Pioneers from Northern Japan in Idaho 16,000 Years Ago? A Critical Evaluation of the Evidence from Cooper’s Ferry

ABSTRACT

Davis et al. (2019) recently presented the results of excavations at the Cooper’s Ferry site, located beside the Salmon River in Idaho. They claim that initial occupation of this site dates from ∼16,000 calendar years ago, that the first inhabitants came from northern Japan, and that this site conclusively demonstrates that “humans initially migrated into the Americas along the Pacific coast.” Here, we critically examine the chronological, geoarchaeological, and artifactual evidence for the claimed antiquity of the Cooper’s Ferry site and show that this evidence remains inconclusive. We also show that the coastal migration theory proposed by Davis et al. is incompatible with emerging paleogenomic evidence. We conclude that the oldest demonstrated occupation of Cooper’s Ferry dates to ∼11,500 calendar years ago, although ambiguous evidence might (but probably does not) indicate an earlier episode of occupation at ∼14,600–14,100 calendar years ago.

KEYWORDS:

• Cooper’s Ferry
• coastal migration
• Western Stemmed Tradition
• pre-Clovis

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Stephan Schiffels, Bastian Llamas, and Pavel Flegontov for their helpful comments on our discussion of genetic evidence. We thank Yu Hirasawa for providing details of Hokkaido chronology. We also appreciate the helpful suggestions of three anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors

Stuart J. Fiedel earned his BA in Anthropology at Columbia University, and his doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania in 1979. His original specialty was the Neolithic archaeology of the Near East. Since 1986, Fiedel has worked in cultural resource management archaeology. He published Prehistory of the Americas in 1987. He has also published numerous articles on diverse topics in New and Old World archaeology, including radiocarbon calibration, megafaunal extinctions, the origins of the European Neolithic, Algonquian languages and migrations, and Paleoindians.

Ben A. Potter is an archaeologist primarily interested in high latitude adaptations, intersite variability, site structure and organization, and long-term history, with a geographic emphasis in the Subarctic. He has worked in both academia (University of Alaska Fairbanks and now Liaocheng University) and cultural resource management. Potter leads investigations at several important subarctic sites, including Upward Sun River, Mead, Gerstle River, and Delta River Overlook, and is currently engaged in multiple research projects involving archaeogenetics, geoarchaeology, and human ecology geared towards understanding the peopling of the Americas.

Juliet E. Morrow is a station archeologist for the Arkansas Archeological Survey. She is a specialist in Paleoindian typology and lithic technology. Her major publications in this field include a volume she edited, Paleoindian Archaeology, a Hemispheric Perspective (2006). Morrow's other research interests include site formation processes, lithic materials, and ritual behavior.

Michael K. Faught, PhD University of Arizona 1996, has been semi-retired and “self-tenured” since 2017. Faught, perhaps best known for pioneering research on submerged landscapes, has spent the majority of his career in the CRM industry, focusing on pre-contact maritime archaeology and geomorphology. Faught continues to compile consilient data from the four fields of anthropology with the goal of constructing a coherent model for the peopling of the Americas.

C. Vance Haynes Jr is Regents' Professor Emeritus at the University of Arizona. He has had a long and distinguished career as a pioneering geoarchaeologist working in North America and northern Africa. In 1990 he was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences. Haynes is well known for his research and many publications on radiocarbon dating and geoarchaeological contexts. He has often stressed the use of multiple working hypotheses to explain stratigraphic sequences. Haynes continues his Paleoindian research while he prepares a publication on Springfield 1875 officers' rifles.

James C. Chatters is an archaeologist and paleoecologist who has worked throughout the western United States and Mexico for over 50 years, studying the remains of many of the continent's earliest human inhabitants. He is a leading expert in the prehistory of the Columbia Plateau, where he has addressed broad patterns of hunter-gatherer adaptation from a macroevolutionary perspective. Now officially retired, Chatters consults and conducts paleoanthropological and paleontological research in the Yucatan Peninsula.