The Day the Armchair Broke: A Reply to White

ABSTRACT

Since 2009, systematic interdisciplinary investigations on the Alpena-Amberley Ridge in Lake Huron have documented hunting features, stone tools and debitage, and unique paleoenvironmental data reported in numerous peer-reviewed publications. Andrew A. White presents a contrarian critique of this work that attempts to dismiss each find and hypothesis that has been generated by the research. White’s assertions rely on a cherry-picked reading of the literature, outdated typological analogies and paleoenvironmental models, and are rife with contradictions. Yet White is unable to present a convincing or coherent counter-scenario to account for the Lake Huron data. This critique aptly illustrates that there is still much research to be done in the Great Lakes.

KEYWORDS:

• Great Lakes
• underwater archaeology
• Paleoindian
• caribou
• early Holocene

This article refers to:

A Critique of the Case for Paleoindian Caribou Hunting on the Submerged Alpena-Amberley Ridge

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

The research described in this reply has been funded by the National Science Foundation award numbers BCS 0829324, 0964424, 1441241, 1530628, and 1744367, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration award numbers NA100AR0110187 and NA20OAR0110427.

Notes on contributors

Ashley K. Lemke

Dr Ashley Lemke is an Assistant Professor at the University of Texas in Arlington and Chair of the Advisory Council on Underwater Archaeology. She is a leading researcher on the archaeology of hunter-gatherers. She has worked extensively on both terrestrial and underwater archaeological projects from the Lower Paleolithic in Europe to 19th-century Nunamiut archaeological sites in the Arctic. She is an expert on submerged ancient sites in the Americas and has researched such sites in the Gulf of Mexico, Great Lakes, and Atlantic Ocean.