Current Understanding of the Earliest Human Occupations in the Americas: Evaluation of Becerra-Valdivia and Higham (2020)

ABSTRACT

Various chronologies of the earliest Native American occupations have been proposed with varying levels of empirical support and conceptual rigor, yet none is widely accepted. A recent survey of pre-Clovis dated sites (Becerra-Valdivia and Higham 2020) concludes a pre-Last Glacial Maximum (>26,500–19,000 cal yr BP) entry of humans in the Americas, in part based on recent work at Chiquihuite Cave, Mexico. We evaluate the evidence used to develop this inference. To provide clarity, we present three explicit dispersal models for the earliest human dispersals to the Americas: Strict Clovis-First (13,050 cal yr BP), Paleoindian (<16,000 cal yr BP), and Pre-Paleoindian (>16,000 cal yr BP, encompassing pre-LGM, preferred by Becerra-Valdivia and Higham (2020)), and we summarize the current genetic and archaeological evidence bearing on each. We regard all purported Pre-Paleoindian sites as equivocal and the Strict Clovis-First model to be equally unsupported at present. We conclude that current data strongly support the Paleoindian Dispersal model, with Native American ancestors expanding into the Americas sometime after 16,000 cal yr BP (and perhaps after 14,800 cal yr BP), consistent with well-dated archaeological sites and with genetic data throughout the western hemisphere. Models of the Americas’ peopling that incorporate Chiquihuite or other claimed Pre-Paleoindian sites remain unsubstantiated.

KEYWORDS:

• First Americans
• last glacial maximum
• pre-Clovis

Postscript

Newly reported human footprints in White Sands, New Mexico, in a stratified sequence dated by aquatic plant seeds to 21,000-23,000 cal yr BP, may be evidence of an earlier occupation episode (Bennett et al. 2021). This research was more rigorous and robust than that conducted at other early sites discussed here, but there remain issues to be resolved before acceptance, including definitively ruling out (1) significant carbon reservoir effects, observed for the genus (Kalanke et al. 2020) and (2) younger trackways overlain by redeposited materials (Rachal et al. 2021). In any event, the White Sands data have no bearing on the quality of data for other purported early sites.

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank Michael Faught, David Meltzer, Bonnie Pitblado, Gustavo Politis, multiple anonymous reviewers, and editor Ted Goebel for helpful comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ben A. Potter

Ben A. Potter is an archaeologist primarily interested in high latitude adaptations, intersite variability, site structure and organization, and long-term history. He has worked in both academia (University of Alaska Fairbanks and now Liaocheng University) and CRM. He leads investigations at the important subarctic sites, including Upward Sun River, Mead, Gerstle River, and Delta River Overlook, and is currently engaged in archaeogenetics, geoarchaeology, and human ecology research directed at understanding the peopling of the Americas.

James C. Chatters

James C. Chatters (PhD University of Washington 1982) is an archaeologist and paleontologist who has published extensively on hunter-gatherer archaeology and bioarchaeology of first Americans, late Pleistocene vertebrate paleontology, and ¹⁴C dating. His recent book, Hunters of the Mid-Holocene Forest, focuses on lithic technology. He is currently Principal Investigator of Proyecto Arqueológico Subacuático Hoyo Negro, a Mexican initiative researching Late Pleistocene human and animal remains in an underwater cave on the Yucatan Peninsula.

Anna Marie Prentiss

Anna Marie Prentiss (PhD Simon Fraser University 1993) is Regents Professor of Anthropology at the University of Montana and co-editor of Hunter-Gatherer Research, the scholarly journal of the International Society for Hunter-Gatherer Research. Her research interests include hunter-gatherers, lithic technology, cultural evolution, and subsistence ecology. She has conducted field research in Chilean Patagonia and North America's Arctic, Pacific Northwest, Great Plains, and Rocky Mountains regions.

Stuart J. Fiedel

Stuart Fiedel (PhD University of Pennsylvania 1979) wrote Prehistory of the Americas (Cambridge University Press) (1987). He has excavated innumerable sites in North America as an academic and CRM archaeologist, and has published many 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.

Gary Haynes

Gary Haynes (PhD Catholic University of America 1981) is Foundation Professor of Anthropology Emeritus at the University of Nevada-Reno. He has carried out archeological research in North America, Zimbabwe, and Poland, and spent four decades doing neo-taphonomic studies of large mammals in the wild.

Robert L. Kelly

Robert L. Kelly is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Wyoming. His research interests include the archaeology and ethnology of hunter-gatherers. He has recently completed a database of >100,000 radiocarbon dates for the lower 48 states, is analyzing a 12,000-year rockshelter record, and is working on a Clovis mammoth kill site, both in Wyoming. The most recent of his books is The Fifth Beginning: What Six Million Years of History Can Tell Us about Our Future (University of California Press).

J. David Kilby

J. David Kilby (PhD, University of New Mexico, 2008) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Texas State University and Director of the Ancient Southwest Texas Project. His research focuses on North American Paleoindians, lithic technology, and geoarchaeology. He has published extensively on Clovis and Folsom lithic technological organization, with a particular emphasis on Clovis caches.

François Lanoë

François Lanoë (PhD University of Arizona 2017) is an archaeologist specialized in the ecology and archaeology of pre-contact hunter-gatherer groups in North America, particularly during the Late Pleistocene and early Holocene in the Northwestern Plains and Alaska. A large part of this research is conducted in close partnership with Native American communities aiming to conciliate traditional and anthropological narratives about the past, and develop professional and educational opportunities for tribal members.

Jacob Holland-Lulewicz

Jacob Holland-Lulewicz (PhD University of Georgia 2018) is currently Lecturer of Archaeology in the Department of Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis. He has worked across North America and has published in national and international journals in the areas of Indigenous sociopolitical organization, the archaeology of institutions, social network analysis, remote sensing, and chronological modeling.

D. Shane Miller

D. Shane Miller (PhD Arizona 2014) is an archaeologist whose main interests are the Ice Age colonization of the Americas and the origins of agriculture in eastern North America. He has authored or co-authored over forty peer-reviewed publications.

Juliet E. Morrow

Juliet E. Morrow (PhD, Washington University in St. Louis, 1996) is a Research Station Archeologist at Arkansas State University and Research Professor of Anthropology at the University of Arkansas-Fayetteville. Morrow edited Paleoindian Archaeology in 2006 and has focused on the Paleoindian period and multidisciplinary studies of hunter-gatherer lifeways, stone tool technology, and Pleistocene/Early Holocene ecology. She is currently conducting fieldwork in northeast Arkansas.

Angela R. Perri

Angela Perri (PhD Durham University 2014) is a zooarchaeologist who specializes in human-animal interactions, carnivores, and domestication. Her recent research has examined dog domestication and the peopling of the Americas.

Kurt M. Rademaker

Kurt Rademaker (PhD, University of Maine 2012) is an archaeologist who investigates hunter-gatherer adaptations and human-environment interactions in Andean South America. He has led archaeological survey and excavation projects throughout the US and Peru and participated in field research on volcanic and glacial geomorphology. His current research is focused on Terminal Pleistocene to Middle Holocene settlement dynamics and biocultural adaptations in the high Andes.

Joshua D. Reuther

Joshua D. Reuther (PhD Arizona 2013) is the Curator of Archaeology at the University of Alaska Museum of the North and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. His research interests include reconstructing the evolution of Beringian landscapes over the last 20,000 years, and understanding the response of humans to climate change in arctic and subarctic environments.

Brandon T. Ritchison

Brandon T. Ritchison (PhD University of Georgia 2019) is an archaeologist interested in the relationships between mobility, demography, and the emergence and transformation of socio-political institutions in pre-colonial Eastern North America. His research on the Native American history of the Southern Atlantic coast of North America, focusing on large-scale population movements, settlement analysis, and chronology building, has been published in national and international journals.

Guadalupe Sanchez

Guadalupe Sanchez (PhD University of Arizona 2010). Is a member of the Mexican National System of Researchers. She has studied the geoarchaeology and lithic technology of sites in Northern Mexico for 20 years; together with hunter-gather prehistory, paleoethnobotany, and paleoecology of Northern Mexico. Her research has led to over 50 articles in international journals and books. Her 2016 book Los Primeros Mexicanos: Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene People of Sonora, received honorable mention for best archaeological Investigation in Mexico.

Ismael Sánchez-Morales

Ismael Sánchez-Morales (MA University of Arizona 2015) is a PhD candidate at the School of Anthropology of the University of Arizona, who specializes in the study of land-use patterns of archaeological hunter-gatherer societies through the analysis of lithic technologies. His research focuses on the Paleoindian and Archaic occupations of NW Mexico and the American Southwest and on the Middle Stone Age of the Maghreb. Currently he directs excavations at El Fin del Mundo Clovis site in Sonora, Mexico.

S. Margaret Spivey-Faulkner

S. Margaret Spivey-Faulkner (PhD Washington University in St. Louis 2018) is an Indigenous anthropological archaeologist, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Alberta, and an Assistant Chief of the Upper Georgia Tribal Town of the Pee Dee Indian Nation of Beaver Creek. Her primary research is on hunting, gathering, and fishing people in the southeastern United States. She also conducts research employing archaeological findings to reinforce Indigenous sovereignties in North America.

Jesse W. Tune

Jesse W. Tune (Ph.D. Texas A&M University 2015) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado. He is a prehistoric archaeologist who studies Pleistocene human migrations and the colonization of new landscapes. His research focuses on investigating the relationships between humans and the environment – specifically how humans adapt to new or changing environments.

C. Vance Haynes

Vance Haynes, Regents Professor Emeritus in the School of Anthropology and the Department of geosciences, University of Arizona, is a geoarchaeologist who specializes in the geochronology of Paleoindian sites, and the peopling of the Americas.