Experts have responded sharply to a controversial study published earlier this year that sought to challenge the dating of archaeological features at Chile’s famous Monte Verde site.
Excavations that began at Monte Verde decades ago, led by archaeologist Tom Dillehay, established evidence of a human presence at the site as early as 14,500 years ago. The discovery was significant, as it marked the first unequivocal evidence of human presence in the Americas that predates the cultural manifestation known as Clovis, which had long been assumed to be the earliest human presence in the New World.
Those findings, supported by ongoing investigations Dillehay and his colleagues have conducted over the last several decades at Monte Verde, were challenged in March in a study led by archaeologist Todd Surovell, Ph.D., who, along with his colleagues, argued that a fresh analysis of features located near the Monte Verde site suggested it could be younger than previous estimates by as much as several thousand years.
Now Dillehay, who is currently the Rebecca Webb Wilson University Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, Religion, and Culture at Vanderbilt University, and more than two dozen other experts in the archaeology of the early Americas have responded in a series of eLetters published in Science, which argue that Surovell and his colleagues’ findings are not strongly supported by existing evidence.
Pre-Clovis in Southern Chile
Following its discovery in 1976 and Dillehay’s subsequent excavations, Monte Verde has long been considered a cornerstone of early American archaeology. With its array of well-preserved artifacts that include stone tools, as well as wooden structures, botanical remains, and even a human footprint, radiocarbon dating has periodically been undertaken at the site, which consistently places its occupation at an estimated 14,500 years ago.
At the time these discoveries were made, Monte Verde became one of the earliest securely dated human settlements in the Americas. Not only that, it became one of the first major challenges to the then-dominant “Clovis First” paradigm, which insisted that evidence showed the earliest arrivals in North America occurred no earlier than around 13,000 years ago.
Hellbound and Down 