the theory in-triguing, but in need of further work before the issue is resolved.

Then there are the outright critics. Aside from the expected

Microparticles associated with comet impacts—likenanodiamonds and these magnetic spherules—becauseof their unusually high concentration at Clovis sites,weigh heavily in the evidence pointing to a cataclysmiccometary event. Critics of the theory, on the other hand,point out that they’re present in the cosmic rain thatcontinuously falls on Earth’s surface. Isn’t it possible, theysubmit, that an accumulated layer was displaced bywinds born of violently unstable weather at the time ofthe onset of the Younger Dryas?AL

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Of course, being on the sidelines doesn’t mean all thesespectators are united; in fact, their opinions fall across a ratherwide continuum, ranging from an unwillingness to get involvedat all to the guarded optimism of Dr. Waters and theSmithsonian’s Dennis Stanford, who both find the idea intrigu-ing but in desperate need of further research. The response of R.Dale Guthrie, whose work was recently profiled in this magazine(MT 22-3, “Megafaunal Extinctions Revisited”), is typical: “I’mpretty amazed by the information that [PNAS team memberJames] Kennett and his group are putting together on thissubject, and understand they’re working hard to gather moredata. By his admission the data he has are very suggestive, andhe hopes to expand that to see if the theory really floats ornot. . . . Let’s see how it goes.”

Dr. Stanford offers some cheerful, if cautionary, advice: “Myopinion is that it’s an interesting alternative theory that needs tobe tested. I’d like to see them keep working at it, because there’s

One of the localities the comet team based its conclusions onis Murray Springs, a Clovis site in southeastern Arizona that wasexcavated by Dr. Haynes. Not only does Murray Springs exhibitan organic-rich black mat of the appropriate age (a signifyingmarker of the impact theorists), the site has also producedplenty of the aforementioned magnetic spherules. But Haynesisn’t convinced that the spherules are the result of a cometaryimpact. The problem he points out “is that cosmic dust is fallingon us all the time, both from material that the Earth sweeps upduring our orbit, and from meteors falling into our atmo-sphere”—and that cosmic dust is full of magnetic spherules.He’s even detected them in dust collected from the roof of hishouse. On the other hand, he’s convinced that something odd isdefinitely occurring just after the YD boundary, based on arecent examination of black mats described in his recent PNASarticle. “You never find Clovis material and extinct fauna in theseYounger Dryas–age black mats,” he reports. “Mammoth, mast-

odon, horse, camel, dire wolf, American lion—all those speciesterminate at the Younger Dryas contact. They’re just gone. Theonly extinct faunal material is bison, and any cultural material inand above the black mat is post-Clovis. My bottom line is thatsomething happened 12,900 years ago that we have yet tounderstand. I’m not convinced that it was an impact, but it mighthave been.”

Critical responseIn the scientific press, researchers in the fields of chemistry,geology, and geophysics have recently begun questioning thecollection and analysis techniques of some of the members ofthe PNAS team, particularly concerning their reports ofnanodiamonds, extraterrestrial elements, and carbon fullerenesfilled with extraterrestrial helium. However, it’s the interpreta-tion of the evidence that poses a problem for some prehistorians.Ted Goebel, CSFA associate director, is one example. “I don’thave any qualms with the way initial data collection and analysishave been carried out,” he states. “However, I do have qualmswith the ways that the presumed impact event has been charac-terized.” Dr. Goebel takes issue with the “firestorm” aspects of

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Black mats, like this deposit (arrow) at theMurray Springs site in Arizona, are found at

roughly a third of all Clovis sites. They’re thesooty residue of a firestorm of continentaldimensions, say proponents of the Clovis

Comet theory, that incinerated much of IceAge megafauna and decimated the Clovis

population. Critics of the comet theorycounter, Why only much of the megafauna?

Why not all species? Moreover, C. VanceHaynes, the acknowledged authority on blackmats, observes that all material found in and

above black mats dates to the period followingClovis. Black mats, he concedes, appear to bethe result of a singular event that occurred at

the onset of the Younger Dryas. In the absenceof more evidence, he allows that a cometary

impact is only one possible such event.

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a lot we don’t know about that time period. As [geochronologist]Tom Stafford once said, there’s got to be another part of theequation we don’t understand—and this may be it.” Watersagrees: “I’m interested in the idea and think it has merit, but itrequires much more work. Right now we have an idea and someinteresting information presented—I think this is an excitingidea that needs investigation. There certainly seems to be some-thing accumulating on the 12,900-year contact.”

Both Waters and Stanford point out that the comet research-ers, whose studies focused on the YD contact at 12,900 CALYBP,need to take a longer view and sample continuously both aboveand below the YD contact at all the Clovis-age sites they can getaccess to. This could help eliminate (among other things) thepossibility that the concentrations of nanodiamonds, magneticspherules, and other rare materials are lag deposits, the result ofa period of very windy weather at the beginning of the YD—apossibility that Stanford suggests based on an article recentlypublished in Nature. C. Vance Haynes, Professor Emeritus atthe University of Arizona, agrees that something like this is apossibility: “On any surface that was stable for a long time, youcan expect to find a concentration of cosmic dust.”

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the theory, noting that not all megafauna in North America diedat the end of the Pleistocene. Nor is he convinced there was ahuman depopulation event at the onset of the Younger Dryas.“In many areas of North America, just the opposite seems tohave occurred, if frequencies and sizes of archaeological siteshave anything to do with human demographics. I think that GaryHaynes’s arguments are most strongly supported by the bulk ofthe evidence.”

Gary Haynes, President of the Commission on Paleoecologyand Human Evolution for INQUA (the International Union forQuaternary Research), is a keen observer of any research con-cerning Pleistocene populations. As he explains it, “My ques-tioning of the comet theory is pretty much along the same linesas what you’ll hear from other archaeologists who think criti-cally, such as Stuart Fiedel.” Quoting Fiedel, Dr. Haynes notesthat some large-animal species didn’t go extinct in tandem withthe onset of the YD, and that South American megafauna tendedto last 500–1,000 years longer than their northern cousins. Andwe now know that mammoths survived well into the Holoceneon a few islands in the Arctic; why weren’t they wiped out too?Moreover, he argues that “the YD ended at 11,590 CALYBP evenmore abruptly than it began; wouldn’t this require another im-pact? If not, why does the onset need an extraterrestrial trigger?”

Stuart Fiedel is probably the most vigorous questioner of theClovis Comet theory, at least within the field of Paleoamericanstudies. “It’s certainly intriguing,” Dr. Fiedel says, “and one can’tignore the unusual, seemingly extraterrestrial objects that arebeing reported from many sites. However, the theory is not yetentirely coherent, and it fails to account for several aspects of thearchaeological record.” His contrary evidence includes all thepoints cited by colleague Gary Haynes, as well as the assertionthat the Clovis people did not, in fact, go extinct 12,900 yearsago; indeed, they appear to have evolved fairly rapidly into thevarious later-Paleoindian cultures. He also raises the question ofwhy large animals like bison, elk, caribou, deer, and bear didn’tgo extinct in the wake of the purported impact, as other largespecies apparently did. “But to be fair,” he admits, “that’s anissue with other catastrophic extinctions. Why did birds survivethe KT [Cretaceous/Tertiary] event, but not small dinosaurs?”

He also explains that the extinctions that did occur werestaggered in time. “Megafauna are wiped out in Florida at 12,900CALYBP, but the medium-sized ground sloths in the Caribbeansurvived until the mid-Holocene. If the effects of the blast arepresent, as claimed, across the Atlantic in the Low Countries,how could 100 miles of water have been enough to dampen theirforce?” And then there’s the southern survival well into the YD:“Megafauna seem to have survived at least as late as about12,500 CALYBP in South America, maybe even centuries laterthan that. But more species went extinct there than in NorthAmerica. If the bolide shockwave didn’t wipe them out synchro-nously, these later extinctions cannot be attributed to the hy-pothesized impact. Another common factor must be sought thataffected north and south with a slightly staggered timing—prob-ably human hunting and landscape modification by burning.”

Where’s a time machine when you need one?We may never know precisely what happened to North America12,900 years ago; but then, not knowing gives researchers a

reason to keep working toward clearing away the murky veil ofprehistory, one site at a time. Eventually, enough data will pile upand our technology will advance enough for us to get a clearerview of what happened back then. “We’ll know the truth in about10 years,” Waters surmises. “That’s how long it will take for theconcept to sort itself out.”

Stanford agrees, though he doesn’t put a time frame on ageneral consensus. “Look at any of this stuff—we’re justscratching the surface right now,” he observes. “Any of us whothink they’re right are just fooling ourselves. Eventually we’llget some parts and pieces of it, and we’ll finally understand theconsequences of it—which is the primary importance for ar-chaeology.”

–Floyd Largent

How to contact the principals of this article:Dr. Michael R. Waters, DirectorCenter for the Study of the First AmericansTexas A&M UniversityCollege Station, TX 77843-4352e-mail: mwaters@tamu.edu

Ted Goebel, Associate DirectorCenter for the Study of the First AmericansTexas A&M UniversityCollege Station, TX 77843-4352e-mail: goebel@tamu.edu

R. Dale Guthrie, Professor EmeritusInstitute of Arctic BiologyUniversity of Alaska, FairbanksFairbanks, AK 99709e-mail: ffrdg@uaf.edu

Dennis Stanford, Division HeadDivision of ArchaeologySmithsonian InstitutionNMNH MRC 112P.O. Box 37012Washington, DC 20013-7012e-mail: stanford@si.edu

Gary Haynes, PresidentINQUA Commission on Paleoecology and Human EvolutionAnthropology DepartmentUniversity of Nevada Reno1664 No. Virginia MS0096Reno, NV 89557-0096e-mail: gahaynes@unr.edu

C. Vance Haynes, Professor EmeritusDepartment of Anthropology and GeosciencesUniversity of Arizona1009 E. South Campus DriveTucson, AZ 85721-0030

Stuart J. FiedelLouis Berger Group801 East Main Street, Suite 500Richmond, VA 23219-3786e-mail: sfiedel@louisberger.com

16 Volume 23 ■ Number 4

Stratigraphy of Mockingbird GapHolliday’s stratigraphic studies reveal that these campsites,like Lubbock Lake and Blackwater Draw Clovis sites, wereadjacent to a wetland environment. At Blackwater Draw deeplyburied remains of kills and as-sociated campsite activity werefound in a large gravel pit, andat the Lubbock Lake sitedeeply buried evidence ofClovis occupation was exposedduring construction of a largereservoir for the town of Lub-bock. Unfortunately, the greatdepth of the wash at Mocking-bird Gap prevents excavationon a similar scale. The sheersize of the wash (about 100 mwide) also poses the problem,Where do you dig? The teamwas able, however, to obtain

wetland conditions and eventually to the arid conditions seentoday.

Tomorrow at Mockingbird GapHuckell and Holliday hope to lead future excavations. Muchmore research is needed to get a better handle on the patternsof Clovis land use reflected at Mockingbird Gap and to sharpenour knowledge of the patterns of movement that brought

people to this spot on a vast plain.Mystery still surrounds some of thechert found at the site: Abundantchert from an unknown but presum-ably local source; and a rare chertthat sources from Texas but refusesto fit neatly into the theorized path-way from northwest New Mexicosuggested by other artifacts. A bet-ter understanding of Clovis lithictechnology might also solve themystery behind the conspicuousabsence of blades among the arti-facts at Mockingbird Gap.

Holliday hopes micro-scopic examination of theChupadera Wash coringsamples may revealphytoliths, pollen, and per-haps diatoms that willprove useful in paleo-environmental analysis.For his part, Huckell is ea-ger to continue work atMockingbird Gap. “Thematerial on the northernridge that has remainedburied,” he says, “prob-ably has the greatest re-

search potential for us and for future investigations at the site.”Naturally, more work on artifact assemblages and more exca-vations would round out the next stage of research, providedsufficient funding can be found.

With luck, Mockingbird Gap won’t make us wait another 35years to learn the rest of its secrets.

–Dale Graham

How to contact the principals of this article:Bruce B. HuckellMaxwell Museum of Anthropology and Department ofAnthropologyUniversity of New MexicoAlbuquerque, NM 87131e-mail: bhuckell@unm.eduVance T. HollidayDepartments of Anthropology and GeosciencesUniversity of ArizonaTucson, AZ 85721e-mail: vthollid@mail.arizona.edu

core samples from about 10–11 m belowsurface and retrieved materials suitable forradiocarbon dating. The age range is 9000–11,000 RCYBP.

The results from Holliday’s coring samples were somewhatsurprising. Not so surprising is the conclusion that climate andhabitat were very different from today. What is now an ariddesert grassland was once much wetter, flourishing with floraand fauna. The topography of the Clovis-age landscape, more-over, was shockingly different from today’s. Holliday saystheirs is the first such extensive subsurface geologic workdone in this area and no one expected 30 ft of fill in the wash.“One of the common stories in a lot of the valleys is that theycut way down during the Pleistocene and have been backfillingever since,” he explains, “but we had no idea there was any-thing of this magnitude.” Pictures of the site today show theslight and gradual elevation differences between the site land-scape and the modern-day floor of the wash. What a differencefrom 11,000 years ago, when a 40-ft relief severely delimitedthe present excavation sites from the bottom of what was atthat time a flowing stream or river. Holliday’s coring rigcouldn’t penetrate the gravelly stream bottom, so it isn’t knownwhat lies under the bed. Core samples show conclusively,however, that flowing water gradually gave way to marshy,

Overview of UNM field schoolexcavations at Locus 1214 of Mockingbird

Gap, June 2007; view to the southeast.

UNM Anthropology grad studentsMarcus Hamilton (left) and Christina

Sinkovec, teaching assistants for the 2007UNM Southwestern Archaeological Field

School at Mockingbird Gap.

Mockingbird Gap

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URING THE LATTER PART of the 20th cen-tury, the excavation of prehistoric sites inSouth America left little doubt that early man

Arctic to the tip of South America, have made him agiant among his peers. He was curator for SouthAmerican archaeology at the then Department of

Anthropology (now the Division of Anthropology),American Museum of Natural History in New York, from

1957 until 1973; he then reigned as curator emeritus until hisdeath in 1982. Not bad for a man who lacked a university degreein a field where today a doctorate is common currency.

Bird died of cancer in 1982. Collections from his research,some as yet unstudied, are housed in the United States andChile. Tom Amorosi, Research Associate in the Division ofAnthropology of the Museum, is forming an international teamof scholars to probe those collections with state-of-the-art tech-nology and methods in a quest for new data and a deeper

understanding of the significance ofBird’s original research. In this serieswe’ll probe that ambitious project andexamine in detail Bird’s work.

A closer look at BirdWords to describe him come easily tothose who knew him. Adventurous.Modest. A first-class, meticulous re-searcher. A good story teller. An innova-tive expert on textiles. Pragmatic.Enthusiastic. Eager to help student ar-chaeologists. He was also a man whoseknowledge of stratigraphy and artifactswas unquestioned.

Craig Morris, dean of science and cu-rator of South American archaeology atthe American Museum of Natural His-tory until his death in 2006, describesBird in a 1985 obituary in American An-thropologist as “a guiding force in Ameri-

In the footsteps of

Junius BirdPart I: Bird the Person

Doccupied the southernmost tip of the continent by about11,000 radiocarbon years ago, far earlier in other areas.

But that wasn’t true of mainstream thought in archaeologyearlier in the century. Finds at sites near the towns of Folsomand Clovis in New Mexico in the late 1920s and early 1930scarved into archaeological bedrock the Clovis-First paradigm:That humans arrived first in North America no earlier thanabout 11,200 radiocarbon years ago, and that these First Ameri-cans were identified by a unique cultural marker, a fluted stoneprojectile point that became known as the Clovis point.

Then along came archaeologist Junius Bouton Bird. Heshook the foundations of Americanarchaeology by finding evidence ofClovis-age humans—with similar,yet strikingly different lithic tech-nology—preying on Pleistocene-age mammals nearly at the tip ofSouth America. Finds from Bird’s1930s expeditions kindled an aca-demic firestorm over the timing ofhuman entry into the New Worldthat has been raging for more thanhalf a century. The big question,says James Adovasio in his bookThe First Americans, is, How was itpossible for people to migrate fromNorth America to the tip of SouthAmerica as quickly as it appearsfrom Bird’s evidence that they haddone? It’s a question still beinghotly debated.

Bird’s remarkable discoveries,along with other contributions toarchaeology throughout a stellarcareer of field research from the

Junius Bird as Amorosi remembers himin the late 1970s.DIV

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can Archaeology for nearly half a century. His work on the earlyoccupation of South America and on numerous aspects ofAndean technology, especially textiles, set new standards ofexcellence and innovation.” Morris wasn’t alone in his praise.

Bird was born in Rye, New York, in 1907 into a family ofscientific traditions. His father, Henry Bird, was a well-knownentomologist; his mother, the daughter of naturalist SeymourBouton; an older brother became a paleontologist. Reportedly,Bird became fascinated with archaeology at the age of nine.

radiocarbon years ago. Similar finds emerged from a nearbylava-field cave known as Pali Aike (formerly spelled Palli Aike).

Archaeologist and longtime First Americans researcherRuth Gruhn puts the importance of his research this way: “Itcertainly woke up North America to the fact that there wassome very early stuff all the way down to the tip of Tierra delFuego. He [Bird] demonstrated quite conclusively that therewere already people at the Straits of Magellan about the sametime as the Clovis horizon in North America. If you were a

Clovis Firster, then youwould have to account forthat. He was definitely a pio-neer down there.”

Bird followed up his suc-cess at Fell’s Cave with in-vestigations in the AtacamaDesert of northern Chileand excavation of sites ofearly coastal dwellers innorthern Peru. Further re-search took him in 1941–42to the shores of northernChile, and in 1946–47 toHuaca Prieta on the northcoast of Peru. He also con-ducted early-man researchin Panama with RichardCooke in the early 1970s.

After 1950, Bird devotedmost of his energy to labora-tory analysis, particularly oftextiles. In that specialty,Bird gave the world a newview of the intricacies and

sophistication of this ancient craft and its practitioners.Without question, Bird was a dominant force among his

fellow archaeologists, who showered him with academicawards; a New York Magazine accolade once named him among“The top 100 most interesting New Yorkers.”

Passing the torchHe also molded the careers of future archaeologists, includingDr. Amorosi, whose interest in Bird’s collections is partiallypersonal. “I’m an old museum brat at the American Museum [ofNatural History],” Amorosi confesses. “My father was a staffillustrator there in anthropology for more than 30 years, and Iused to come in and visit my father all the time. One of the peopleI used to hang out there with was Junius Bird.”

Bird, Amorosi explains, was not buying the arguments ofAleš Hrdlicka and his fellow critics who strongly opposed theidea of very early man in the Americas. “There were rumors ofground sloth caves down there, and also finds of ground slothhair and skin, and he [Bird] wanted to investigate to see thearchaeological potential of those caves and see if he could findevidence of Pleistocene mammals and humans in those caves.”Bird’s idea that there might be a connection between Pleis-tocene mammals and humans was quite controversial at thetime, Amorosi reminds us, probably akin to an archaeologist of

Above, anterior view (left) and left lateral viewof the cranial vault (right) of individual #1 fromPali Aike Cave, a male 45-plus years old at time

of death. Below, the left lateral view of themandible of individual #1 (AMNH 99.1/77).Although an early radiocarbon bulk sample

dated the lower levels of Pali Aike to the earlyHolocene (8639 ± 450 RCYBP), Amorosi believes the

lower levels may date to the late Pleistocene.

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After high school, he attended Columbia University for only twoyears before being lured away to the Arctic by explorer BobBartlett. Upon his return, Bird decided to become an archaeolo-gist and learn the skills in the field rather than return to Columbia.

A career with the Bird signatureAfter joining the American Museum of Natural history in 1931,he carried on work in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania,as well as along the Caribbean coast. Bird began work in SouthAmerica with a survey of Tierra del Fuego and Navarino Islandin 1932–33. His seminal discoveries began in 1934, when Birdand his new bride, Margaret (“Peggy”), set out on their honey-moon searching for signs of early man in far South America. Itwas a search that had frustrated earlier researchers, and onethat some thought delusive. The young couple launched their1,300-mile honeymoon trip down the coast of South America inHesperus, a 19-foot sailboat, followed by a bumpy ride across thewindswept plains of South America in a Model T Ford.

Some 50 km north of the Straits of Magellan, Bird found thesuccess that had eluded earlier investigators. At Fell’s Cave hefound projectile points, some fluted, known as fish-tail points, aswell as hearths and other artifacts in direct association with thebones of extinct mammals such as horse and ground sloth—finds radiocarbon-dated in the 1960s to approximately 11,000

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20 years ago talking about pre-Clovis-age materials. Pursuingsuch ideas could be career-destroying, not career-enhancing.

When Amorosi was near the end of his sophomore year inhigh school, looking for something “nontraditional” for a sci-ence project, Bird became a guiding light. “Junius suggestedthat I come in as an intern with him,” Amorosi recalls. “This wasin the early 1970s, and Junius asked if I would come in and helpin his lab. That is how I came to know him and what he was doingin South America.

“Junius wasn’t doing Paleoamerican studies as much as hewas doing textile studies at the time. When he saw I had a realinterest in working with fossil materials he took me over to theFell’s Cave materials and the Pali Aike materials and showed methe ground sloth and things and said that, when I had a slackmoment or two when I wasn’t looking at textiles for him, I couldhelp catalog some of the bone material. Then he would bring outsome of the Fell’s Cave points to show me and that sort of thing.I got really fascinated with the whole concept of being at the endof the world. I guess that’s why I am in it today.”

A gutsy scientistAs a bonus, Bird often reminisced about his expeditions and

adventures. “Junius certainly had all sorts of adventures,”Amorosi says. “He would tell me all about sailing down therewith his wife, Peggy, on their honeymoon. It’s just like all theromance tales, all the high-adventure tales you could possiblywant as a teenager.

“You know, when he went down there he decided to do it onthe inner channel on an open boat. It’s a pretty vicious channelfor sailing, but Junius didn’t think twice about it. My God, thiswas a time when there were only a few mail boats, no CoastGuard to rescue you, and no GPS [to pinpoint your location orhelp chart a course], and if you did get into trouble—and theydid get into trouble a few times—there is no one there to help.

“From Peggy’s notes, it appears they almost were swampedby some swells, so it really was a high adventure story justgetting there. And he came back with our first real archaeologi-cal assessments of the coast of Chile.”

Amorosi chuckled when remembering Bird’s adventureswith the Model T Ford. “There’s even a wonderful picture wherethe Model T breaks down and he hires two oxen to chain to thefront of the Ford to carry out the finds from Pali Aike to PuntaAreneas, where he could then catch a mail boat back to NewYork. “You know,” he concluded with considerable awe in hisvoice, “you and I probably would not want to do this.”

Archaeology done the Bird wayBird’s work was so meticulous, and he became so respected inhis field, that his lack of academic credentials didn’t reallymatter. Amorosi tells us that “when you read his field notes, theyare absolutely amazing for the time he was working. . . . Hisunderstanding of stratigraphy, the way he could understand avariety of things and work out problems, he was way ahead of hiscolleagues at that time.”

Bird collected everything, something unique for the time, aswas his screening of excavated dirt through ½-inch-mesh screen(Today, 8-inch-mesh screen is the standard.) “It’s the first realinstance, that I am aware of anyway, of such sifted collections,”Amorosi confides. “It was totally unusual for his time period.”

Bird also bagged all faunal material, not just primary ex-amples of bone or teeth as his contemporariesdid. “He also took fragmentary long bone,” saysAmorosi, “which was unheard of, and not justbelow Paleoamerican levels, but up the entirecolumn to today, even surface finds. He wasextremely thorough and far-thinking, far-seeinginto the future of how archaeology mightwork. . . . He set things in motion for all of SouthAmerican archaeology.”

Other archaeologists who knew Bird alsopraise his knowledge of artifacts and his far-thinking, meticulous ways. They include Dr.Ruth Gruhn and her husband, Dr. Alan Bryan,professors emeriti at the University of Alberta,

Junius and Peggy Bird in Chile using thewind to push their Model T Ford. SaysAmorosi, “I guess we could call this thefirst hybrid car.”

Edmonton. They knew Bird professionally and personally, ini-tially as a result of a trip they took to South America in 1969 and1970 as part of a university sabbatical. Their trip took them to avariety of sites all the way to the tip of South America, includingFell’s Cave. Gruhn vouches that “Bird did a heck of a lot of goodarchaeology in South America, I can tell you that.”

Bryan and Gruhn later visited Bird at his home in New York,and welcomed him as a house guest in Canada when he wasvisiting there in the 1970s to speak on work he had earlier donein the area.

“What really impressed me was the extent of his knowledgeof South American artifacts,” Gruhn says. Among artifacts sheand Bryan had collected earlier while doing post-doctoral workin England were some unidentified arrows in their collection.Bird only needed one look to identify them as Ona arrows fromthe Straits of Magellan. “Junius wrapped the fletching in paper to

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protect it, being a curator-type person and all,” Gruhn recalls.“We were quite impressed with the guy.”

Bird also deeply impressed Mario A. Rivera, who touredarchaeological sites with him in the 1970s and in 1980. Riverafirst met Bird in the 1970s while doing graduate work in theUnited States, and again in the 1980s when Rivera was head ofthe Institute of Archaeology and Monumental Research atthe University of Chile, Antofagasta. Now a visiting professorof anthropology at Beloit College in Wisconsin, Rivera atteststhat Bird was “a really great person.” He describes Bird as “afirst-class researcher, a very meticulous researcher,” whosework in Chile was a “milestone that we rely on up until today,

particularly his stratigraphic studies and the sequence of humanhabitation” that he developed for the region.

Bird was also a renowned storyteller. “Oh, he just had all kinds ofstories,” Gruhn says. “He was quite the raconteur.”

Gruhn remembers also that Bird was an excellent student ofmaterial culture. “I am sure he has a bibliography as long as yourarm.” That bibliography, indeed extensive, includes several paperson textiles. She also remembers that as well as his dirt archaeology,Bird did some excellent ethnographic work, particularly on thesurviving Alacaluf Indians in the Chilean archipelago. “It’s a goodthing, too,” she notes, “as they were gone soon after that.”

Gruhn and Bryan last saw Bird in 1979 when he showed up toview a site they were digging in New York State. As it turned out, itwas a scant three years before his death.

“No question about it,” Gruhn said. “He [Bird] was an old-timearchaeologist. He went everywhere, complete with fedora. He wasa very interesting fellow.” (A fedora, Gruhn reminds us, was thetrademark headgear for archaeologists of the 1930s and 1940s.Some archaeologists claim Bird later became the prototype imagefor the academic adventure character Indiana Jones.)

We’ll discuss more details of Bird’s work in Part II of thisseries.

–George Wisner

How to contact the principals of this series:Thomas AmorosiDivision of AnthropologyAmerican Museum of Natural HistoryCentral Park West at 79th StreetNew York, NY 10024-5192e-mail: tamorosi@ix.netcom.com

Ruth GruhnDepartment of AnthropologyUniversity of AlbertaEdmonton, AB T6G 24H, Canadae-mail: rgruhn@maildrop.srv.ualberta.ca

Mario A. Rivera7710 S. Manitowoc Ave.Oak Creek, WI 53154-2152

Suggested ReadingsAdovasio, J. M., with J. Page 2002 The First Americans. Ran-

dom House, Inc. New York.

Amorosi, T. 2006 “A Newly Discovered Site Plan for Pali AikeCave, Magallanes, Southern Chile.” Current Research in thePleistocene, 23:53–54.

Bird, J. B. Hyslop, J., ed., with journal segments from PeggyBird 1988 Travels and Archaeology in South Chile. Univer-sity of Iowa Press, Iowa City.

Guichón, R.A. 2002 Biological Anthropology in Fuego-Patagonia. In Archaeological and Anthropological Perspectiveson the Native Peoples of Pampa, Patagonia, and Tierra del Fuegoto the Nineteenth Century. C. Briones and J. L. Lanata, eds., pp.13-30. Westport, Connecticut: Bergin & Garvey.

Hedges, R., R. Housley, C. Bonk, and G. van Klinken 1992

Radiocarbon dates from the Oxford AMS system: Archaeometrydatelist 15. Archaeometry 34: 337–57.

L’Heureux, G. L., and T. Amorosi 2008 Entierros humanos decomienzos del Holoceno tardío en la región volcánica de Pali Aike(Argentina y Chile). Revisíon de los hallazgos de Cerro Sota yCañadon