Across Atlantic Ice: The Origin of America's Clovis CultureWho were the first humans to inhabit North America? According to the now familiar story, mammal hunters entered the continent some 12,000 years ago via a land bridge that spanned the Bering Sea. Distinctive stone tools belonging to the Clovis culture established the presence of these early New World people. But are the Clovis tools Asian in origin? Drawing from original archaeological analysis, paleoclimatic research, and genetic studies, noted archaeologists Dennis J. Stanford and Bruce A. Bradley challenge the old narrative and, in the process, counter traditional—and often subjective—approaches to archaeological testing for historical relatedness. The authors apply rigorous scholarship to a hypothesis that places the technological antecedents of Clovis in Europe and posits that the first Americans crossed the Atlantic by boat and arrived earlier than previously thought. Supplying archaeological and oceanographic evidence to support this assertion, the book dismantles the old paradigm while persuasively linking Clovis technology with the culture of the Solutrean people who occupied France and Spain more than 20,000 years ago. |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
Alaska animals antler archaeological cultures archaeologists Arctic assemblages Beringia beveled biface bifacially flaked bison Blackwater Draw blade cores bladelets burins caches Cactus Hill chert Cinmar climatic Clovis artifacts Clovis points Clovis sites cluster coast coastal complex continental shelf deposits early east eastern Beringia end scrapers environment evidence excavations flake scars flaked stone technology flintknappers fluted point Folsom France glaciers Gravettian hafted human hunters hunting ice age ice edge indented base points indicate Island ivory kilometers knappers Last Glacial Maximum Late Dyuktai laurel leafs Magdalenian mammoth manufacture marine mastodon Meadowcroft Nenana North America North Atlantic northern Spain occupation ocean overshot flaking Paleo-Indian platform points figure pre-Clovis pressure flaking produced projectile points radiocarbon dates RCYBP retouched Riera Cave River sea level seals Solutrean sites southwestern Europe spear stone tools Straus suggest surface techniques thinning tool type tradition Upper Paleolithic weapon tips western