Dating of a large tool assemblage at the Cooper's Ferry site (Idaho, USA) to ~15,785 cal yr B.P. extends the age of stemmed points in the Americas

Loren G Davis, David B Madsen, David A Sisson, Lorena Becerra-Valdivia, Thomas Higham, Daniel Stueber, Daniel W Bean, Alexander J Nyers, Amanda Carroll, Christina Ryder, Matt Sponheimer, Masami Izuho, Fumie Iizuka, Guoqiang Li, Clinton W Epps, F Kirk Halford

Publications: Contribution to journalArticlePeer Reviewed

Abstract

The timing and character of the Pleistocene peopling of the Americas are measured by the discovery of unequivocal artifacts from well-dated contexts. We report the discovery of a well-dated artifact assemblage containing 14 stemmed projectile points from the Cooper's Ferry site in western North America, dating to ~16,000 years ago. These stemmed points are several thousand years older than Clovis fluted points (~13,000 cal yr B.P.) and are ~2300 years older than stemmed points found previously at the site. These points date to the end of Marine Isotope Stage 2 when glaciers had closed off an interior land route into the Americas. This assemblage includes an array of stemmed projectile points that resemble pre-Jomon Late Upper Paleolithic tools from the northwestern Pacific Rim dating to ~20,000 to 19,000 years ago, leading us to hypothesize that some of the first technological traditions in the Americas may have originated in the region.

Original languageEnglish
Article numbereade1248
JournalScience Advances
Volume8
Issue number51
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Dec 2022

Austrian Fields of Science 2012

  • 106018 Human biology

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