Across Atlantic Ice

by Dennis J. Stanford

  The following are the conclusions we have reached in our various areas of inquiry. Although we contend that flaked stone technology is a better indication of historical connections than tool form, the profession has not embraced this assertion in general. Nevertheless, we think that the common assumption that technology was mainly an adaptation to specific needs and would be easily changed by a group is also unfounded. Indeed, we have only to look at what was done with some of the major technologies, such as microblade, to demonstrate the fallacy of this notion. Microblade tools and technology dominate archaeological assemblages at one time or another in every ecological zone, from the Sahara desert to the high Arctic.

  We contend that the more basic a technology, the more likely its independent invention. By the same token, we conclude that complex technologies that shared highly detailed and specific methods were unlikely to have been independently developed. The possibility of their historical relatedness would of course depend on a plausible link in time and space. Since this exists for Solutrean, pre-Clovis, and Clovis, we conclude that the high degree of correspondence between their flaked stone technologies indicates a historical relatedness.

  It is an amusing coincidence that a Frankish king indirectly lent his name to such a contentious issue in North American archaeology! Based on its appearance in textbooks, Clovis is probably the best known ancient culture in the Americas, but do we really know much about it? We think not. The popular image of a specialized mammoth-hunting society, meandering around the semi-arid west, is giving way to a much more interesting story. For instance, we now see that small animals—including fish, reptiles, and amphibians (and their eggs)—and nuts and berries made up much of the Clovis diet.

  We have also become aware of large, long-term habitations where Clovis folks settled, built structures, and produced objects of portable art. Settlement was densest and probably longest in the east. The Gault Site in Texas and a late radiocarbon date of 10,765±25 from Jake Bluff in Oklahoma hint that Clovis occupation crossed the animal extinction boundary at the end of the last ice age. This indicates that Clovis was probably longer lived than we thought.

  Rather than being adapted to a single environment, Clovis ranges from subarctic to subtropical climes, with no change in flaked tool technology or inventory. Based on where Clovis finds have been made and the origins of identifiable stones at these sites, Clovis folks were consummate explorers.

  Although we have found little evidence of Clovis art other than a few engraved bones, ivory objects, and pebbles, their knappers were extraordinary artists. Their flaking went well beyond what was necessary to make a functional tool, and they left behind caches of some of the most beautiful pieces of flintwork seen anywhere. It is clear that Clovis came from a deep, rich heritage and expressed some of this in a formalized flaking tradition. Clovis people’s technique of thinning the bases of spear points, known to us as fluting, is unique in the world, was practiced and perfected by their descendants, and then vanished.

  In archaeological terms, Clovis sprang into being, spread throughout North America and into South America, and gave rise to innumerable regional cultures around 13,000 years ago, at the dawn of the Holocene. Who were these people? How could their culture spread so quickly in 200 or so years over such a vast region with little to no change? And where and who did they come from?

  There is only a small amount of evidence of people in North America before Clovis. Surprisingly, it is not in the northern Great Plains, where theories have predicted it would be. Most of the earliest evidence comes from eastern North America. The sites in the Chesapeake Bay predate all of the archaeological remains documented in eastern Beringia, and they overlap with the Solutrean in southwestern Europe. More early deposits are being encountered on the eastern shore, and tantalizing finds are being made on the deeply submerged continental shelf. There are also strong hints of earlier humans in the lower Great Lakes region, and new possibilities are cropping up in the central plains. As more early sites are validated and documented, we will get better at predicting where additional ones should be and will undoubtedly find more. The recognition of these early artifact types by professional archaeologists and amateur collectors alike will also lead to new discoveries.

  Our evaluation of the Beringian data is that there is no evidence of Clovis ancestors in Siberia. The oldest fluted points in Alaska are younger than western Clovis and much younger than the early sites in eastern North America. Even if we discount these dates, there are no good technological candidates for a thinned biface, large blade tradition in Beringia. Beringia today, especially on the Asian side, is one of the coldest and most inhospitable places on earth. Only Antarctica rivals it. Imagine what it must have been like during the even colder and stormier glacial period. And this is where we expect to see intrepid waves of migrants in search of a better place to live? Perhaps some did penetrate into the area, but not on a large scale until after the LGM.

  It is generally agreed that Denali, the oldest dated culture of Alaska, is directly derived from the Dyuktai culture of northeastern Siberia. We concur with this conclusion, but upon what is it based? It is the similarities between the two assemblages and the slightly older dates for Dyuktai. This makes good archaeological sense. So why not use the same criteria to identify an ancestral Clovis culture? Our comparisons of these assemblages clearly indicate there are few similarities between Clovis and either Dyuktai or Denali, but there are a great many similarities shared among Clovis, pre-Clovis, and Solutrean technologies and tools.

  There is increasing evidence that a habitable land route through the northwest American ice-free corridor was not available before Clovis times. When a passable corridor did open, the evidence points to people moving northward up the corridor when it opened rather than the other way around. We contend it is even likely that people moved through eastern Beringia into northeastern Asia, taking with them a modified continental North American technological tradition like Sluiceway.

  It is possible that, just like the North Atlantic at the end of the ice age, the North Pacific Rim may have served as a route of migration. Research is proceeding along these lines, and there is some promising evidence of a coastal migration that reached southeastern Alaska and western Canada. It is also highly likely that maritime ancestors of Kennewick Man traced their origins to southeast Asians who explored the North Pacific during the LGM. Of course, wherever we look, be it North Atlantic or North Pacific, we must keep in mind that the best evidence is undoubtedly below the waves on the continental shelves. This is also true in southwestern Europe.

  Based on the archaeological evidence we now have, we see multiple movements of people in Beringia at the end of the Pleistocene. The first is traced by the Dyuktai-Denali Complex, which spread from east central Siberia into Alaska, then the Cascade Mountain area of western Canada, and possibly even the northern Great Basin of the American west. The second is a migration of peoples from the Russian Far East who arrived in Alaska in the early Holocene. The third is a movement in the opposite direction: Paleo-American peoples traveled up the expanding ice-free corridor to Alaska’s North Slope and Nenana Valley, then possibly moved into western Beringia.

  If Clovis ancestors did not come from Asia, what other cultures were around that may have been their progenitors? We have looked east and found a very suitable possibility in the form of a biface-thinning, large blade tradition perched on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean at the margin of the southern extent of the sea ice during the LGM. This archaeological culture has been dubbed Solutrean.

  After we decided that the often dismissed idea of a Solutrean origin for Clovis merited more intense scrutiny, we made two extended trips to France and Spain, in 1999 and 2000. We also delved into as much literature as we could get our hands on. (Both of us can read technical literature in Spanish and French.) The main thing we found was that there is no one Solutrean. It is really a mixed bag, with technological differences through both time and geographic regions.

&nbs
p; Collections from Solutrean sites, especially in France, suffered greatly because the sites contained beautiful artifacts. These artifacts were highly sought after and excavated in the early years of Paleolithic archaeology. Few French Solutrean sites have been investigated with modern techniques, and few of these collections are available that contain both large numbers of items and good records, Les Maitreaux being a notable exception.

  Another peculiarity of the Solutrean is that all but a small number of the known sites are in rock shelters or caves. This is partly because that is where archaeologists looked, but there also seems to be a geological explanation: open sites have been deeply buried, as in the Landes area, inundated by the sea, or destroyed by erosion. Whatever the reasons, it is clear that we are looking at only a sample of the sites Solutrean folks left behind, and all of them are inland.

  There has been great debate about where the Solutrean came from, with little resolution. One camp argues for an in-place invention and points to a few developmental technological traits in early assemblages. The other camp dismisses these as insignificant and sees the Solutrean arriving in southwestern Europe as a fully developed culture, but from an unidentified location. This sounds a lot like our Clovis origin debate.

  Even with all of these problems, most researchers agree on a few basic points and have noted some extraordinary aspects of the Solutrean. To begin with, there is general agreement that the flaked stone technology of the Solutrean was based on large blade and thin biface manufacture, unlike the technologies of the Paleolithic cultures that came before or after. Most agree that these people lived in a relatively restricted area with no apparent geophysical boundaries in some directions. Unusual inventiveness and adaptability have also been ascribed to the Solutreans. It seems to be they who invented the spear thrower, heat treatment, and, at least in their Mediterranean expression, the bow and arrow. Whether or not Solutrean folks actually did invent all of these things, they certainly incorporated them into their culture in ways never seen before in the region.

  Many researchers have pointed out how adaptable Solutrean people were in order to make their living in the extreme ice age climate, especially in the upland areas. More than one archaeologist has noted that they were general foragers as well as hunters and the first to really exploit the sea margins, at least in western Europe.

  We can see that Solutrean people were part of the general Upper Paleolithic spiritual-artistic tradition in their excellent cave paintings and engravings. They also added new elements to their art through the selection of colorful exotic stones to make tools, especially the exquisite oversize, ultrathin laurel leafs that were buried in caches, a previously unknown behavior.

  This was a vigorous culture whose roots were deeply embedded in the general Upper Paleolithic but that certainly marched to a different drummer. Its seemingly abrupt appearance in and disappearance from the archaeological record may be less real than it seems. In many places Solutrean deposits are truncated by erosion, and it is unclear how long their culture may have lasted. However, even in the areas where it held sway for perhaps several thousand years, we see little vestige of its existence in the cultures that followed, at least in southwestern Europe.

  We have discussed at length the difficulties archaeologists face when trying to establish historical links between what are essentially made-up ancient cultures. Our research tools are limited and for the most part revolve around connections in time, space, and archaeological remains interpreted through theoretical frameworks. With few exceptions, Paleolithic archaeologists have precious little to work with—no written records, no first-hand accounts, only the wordless things we find and the deductions we make from them.

  There are a number of ways that we can come to some conclusions, but in almost all cases they involve direct comparisons. Comparing assemblages or archaeological cultures is at best a tricky exercise and at worst an exercise in self-fulfilling prophesy. We can decide what we want to conclude and then compare just those traits that support our contentions. The worst results of this approach are the ever-popular trans-oceanic theories of Vikings in Minnesota, Irish monks in New Mexico, and even space aliens in Yucatán.

  We admit that we have selected certain traits and not others for our comparisons. But we have striven to base these selections on comparability between complete bodies of data, not only on what we thought might be fruitful. We have also chosen to use a statistical method, cluster analysis, to objectify the comparisons, knowing full well that at best this method would only weakly support or contradict our subjective assessments. Nevertheless, our cluster analyses have lent support to our interpretations of similarities and differences between assemblages.

  Whatever methods archaeologists apply, using whatever variables, it is paramount that we apply the same criteria in all situations to investigate relatedness. We find it curious that colleagues will discount the importance of similarities between two assemblages in one case, citing coincidence and independent invention, but then use exactly the same approach with other assemblages, find even fewer similarities, and conclude that there is good evidence of relatedness.

  Among the most frequent criticisms against the idea of a Solutrean origin for Clovis are: there is too large a time gap between the end of the Solutrean and the beginning of Clovis; there is no way Paleolithic people could have dealt with the harsh ocean conditions of the last ice age; and there is no evidence that they had boats. We think that all of these suppositions can be reasonably challenged.

  Meadowcroft, Cactus Hill, Miles Point, and Cinmar, along with other likely early sites in North America, should finally put to rest the time issue. There is no longer a chronological gap between the Solutrean and the earliest sites found on the East Coast, but one still exists between the early North American evidence and Clovis. However, sites such as Jefferson Island, Page-Ladson, and Johnson indicate that this gap will close as well.

  When we compare the difficulties of traversing a high Arctic landscape in the coldest place on earth on foot to those of traveling along an ice edge in a small craft, even in an ice age ocean, we think that traveling on the sea in sub-Arctic latitudes would be more feasible. Even Beringia would have been all but impossible to get across without some type of boat. The glacial melt and outwash in the summer would have made for massive river systems that, although smaller today, are still daunting to cross. Of course, people could have waited for the rivers and marshes to freeze over, but then they would have been traveling through a frozen landscape in short daylight and prolonged darkness with reduced or unavailable resources.

  Still, to most people today, crossing the North Atlantic at the height of the ice age would seem to be more difficult. To investigate this, we pulled together the paleoceanography information that is currently available, but this area of research is extremely active, and major changes in interpretation are frequently published. As in any other field of science, there are significant disagreements, and debate about the extent of the ice front and how to assess productivity is the order of the day. Unfortunately, the story of the Titanic has overly influenced the public conception of the North Atlantic. How could “simple” Stone Age people successfully take on such a hostile environment when even our modern technology can so obviously fail?

  We have to completely discard our preconceptions on this point. Although we do not suggest a direct analogy, seeing how historically documented Arctic people have adapted and coped has certainly been enlightening. What we consider hostile, Inuit people consider idyllic. What we think of as impossible, they accept as normal. Their technologies for survival in a cold marine environment are ingenious to us, but archaeologically their nonperishable tools are relatively simple. It is not reasonable to think of Upper Paleolithic people as being any less intelligent than modern people—they just had different survival issues to contemplate. Why is it so hard to imagine Solutreans figuring out ways to take advantage of the North Atlantic environment?

  The issue of boats is one more of
preservation than possibilities or human abilities. There are any number of places around the world where indirect evidence of boats is clear but direct evidence is lacking. Few people would dispute that Micronesia, Polynesia, and Australia had to be colonized by seafaring people, but where are the archaeological watercraft? We find it inconceivable that people as clearly innovative and inventive as the Solutreans would have been unable to come up with the concept and make boats adequate for their needs, be they on glacial rivers or sea margins. In fact, if archaeologists ever develop methods to identify boats in the ancient record, we are sure they will discover a deep history, perhaps as far back as the Lower Paleolithic.

  The majority of the oldest dated sites in the Americas with undisputed artifacts are in the Chesapeake Bay region. The artifacts from these LGM sites are technological and functional equivalents of artifacts from the same period found in southwestern Europe and are not technologically or morphologically related to any east Asian technology. These facts, along with the lack of any possible antecedents of the Chesapeake Bay sites in the rest of North America, indicate that the most parsimonious conclusion is that the early American Paleolithic technologies have their origins in southwestern Europe and that opinions about the productivity of the LGM North Atlantic relative to human exploitation need to be re-evaluated, along with ideas about maritime development and oceanic travel.

  As to direct evidence of the origins of specific groups of people, we suspect that future DNA studies will identify which Old World populations came to the New World and when they arrived. Developments in genetic research have already contributed some intriguing hints of the European origin of early American cultures. But for now, these studies are fraught with difficulties—most are based on modern DNA, results from the analysis of a few pre-Columbian individuals, and even fewer Paleo-Indian readings.