Dennis Stanford, chair of the anthropology department at the Smithsonian Institution, will speak on his controversial suggestion that the "Solutrean Culture" from Europe may well have been among the original colonizers of the Americas.
Sponsored by the CU-Boulder anthropology department and funded by a department alumnus, the Ninth Annual Distinguished Archaeology Lecture will be held at 7 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 31, in room 270 of the Hale Science building. The free public event will be followed by a question-and-answer session with the audience.
Most paleo-archaeologists have long believed the first Americans came from the Siberian region of Asia across the Bering Strait some 12,000 years ago. But Stanford and several colleagues believe they may have evidence that Clovis technology, more common in southeast U.S. prehistory, may have had its roots in upper Europe between 22,500 and 16,000 years ago.
Solutrean is taken from the French village Solutre, where Paleolithic artifacts have been found.
The late Paleolithic stone technology of Siberia was based on "microblades" inset into bone and antler ivory -- a "totally different conception than the Clovis fluted biface projectile points," Stanford wrote. In addition, few radiocarbon-dated tools from the Bering Strait region are much older than 11,000 years old, according to Stanford.
"Professor Stanford is just one in a string of world-class archaeologists we bring in for these annual lectures," said CU-Boulder anthropology Professor Payson Sheets. "This is one of the most interesting and controversial topics in American archaeology."
Stanford points out that ancient mariners arrived on the shores of Australia between 60,000 and 50,000 years ago across the Timor Trough, being out of sight of land for up to 50 miles. He said some archaeologists, including CU-Boulder archaeologist James Dixon, have been researching ancient maritime navigation down the north Pacific in Alaska and Canada.
The tools at Meadowcroft Rock Shelter in Pennsylvania dating to about 14,000 years ago and Cactus Hill in Virginia dating to some 16,000 years ago both contain bifacial projectile points and blades, according to Stanford. The bifacial technology of the tools clearly is similar to Solutrean and Clovis, he said.
"The peopling of the Americas is a complicated issue, and there is no single answer," Stanford said. But he notes the final results of the controversy will rest in paleobiology, the analysis of human remains, and interdisciplinary research.