Nunataks and Valley Glaciers: Over the Mountains and Through the Ice

Summary

The first peopling of the Americas is characterized by either a coastal route or an ice free corridor during the late Wisconsin glaciation, when continental ice still covered the north half of the continent. While the pendulum has swung somewhat towards the coastal route, no smoking gun exists that will deliver a champion in this controversy. With this paper we would like to present a third option – the “Icy Corridor.” We argue that a corridor is an unnecessary feature for Clovis predecessors terrestrial arrival below the ice sheets. In this presentation we review the recent genomic data and consider its compatibility with a re-visioned Alberta/Rockies corridor.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• After Anzick: Reconciling New Genomic Data and Models with the Archaeological Evidence for Peopling of the Americas

Keywords

Spatial Coverage