The First Americans

  Praise for The First Americans

  “Throughout, Adovasio's pull-no-punches approach peppers the narrative with vigor…. In this lively telling, the journey to learn all the things we don't know has seldom been more fascinatingly rendered.”

  —Los Angeles Times

  “In the summer of 1973, University of Pittsburgh archaeologist James Adovasio began to excavate a nearby rock shelter. By the next summer, he had dug a hole ten feet deep exposing at least twenty separate layers of human occupation that included identifiable artifacts. He later encountered layers with decidedly human artifacts that were unknown to scholars. … [T]he radiocarbon dates … were about 13,000 years old, 1,500 years before the earliest accepted date for the peopling of the Americas. Eventually, Adovasio would get even older dates—16,000 years ago—from the Meadowcroft Rock Shelter. The First Americans tells the story of one of the most exciting and controversial research projects in the history of American archaeology.”

  —American Archaeology

  “In recent years many books have been written about the archaeology of the first Americans, but if there is an untold story, this is it. Adovasio's (and Page's) scholarly perspective is expert and sophisticated; Adovasio's arguments are boldly presented in clear, elegant prose.”

  —TOM D. DILLEHAY, author of The Settlement of the Americas: A New Prehistory

  “The First Americans is a lively look at a contentious debate by a man in the middle of it.”

  —Science News

  “James Adovasio is the perfect guide to the science, the infighting, and the passion surrounding a deceptively simple question: ‘When was the Western Hemisphere first peopled?’ Read to find where the bodies are buried. Read for enjoyment. But above all, read for honest answers.”

  —CLIVE GAMBLE, Centre for the Archaeology of Human Origins, University of Southampton

  “Adovasio …proved well-suited for the combat his work thrust upon him. … [H]e was taught the strictest standards of meticulous field research by legendary archaeologist Jesse D. Jennings at the University of Utah. As a result, his work at Meadowcroft is above technical criticism. … Adovasio offers a lengthy, lucid natural history of North America—glaciation, megafauna, extinction theories, climate changes—that is sheer pleasure to read. He also shows how politics, religion, racism and other preconceptions have hindered scientific observation of American Indians since the time of Columbus. And he presents frequent, dismissive criticisms of the way science is taught and done. … All in all, The First Americans is about as good as popular science writing gets.”

  —Sun-Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale)

  “This book offers us a frank exploration of the often nasty debates that swirl around the earliest archaeological sites that the Americas have to offer and the archaeologists who study them. A book like this could be written only by a bold insider—someone who has long worked in the area, has participated in all the debates, knows all the players, and is fearless. Adovasio is all these things.”

  —DONALD K. GRAYSON, professor of anthropology, University of Washington

  “In all, readers get a lively, close-up view of how archaeologists study America's original discoverers.”

  —Booklist

  “This is a story only Jim Adovasio could tell—he is simultaneously the most meticulous fieldworker and entertaining storyteller I have met in my thirty-five years as an archaeologist. It is archaeology from the inside.”

  —DAVE MADSEN, senior scientist, Environmental Science Program, Utah Geological Survey

  “The professor's discovery not only shook the very foundations of modern archaeology, it set Adovasio himself on a mission to uncover one of the greatest mysteries of all time: uncovering the origins of the first Americans and explaining how they got here. … [The First Americans] is well written and thoroughly researched, not surprising given Adovasio's impressive credentials, which include teaching at or performing research for the Smithsonian Institution, Youngstown State University, the University of Pittsburgh, the Carnegie Institute and Mercyhurst College (Pa.). What is surprising is Adovasio's—along with coauthor Jake Page's—lively prose and downright funny anecdotes. It's an enjoyable read.”

  —The Post and Courier (Charleston, S.C.)

  “This book, written with Jake Page, is vintage Adovasio: incisive, funny, self-deprecating in his own imperial manner, and sure to trigger howls from the brethren at the receiving end of his barbs. But this is no hit-and-run book: it's a detailed and wide-ranging exploration of the history and current state of views on the archaeology, geology, and environment of late Pleistocene North America. It provides an important perspective on the fierce storm over the peopling of the Americas, from one who's been at its churning center for well on three decades.”

  —DAVID J. MELTZER, professor of anthropology, Southern Methodist University

  “[The First Americans] admirably lays out how new digs and new theories have further pushed back the ETA of the New World's first occupants some 30,000 years.”

  —The Week

  CONTENTS

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  OVERTURE: NOT FOR THE TIMID OF HEART

  Chapter One: GLIMPSES THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS

  Chapter Two: THE GLACIER'S EDGE

  Chapter Three: CHARISMATIC MEGAFAUNA

  Chapter Four: GOOD-BYE, GLACIAL MAN; HELLO, CLOVIS

  Chapter Five: TIMING IS EVERYTHING

  Chapter Six: THE PRE-CLOVIS QUEST

  Chapter Seven: MELEE OVER MEADOWCROFT

  Chapter Eight: ANOTHER ANGLE OF VIEW

  Chapter Nine: FIREWORKS AND THE PALEO-POLICE

  Chapter Ten: THREE-LEGGED STOOLS AND SKULL WARS

  Chapter Eleven: WHO ARE THOSE GUYS?

  AFTERWORD

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  To the late Albert and Delvin Miller, without whom there would be no Meadowcroft.

  To John and the late Edward Boyle, who generously supported the work at Meadowcroft from the beginning.

  And to the late R. L. Andrews, who made the Meadowcroft adventure so much better.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I've wanted to be an archaeologist since I was four or five years old. My early interest in the field was fashioned by my mother, Lena Adovasio, a quadruple major (ancient history, French, Latin, and German) at Marietta College. She provided my initial entrée into history, prehistory, and pale-ontology by teaching me to read books on those subjects and by continually encouraging me in the direction to which she first steered me. My “choice” of careers was fostered by my sixth-grade teacher, Samuel A. Loree, who thought (and I hope still thinks) that archaeology was a worthy field of endeavor, and shortly thereafter I decided I wanted to go to the University of Arizona “when I grew up.”

  As most will attest, I never did grow up, but I did attend the University ofArizona, where my career trajectory was molded, wittingly or otherwise, by Malcolm McFee, William A. Longacre, and especially by the example of the late Emil Haury, the prototypical gentleman and scholar. I was also influenced, at least indirectly, by C. Vance Haynes, who was already well on the road that would ultimately lead him to the National Academy of Sciences.

  While I would like to think I became a passable anthropologist at Arizona, my transformation into an anthropological archaeologist would occur under the ominous shadow of The Dark Lord, Jesse D. Jennings, at the University of Utah, where I would also be profoundly influenced by C. Melvin Aikens and my colleagues Gary F. Fry, John “Jack” P. Marwitt, and D. “Dave” Brigham Madsen.

  Through the intervening years, Madsen and Aikens have continued to represent the archetypes for anthropological scholars, as have David B. Meltzer and Thomas Dillehay, who appear frequently in this book andwhose opinions I have valued for
a very long time. The same can be said for the “sister” I never had, Olga Soffer, with whom I have collaborated for more than a decade and whose insights into prehistoric behavior as well as personal support during times of great personal stress have been profound. All of the aforecited individuals as well as my longtime fellow traveler in Pennsylvania, Kurt Carr, have helped shape the prism through which I look at the past and have contributed in a very real way to the formation or refinement of some of the ideas contained in this book. A special debt of gratitude is also owed to Dave Pedler (the longtime Mercyhurst Archaeo-logical Institute editor and a close collaborator with me on many forays into Paleo-Indian commentary), who never ceases to remind me of the need to avoid convoluted Victorian prose when pontificating about the past.

  Dave Meltzer, Tom Dillehay, Dave Madsen, Don Grayson, and Mike Collins also assisted in a very direct way in this production by reading and rereading various drafts of the manuscript and providing suggestions and corrections that, no doubt to their surprise, I took to heart. Many others also contributed directly to this volume, including Alan Bryan, Jim Chatters, Ruth Gruhn, Jim Richardson, Jerry McDonald, Mike Johnson, Tony Boldurian, Al Goodyear, Paul Goldberg, and Trina Arpin, who graciously provided illustrations.

  Obviously, this volume would not exist without the primary encouragement of Jake Page, who not only broached the idea for a “different look” at the initial colonization ofthe Americas but shouldered the laborious but not thankless task of rendering the archaeological experience accessible to the general reader in ways no one with whom I have ever associated could ever approach. Once begun, our work was immeasurably furthered by the efforts of our agent, Joe Regal, who thought there might be a market for such a tome and quickly found a venue for it in Random House. Once suitably housed, the ultimate configuration of the book was hammered out by our editor, Scott Moyers, while the nuts and bolts ofproduction, design, and copyediting were squired with great skill by Elena Schneider. Assistance in preparing the bibliography was provided by Mia Bruno and Whitney Swan.

  Finally, Jake and I owe special debts of gratitude to Susanne Page and Judith Thomas for actually aiding and abetting our collaboration, reading, rereading, and constructively criticizing our efforts, and pointedly remindingus not to sink into Swiftian misanthropy, tempted as we might be in certain parts of the book. We also owe and gratefully acknowledge an immense debt to Jeff Illingworth, who produced the various drafts of this book, entered the countless changes, corrections, and emendations, criticized our individual and collective failings, solicited and collated the illustrations, and generally acted as the primary interface between ourselves and Random House. In a very real way, this book is as much his as ours.

  OVERTURE

  NOT FOR THE TIMID OF HEART

  Damn!” I said.

  The dates hadn't come as a real surprise. We had suspected we were getting into a nasty realm where traction was poor and plenty of archaeologists before me had spun out. But here they were, two apparently firm dates that would completely change my life. Maybe these two “facts” in front of me—so neatly typewritten, so crisp, so cool—were wrong. I had little reason to think so. Whatever the extent to which I had been steering my career as an archaeologist, it was now about to veer and yaw off into the archaeological badlands. So my first reaction, standing in a ten-foot-deep excavation about thirty-five miles southwest of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was to say, out loud, “Damn.”

  It was July 13, 1974, and I held in my hand a report from an impeccable source, the radiocarbon-dating lab at the Smithsonian Institution. Most Americans rightly considered the Smithsonian the very essence of the Authentic, and archaeologists all knew it as one of the very best dating facilities then in existence. Even so, I knew perfectly well that once my colleagues got wind of these two dates, they would start throwing verbal rocks at me and my crew.

  On the piece of paper in my hand were eleven dates, all of them ordinary, unsurprising, nothing to really catch anyone's attention, except for the two that challenged one of American archaeology's most cherished dogmas.

  The two dates were based on charcoal taken from two firepits, or hearths, near the very bottom layer of soil and rock that lay on top of the bedrock floor of a large shallow “rockshelter” or “rock overhang” called Meadow-croft Rockshelter. They said that humans had been there using these two hearths in about 13,000 B.C. (The actual dates were 12,975 [H11006] 650 B.C. and 13,170 [H11006] 165 B.C.) That meant that people had been here in western Pennsylvania some four thousand years before any human being was supposed to have set foot anywhere in this hemisphere. That no one had been here as early as these dates suggested was a tenet of archaeology that had come about in the 1930s, when a distinct kind of stone spear point had been discovered near Clovis, New Mexico, associated with the bones of a mammoth. Clovis Man, a mighty hunter, the dogma went, was the first here, and the dogma had survived hundreds of challenges in the intervening forty years.

  J. M. Adovasio during the 1975 excavations at Meadowcroft Rockshelter.

  In 1975, just a year later, we obtained more dates that confirmed the first ones. These were announced in an archaeological journal and picked up by The Washington Post, which published the news a couple of days before President Nixon resigned his office. With the future of the Republic in some jeopardy, nobody much cared about my dates or what most normalpeople would consider a relatively minor flap in a fairly arcane subject of little contemporary import: When did the first humans reach North America?

  General view of Meadowcroft Rockshelter from the south bank of Cross Creek, facing north.

  But it seems that when the future of the Republic is secure, the World Series is decided, and other major preoccupations are satisfied, the American public does like to get caught up in a good controversy, even on so remote a subject as the populating of the New World at some time long before memory. That subject has never been more controversial than in the past few years, and not just in academic circles. It has recently erupted onto the covers of newsmagazines and even into federal courts. It has been said that academic disputes are so bitterly waged because the outcomes are of so little lasting importance. This one, however, has stirred up not only scholars but also many of today's Native American peoples by casting doubt on the legitimacy of their claim to be the descendants of the first Americans. It even brought a momentary epiphany to a band of Scandinavian-American loonies who, in their fifteen minutes of fame, laid fleeting claim to the title (and lands) of the first Americans. In the field of North American archaeology— almost never a realm of courteous and collegial discussions over a bit ofbrandy before a toasty fire—it would be putting it mildly to say that hackles have been raised. The work of lifetimes has been put at risk, reputations have been damaged, an astounding amount of silliness and even profound stupidity has been taken as serious thought, and always lurking in the background of all the argumentation and gnashing of tenets has been the question of whether the field of archaeology can ever be pursued as a science.

  My intention, back in the early 1970s, was to involve myself in nothing of this sort. Up to 1974, I was looking forward to a career teaching the most rigorous techniques of field archaeology and a lifetime as an expert in a tiny pond in the mostly stone-filled archaeological landscape. I studied the artifacts that tend to turn up the least often in the archaeological record: baskets, cloth, cordage, nets, sandals, and the like. These are called perishable artifacts for the obvious reason that they tend to rot away over time, vanishing from the record, unlike a stone arrowhead, which can lie in the ground dormant but intact for eons.

  But now I was going to turn out to be the latest of many to tilt at what has been called the Clovis Bar.

  Schematic of a Clovis point from Blackwater Draw, New Mexico, drawn by S. Patricia.

  The Clovis Bar went up soon after the first Clovis spear points were found. They were exquisitely made, the result of very fine, very controlled chipping, or flaking, and were also “fluted,” meanin
g that a long verticalflake was chipped off both sides of the point's base in order to produce grooves. This so-called fluting was unique in the archaeological record anywhere on the planet: only in America. Clovis points then began to turn up here and there around the West and then elsewhere, all the way to the Atlantic Ocean and even on down into Mexico and points south.

  Having been found with mammoth remains, Clovis points clearly were the work of people who lived in North America during the last Ice Age, which scholars at the time were sure had ended around 10,000 years ago. As the decades went by, an accurate dating technique—radiocarbon dating—permitted many Clovis finds to be dated with some precision. It turned out that these people lived between 11,250 and 10,550 years ago (or from 9250 years B.C. to 8550 B.C.). Then, suddenly, humans didn't make Clovis points anymore. More important, no one could find any evidence that people had lived in North America earlier than Clovis Man. This, then, was the Clovis Bar, and while some archaeologists over the years announced new evidence that humans had been here at an earlier date, most North American archaeologists were not merely content with the bar but built their scholarly career on its foundation.

  Frankly, in the early 1970s, I didn't give much of a hoot about Clovis Man. Most of my research with perishable artifacts had been done in the Great Basin area of the West on what is called Archaic material, artifacts that were more recent than Clovis. To the extent that I had ever bothered to think about it, I believed the idea that Clovis Man had leapt fully armed (out of the head of some Siberian Zeus) into midcontinent and proceeded to overrun the hemisphere in less than a millennium to be, at best, an oversimplified notion and, at worst, hopelessly naive if not simply dumb. To my mind, the Clovis First hypothesis did not allow enough time for the diversity of lifeways that had come into being shortly after the last Clovis point was chipped 10,500 years ago—not to mention the diversity that appeared to exist even during Clovis Man's tenure.