A Chronometric Study of the Peopling of the Americas

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Constructing Chronologies II: The Big Picture with Bayes and Beyond" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The initial peopling of the Americas marks a major event in the expansion of modern humans across the planet. Questions associated with this dispersal remain, however, largely unanswered, with the previously accepted model, “Clovis-first,” effectively refuted. Considering that timing is fundamental in the study of human dispersals, our research focused on defining a robust chronology using radiocarbon dating and Bayesian age modeling. This involved building site- and region-level Bayesian age models using chronometric data from 42 archaeological sites across North America and Beringia, which fall within specific technological and temporal categories. The chronology produced allowed us to elucidate spatiotemporal patterns of human dispersal, and the results were integrated with available genetic and climatic evidence. Our analysis showed that humans were probably present before, during, and immediately after the LGM (~26.5–19 kya), but that more widespread occupation began later, during a period of abrupt warming (~14.7–12.9 kya). We also identified the near-synchronous commencement of Beringian, Clovis, and Western Stemmed cultural traditions, and an overlap of each with the last dates for the appearance of 18 extinct faunal genera. These results suggest that human expansion and population growth were likely important factors in megafaunal extinctions.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Constructing Chronologies II: The Big Picture with Bayes and Beyond   •
• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32899