REVIEW ARTICLE

The Millennium before Clovis

Gary Haynes
University of Nevada – Reno, NV
Note text corrections on pages 137, 150, & 160 that were not in the final printed version
This paper reviews the published information, uncertainties about claims, and possible technological and
cultural relationships of a sample of sites which have older-than-Clovis dates in North America. The goal is
to trace the origins of “Classic” Clovis techno-cultural patterns. Some sites in the sample contain lithic
artifacts and some do not. Production technology and artifact characteristics in a number of the lithic sites
(such as Debra Friedkin and possibly Page-Ladson) may be evidence of Clovis ancestry, but the lithic
materials in most pre-Clovis sites cannot be explicitly linked to Clovis. A few nonlithic sites (such as
Manis, Firelands, and Lindsay) may indicate a pre-Clovis pattern of large-mammal exploitation
foreshadowing a later Clovis trait. Overall, the available data are incomplete or ambiguous, and as a
result, individual interpretations have produced incompatible models of Clovis origins.
Keywords older-than-Clovis, pre-Clovis, proto-Clovis, Clovis

1. Introduction and organization (before 1950 CE/AD). Radiocarbon dates needing

This paper examines a sample of prehistoric North
American sites that predate the Clovis era by 1000
14
C years or so (Table 1), and evaluates their possible
evidence about Clovis origins. One of the dominant
unanswered questions in prehistory is whether Clovis
was a replacement or a descendent culture, or, as
Kunz (2010, 144) put it, whether the people were
“immigrants or home grown.”
The search for Clovis origins goes back to the 1960s
and 1970s; C. Vance Haynes (1964, 1966, 1967, 1969,
1970, 1974, 1980, 1982, 1987, 1991a, 1993), now
retired, was perhaps the best-known scientist engaged
in the search. It became clear to him and others
helping to define Clovis that the distinctive technologi-
cal traits, extensive mobility, and subsistence strategies
did not originate in North America, but from a north-
ern Eurasian Upper Paleolithic background. It was
also obvious that there had to be an ancestral human
population in the Americas, which developed the
Classic Clovis features. Haynes and others had faith
that a pre-Clovis progenitor population would be
found. It seems logical to expect that sites dating to
the millennium before Clovis would provide evidence
about the origins of Clovis.
1.1 Timeframe
Radiocarbon dates and calibrations are cited as orig-
inally reported, respectively 14C yr BP and cal yr BP
Correspondence to: gahaynes@unr.edu
calibration were entered in the Calib 7.0 online
program, which uses the IntCal13 calibration curve
(Reimer et al. 2013). Calibrated ages are generally
given here as approximate midpoints in the 2-sigma
range, unless the range is very wide. The notation
“ka” means 1000 years before Y2K (2000 CE/AD).
The term Clovis is used here to designate a horizon
of traits left by human groups who made fluted bifaces
across almost all of unglaciated North America
around 13,000 cal yr BP. Waters and Stafford (2007)
set the upper and lower bounds of Clovis at 11,050
and 10,800 14C yr BP (tentatively calibrated with
maximum span at 13,250–12,800 cal yr BP, and at
minimum span 13,125–12,925 cal yr BP). A later pub-
lication (Waters and Stafford 2013, 550) sets a slightly
different “maximum period for Clovis –
13,100–12,600 cal yr BP,” and another publication
(Rasmussen et al. 2014, which includes Waters and
Stafford in its author list) cites the minimum age at
12,556–12,707 cal yr BP, stretching the range later to
encompass the relatively young direct date (10,705 ±
35 14C yr BP, or ca. 12,556–12,707 cal yr BP) on the
Anzick (MT) site’s Clovis-associated child.
The narrow time range has been met with question-
ing (Haynes et al. 2007), because older ages have been
published, such as an average of two radiocarbon
dates from the Aubrey site, 11,565 14C yr BP (13,400
cal yr BP) (Ferring 2001, 49, table 3.2), which
Waters and Stafford (2013, 544) consider possibly con-
taminated or not directly associated with the Clovis

© 2015 W. S. Maney & Son Ltd

and the Center for the Study of the First Americans
134 DOI 10.1179/2055556315Z.00000000016 PaleoAmerica 2015 VOL. 1 NO. 2
 Haynes The Millennium before Clovis

Table 1
Sites reviewed in this paper, showing radiocarbon and calibrated ages

Direct dating of organic artifacts or

Site Approximate age of materials bones?

Monte Verde II, Chile 12,780–12,230 14C yr BP Yes, on possible organic artifacts and
seaweed
Meadowcroft Rockshelter, 11,300–12,800 14C yr BP in middle of Stratum II (Miller point Yes, on bark-like organic fragment
PA minimum age 14,000 cal yr BP); 12,800–16,175 14C yr BP
in lower Stratum II; and 19,600 14C yr BP date on bark-
like-fragment
Cactus Hill, VA 10,920 14C yr BP on Clovis level charcoal; 15,070 14C yr BP No, on charcoal flecks
on charcoal below Clovis; OSL ages 17–20 ka
Topper, SC OSL estimate of Clovis 13,500 ± 1,000 cal yr BP; OSL ages No, only OSL sediment estimates, with
below Clovis >15,200 ± 1,500 cal yr BP; and deeply some radiocarbon dates on
buried “hearth” >50,000 14C yr BP questionable hearth
Buttermilk Creek Complex OSL estimates of lower part of Clovis level 14,350 ± 910 cal No, only OSL dates on sand grains
(Debra L. Friedkin site), yr BP and 14,070 ± 910 cal yr BP; OSL estimates of BCC within fluvial sediments
TX 14,080 ± 920 to 16,515 ± 1,075 cal yr BP
Gault, TX Preliminary OSL age estimates similar to BCC No
Swan Point, AK 12,360–11,770 14C yr BP on residues, 12,060 14C yr BP on Yes, on various organics
ivory 12,040 14C yr BP on charcoal
Broken Mammoth, AK 11,770 14C yr BP on charcoal No, on charcoal
Mead, AK 11,600 and 11,560 14C yr BP on charcoal No, on charcoal
Big Eddy, MO “Early/Middle Paleoindian” (including Clovis) level: No, on charcoal
10,260–11,384 14C yr BP; pre-Clovis: 4400–12,950 14C yr
BP
Paisley Caves, OR 12,265 and 12,165 14C yr BP on oldest coprolites having Yes, on coprolites
human mtDNA
Hebior and Schaefer, WI 12,290–12,590 14C yr BP on mammoth bone collagen Yes, on marked bones
Burning Tree, OH 11,660 and 11,450 14C yr BP on presumed mastodont gut Yes, on presumed gut contents and
contents; 10,860 14C yr BP on mastodont bone collagen bone
Coats-Hines, TN 12,050–12,030 14C yr BP on charred material just above No, on charcoal
artifacts and just below mastodont bones
Lindsay, MT 9,490–11,925 14C yr BP on unpurified mammoth bone Yes, on bone collagen
collagen; 12,105–12,330 14C yr BP on purified collagen;
14
and 12,270–12,300 C yr BP on purified collagen
Page-Ladson, FL Average of six dates 12,450 14C yr BP (14,475 cal yr BP) No, organics in sediment were dated
Manis, WA 11,990 14C yr BP on mastodont rib Yes, on mastodont bone
Ayer Pond, WA 11,700–11,990 14C yr BP Yes, on possibly impacted, chopped
bison bone
Firelands, OH 11,740 14C yr BP (13,550 cal yr BP) Yes, on bone

archeology, and thus not validly dating the Clovis
component; and a terminus post quem date from the
East Wenatchee site, 11,600 ± 50 14C yr BP (also
roughly 13,400 cal yr BP) (Kuehn et al. 2009), which
Waters and Stafford (2013, 543) observe is only a
maximum limiting date, not necessarily the age of
the Clovis materials. Miller et al. (2013) accept
Ferring’s (2012) argument that the 11,565 14C yr BP
age at Aubrey is securely associated with the fluted-
point occupation, which Ferring terms “proto-
Clovis,” because it lacks some of the distinctive
(“Classic”) Clovis features of overshot flaking and
large-blade manufacturing, as defined for Clovis by
Bradley et al. (2010).
Two recently acquired radiometric dates now offer
additional possible support for a much earlier start
of the Clovis era. One date (11,560 ± 140 14C yr BP;
roughly 13,450 cal yr BP) on wood charcoal comes
from a repeatedly occupied kill- and camp-site, El
Fin del Mundo, where the bones of at least two gom-
photheres are associated with Clovis points in Sonora,
Mexico (Sanchez et al. 2013, 2014), and another date
(11,626 ± 68 14C yr BP, roughly 13,400 cal yr BP)
comes from a piece of wood charcoal excavated near
an overshot flake at the Beach biface cache site in
North Dakota, which Huckell (2014, 151) has
argued is Clovis, although it lacks fluted points.
Regarding the overshot flaking on Clovis bifaces,
Eren et al. (2013, 2014) strongly argued that overshot
flaking of bifaces – the removal of flakes from one
edge that cross the entire face and take off part of the
opposite edge – was not an intentional Clovis strategy;
instead it was a mistake, and overface or “ultrashot”
flaking was the intention, with flakes terminating just
short of the opposite edge. Furthermore, Huckell
(2014, 151) has pointed out that it is not certain if
intentional overshot flaking was “uniquely diagnostic
of Clovis.” This means that although the presence of
overshot flaking may still be potentially diagnostic of
Clovis (Eren et al. 2014, 60), by itself and without
other features such as fluted bifaces or macroblades,
it cannot be considered decisively diagnostic.
In this paper, the start date for Clovis (meaning both
the Classic sensu Ferring (2012) and Miller et al.

PaleoAmerica 2015 VOL. 1 NO. 2 135

Haynes The Millennium before Clovis
(2013) and pre-Classic, which is Ferring’s “proto-
Clovis”) is set at 11,600 14C yr BP (∼13,400–13,495
cal yr BP), while the cryptic existence of what I had
earlier termed proto-Clovis (Haynes 2002, 253),
meaning the stage before even fluting had been
invented, might be detectable within the millennium
before Clovis. My review focuses on a sample of
sites with ages back to 12,600 ± 200 14C yr BP
(roughly 14,100–15,500 cal yr BP at 2-sigma)
(Table 1). I mention older claims when they may be
relevant to understanding archeological developments
in the Americas.
The possibility that people co-existed with Clovis
but used very different lithic technological methods
and subsistence practices bears on the question of
Clovis origins. For some time, there has been debate
about whether the Clovis horizon marks the appear-
ance of North America’s earliest typable projectile
point. One possible contemporary is Goshen (Frison
1996; Sellet et al. 2009), and another is Western
Stemmed (Beck and Jones 1997, 2010; Bryan 1988;
Bryan and Tuohy 1999; Fiedel and Morrow 2012;
Goebel and Keene 2014; Willig and Aikens 1988).
However, the evidence for contemporaneity of
stemmed points and Clovis is inconclusive, or negative
in the case of Goshen (Waters and Stafford 2014). If
human groups with different production technologies
co-existed at the time of Clovis, often using the same
geographic ranges, their potential cultural, social,
and genetic relationships with each other will be
difficult to model.
1.2 Minimally acceptable evidence for
archeological claims
Most sites examined here have been excavated under
controlled conditions, although their original discov-
ery may have been accidental. Their stratigraphy has
been formally described, but spatial associations may
be ambiguous in some cases. In most sites, the artifacts
are unquestionably of human manufacture, but in a
few sites, the materials are not solidly proven to have
been made or modified by human hands. Some form
of dating has been done, not always directly on arti-
facts, and adequate details are available about the
dated materials and how they spatially relate to the
artifacts. However, the soundness of age assignments
may be open to re-evaluation, along with presump-
tions about human behavior associated with different
objects.
1.3 Background: Anatomically modern Homo
sapiens arrives in the Americas
Goebel et al. (2008) summarized knowledge about the
nature and tempo of modern human entry into the
Americas. Ancient mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA)
evidence shows that a European-derived population
136 PaleoAmerica 2015 VOL. 1 NO. 2
of Homo sapiens was in Northeast Asia by 19,880 ±
160 14C yr BP (roughly 24,000 cal yr BP; Raghavan
et al. 2013), and later must have become admixed
with East Asian populations, eventually evolving the
types of mtDNA found in Recent Native Americans
(e.g., Rasmussen et al. 2014). By 22 ka, humans had
occupied parts of western Beringia. Indigenous
Northeast Asians, Recent Native Americans, and a
sample of human skeletons from North America’s
late Pleistocene are clearly connected genetically.
Native American ancestors originated exclusively
from Asian populations, with early European admix-
ture in Siberia long before dispersing to the Americas.
Some time after 17 ka, human groups began disper-
sing out of Beringia into continental North and South
America. The route taken is still anyone’s guess. Both
the iced-over coasts and interior landscapes of North
America had been bottlenecks or barriers until
around 16–14 ka (Clague et al. 2004; Munyikwa
et al. 2011). Ives et al. (2013, 162) proposed that “in
ecological terms human populations could have reen-
tered [sic] the [ice-free] Corridor region as early as
11,600 14C BP [roughly 13,400 cal BP],” which is a
time estimate that places availability of the inland
route at the same age as first dates on Clovis a thou-
sand miles south of the corridor. This conservative
age estimate for the corridor is based only on
mammal-bone dates – there are other estimates that
make the corridor livable as much as 2000 14C years
earlier (ca. 14,000–15,000 cal yr BP or before) based
on radiocarbon-dated wood macrofossils and optically
stimulated luminescence (OSL)-dated postglacial
dunes in the corridor (Munyikwa et al. 2011; other
references in Ives et al. 2013, 151–152).
The Pacific coastal route has been prominently
touted as a more likely way southward from
Beringia, because (1) biface shapes from Siberia,
Japan, Oregon, California’s Channel Islands, and
South America are perceived to be morphologically
similar enough to imply a shared origin (Erlandson
2013); (2) terrestrial fauna such as bear and caribou
occupied isolated refugia along the British Columbia
coast ca. 16,000 cal yr BP; (3) the discovery of interti-
dal latest Pleistocene/early Holocene sites has led to
optimism that now submerged late-glacial sites in the
Pacific Northwest region of Canada eventually may
be found (Mackie et al. 2013); and (4) some sites
located around “the Western margins of the
American continents” (Mackie et al. 2013, 145)
appear to date relatively early.
2. Finds, claims, and possibilities
Here I first summarize information about a sample of
archeological (or potentially archeological) sites
dating >1000 14C years older than Clovis, then
discuss another sample of lithic-bearing sites with

ages nearer or within ∼1000 14C years of Clovis, and
complete the review by examining a sample of
animal-bone sites without lithics that date to within
∼1000 14C years of Clovis. While the discussions sum-
marize issues that I consider important and unresolved
about the sites, I also accept that the sites provide hints
about cultural developments before the Clovis era. The
examinations are centered on North America. Latin
American sites dating to the millennium before
Clovis are only briefly mentioned.
The samples were taken from others’ lists (such as in
Collins et al. 2013; Waters and Stafford 2013), and are
not exhaustive. I have not included plenty of possible
sites such as those listed in Faught and Freeman
(1998), because most are inadequately published or
the claims made about them have been vigorously
questioned. A prominent site not discussed is Sandia
Cave (Haynes and Agogino 1986; Hibben 1941;
Stevens and Agogino 1975), with its Sandia type 2
basally thinned point, once discussed as a possible
Clovis point precursor. The Sandia type may be as
old as Clovis, older than Clovis, or younger than
Clovis (Haynes and Agogino 1986) – and the site
remains in the limbo of uncertainty. Another site not
included here is Pendejo Cave, which MacNeish
(2004) proposed had a record of human occupation
spanning from >50,000 years ago through Clovis
and the Holocene. This site yielded bones of numerous
Pleistocene and Holocene animals, including some
interpreted as tools, a pendant, and by-products of
marrow extraction, and apparent human finger
prints or palm prints in heated clay that are up to
37,000 14C years old (Chrisman et al. 1996, 2003;
but also see Schaffer and Baker 1997). The senior
investigator R. MacNeish died just before the publi-
cation of a large book about the site, and his
absence may explain why his provocative findings are
not very actively discussed.
2.1 Sites dating ≥1000 14C years before Clovis
Several archeological sites have claims of exceptionally
early evidence about human behavior in the Americas,
dating to before the last glacial maximum (LGM)
(23–18 ka). In eastern North America, lithic sites
with very early dates ranging to 27,240 ± 230 14C yr
BP (roughly 31,000 cal yr BP) have been reported on
the Delmarva peninsula: Parsons Island, Miles Point,
Oyster Cove, and Cators Cove (Lowery et al. 2010;
Stanford and Bradley 2012). Another site, Cinmar, is
located 65 km offshore and 74 m below sea surface
in the Atlantic; a bipointed biface was pulled up
there in the same dredge with mastodont remains
dated 22,760 ± 90 14C yr BP (roughly 27,000 cal yr
BP). The early Delmarva lithics are generally well-
made bifaces and other kinds of tools. Any possible
ancestral connection to Clovis cannot be nailed
Haynes The Millennium before Clovis
down, because of the extreme separation in time (at
least 7000 years for the youngest site, and more than
twice that for others), and the prospect that any
shared technological features such as overshot
flaking reflect cultural convergence rather than a
lineal relationship with Clovis. Perhaps as important
an issue is the dating of these pre-LGM claims,
which open them to question. They are much older
than models in archeology (summarized in Goebel
et al. 2008; also see Graf 2008, 2009) and genetics
(e.g., Mulligan and Kitchen 2013; Perego et al. 2009)
establish for the first human movement out of
Northeast Asia into the Americas. The controversial
attribution of this possible complex to Solutreans
from Iberia must confront the chronological problem
that the Solutrean lithic industry developed from the
Gravettian ca. 20,000 14C yr BP, almost 3000 14C
years after the Cinmar mastodont died.
Holen and Holen (2013) proposed that seven mid-
continental sites are pre-LGM and seven sites date to
the LGM, created by mammoth-steppe-adapted
humans who had moved east from Asia between
40,000 and 22,000 14C yr BP. Two examples of the
sites are Lovewell I, Kansas, dated 20,430 ± 300 14C
yr BP (about 24,000 cal yr BP), and Villa Grove,
Colorado, dated 33,405 ± 340 14C yr BP (about
37,000 cal yr BP). Both are without lithics and
contain broken mammoth bones interpreted (Holen
and Holen 2013, and other references therein) as
impacted by humans using stone percussors. A third
example is Cooperton, Oklahoma (Anderson 1962,
1975; Mehl 1975), another lithics-free mammoth find
with claims for bone-breakage by humans, dated
17,575 ± 550–20,400 ± 450 14C yr BP (roughly
21,000–25,000 cal yr BP). A fourth example not in
the Holen and Holen (2013) list is the lithics-free
mammoth site called Inglewood, Maryland, with a
bone date of 20,070 ± 265 14C yr BP (roughly 24,000
cal yr BP) and a date on associated woody vegetation
of 29,650 ± 750 14C yr BP (roughly 33,000 cal yr BP).
The find was first interpreted (Haynes 1991, 236,
figure 6.11) as a partial skeleton with many axial
bones in anatomical order but with larger elements
( particularly appendicular and cranial) broken by
heavy equipment while the bones were still enclosed CORRECTION
in waterlogged sediments. Karr (2015) has attempted "..broken in
antiquity,with
to re-interpret it as an example of bones that were "LGM humans
humanly flaked in antiquity, but the conclusions are possibly
responsible,
insupportable and based on incomplete information. although he
Until the site has been adequately published, it considers that
unlikely."
cannot be considered further here.
With one exception, Burnham, Oklahoma, dated
36,000–35,000 14C yr BP (about 40,000 cal yr BP),
the 14 sites listed in Holen and Holen (2013) and the
Inglewood site contained either no lithics or no more
than four flaked-stone items, mostly flakes. The
PaleoAmerica 2015 VOL. 1 NO. 2 137
Haynes The Millennium before Clovis
scarcity or lack of lithic technological information and
the lengthy time separation of these sites from Clovis
preclude reliable attempts to trace lineal/cultural
relationships.
An example of a pre-LGM site in South America is
Arroyo del Vizcaino, Uruguay, with a possibly butch-
ered extinct giant sloth (Fariña et al. 2014) dated
27,000–30,000 14C yr BP (about 31,000–34,000 cal
yr BP) and possible lithics, including flakes and a poss-
ible scraper with micropolish that was found “in very
close association with several bones” (Fariña et al.
2014, 5, figure 2). Even a vague link to Clovis is
hard to see with this site, both technologically and
chronologically. For one thing, Clovis itself has not
been found in Uruguay, although undated “Clovis-
like fluted points” are known from as far south as
southern Chile, on the other side of South America
(Jackson 2006, 116, figure 6.4, 117). The sloth site
and the Clovis-like horizons in South America are
floating too far apart in time (and space) to hint at a
possible cultural connection.
Examples of South American claims with pre-
LGM ages and definable lithic technological features
are Vale de Pedra Furada (not the same as
Boqueirão de Pedra Furada) and Toca da Tira
Peia, both in Brazil, among others (e.g., see Boëda
et al. 2013; Lahaye et al. 2013). These are not well
known and not widely accepted by North
American archeologists, probably because (1) the
lithic assemblages are much cruder looking than
those made by modern Homo sapiens living at the
same time in Europe, Asia, and Africa, which is an
argument Boëda et al. (2013) reject as unscientific;
(2) the sites are very rare and scattered in space,
thus not appearing to be archeological cultures on
the landscape, another bit of reasoning rejected by
Boëda et al. (2013, 462) who claim the earliest
human populations were very small, “dispersed
across vast areas,” and “without apparent links
between them;” and (3) the dates are much older
than current genetic and archeological models
accept for human migrations out of northern Asia,
which is also a line of reasoning that Boëda et al.
(2013) and some other South American prehistorians
see as naively overlooking the extremely patchy
nature of the first migrants who would have disap-
peared without archeological or genetic trace.
The lithics in these Brazilian sites, OSL dated to
>20 ka, are forms such as asymmetrically and irregu-
larly flaked cobbles and “beaked” flakes (see the
numerous figures in Boëda et al. 2013). They are not
at all similar to what have been defined as Clovis tech-
nological characteristics (Bradley et al. 2010), and
cannot be linked to Clovis. Many archeologists may
not be convinced that these specimens were actually
made by humans.
138 PaleoAmerica 2015 VOL. 1 NO. 2
Other South American pre-Clovis lithic sites (e.g.,
those listed in Collins et al. 2013; Dillehay 2013;
Waters and Stafford 2013) are not so distant in time
from the Clovis era. According to Waters and
Stafford (2013, 545) at least five sites have ages that
fall within the Clovis era, while a “handful” have
older-than-Clovis ages. Lavallée (2000 [orig. 1993]:
42) on one page counted “about 10 sites” in South
America with dates older than Clovis, while on
another page (Lavallée 2000 [orig. 1993]: 51) she
counted “a dozen or so.” Numerous other lists of
South American sites possibly older than Clovis or
the same age can be found elsewhere (e.g., Aceituno
et al. 2013; Dillehay 1999; Kelly 2003; MacNeish
2004). The best known of such sites surely must be
Monte Verde, Chile.
2.1.1 MONTE VERDE II, CHILE
Monte Verde II, Chile (Dillehay 1989, 1997; Dillehay
et al. 2008) is undoubtedly the most extensively
described and publicized South American site older
than Clovis. Another locus nearby, called Monte
Verde I, has lithic objects and hearth-like features
that may date to ca. 33,000 14C yr BP (about 37,000
cal yr BP), but it has not been adequately explored
or published. Monte Verde II has features interpreted
as hearths and hut remains, wooden artifacts, a few
definitely shaped lithic tools, broken and unbroken
pebbles of a certain size range that may have been
selected from naturally occurring pebbles at the site,
and a variety of organic materials such as seaweed,
bone fragments, and plant fibers. Radiocarbon dates
on wood identified as artifacts and on seaweed from
the lowest cultural component cluster between
12,780 ± 240 and 12,230 ± 140 14C yr BP (roughly
15,000–14,000 cal yr BP), which are 1100 to >800
14
C years older than Clovis.
Questions or issues? A number of professionals have
found aspects of Monte Verde II singular, peculiar, or
confusingly documented (e.g., Fiedel 1999; Lynch
2001; West 1996, 1999), even after a first round of
criticisms was aggressively addressed (Dillehay et al.
1999; see Fiedel n.d., for response to the response),
or they have questioned the correctness of age assign-
ments in the oldest component (e.g., Dickinson 2011;
Haynes 1999). Some are not convinced that all the
lithic and organic materials found at Monte Verde II
are actually artifacts (e.g., Haynes 1999; West 1999).
A 2012 survey of opinions from over 200 individuals
who were actively involved in publishing or gathering
data about the peopling of the Americas (Wheat
2012) found that 33 per cent of respondents either
rejected or were undecided about Monte Verde’s
claims as a pre-Clovis site. Most of the respondents
were academic archeologists, along with a number of

genetic anthropologists, skeletal biologists, linguists,
and a few others.
Relation to Clovis? If the age assignments and
interpretations are correct, Monte Verde II and other
sites listed by Waters and Stafford (2013) and Collins
et al. (2013) show that at the time of Clovis and
proto-Clovis in North America, and possibly for
several centuries before, South American people had
very distinct material cultures, even in the same
regions where Clovis-like patterns would be, or
already were, manifest, such as fluted points, associ-
ation with extinct megafauna, and Clovis-era radiocar-
bon dating (Jackson 2006; Jackson et al. 2007; Ranere
and Cooke 1991).
2.1.2 MEADOWCROFT ROCKSHELTER, PENNSYLVANIA
Another important site is Meadowcroft Rockshelter,
Pennsylvania. There are abundant short publications
about this North American site from 1975 onward,
many being annual updates, but no full publication
exists that provides all the updated information in
one place and answers to critiques. Examples of sum-
maries (and defensive responses to criticisms) are
Adovasio et al. (1977, 1978, 1999), while more
details about specific aspects of the site’s earliest com-
ponents are in Fitzgibbon et al. (1982) and
Stuckenrath et al. (1982).
Stratum IIa, one of 11 natural strata identified in the
rockshelter, has radiocarbon dates on wood charcoal
of 11,300 ± 700 to 12,800 ± 870 14C yr BP (setting a
possible range of 11,250–17,500 cal yr BP) in its
middle part, which contained a resharpened unfluted
lanceolate biface (typed as a Miller point; Figure 1)
similar to an incomplete biface found at the relatively
nearby Krajacic open-air site, and what was called a
Figure 1 Miller type lanceolate biface from Meadowcroft
Rockshelter Stratum IIa, as drawn by Joel Gunn (edited from a
figure in Adovasio et al. 1977, figure 24). This specimen has
been used in publications to illustrate the Miller type (e.g.,
Stanford and Bradley 2012, figure 4.12), but in fact it is a
reworked/resharpened piece whose dimensions and shape
are not as originally manufactured. The 1977 description
(Adovasio et al. 1977, 46–47) stated its outline had been
“altered by breaking and re-shaping the point.” A scar from a
probable “substantial impact” is visible on the right hand
view; the point was subsequently reshaped by pressure
flaking. The edges of the base were ground up to the lateral
tick marks on the figure.
Haynes The Millennium before Clovis
possible fragment of a fluted point (Fitzgibbon et al.
1982, 96), which seems to have been recognized later
as unrelated to Clovis. A lower part of the stratum con-
tained several hundred flaked-stone artifacts and has
dates ranging from 12,800 ± 870 to 16,175 ± 975 14C
yr BP (calibrating to a range of roughly 13,000–
22,000 cal yr BP). Two fragmentary human bones
were also found in a firepit in lower Stratum IIa
(Sciulli 1982), assigned dates of 13,270 ± 340 14C yr
BP and 13,240 ± 1010 14C yr BP (calibrating roughly
between 13,200 and 18,300 cal yr BP). A carbonized
fragment of bark-like material from the deepest part
of the stratum, said to be cut and consistent in mor-
phology with basketry plaiting strips (or warp or
weft fragments) (Stuckenrath et al. 1982, 83, table 3;
see also Adovasio and Pedler 2013), was dated
19,600 ± 2400 14C yr BP (roughly 17,900–28,500 cal
yr BP); note the very large sigma and the very wide
calibration range.
Noteworthy is the fact that the most distinctive fea-
tures of Clovis technology are not represented at the
rockshelter, although fluted-point assemblages have
been found nearby in Pennsylvania and Ohio.
Adovasio et al. (1999, 418; the passage is also repeated
verbatim in Adovasio and Pedler 2005, 26) called the
assemblage part of a “technologically standardized
and sophisticated, small, polyhedral core- and blade-
based industry of decidedly Eurasiatic, Upper
Paleolithic ‘flavor’” [quotation marks in orig.], which
is “precisely the sort of lithic reduction strategy that
should be evidenced at this time” [italics in original].
Questions or issues? Some vocal skeptics, such as
Haynes (1991b) and Mead (1980), were not convinced
that the site’s oldest dates were correct because of
important inconsistencies – for example, only
Holocene species of flora and fauna were identified
in the sediments dated to the Pleistocene, and there
was no noticeable stratigraphic break at the
Pleistocene–Holocene boundary. However, Adovasio
et al. (1999; Adovasio and Pedler 2005) retorted that
both of these characteristics are common in sites
from nearby areas and elsewhere. Another questioner,
Kelly (1987, 332), wondered if bioturbation could have
mixed charcoal and artifacts of different ages, or led to
contamination of radiocarbon samples. Below the cul-
tural assemblage in Stratum IIa is much older carbo-
nized material (in Stratum I), but no cultural items,
which may have been a source of contamination.
Stratum IIa has radiocarbon dates stretching over
13,000 years, a very slow sedimentation rate, and
fairly thick sterile layers in it, indicating “an enormous
amount of time […] encompassed in a relatively thin
deposit which accumulated very slowly” (Kelly 1987,
332). A respected Australian paleoecologist
(Flannery 2003, 52) who reviewed Adovasio’s and
Page’s (2002) mass-market book The First Americans
PaleoAmerica 2015 VOL. 1 NO. 2 139
Haynes The Millennium before Clovis
suggested that anomalous flora and fauna, the exca-
vators’ miscommunication about the site’s radiocar-
bon samples, and a lack of professionalism when
responding to skeptics were major stumbles (his
term) that made the rockshelter’s reported chronology
suspicious.
The 2012 survey of opinions from individuals
involved in researching the peopling of the Americas
(Wheat 2012) found that over 60 per cent of respon-
dents either rejected the claims about Meadowcroft
or were undecided — in other words, not convinced.
Relation to Clovis? The imprecise dating is trou-
bling; still, some materials seem to be older than
Clovis. They lack the most diagnostic lithic features
that would link them less ambiguously to Clovis,
such as ultrashot or overface flaking on bifaces.
However, the early levels did yield lithic materials
superficially consistent with what has been found in
some fluted-point assemblages, such as blades and lan-
ceolate bifaces. The Miller lanceolate biface (Figure 1)
from a pre-Clovis level is similar enough to be called
by some archeologists a precursor to the Clovis
point, although this piece had been reshaped after
breaking; Adovasio (1993, figure 7) illustrated a poss-
ible prototype of the Miller form, based on the
Meadowcroft and Krajacic finds, neither of which
was in pristine condition. In Meadowcroft publi-
cations, pre-Clovis lithic materials from the site are
compared favorably to Clovis lithics, and to both
pre-Clovis and post-Clovis assemblages from the
eastern and western United States. However, Collins
and Lohse (2004, 182) state that “neither the points
nor the blades are technologically very similar to
those of Clovis.” The blades and the Miller lanceolate
biface are also similar to post-Clovis materials from
the eastern USA – for example, some variants of a
late Paleoindian/early Archaic point type called Hi-
Lo in the Great Lakes region are difficult to dis-
tinguish from the Miller lanceolate (Ellis 2004, 71),
and blades continued to be made by post-Clovis cul-
tures of the Great Lakes region and the Ohio and
Tennessee valleys, although with reduced emphasis
(Ellis 2004; Kimball 1996; Sherwood et al. 2004).
2.1.3 CACTUS HILL, VIRGINIA
Unlike Meadowcroft, the Cactus Hill site did yield
fluted points, along with other lithic materials –
early Archaic through Woodland projectile point
types above Clovis, and blades and small bifaces
occurring 7–15 cm below the Clovis level. The site
has an unconsolidated medium-fine sand matrix with
acknowledged uncertainties about context and strati-
graphic integrity (McAvoy and McAvoy 1997, 179;
see also Johnson 1997, unnumbered page in appendix
G of McAvoy and McAvoy 1997). Points of recognized
post-Clovis types were found below Clovis, and their
140 PaleoAmerica 2015 VOL. 1 NO. 2
positions are attributed to drift. Charcoal from the
lower part of a Clovis hearth was dated 10,920 ± 250
14
C yr BP (about 12,500 cal yr BP at the midpoint of
the 2-sigma range). The upper part of the hearth
also contained “partly carbonized” Holocene-age
wood (McAvoy and McAvoy 1997, 167). A date on
“an amorphous scatter of carbon” associated with
quartzite lithics below the Clovis hearth was
15,070 ± 70 14C yr BP (roughly 18,200 cal yr BP).
The suite of OSL age estimates on four sediment
samples from below the fluted-point level, ranging
from 17 to 20 ka, “if anything […] are apt to be too
young,” according to Feathers et al. (2006, 185).
Questions or issues? Archaic type projectile points
also occur in the Clovis-bearing level in some of the
site (Units 1/9 and 2/9) (McAvoy and McAvoy
1997, table 15b, unnumbered page in appendix A),
apparently in pits dug into the Clovis level from
above. Charcoal dates that are both Holocene and
late Pleistocene from a Clovis hearth might call into
question the site’s stratigraphic integrity. However,
Feathers et al. (2006, 185) think the “archeology, sedi-
mentology, pedology, botany, radiocarbon, and lumi-
nescence” lines of evidence are in agreement, and the
site strata have “overall integrity” (Feathers et al.
2006, 167), in spite of deflation, turbation, low accre-
tion rates, and slight mixing of deposits.
The 4000 14C year (or almost 6000 cal year) gap
between the Clovis layer and the underlying pre-
Clovis stratum is very lengthy, yet there is no erosional
disconformity or sign of weathering, which is a
geoarcheological problem, and the temporal separ-
ation may be even longer if the OSL dates are accepted.
In the Wheat (2012) survey of professional opinions
about sites older than Clovis, more than 75 per cent
were unconvinced about Cactus Hill.
Relation to Clovis? The two oldest projectile points
from Cactus Hill have lanceolate and semi-triangular
forms (Figure 2), somewhat similar to the
Figure 2 One of the two subtriangular bifaces found below
the Clovis level at Cactus Hill (edited from an illustration in
Stanford and Bradley 2012, figure 4.12; drawn by Marcia
Bakry; used by permission of D. Stanford).

Meadowcroft Miller type but otherwise not especially
similar technologically to Clovis bifaces. The same
goes for the blades. Superficially, the pre-Clovis
lithics are not what is typical in a Clovis assemblage
(Collins and Lohse 2004, 182), and they are also very
distantly separated in time from Clovis, by
4000–6000 calendar years, making their possible
ancestral relationship very uncertain. The pre-Clovis-
dated assemblage, like the Meadowcroft pre-Clovis
assemblage, may or may not be a contender for ances-
tor to Clovis or proto-Clovis (sensu Haynes 2002, not
Ferring 2012).
2.1.4 TOPPER, SOUTH CAROLINA
Topper is a stratified, multicomponent site containing
a quarry-related Clovis occupation (Miller 2010;
Smallwood et al. 2013) in colluvial-fluvial sediments.
The pre-Clovis claims have not been well published
in refereed journals or a monograph. Goodyear
(2005) proposed that the site also has lithics in a paleo-
sol that are 3000–7000 calendar years older than
Clovis, as estimated by OSL dating and reckoning of
the time needed for the paleosol to have developed
in alluvial sand. A precise age is not known.
Goodyear also interpreted carbonized plant remains
found well below the Clovis levels as remnants of a
human-made fire feature, dated >50,000 14C yr BP,
which is very near the early limit for radiocarbon
dating and cannot be calibrated with IntCal13.
“Unusual chert artifacts” (Goodyear 2005, 109) such
as broken cobbles without negative bulbs and frequent
hinge terminations, and small-flake clusters, are said
to be cultural. The lithics, which do not change in
character between levels dated >50,000 and 15,000
14
C yr BP, are characterized as a smashed core and
microlithic industry (Goodyear 2005), matching
nothing else in Paleoindian prehistory or in any
hypothetical Old World ancestral region. Noteworthy
is the fact that the broken chert objects derive from
bedrock outcrops of the chert, now buried at the site.
Questions or issues? Besides the abundant artifacts,
Topper has yielded thousands of local chert fragments,
most of which are not thought to be humanly pro-
duced. Waters et al. (2009, 1309) suggested that chert
breakage may have been caused by thousands of
years of natural fires, freeze–thaw cycles, or stream
transport. The very old specimens with characteristics
of human-made lithics may be the result of noncul-
tural fragmentation. Natural breakage events must
have occurred thousands of times in Topper’s last
50,000 years; so many natural events could have
produced a proportion of broken specimens that
look like artifacts, which is not extraordinary at all
but in fact almost inevitable, according to statistical
principles (e.g., see Hand 2014). This is similar to
the reasoning used by Meltzer, Adovasio, and
Haynes The Millennium before Clovis
Figure 3 Examples of small broken chert pieces found at
Topper, from sediments dated by OSL as 3000–7000 calendar
years older than Clovis (edited from an online photograph
accessed 1 September 2014, http://www.allendale-
expedition.net/museum/bb2.jpg).
Dillehay (Meltzer et al. 1994) in doubting that
humans flaked the stones in the lower levels at
Brazil’s 35–50 ka Boqueirão de Pedra Furada, and
also similar to the logic of Haynes (1973) who
argued that natural events created the flaked-stone
specimens at California’s 200 ka Calico Early Man
Archaeological Site.
In the Wheat (2012) survey of professional opinions,
85 per cent of respondents were unconvinced about
Topper’s pre-Clovis claims. Some recent reviews of
sites older than Clovis (e.g. Adovasio and Pedler
2013; Collins et al. 2013; Waters and Stafford 2013)
either do not mention or do not give serious attention
to Topper.
Relation to Clovis? The mostly small lithics below the
Clovis level (Figure 3) are not widely thought to be cul-
turally produced. OSL age estimates have large error
ranges for the lithics said to be older than Clovis,
and the fact that the materials are technologically
unchanged for over 35,000 calendar years seems
unusual in the late Quaternary prehistory of Homo
sapiens. The technology of these materials, if they are
artifacts and not nonculturally broken pieces, is very
different from Classic Clovis, hence making any
possible relationship with Clovis indeterminable. The
very oldest date also does not fit with current genetic
models of human entry into the Americas.
2.1.5 DEBRA L. FRIEDKIN (BUTTERMILK CREEK COMPLEX), TEXAS
The Buttermilk Creek Complex (BCC) in the open-air
Debra L. Friedkin site is a lithics-only assemblage
below a level which did not contain fluted points but
did have channel flakes and evidence of overshot
flaking, leading to classification as Clovis. The
Clovis level underlies a series of time-diagnostic
artifacts from late Prehistoric at the top through
Archaic, late Paleoindian, and Folsom. The age
assignment of the BCC is 15.5–13.2 ka, based on 18
OSL dates on quartz grains in clay-rich overbank
deposits (Waters et al. 2011a). Most of the BCC
assemblage is debitage, but also found were bifaces,
blade fragments, mostly small-flake tools, often with
use-wear on edges, and small blades (Waters et al.
2011a, supporting online material, p. 27).
PaleoAmerica 2015 VOL. 1 NO. 2 141
Haynes The Millennium before Clovis
Questions or issues? Morrow et al. (2012) point out
that the OSL dates are imprecise and do not provide
a decisive age for the pre-Clovis materials; the stan-
dard deviations for the dates are huge, some over
1000 calendar years, effectively establishing age
ranges of 2000 calendar years for each sample. Also,
some OSL ages from the Folsom and Clovis strati-
graphic zones are demonstrably too old, by about
1000 calendar years, suggesting that OSL overestima-
tion of the BCC age is also possible. Morrow et al.
(2012) further speculate that younger debitage from
levels above the BCC may have moved downward
into the BCC level, perhaps due to the opening of ver-
tical cracks during shrinkage of the clay-rich matrix,
technically a vertisol, or possibly through animal
(e.g., crayfish) burrowing, although Driese et al.
(2013) concluded that the site sediments do not
contain evidence for significant mixing of cultural hor-
izons (also see Jennings and Waters 2014, 44, note 3
for other supporting references).
Relation to Clovis? Jennings and Waters (2014) com-
pared technological and typological traits from three
assemblages, the Friedkin site’s Clovis materials, the
Gault (see below) Clovis assemblage, and the BCC.
The Clovis assemblages at Friedkin and Gault were
significantly different from each other in some
respects, such as frequencies of large debitage and
overshot flakes and relative counts of debitage types,
while the BCC differed from both Clovis assemblages
in some ways. But the BCC materials had 6 of 10 traits
often used to “define Clovis” (Jennings and Waters
2014, 38, table 12). The BCC lacked fluted points,
bifaces with overshot flaking, blade cores, and
retouched blades. For the most part, these distinctions
were interpreted as significant and meaningful and not
the result of sample-size differences.
Morrow et al. (2012, 3680) point out that the BCC’s
reported “end-thinning flakes, partial overshot flakes
[…], an overshot flake […], biface reduction debris,
[…] edge-modified flakes, utilized blades and blade-
lets, graver, notches, bend-break tools, and tools
made on radially broken pieces […] also occur in
Clovis assemblages.” Nevertheless, a few BCC traits
are uncommon in Clovis assemblages from other
sites, such as the presence of burin spalls, discoidal
core reduction, and deliberate radial breakage of
bifaces (Jennings and Waters 2014, 39). The differ-
ences may mean the BCC cannot be considered a
form or variant of Clovis, but on the other hand, the
similarities may indicate that the BCC is technologi-
cally related to Clovis, perhaps a precursor lacking
only the production trait of fluting.
The analysis presented in Jennings and Waters
(2014) supports the interpretation of the BCC assem-
blage as a Clovis progenitor, because the materials
are not completely identical to other Clovis
142 PaleoAmerica 2015 VOL. 1 NO. 2
assemblages and the age is older than Clovis; but
Jennings and Waters also cautiously point out that
all Clovis assemblages are not identical to each other
anyway, for a variety of possible reasons. On the
other hand, Morrow et al. (2012) reason that the
BCC assemblage could be part of a Clovis occupation,
and is not necessarily a progenitor because the pre-
Clovis dating is so imprecise.
2.1.6 GAULT, TEXAS
The Gault site is 250 m upstream from the Debra
L. Friedkin site on Buttermilk Creek. Both sites are
near high-quality lithic toolstone outcrops and reliable
springs, and both contain abundant lithics, mostly
debitage. “Preliminary OSL dates” (Collins et al.
2013, 528) have placed the lowermost Gault lithics at
about the same age as the Debra L. Friedkin site’s
pre-Clovis materials, up to 2000 (or more) calendar
years older than Clovis. Lithic technological differ-
ences from Clovis are highlighted by Collins et al.
(2013) and Jennings and Waters (2014), such as in
biface morphology and manufacturing techniques.
The unique presence of very small projectile points
(Collins et al. 2013, 531, figure 30.7) also differs
from Clovis. The site does have technological charac-
teristics shared with Clovis such as prismatic blades
and similarities of point preforms. A 2 × 2 m stone
pavement is thought to be older than Clovis, with
chert flakes on one side of it and large-animal bones
on another.
Questions or issues? Morrow et al. (2012) raised
some questions about Gault. According to Collins
(2007) and Waters et al. (2011b), who examined the
Gault stratigraphy, the site has evidence for disturb-
ance and mixing of objects of different ages, mostly
in upper ( post-Clovis) levels. There is possible tram-
pling damage on lithic artifacts in the Clovis zone,
which could have caused downward movement of
some lithics. Depositional rates were “modest”
before, during, and after Clovis times (Collins 2007,
61). Root penetration and microbioturbation pro-
cesses have occurred, such as insect burrowing,
which could have mixed materials vertically. Parts of
some refitted lithic pieces had been vertically separated
by 19 cm. Further contributing to uncertainty about
the site’s depositional integrity is the presence below
the Clovis zone of the very small stemmed points
similar in morphology to later Holocene projectile
point types. Collins et al. (2013) suggest that these
and a slightly larger similar piece from the Debra
L. Friedkin site are first glimpses of a Pleistocene tech-
nology so far unknown from Paleoindian contexts.
Relation to Clovis? As with the BCC, the oldest
materials at Gault are not precisely dated, although
they are found under Clovis-specific levels. They may
be very early ( proto?) Clovis, or considerably older.

The existence of the very small points in the older-
than-Clovis material is especially surprising, since
these forms are not Paleoindian-related and do not
appear anywhere else in North America until much
later in the Holocene. Prismatic blades in the oldest
assemblages are similar to Clovis forms, but not all
bifaces are similar to those in Clovis assemblages
from other sites. The pre-Clovis materials plausibly
could be technological precursors to Clovis, but they
do seem distinct in some ways from the Clovis assem-
blage (Jennings and Waters 2014). Yet it is important
to keep in mind that Clovis assemblages from many
North American sites do have variability, and the
differences among them probably reflect differences
in site function, location, availability of lithic raw
materials, occupation times, and other factors.
Pre-Clovis differences from Clovis at Gault or at the
Debra L. Friedkin site may be a result of variations
in these same kinds of factors, and are not necessarily
outright indications of a major cultural/technological
dichotomy. If such factors are better studied, the tech-
nological and typological relationships between Clovis
and vaguely similar older-than-Clovis traits may
become clearer (Jennings and Waters 2014).
2.2 Sites dating ≤1000 14C years before Clovis
2.2.1 ALASKAN FINDS
Several culture-historical components have been
named in east Beringia, but there are disagreements
about labeling in different classification systems
(Goebel and Buvit 2011; Potter 2011). The East
Beringian Tradition (Holmes 2001, 2011; also see
West 1981, 1996) is also called simply the Beringian
Tradition (Hoffecker 2005; Hoffecker and Elias
2007), and what is called Nenana by some (Goebel
et al. 1991; Hoffecker et al. 1993; Vasil’ev 2011) is pre-
ferentially termed Diuktai by others (Holmes 2001),
while the Denali complex may also be termed
American Paleoarctic or even Diuktai. The relative
ages of these complexes are not clear; a figure in
Dixon (2013, 122, figure 6.8) shows Denali/eastern
Beringian as oldest, followed by Nenana above,
Denali again above that, northern Paleoindian,
Denali again, northern Archaic, and late Denali.
The oldest sites share dominant features such as
presence of microblades and burins. Examples of
important sites are Swan Point, Dry Creek, and
Broken Mammoth, among a few others that date
before the Clovis era (see Potter et al. 2013, 83, table
5.1 for a list). Rasic (2011) reports a site that, while
it yielded mostly Sluiceway type stemmed points,
also had one fluted point, one lanceolate point, and
a single microblade core (with a date of 11,200 ± 40
14
C yr BP (about 13,100 cal yr BP), which is within
the Clovis era). There are others with similar ages
just before the Younger Dryas.
Haynes The Millennium before Clovis
Dates from some of the Alaskan sites’ earliest cul-
tural components partly fall within my espoused
Clovis time range. For example, at the Mead site, the
lowest cultural component has charcoal dates of
11,560 ± 80 and 11,600 ± 60 14C yr BP (about
13,400 cal yr BP), which Waters and Stafford (2007)
would consider older than Clovis, but which here are
considered to be coeval with the earliest Clovis dates.
At Broken Mammoth, the oldest component has char-
coal dates of 11,770 ± 210 and 11,770 ± 220 14C yr BP
(about 13,800 cal yr BP), placing it 170–700 14C years
(or an average of about 200 cal years) older than
Clovis, depending on which of the assigned Clovis
time spans is preferred. Swan Point’s oldest dates are
on various materials, including ivory collagen
(12,060 ± 60 14C yr BP, or about 13,900 cal yr BP),
charcoal (12,040 ± 40 14C yr BP, or about 13,850 cal
yr BP), and lithic-surface residues (12,360 ± 60,
12,220 ± 40, 12,110 ± 50, 12,100 ± 40, and 11,770 ±
140 14C yr BP, calibrating to a maximum of roughly
14,800 cal yr BP). These ages are older than Clovis
by 170–760 14C years (or, when calibrated, range
from approximately coeval to 1000 cal years older).
Faunal remains include bones of game birds, water-
fowl, elk, bison, and fish, and fragments of horse
teeth and mammoth teeth and tusk.
Potter et al. (2013, 95) inferred that the original
colonization of eastern Beringia was “primarily
inland and terrestrially oriented,” and that subsistence
focused on large mammals. They also (Potter et al.
2013, 93) suggested that the faunal record of eastern
Beringia is consistent with Kelly’s and Todd’s (1988)
behavioral model of early Paleoindian foragers being
highly mobile and reliant on large animals, although
foraging also was opportunistic for other food
resources when necessary. During resource scarcity
periods, the main strategy would have been to move
into new territory. When Beringian populations
expanded south, they did so through the interior corri-
dor, “innovating fluting technology and discontinuing
microblades (but not macroblade and burin technol-
ogy)” ( parentheses in original) (Potter et al. 2013,
95). The dispersing populations kept other lithic
traits, such as standardized end scrapers and side
scrapers, macroblades, and gravers (Goebel et al.
1991) as they moved into and through the lower 48
states (see Goebel et al. 2013).
Relation to Clovis? Lithics in the East Beringian
Tradition sites are variable, often dominated by micro-
blades and microcores, but assemblages are similar in
some ways to those of Clovis (Figure 4) (Goebel 2004;
Goebel et al. 1991). The microblade technology clearly
sets them apart from Clovis – this trait is not part of
the Classic Clovis package as defined by Bradley
et al. (2010). Fluting technology appeared in Alaska
no earlier than about 10,370 14C yr BP (about
PaleoAmerica 2015 VOL. 1 NO. 2 143
Haynes The Millennium before Clovis
Figure 4 Comparison of lithic classes from Clovis and Nenana sites (edited from an illustration in Goebel 2004, figure 11.10,
used by permission of T. Goebel).
12,000–12,400 cal yr BP), shown by multiple dates
from the Serpentine Hot Springs site (Goebel et al.
2013; Young and Gilbert-Young 2007) and Raven
Bluff site (Hedman 2010). This is more than 1000
14
C years after Classic Clovis had first appeared in
the lower 48 states, perhaps indicating a northward
“return” migration of descendant cultures 2000 14C
years after the initial entry of ancestral people into
Beringia. Most Alaskan fluted points are multiply
fluted, and are morphologically similar to points that
seem to post-date Classic Clovis in New England
and the Great Basin.
Other lanceolate biface industries such as Mesa and
Sluiceway also appeared in the interior of Alaska,
termed the northern Paleoindian (Hoffecker and
Elias 2007), at around 13,250 cal yr BP, which is
nearly the same age as Clovis in the lower 48 states.
These industries are quite different from those of the
microblade-dominated complexes. It is not clear if
the northern Paleoindian industries developed in
Alaska or moved there from lower latitudes (Smith
et al. 2013), as fluted points may have done.
144 PaleoAmerica 2015 VOL. 1 NO. 2
2.2.2 BIG EDDY, MISSOURI
The open-air Big Eddy site has cultural components
that include, from the top down, Mississippian,
Woodland, Archaic, late Paleoindian, early/middle
Paleoindian (including fluted bifaces), and pre-Clovis
(Lopinot et al. 1998, 2000; Lopinot and Ray 2000;
Ray et al. 1998). The site has nine accelerator (AMS)
dates on its “early/middle Paleoindian” component
(containing fluted bifaces and debitage) that are
within the span of the Clovis era. Below the early/
middle Paleoindian materials, three flakes and three
large cobbles were found, and farther below was a
gravel layer containing numerous chert flakes, a large
and heavy stone that may have been used as an
anvil, and a large cobble that may have been used as
a hammerstone. Charcoal fragments were “scattered
throughout the early deposits” (Lopinot and Ray
2000, 3). Sixteen AMS dates were run on wood char-
coal from the component thought to be pre-Clovis;
three samples returned Holocene ages, and three
others fell within the Clovis era as defined in this
paper, although they came from below the fluted-

point level. The other 10 dates from the layer below
Clovis range from 11,910 ± 440 to 12,950 ± 120 14C
yr BP (approximate midpoint of calibrated range is
14,400 cal yr BP).
Questions or issues? The discordant charcoal dates
could be a warning sign of inconspicuous stratigraphic
mixing of materials in sediments. As for the older-
than-Clovis stone items, two experts in artifact use-
wear analysis did not consider them to be unambigu-
ously artifactual (Ahler 2000; Kay 2000), but a third
examiner thought the materials possibly could be
human-modified (Dillehay 2000). The site investi-
gators (Lopinot and Ray 2007) experimented with
trampling by elephant and bison to determine if the
pre-Clovis gravel layer’s lithic flakes and modified
pebbles and cobbles could have been naturally
created, which they conceded was likely for most
flakes, but they also continued to maintain that the
possible anvilstone and cobble hammer were
humanly modified.
Relation to Clovis? The possible anvilstone, the pos-
sible hammerstone, and the flakes in the gravel layer
may be Clovis age or more than 1000 14C years
older. If older than Clovis (Ray et al. 2000), which
most AMS dates suggest, there is no direct technologi-
cal connection between the site’s simple lithic assem-
blage and the typical materials in a Clovis site.
2.2.3 PAISLEY CAVES, OREGON
The Paisley Caves consist of several rockshelters
(Gilbert et al. 2008; Jenkins 2007; Jenkins et al.
2012a, 2012b, 2013) that have produced a number of
different claims: (1) its Western Stemmed points are
as old as or older than the Waters and Stafford
(2007) age range of Clovis; (2) some coprolite speci-
mens with Native American types of mtDNA in
them, found in the deepest deposits without associated
artifacts, are older than Clovis; and (3) animal bones
were cut by stone tools 1300 14C years before Clovis.
Questions or issues? The dates ascribed to stemmed
points at Paisley Caves are among the very few
Clovis age or pre-Clovis dates associated with
stemmed points in the Intermountain West, out of
many dozens of published dates from numerous
other localities (Beck and Jones 1997; Fiedel and
Morrow 2012; Goebel and Keene 2014).
Importantly, three of the four ages assigned to the
oldest stemmed points at Paisley Caves are younger
than or the same age as Clovis. One stemmed point
that was not recorded in situ has estimated bracketing
dates of 12,269 ± 60 to 10,050 ± 50 14C yr BP, so it
conceivably may be 800 14C years older than Clovis,
but it may also be over 1000 14C years younger.
Another (“possibly oldest”; Jenkins et al. 2012b, 16)
stemmed projectile point recovered in situ was dated
to 11,500 ± 30 14C yr BP (about 13,300 cal yr BP)
Haynes The Millennium before Clovis
by association with a woody twig 40 cm away and
lying below the level of the point, which might indicate
that the point was deposited after the twig.
The obsidian hydration age estimates on some
lithics are older than Clovis, but they are also older
than the radiocarbon ages in the same stratigraphic
positions as the oldest stemmed point fragments
(Gilbert et al. 2008; Pinson 2010). Obsidian hydration
age estimates are rough at best and may be inaccurate
(Anovitz et al. 1999; Duke 2011), because even slight
differences in effective hydration temperature may
produce errors of several thousand years for early
Holocene/late Pleistocene artifacts (Duke 2011, 46,
54–58). It is also doubtful if obsidian hydration
results can validly make age separations at a finer tem-
poral scale than the gross major cultural periods
(Paleoindian, Archaic, etc.) (Duke 2011). The question
of whether stemmed points are as old as or older than
Clovis at Paisley Caves is unsettled.
As for the coprolites, human and large canid feces
are often visually indistinguishable, and the presence
of the canid mtDNA in the same coprolites with
human mtDNA, the herbivore-like micromorphology
of sampled coprolites (Goldberg et al. 2009; Poinar
et al. 2009), and the geographically anomalous
human mtDNA haplotype in two coprolites (Fiedel
2014) has caused concern about possible contami-
nation or misidentification. A lab at Washington
State University could not find the Native American
haplogroups – or any human mtDNA at all, except
for a probable contaminant – in eight samples which
two other labs at Copenhagen and the University of
York had said contained the Native American
mtDNA haplogroups (Jenkins et al. 2012b, 26);
however, canid mtDNA was identified in the sample
by the Washington State lab, as the Copenhagen lab
had done earlier (Gilbert et al. 2008). The discrepancy
was thought to be due to “(a) differences in DNA
survival across specimens, (b) the possibility that
these coprolites are nonhuman; or (c) […] the ratio
of contaminant to endogenous DNA was too great
for endogenous mtDNA detection using [the
Washington State University] techniques” (Jenkins
et al. 2012b, 27), possibly implying that control for
contamination at the Washington State University
lab was inferior to that at the other labs. Recently,
one “human” coprolite with the oldest dates
(12,400 ± 60 and 12,275 ± 55 14C yr BP) from
Paisley Caves was identified as decidedly not human,
because the fecal biomarkers in it and its micromor-
phology are diagnostic of a herbivore, not a human,
and the presence of human mtDNA was “probably
derived from an undetermined contamination
pathway” (Sistiaga et al. 2014, 815), ironically imply-
ing that the Copenhagen lab’s controls for contami-
nation were imperfect.
PaleoAmerica 2015 VOL. 1 NO. 2 145
Haynes The Millennium before Clovis
It is relevant when considering this give and take
about the Paisley Caves coprolites to remember an
anecdote in Matisoo-Smith and Horsburgh (2012,
61), who recount how Viking samples for a DNA
analysis were collected under both the strictest possible
conditions to prevent contamination and under much
looser, less than ideal conditions. All workers who
could have come into contact with the samples were
tested for their own DNA. The sample collected
under the looser conditions returned DNA from mul-
tiple individuals, but it matched none of the research-
ers who could have inadvertently contaminated the
sample. Sediment from the sample’s find spot also
did not contain any of those DNA sequences. One
could conclude that even though the Paisley Caves
excavators’ own DNA did not match the
Copenhagen lab’s identification of a Native
American DNA variety, some other avenue of con-
tamination could have existed during the brief first
exposure of the coprolites.
A third issue is the assertion by Hockett and
Jenkins (2013, 766) that there are stone-tool cutmarks
on pre-Clovis bones, although the identifications are
only “likely” (Hockett and Jenkins 2013, 766),
based on specimens having “several of the character-
istics” of experimentally created cutmarks and not
having the features typical of trampled bones.
Hockett and Jenkins used a checklist of features (V-
shape, non-sinuous length, shoulders present, mul-
tiple straight and parallel marking, etc.) to classify
cutmarks, but these may or may not be present in a
significant proportion of marks made by various
agents other than stone tools, according to exper-
imental work by Dominguez-Rodrigo et al. (2010,
2012) and Krasinski (2010). For example, 30 per
cent of trample marks may be straight rather than
sinuous, and 10 per cent of stone-tool cuts may be
sinuous rather than straight (Krasinski 2010).
Stone-tool cuts may have either a V-shaped or a
U-shaped (flat) profile in section. The experimental
tool-cutting of fresh bone for comparative purposes
described by Hockett and Jenkins (2013) was done
on defleshed pig bones, apparently not in order to
dismember or fillet meat, but specifically to make
marks. Such marks are not identical to marks
inflicted while butchering a fresh carcass. As it
stands now, the similarities of the experimental and
fossil marks are evidence that can support the
cutting of the bones after they were defleshed, but
need not support human actions involved in proces-
sing a fresh carcass. Defleshed bones could have
been cut when trampled against sharp-edged stone
fragments in the rockshelter (see Dominguez-
Rodrigo et al. 2012).
In the Wheat (2012) survey of professional opinions
about pre-Clovis possibilities in North America, over
146 PaleoAmerica 2015 VOL. 1 NO. 2
50 per cent of respondents were unconvinced about
the Paisley Caves claims.
Relation to Clovis? If the Paisley coprolites are
human, and the lithics are indeed as old as or older
than Clovis, the implications are complex. The pro-
duction technology of stemmed bifaces and Clovis
differs, which Bradley (1993) thought indicated differ-
ent ancestry, although there are some similarities (see
Amick 2004 for an analysis of a Great Basin
stemmed biface cache). It seems inefficient and unli-
kely that a single cultural group would have manufac-
tured important lithic tools using two distinct
knapping strategies; therefore, two different lithic tra-
ditions seem to have existed in close proximity in the
American West for several centuries. Judging from
where the diagnostic lithic implements of both tech-
nologies have been found, such as around pluvial
lakes (Willig and Aikens 1988), some of the same
ranges were used by the two cultures, some of the
same resources may have been sought, and the
people surely must have come face to face for several
centuries, which would raise the issue of how as
niche-sharing cultures they dealt with competitive
exclusion (Fiedel 2014).
2.2.4 HEBIOR AND SCHAEFER, WISCONSIN
Hebior and Schaefer are two open-air sites in south-
eastern Wisconsin dated about a millennium older
than Clovis (Joyce 2006, 2013; Overstreet 1993,
1996; Overstreet et al. 1993, 1995; Overstreet and
Kolb 2003; Overstreet and Stafford 1997). They are
both mammoth bone beds encased in pond deposits,
and having very few stone implements within the
beds. The lithic items are unusually crude looking
(images are in Joyce 2013, 475, figures 27.6, 27.7)
when compared to Paleoindian (and especially
Clovis) lithics. Other sites often mentioned together
with them, Mud Lake and Fenske, Wisconsin, are
not discussed here because few bones survive from
the original discoveries by ditch-diggers many
decades ago. As well, a sample of the Mud Lake
ulna’s plentiful surface marks that had been classified
as stone-tool cuts by Johnson (2006, 2007) and Joyce
(2013) could not be identified as tool cuts in another
study (Krasinksi 2010).
At Schaefer, 10 mammoth bones have over two
dozen marks interpreted as cuts or wedge marks,
and at Hebior, nine bones have marks interpreted as
produced by human actions. Cuts or chop marks
may be created on modern proboscidean carcasses
during meat removal or skeletal disarticulation
(Haynes 1991; Haynes and Krasinski 2010), but they
tend to be rare or nonexistent when expert butchers
strip meat.
An undated lithic complex called Chesrow has been
mentioned as possibly associated with Hebior and
 Haynes The Millennium before Clovis

Schaefer (e.g., Overstreet 1993). In reviewing this sug- incorporated in the intrusive vertical and lateral sand
gestion, Joyce (2013, 475) inaccurately claimed I pre- bands, moving short distances in the sand and there-
sented the Chesrow–mammoth association “as fact” fore are not visibly abraded. Vertical and lateral dis-
and “a given” (Joyce 2013, 478), when clearly the placement of items is a possibility in any site where
message in my discussion (Haynes 2002, 49–50) was sediments are disturbed, even if only slightly.
about the ambiguity in the dating of Chesrow and Relation to Clovis? Whether or not the sites have
the unproven nature of any suggested association been correctly interpreted as mammoth-butchering
with pre-Clovis mammoths. Joyce (2013, 478) unequiv- locales, the fact that single proboscideans occur in
ocally stated that a link between the Chesrow Complex association with lithics is indeed reminiscent of
and the Hebior and Schaefer mammoths is “nonexis- Clovis sites. Mammoth-associated Clovis sites, on
tent,” but then went on to accept it as a “working the other hand, do not have such heavily marked
hypothesis.” Ellis (2004) did not accept the Chesrow bone surfaces (although poor preservation could
association with the mammoths, and considered the have removed such traces from some Clovis finds),
Chesrow point forms to be coeval with Hi-Lo and and of course, they consistently date 1000 14C years
Dalton materials, which post-date the Clovis era. younger. Importantly, the lithics at both sites are
Chesrow’s association with Hebior and Schaefer is a very different from anything expected in Clovis sites
very weak possibility, which was my position in with large-mammal bones, or in any Upper
Haynes (2002), and lacks enough support to discuss Paleolithic butchery site in Eurasia. There is no tech-
further. nological link at all to Clovis, but proboscidean
Questions or issues? It is very unlikely that the mam- hunting or scavenging at Hebior and Schaefer 1000
moths in these two sites were butchered by the rela-
tively small lithics found with the bones, including
irregularly flaked bifaces (Figure 5). The presence of
carnivore tooth marks and trampling marks, the
close similarities of some marks to metal-tool dings,
and the claim that pry or wedge marks have been
identified, when such an impracticable and dysfunc-
tional action of wedging or prying bones apart
would not be part of elephant-carcass processing
when handheld tools are used, leads me to question
the identification of the cutmarks.
Doubt also arises when the stratigraphy is examined
for Hebior (Figure 6). The stratigraphic profile con-
tains horizontal layers, vertical columns, and broken
offset bands of intrusive or injected sand, called
dikes or lenses that formed “very late in the develop-
ment of the stratigraphic sequence” (Overstreet and
Kolb 2003, 7). The possibility exists that these were
routes through which much younger artifacts were
moved downward by water action into the bone bed
from above. Some small objects could have been

Figure 6 Hebior stratigraphy. Upper photograph: view of the

Figure 5 Lithics from the Hebior site, edited from a
photograph in Joyce (2013).
mammoth bones in situ, with a cleaned profile in the
background, showing lighter colored lenses and stringers
cutting through the sediments overlying the bone level
(photographed by Vance Holliday, used by permission).
Lower photograph: closer view of part of one cleaned wall
profile after the bones had been removed (photographed by
G. Haynes in 2005).

PaleoAmerica 2015 VOL. 1 NO. 2 147

Haynes The Millennium before Clovis
14
C years before Clovis is a possible sign of a foraging
pattern similar to Clovis, namely human opportunistic
targeting of increasingly vulnerable or stressed mega-
fauna during the climatic oscillations of the late
glacial.
2.2.5 BURNING TREE, OHIO
At Burning Tree, three bone clusters from a mastodont
skeleton missing one rear limb’s bones, most of the
tail, most toes, and a few other elements were found
within a peat bog in the first stages of excavation to
make a water hazard on a golf course (Lepper et al.
1991). Radiocarbon dates were run on spruce branches
in spatial association (12,620 ± 90 and 11,720 ± 110
14
C yr BP; about 14,000 cal yr BP at midpoint of
both ages), peat/soil (12,230 ± 70 14C yr BP; about
14,400 cal yr BP), non-coniferous twigs and organic
matter from “presumed gut contents” (11,660 ± 120
and 11,450 ± 70 14C yr BP; about 13,700–13,100 cal
yr BP at midpoint of range), and bone collagen
(10,860 ± 70 14C BP) (Lepper et al. 1991, 124). The
gut content ages are about 400–600 14C years older
than the Waters and Stafford (2007) beginning date
for Clovis, but are very near or younger than the less
conservative date preferred here (see Miller et al.
2013; Sanchez et al. 2013, 2014), placing this site
within the Clovis era. The younger date on the bone
is explained as typical of bone collagen dates
(Lepper et al. 1991, 123, citing other sources).
The find lacked lithics, but had some possible tool-
made cuts and gouges on a toe bone and ribs, along
with “dragmarks” claimed to have been made by the
bones being pulled across sand or grit, which are par-
ticle sizes apparently not present in the bog where the
bones came to rest (Fisher et al. 1991, 1994), although
grit was found on the internal surface of unfused
epiphyses. Carnivore gnaw marks were also identified
on some pieces. The site was interpreted as a partly
butchered carcass that had been transported away
from a kill site and stored in the water of a frozen
bog, a difficult-to-prove possibility proposed by
Fisher (Fisher 1984a, 1996; Fisher et al. 1994;
Lepper et al. 1991).
Questions or issues? The bones were partially sub-
merged during part of the excavation, and it is possible
that marks were created on the bone surfaces during
recovery actions. Some well-preserved fossil bones
when wet have surfaces that are easier to mark than
when they harden after drying. The bone surface
marks should be rigorously analyzed by taphonomic
experts using a contextualized approach
(Dominguez-Rodrigo et al. 2010). The original bones
are currently in a Japanese museum, to which they
were sold in 1993 for $600,000. As with Hebior,
Schaefer, Manis (see below), and several other probos-
cidean finds not examined in this paper, heavy
148 PaleoAmerica 2015 VOL. 1 NO. 2
equipment such as earth-movers or draglines may
have driven over and deformed the waterlogged sedi-
ments enclosing the bones, abrading or fragmenting
them, before exposing the bone assemblages to discov-
ery (see Haynes 1991, 236, figure 6.1), and it is also
possible that abrasion from being forced through sedi-
ment or across other bones, or the impact of hydraulic
buckets, may be responsible for at least some bone
modifications.
Relation to Clovis? The site may have been made by
early or proto-Clovis people, based on the dating of
the presumed gut contents. If it actually is a butchered
and cached proboscidean, it makes more credible the
development of a rational late-glacial subsistence strat-
egy of opportunistically targeting large mammals. But
because there are no lithics in the site it is unlike the
proven Clovis sites with large-mammal remains; there-
fore, it cannot be clearly identified as either a Clovis
site or made by people immediately ancestral to
Clovis.
2.2.6 COATS-HINES, TENNESSEE
At the Coats-Hines site, “Charred material […] from
the top of the artifact-bearing deposit” in a paleo-
pond (Deter-Wolf et al. 2011, 152) was dated
12,050 ± 60 14C yr BP (ca. 13,750–14,000 cal yr BP
at 2 sigma), about 400 14C years older than the
Clovis start date preferred here. A younger radiocar-
bon date came from just above a mastodont bone,
while a date of 12,030 ± 40 14C yr BP came from
beneath another mastodont bone, and an older date
of 14,750 ± 220 14C yr BP came from below yet
another mastodont bone. Deeper bone-bearing depos-
its at the site were dated around 23–28,000 14C yr BP
(roughly 27,300–33,500 cal yr BP). Mastodont bones
are said to have been marked by stone-tool edges,
although adequate illustrations of the marks have
not been published. Also found were lithic resharpen-
ing flakes and a prismatic blade, part of a biface, scra-
pers, gravers, and cores (Breitburg et al. 1996). Besides
bones of mastodont, the site also contained remains of
deer, turtles, and muskrat.
Questions or issues? The bone marks thought to be
made by stone tools should be examined by experi-
enced taphonomic researchers who do not have a
stake in the current debate about the peopling of the
Americas, to provide a supporting voice to the argu-
ment that the animal bones and the lithics are behav-
iorally associated rather than unrelated members of a
palimpsest water-source assemblage.
Relation to Clovis? The lithics are not inconsistent
with forms known from Paleoindian assemblages,
but they do not show specific direct links to Classic
Clovis such as fluting or overface/ultrashot/overshot
flaking. The possible butchering of mastodont, along
with what may be either “background” or subsistence

faunal remains – deer, turtle, and muskrat – is reminis-
cent of Clovis mammoth sites in the Plains and
American West, such as Lehner, Murray Springs,
Domebo, and Colby (Haynes 2002). As with
Burning Tree, the site may reflect yet another manifes-
tation of an occasional subsistence strategy that even-
tually culminated in a preference for the largest
mammals in some habitats (Haynes and Hutson
2013; Surovell and Waguespack 2008, 2009;
Waguespack and Surovell 2003; but see Cannon and
Meltzer 2004, 2008; Grayson and Meltzer 2003 for dis-
senting opinions).
2.2.7 LINDSAY, MONTANA
Krasinski (2010) suggested that some mammoth bones
from the Lindsay site in Montana (Davis and Wilson
1985; Hill and Davis 1998) had been cut, chopped,
and broken by people using stone tools. The site
yielded no flaked-stone lithics, but there were several
large sandstone blocks with the bones, which Davis
and Wilson (1985) had thought to be manuports
used as hammers or anvils to break open bones.
Earlier radiocarbon dating put the site in the Clovis
era (Hill and Davis 1998, for example); however,
Waters and Stafford (2013) report new dates that
now indicate that it is about 1300–700 14C years
older than Clovis, depending on which assigned time
range for Clovis is preferred, or at 2 sigma roughly
1000–600 cal years older than the earliest Clovis ages
accepted here.
Questions or issues? Krasinski (2010) compared the
site’s mammoth bone marks to marks, which had been
experimentally produced by different processes. To
identify stone-tool-inflicted cuts, she applied
regression models that incorporated micromorpholo-
gical traits (e.g., mark length, width, and depth, apex
flatness, presence of concave or cracked walls and
apex striae, and type of termination of mark). Her
experiments and the statistical models showed that
stone-tool cuts have either V-shaped or flat apices
(that is, the bottoms of the marks), as do animal
tooth marks, and striae were present in the apices of
stone-tool cuts. Using regression models, the accuracy
of correct mark classifications (steel versus stone
versus tooth) varied, and was never 100 per cent.
Thirteen marks on four Lindsay specimens had “a
>50 per cent probability to represent cutmarks pro-
duced by lithic implements” (Davis et al. 2013). Also
noted, based on probabilities, were more than twice
as many steel-made marks on seven elements, more
than four times as many trample marks on 22 speci-
mens, and more than four times as many “cutmark-
like” incisions on 29 specimens. Some marks were
probably made by shovels and steel trowels (see the
8 mm film footage of the 1967 excavations, recorded
by L. Davis (ThisIsBozeman.com [1967]; http://
Haynes The Millennium before Clovis
www.thisisbozeman.com/detail/digging-the-lindsey-
mammoth-1967/)). This diverse mix of marks made
by a wide variety of agents lends an air of ambiguity
to the site’s interpretation as a butchered mammoth.
Relation to Clovis? The dating, the uncertainty
about the bone marks, and the lack of lithics mean
this find can only be regarded as older than Clovis,
but cannot be unreservedly recorded as a memento
of people who were ancestral to Clovis. But, like
Burning Tree, Coats-Hines, and the Wisconsin mam-
moths, if it is genuinely a proboscidean butchery site,
it shows an occasional human preference for mega-
fauna just before the Clovis era.
2.2.8 PAGE-LADSON, FLORIDA
The rich Page-Ladson site is under water in a 10-m
deep sinkhole in the Aucilla River, offering unusual
challenges – such as extremely low visibility in the
deep water – for the deciphering of its stratigraphy
and depositional processes (Dunbar 2006; Halligan
et al. 2013; Waters and Stafford 2013; Webb 2006).
“Abundant numbers of Paleoindian and early
Archaic artifacts from several time periods” have
been recovered from the sinkhole (Faught 2006,
173), including bifaces (Figure 7). During an early
period of use by animals and humans, before sea
level rise at the end of the Pleistocene, the site was a
karst depression situated almost 100 miles (ca.
162 km) from the Gulf of Mexico, which is 5 miles
(ca. 8 km) away today. A deeply buried layer of sedi-
ment contained a few lithic flakes, a unifacial expedi-
ent tool, and a possible hammerstone, along with
mastodont bones and wood and seeds dated to
12,450 ± 40 14C yr BP (average of six dates) (ca.
14,600 cal yr BP at the 2-sigma range midpoint)
(Dunbar 2006), which is about 1400–850 14C years
older than the Clovis time range in Waters and
Stafford (2007), or about 1200 cal years older than
the earliest Clovis date accepted here. A deposit of
leaves, bark, and wood is thought to be trampled mas-
todont dung, and contained a biface fragment
(Halligan et al. 2013). A mastodont tusk from this
level had six incised grooves near the lipline, inter-
preted as extraction marks made by people removing
the tusk from the animal’s head (Webb 2006).
Questions or issues? Waters and Stafford (2013, 553)
think that the site’s data are “compelling evidence of
early human occupation,” but they also somewhat
contradictorily state that the early human presence is
not yet confirmed, because the stratigraphy is in
need of further study. The six deep grooves in the
mastodont tusk have not been as closely analyzed or
adequately published as they should be to support
the interpretation as extraction damage.
Relation to Clovis? The lithics from the deep level
reported in Dunbar (2006) do not show conspicuous
PaleoAmerica 2015 VOL. 1 NO. 2 149
Haynes The Millennium before Clovis
Figure 7 Bifaces from the Page-Ladson site (edited from an illustration in Stanford and Bradley 2012, figure 4.10; drawn by
Marcia Bakry; used by permission of D. Stanford).
CORRECTION: The biface on the far right is not a Page-Ladson point.
and direct technological linkage to Classic Clovis. The
site’s possibly cut/chopped tusk is slim evidence for
megamammal butchering, unless every possible non-
cultural source of the marks can be rigorously elimi-
nated from consideration. Even so, the exploitation
of megafauna and creation of scattered sites at water
sources is suggestive of an emerging pre- or proto-
Clovis pattern in North America.
2.2.9 MANIS, WASHINGTON
At the Manis site in Washington, a mastodont rib with
a protruding osseous bit (Figure 8) made from a mas-
todont bone or tusk (determined from DNA analysis)
was directly dated to 11,990 ± 30 14C yr BP (about
13,800 cal yr BP), almost 400 14C years older than
the Clovis horizon as accepted here. The pierced rib
was found in sediments left from a kettle pond, along
with fractured and flaked mastodont bones and puta-
tive cut marks on bone surfaces (Gilbow, unpub.
thesis 1981, cited in Gustafson et al. 1979; Waters
et al. 2011c; Runnings, unpub. thesis 1981, cited in
Waters et al. 2011c), which have not been confirmed
using more recently advanced analytical standards
(e.g., Dominguez-Rodrigo et al. 2010). No unquestion-
able flaked-stone artifacts were found with the bones. A
hydraulic bucket had exposed the bones, splintering
some elements in the process (Figure 9).
Questions or issues? The protruding piece in the
Manis mastodont rib has a very small diameter.
Waters et al. (2011c), following Gustafson et al.
(1979), call it a projectile point, without any discus-
sion, although Stanford (1982, 209) had been more
equivocal, stating it was “tentatively identified as a
projectile point” and a “presumed projectile point.”
The object has not been extracted, but high-resolution
X-ray computed tomography scanning shows that the
main length of the surviving shaft is rectangular in
150 PaleoAmerica 2015 VOL. 1 NO. 2
cross section rather than circular/rounded, with
maximum width and thickness estimated (from
published images with scale bars) of about 3 × 4 mm
at about 3.5 cm back from the conical tip. Judging
from the photographs and other images in Waters
et al. (2011c), the shaft of the Manis item has no
traces of grinding or smoothing, as is typical of bone
piercing implements from other places and times in
prehistory. Other undisputed bone points from arche-
ological contexts typically measure much larger in
shaft thicknesses. For example, “ivory points” from
the Yana site in Siberia (Nikolskiy and Pitulko 2013,
4195, figure 8) were rounded in cross section
( judging from the published images), with cross-sec-
tional diameters of about 6 mm, as measured 3.5 cm
from the tip; eyed needles from the site are smaller
(Pitulko et al. 2013, 32, figure 2.12I, J, L), but all
objects interpreted as weapons from the Yana site
are larger in diameter than the Manis specimen.
Another example of a projectile used against
mammoth is indicated at the Lugovskoe site in
Siberia (Mashenko et al. 2003; Zenin et al. 2003),
where a mammoth thoracic vertebra has a pierced
hole measuring 7 × 10 mm across, roughly showing
the original width of the projectile point that entered
the bone. This projectile had a lithic inset, a fragment
of which is still within the hole. The projectile was
hardly larger in cross-sectional size than the Yana
pieces without insets, and its diameter was substan-
tially larger than that of the Manis piece.
Straight and curved ivory points or rods from
Alaska, Arizona, Florida, New Mexico, Ohio, Texas,
Washington, and Montana (Hemmings 2004,
185–189) are all smoothed and polished, circular or
oval to semi-circular in cross section, and vary in
maximum diameters from 4.85 to 15 mm; the lengths
range up to 30 cm, and in one case 40 cm.
 Haynes The Millennium before Clovis

Figure 8 Two views of the Manis mastodont rib fragment with the embedded object (edited from a photographic montage in
Waters et al. 2011c, figure S4 in “supporting online material”; reprinted with permission from AAAS). Note the rectangular cross
section of the object, and also what may be additional bone material inserted into the rib or pushed out of it, alongside the object.

A sample of complete or nearly complete ivory
points from Florida (see Hemmings 2004) are >7 to
>9 mm in diameter when measured 3.5 cm back
from the tips, much larger than the Manis piece’s
diameter and comparable to the Yana and
Lugovskoe points. An ivory sewing needle fragment
from Florida has a maximum cross-sectional diameter
of 4.8 mm at only 1.5 cm from the tapered tip, also
well above the diameter of the Manis piece
(Hemmings 2004, figure 3.16).
Similarities can be found between the Manis item
and the slender bone spear and arrow points from
southern Africa’s Later Stone Age and Iron Age
(Backwell et al. 2008, figures 3, 8). At about 3.5 cm
back from the tip, some of the so-called Bushman
arrow points are 3–4 mm in diameter, although their
conical tips appear much sharper than the Manis
specimen, and they show signs of rounding and
shaping by human actions, unlike the Manis specimen.
These African specimens appear to be no longer than
about 13 cm, and were always bound into link shafts
that were inserted into reed shafts.
The Manis specimen’s small size and the evident
lack of human shaping to a more efficient circular
cross section should inspire a rigorous visual examin-
ation of the specimen and lead to experiments to test
the effectiveness of such a tiny projectile point.
Relation to Clovis? If the bone or ivory splinter is
indeed a projectile made by human hands, and the
marked and broken mastodont bones were part of a

PaleoAmerica 2015 VOL. 1 NO. 2 151

Haynes The Millennium before Clovis

Figure 9 The upper part of the figure shows Manis mastodont ribs that had been fragmented by mechanized excavation
equipment. Note the pebbles in colluvium above the bones and the stones in glacial till directly under the bones (photographed by C.
Vance Haynes in 1977, used with his permission). The lower part of the figure is the bone-bed map (from Waters et al. 2011c, figure S3
in the “supporting online material,” edited to enlarge the text; note that the original figure had a misspelling of one bone name,
“inominate;” reprinted with permission from AAAS.) with an added outline drawn around the approximate area in the photo above.

butchered carcass, the site may be evidence that mega- 2.2.10 AYER POND, WASHINGTON
fauna stressed by rapidly oscillating climates and com- At Ayer Pond, Washington, Bison antiquus bones
peting for limited resources in the late glacial were found in clay and silt at the base of woody peat in
indeed specifically targeted by human foragers in a pond were directly dated 11,760 ± 70 and
some habitats (Haynes 2009). 11,990 ± 25 14C yr BP (the latter date calibrated at
152 PaleoAmerica 2015 VOL. 1 NO. 2

2-sigma midpoint to about 13,850 cal yr BP) (Kenady
et al. 2011). This is 100–390 14C years older than
Clovis, or 450 cal years older than the earliest
Clovis date accepted here. No lithics were found,
and no organic projectiles. Possible impact points on
bones, unweathered-bone fracturing patterns, and
chopmarks were also identified, but “no fine cut-
marks […] from slicing with a sharp edge” were
seen (Kenady et al. 2011, 135). No carnivore-gnaw
damage was found, and no evidence of animal-tram-
pling. Hence the materials are interpreted as a bison
dismembered and butchered by people, who dis-
carded low-utility body parts on the surface of a
frozen pond, and transported away the higher-utility
parts.
Questions or issues? The storage of large-mammal
body parts within frozen ponds is a recurring theme
in proboscidean-site interpretations by Fisher (e.g.,
see Fisher 1984a, 1984b, 1987, 1996, 2009), and is
equivocally suggested for the site by Kenady et al.
(2011), but a preferred twist is that the bison body
parts may have been cached on top of ice after butch-
ering, rather than under the ice in water. The bones in
illustrations appear to have been broken by impact
when in a fresh state, and were not carnivore
gnawed. Unfortunately, the discovery and collection
of the bones were not done by professionals, and the
discovery was made after a “tracked mechanical exca-
vator” (Kenady et al. 2011, 133) began digging at the
site; its weight could have deformed the clay and
mucky silts enclosing the bones below peat sediments,
causing breakage and putting marks on well-preserved
elements. Workmen gathered up and uncovered bones
by hand after one bone was seen in a cutwall of a
mechanically opened excavation. The bones were
then stored for two years before a professional was
contacted and visited the find spot. Kenady et al.
(2011, 133) state that no shovels or trowels were used
by workmen to recover the bones after mechanical
equipment exposed the first ones, based on workers’
memories two years later and apparently not on
formal notes or records.
Relation to Clovis? Interpretations of the site
support the idea that people in the centuries before
Clovis were competent foragers, who quickly and effi-
ciently killed and butchered large mammals, and
moved on without leaving much behind, somewhat
similar to Clovis behavior at some sites in the
American West. But the absence of associated lithic
and osseous implements makes it impossible to link the
find to Clovis as it has been classically understood –
as a culture that made and used highly efficient tools
and whose foragers were not averse to leaving behind
still-useful implements such as fluted bifaces or dis-
carding worn items such as unmodified flakes after
using them.
Haynes The Millennium before Clovis
2.2.11 THE FIRELANDS GROUND SLOTH, OHIO
At the Firelands Ground Sloth site, Ohio, a femur
from an adult Jefferson’s ground sloth (Redmond
et al. 2012) was directly dated at 11,740 ± 35 14C yr
BP (roughly 13,550 cal yr BP), 700 14C years older
than the Waters and Stafford (2007) maximum age
for Clovis, but only 140 14C years (150 cal years)
older than the first-appearance date espoused in this
paper. One femur had dozens of fine incisions that
were interpreted as made by unmodified and
retouched stone flakes and bifacial tools, used to
chop or slice fresh bone surfaces.
The sloth’s 10 skeletal elements had been given to
the Firelands Historical Museum in Norwalk, Ohio,
but no detailed information is available except that
they had been buried 4 ft deep in wet ground, probably
a swamp or peat bog. No lithics had been curated with
the bones. Upon learning about the bones, Redmond
et al. (2012) initiated a taxonomic and taphonomic
study of them. Surface marks were inspected under
optical instruments and a sample of silicon molds of
the marks was examined in a scanning electron micro-
scope by H. J. Greenfield. Small pieces of wood from
inside bones were identified as cf. conifer, consistent
with expectable late Pleistocene flora.
Questions or issues? The sloth bones had been dis-
covered decades before, so the methods of recovery,
cleaning, and storage cannot be reviewed to eliminate
the possibility that the bone marks are preparators’ or
excavators’ damage. However, Redmond et al. (2012)
do report a variety of bone marks, which they
propose were probably made during handling and
storage, and also a type of mark called “claw
marks,” which are curved, broad, shallow, and
U-shaped – and in my view very unlikely to have
been made on fresh mammalian cortical bone surfaces
by animal claws, which have not been shown to perma-
nently mark large-mammal cortical bone. The cut-
marks themselves are said to have been made by
tools made of stone and not metal, based on features
such as the deep and asymmetrical V-shaped cross sec-
tions with internal striations and steps, but these are
also present in a proportion of metal-produced cuts
(Krasinski 2010). Redmond et al. (2012, 92) admit
that the lack of information about the circumstances
of recovery so long ago “preclude [sic] an absolute
[italics in original] determination as to whether the
incisions […] are the result of human butchering.”
Relation to Clovis? Little can be said, other than
making the obvious (and hardly consequential)
acknowledgment that megafaunal butchering, pre-
sumably following killing, is almost a commonplace
subsistence activity in the Clovis era and may have
developed a few centuries before the appearance of
Classic Clovis lithic technology – if the sites discussed
immediately above have been correctly interpreted.
PaleoAmerica 2015 VOL. 1 NO. 2 153
Haynes The Millennium before Clovis
3. Discussion
One-thousand 14C years may approach the maximum
spread of time in which techno- and socio-cultural
traits among low-density foragers can be expected to
show clear remaining hints of an ancestral–descendant
relationship. The sites reviewed here reasonably
suggest a human presence in many parts of the continent
well before the Clovis era, even though they are not
without interpretive problems. But only a very few
have what can be considered even indirect technological
links to Classic Clovis, or to any other defined cultural
“type” such as Western Stemmed. Leading the list of
sites that could be directly ancestral to Clovis is the
Debra L. Friedkin site in Texas, where the lithic assem-
blage is very similar to what has been found at the
Aubrey Clovis site, also in Texas (Ferring 2001, 2012;
Morrow et al. 2012), although Jennings and Waters
(2014) point out differences, too. Other possible lineal
relationships can be seen in parts of the eastern
Beringian sites (Goebel et al. 1991), but with major
differences there, too, and possibly in Meadowcroft’s
early assemblages and the pre-Clovis material from
Cactus Hill, but the technological relationships are
tenuous at best. Page-Ladson’s bifaces are not all confi-
dently and directly dated, but if there is a confirmable
temporal association with the dated (older than Clovis)
mastodont dung deposit, they very well could be
closely ancestral to Clovis. The rest of the sites reviewed
here either have very lengthy separations of dates on their
pre-Clovis and Clovis lithics (Topper), no Clovis at all
overlying the pre-Clovis levels (Meadowcroft, Paisley
Caves), nondescript or undiagnostic lithics in earliest
levels (Big Eddy, Hebior, Schaefer, and Coats-Hines),
or no lithics at all (Lindsay, Manis, and Ayer Pond),
making inferences about possible lineal relationships to
Clovis unwarranted. And even with the occasional
lithic technological similarities between Classic Clovis
and some pre-Clovis assemblages, it is difficult to
make rigorous and unambiguous reconstructions of
antecedent or coexisting relationships, because special-
ized lithic technological theories are not on hand to
guide such reasoning, as Waguespack (2007) and Shott
(2013) have pointed out. Anderson et al. (2013, 185)
resignedly recognized that “at present all we know is
that appreciable variability characterizes pre-Clovis,
Clovis, and immediate post-Clovis industries in North
America, even among chipped-stone bifaces.”
Contributing to the confusion is the unfortunate scarcity
of detailed publications about many of the sites, which
would provide essential information, the critical data
points, working hypotheses, defended interpretations,
responses to circulating critiques, and so forth.
3.1 Disparate models
Several different models of how Clovis developed from
pre-existing populations south of Beringia are found in
154 PaleoAmerica 2015 VOL. 1 NO. 2
the archeological literature. Some of these models see
Clovis as the sign of a separate human dispersal,
rather latecomers to the Americas, while others see
Clovis as only a set of technological ideas that
spread among long-established human subpopu-
lations. Some of the disagreement may arise from
different degrees of documentation that can be found
about proposed sites. In too many cases, there are
not fully developed integrated descriptions of material
culture (if any has been found), dating, and geology,
and reasonable counter-arguments are sometimes not
well made when the claims are doubted that sites
were humanly made.
The “Staging Area” model (Anderson 1996) was a
proposal that a founding population in the lower 48
states, originators of Clovis culture, fragmented into
separate daughter subpopulations, which adapted to
different micro- and macro-environments in North
America, although these subpopulations continued
to share some “Clovis core” features (Anderson and
Gillam 2000; Smallwood 2012). Fluting and other
Clovis-specific features such as efficient biface thin-
ning by ultrashot or overface flaking and macroblade
manufacture may have been developed before the
staging-area phase, originating in a founding popu-
lation before it fragmented. This is essentially a
“Clovis-first” model. The staging areas continued to
be used even after Clovis was replaced by early
Archaic complexes.
A different kind of model was outlined by Waters
and Stafford (2007), who contended that the surpris-
ingly rapid spread of fluting and other features was
the result of adoption of the technology by pre-existing
and long-resident human subpopulations. The ulti-
mate place of invention of the technology is unknown.
Collins et al. (2013) asserted a long sequence of
human occupation in the Americas, starting almost
30,000 14C yr BP and exhibiting seven divergent pat-
terns of lithic production technology; the message is
that different cultures originating at different times
and places were in the Americas well before the
LGM. Note that dates for some of the recognized pat-
terns are widely separated, such as in Pattern 1 with
bracketing dates >27,000 and <12,000 14C yr BP,
and Pattern 5 with bracketing dates >20,000 and
<11,000 14C yr BP, but without sites showing dating
gradients between the extremes. This may suggest tech-
nological convergence by unrelated cultures and not
lineal connection of the technologies.
MacNeish (2004) also described multiple techno-
logical patterns in a much longer time span for the
Americas, beginning around 100 ka with a Lower
Paleolithic kind of Chopper-Chopping Tool stage of
human dispersal in the Americas, progressing
through a Zhoukoudian Upper Cave-like Unifacial
stage of human presence, and ending with a stage of

leaf-shaped points, burins, and blades, which includes
microblades. These were separate waves of movement
(MacNeish 1971, 2004) that represent evolutionary
stages in hominid technology.
Adovasio and Pedler (2013, 513) asserted that at
least 30 archeological sites in the Americas have sup-
portable claims for being older than Clovis, and con-
cluded that “the diversity of tool kits and the
attendant lifestyles […] [at the older-than-Clovis
sites] point toward multiple movements by different
groups at different times via different routes into the
New World well before the Clovis temporal bench-
mark” (Adovasio and Pedler 2013, 518). They did
not try to reconstruct the origins of Clovis out of all
this diversity.
There are yet other possibilities about Clovis
origins, which could be summarized here, if more
space was available – such as the implications in
Beck and Jones (2010) that the unconnected cultures
making Western Stemmed and Clovis points des-
cended from different ancestors who entered the
American West from different directions, both being
almost the same age. In this proposal, the stemmed
points originated among far western (coastal)
migrants, while the fluted points came from a popu-
lation originating far inland, to the southeast. The sep-
arate ancestry of the fluted-point population is not
suggested. However, genetic evidence from modern
and ancient DNA indicates a single Native
American origin in Northeast Asia, and a single
migration and expansion south of the ice sheets.
My own view is that rapid human spread carrying
the Clovis technology through an empty or nearly
empty continent cannot be ruled out as a possibility,
and it becomes more tenable if a duration of 1000
years was involved in the dispersal. The successful dis-
persal of a very small founding population into wood-
lands, steppes, and grasslands south of the ice sheets
may have been accomplished in just centuries, as
human demes found the game trails, faunal refugia,
and competition-free open ranges ahead.
Meltzer (2009, 231) has stated that “most studies
agree detailed landscape learning is a prolonged
process, with estimates ranging from 200–1000 [calen-
dar] years.” An implication is that centuries of human
invisibility or near invisibility may have passed before
the earliest people in any region accumulated enough
material debris anywhere to create what would be dis-
coverable as sites thousands of years later. This makes
sense, but it does not explain how the new Clovis
technology could have spread so quickly through the
near-invisible different cultural groups who were
presumably spread thinly across the continent. It also
does not take into consideration important points
about late Pleistocene human foraging, such as
oscillating climate changes that were affecting
Haynes The Millennium before Clovis
large-mammal populations, undoubtedly making
them easier to track and attack, even if lowering their
general continental densities, and the absence of
human competition for resources such as high-quality
toolstone and water. The first American foragers
may not have needed 200–1000 years to frame
mental maps of the open ranges around them, unlike
the early English colonists mentioned by Meltzer
(2009, 231) who tried to make a point about the slow-
ness of landscape learning: in spite of being techno-
logically advanced, the English were ill-equipped as
farmers, faced human competition for resources, and
suffered through monumental drought events, conse-
quently requiring more than a century to produce
accurate paper maps. And it is also worth noting
that the English newcomers essentially stopped at the
eastern American Fall Line for a century or so, while
French explorers far more quickly traveled much
deeper into the unfamiliar continent.
4. Conclusion
Let us […] work and wedge our feet downward
through the mud and slush of opinion, and preju-
dice, and tradition, and delusion, and appear-
ance […] till we come to a hard bottom […]
which we can call reality […] [H. D. Thoreau,
1854: Walden, or Life in the Woods]
In the Wheat (2012) survey of professional opinions
about early American sites, 33 per cent of respondents
were unconvinced about Monte Verde, Chile – prob-
ably the best-described and most publicized pre-
Clovis site, familiar to every professional archeologist.
Claims made for lesser known sites may be even less
convincing to professional archeologists who have
not been directly involved with them. Such questioning
bedevils the consensual acceptance of possible patterns
in human dispersals and brings the relevance of some
sites into question when it comes to reviews such as
this one – are the claims worth taking seriously if
they do not convince a substantial number of pro-
fessionals? Should they be incorporated into models
of the first human entry into the Americas, or are
they better left out of the discussion?
I think some interpretive disagreements about older-
than-Clovis claims probably could be minimized, if
scrupulously complete and integrated publications
were to provide details about stratigraphy, dating,
geology, materials recovered, and hypotheses of poten-
tial meanings. Many sites in the samples above do not
have such well-thought-out publications, and the
issues raised about the claims are still unresolved in
the minds of scholars. It is also imperative that when-
ever skeptical colleagues question the claims and
interpretations, they are addressed methodically and
objectively. If criticisms are chronically suppressed or
PaleoAmerica 2015 VOL. 1 NO. 2 155
Haynes The Millennium before Clovis
dismissed, combative partisans of opposing interpre-
tations begin an unproductive era of verbal head-butting.
The future discourse can perhaps be moderated in
those ways, but what about the material ambiguity
that may remain about certain finds, the type of incon-
clusiveness never to be resolved perfectly? For
example, stone-tool cutmarks sometimes have the
same features as marks created by steel-tool edges, as
mentioned above in the discussion about the Lindsay
mammoth site. If analysis of a site’s marked-up
bones shows that a small percentage of all examined
marks statistically appear to be likely stone-tool cuts,
and the rest are of unknown or noncultural origins,
should the evidence for cutting by stone tools be
given greater weight than the possibility that a small
fraction of noncultural marks simply possess the fea-
tures of stone-tool cuts?
There is also potential ambiguity about spatial
associations of materials in some sites’ sedimentary
environments, such as vertisols or unconsolidated
sands, and expert opinions expectably differ about
downward creep or post-depositional displacement.
In cases such as these, new data or new evidence
from the sites that could resolve the disagreements
may never be coming, and the opinions will go on
clashing for a long time.
Probably the very first humans in the New World
were too scattered and transitory in any one locality
to leave much of an archeological record, as Meltzer
(2009) and others have surmised. But by the time of
Clovis, the record had become very visible and dis-
tinct. The ancestral humans of 1000 years before
Clovis were in the process of establishing an archeolo-
gical footprint, even if they left hardly any discover-
able traces for centuries. Our picture of the transition
from the older-than-Clovis period to the Clovis era
may always remain indefinite and perplexing because
of the visibility problem. In the assessment of some
scholars, if there had been human populations in the
New World many more than 1000 years before
Clovis, the archeological traces of the millennium
before Clovis, as reviewed above, should be much
clearer and more extensive than it is, which seems to
weaken the hypothetical case for a very early human
occupation of the New World.
Over a decade ago, Yesner et al. (2004, 212–213)
asked “What do we know about Paleoindian coloniza-
tions,” but no new facts have been discovered since
then. The only facts then and now are just these two:
first human beings in the Americas originated from
Asian populations, and if all the claims are believed,
there was a great deal of variability in regional subsis-
tence and technologies. Anything else which can be
confidently concluded about Clovis origins is limited,
because the archeological record has not been fully
decoded and the evidence itself is “sparse, scattered,
156 PaleoAmerica 2015 VOL. 1 NO. 2
and ambiguous” (Shott 2013, 150), and incompletely
preserved. Exasperating questions remain, which will
continue to inspire the testing of new and evolving
stories about the peopling of the Americas.
5. Acknowledgements
Thanks to Ted Goebel for inviting this review. Thanks
also to the late Paul Martin for showing how to deal
with interpretive disagreements, even the most aggres-
sive kind, and who thoughtfully tried to teach so many
students about late-glacial North America. I wish his
patience and civility had been learned by more
people in this profession. I also want to thank
William Gardner who infected me with the Clovis
virus, and C. Vance Haynes (no biological relation
that can be traced) for sharing time and knowledge
over so many years. Special thanks go to Vance
Holliday, Stuart Fiedel, David Kilby, Vance Haynes,
and a “somewhat anonymous reviewer,” in the
journal editor’s words, for reading a draft of this
paper and making major and minor suggestions to
improve it, and to Janis Klimowicz for essential help
in its preparation.
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Author's Biography
Gary Haynes earned his PhD from Catholic University of America in 1981. He is Foundation Professor of
Anthropology at the University of Nevada, Reno, where he has worked for 30 years. His research interests are
North America’s first people, taphonomic and actualistic studies of large mammals, and southern African
prehistory.
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