Ten years of Solutreans on the ice: a consideration of technological logistics and paleogenetics for assessing the colonization of the Americas

Abstract

In 2004, a theory positing that Western Europeans were among the first peoples to colonize North America was published within the pages of World Archaeology. Ten years later this theory continues to provoke academic debate (Balter 2012; Curry 2012; Runnels 2012; Anderson 2013; Bawaya 2013; Morrow 2014) and ignite public imagination (Cook 2012; Vastag 2012; Coghlan 2012) thanks to the publication of Across Atlantic Ice (Stanford and Bradley 2012), the most recent, comprehensive and accessible presentation of what has come to be known as the “Solutrean Hypothesis”. In considering how debates over entry routes into North America can be taken further, we review the technological logistics of a North Atlantic crossing and Amerindian and European genetics, examining the validity of the Solutrean Hypothesis in 2014.

Keywords:

• First Americans
• Solutrean Hypothesis
• Arctic marine adaptation
• paleogenetics

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Dennis Stanford and Bruce Bradley for their ideas that have inspired our own, and particularly Bruce Bradley for being kind enough to provide encouragement in writing this paper. We would also like to thank Alice Kehoe and Mark White for their comments, Ann Clinnick for her help in editing and formatting, and our anonymous peer reviewers for helping us to greatly improve the quality of this article. Any mistakes are, of course, our own.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

James W. P. Walker

James Walker is currently an AHRC-funded PhD candidate in the Department of Archaeology at Durham University. Prior to his Ph.D., James graduated from Durham with a first class BA in Archaeology, and was awarded a distinction for his M.Phil. in World Prehistory at Cambridge University. His Master’s thesis was awarded the John Evans prize for best dissertation by the Association for Environmental Archaeology. His Ph.D. research focuses on the role of microliths in prehistoric hunting strategies. He is an editor of the upcoming (2014) volume Wild Things: Recent advances in Palaeolithic and Mesolithic research. He also co-chaired a session at the 2012 annual meeting of the AAA entitled: Migration and Diaspora in the Archaeology of the Americas.

David T. G. Clinnick

David Clinnick is currently a doctoral fellow in the Department of Archaeology at Durham University. His undergraduate education took place at Saint Mary’s College of California, graduating cum laude with a BA in Anthropology and Sociology with an emphasis in Archaeology. At Saint Mary’s College, David was recognized for outstanding achievement in archaeological studies and was also inducted into the National Anthropological Honors Society. David continued his studies at Durham University, receiving an MA with distinction from the Department of Archaeology in 2010. He was given a Durham Doctoral Studentship to continue research at Durham University into the evolution of hominin sociality and was a visiting fellow at the Department of Anthropology at Harvard University for Spring 2014.