Some Opinions about Monte Verde: Response to Dillehay (2019) and Dillehay, Pino, and Ocampo (2020)

ABSTRACT

This article is a response to Dillehay [2019. “Un ensayo sobre genética, arqueología y movilidad humana temprana.” Mundo de Antes 13 (2): 13–65] and Dillehay, Pino, and Ocampo [2020. “Comments on Archaeological Remains at the Monte Verde Site Complex, Chile.” PaleoAmerica. https://doi.org/10.1080/20555563.2020.1762399], who criticized our comments about Monte Verde-I and Chinchihuapi-I as well as our suggestion of the tightening of the age of Monte Verde-II [Politis, G. G., and L. Prates. 2018. “Clocking the Arrival of Homo sapiens in the Southern Cone of South America.” In New Perspectives on the Peopling of the Americas, edited by K. Harvati, G. Jäger, and H. Reyes Centeno, 79–106. Tübingen: Kerns Verlag]. They claimed that we purposefully ignored pertinent data to support our opinions, and that we made several mistakes when analyzing the evidence. In this article we demonstrate that we did not ignore any relevant data, and that the putative errors are in fact alternative interpretations based on the available data and recent studies about site formation processes.

KEYWORDS:

• Peopling of South America
• radiocarbon chronology
• Monte Verde
• site formation processes
• lithic raw material

Acknowledgements

Adriana Blasi, Agustina Massigoge, Ivana Ozán, Victor Ramos, and James Steele read parts of this paper and provided useful comments.

Disclosure Statement

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

Notes on contributors

Gustavo Politis is Researcher at the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET) and Professor at the Universidad Nacional del Centro de la Provinica de Buenos Aires and at the Universidad National de La Plata, Argentina. His research interests include hunter-gatherer ethnoarchaeology, the peopling of South America, and the archaeology of the Pampas and Northeast of Argentina.

Luciano Prates is Researcher at the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET) and Professor at the Universidad National de La Plata, Argentina. His research interests include the early peopling of South America and the archaeology of Patagonia.

Notes

1 For the sake of simplicity, we use the mid-points in the age range of each calibrated date.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by CONICET: [Grant Number 2737].