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Weekly Chat from About Archaeology
Moderated by Pat Garrow and K. Kris Hirst
Transcript: March 4, 2001: Speaker Dr. Tom Dillehay (University of Kentucky).
| .You are at: Page 4. Go to: Page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 | |
| Wayne | Coming from the opposite direction of sound bites, Tom, have you found that your book has enlightened many others on the differences between archeology in north vs. south America? I know it has for me. |
| Tom Dillehay | Wayne: I hope so. There are major differences. The most significant is the unifacial industries down south, which are very similar to those, curiously in Australia. Glad the book helped. |
| jharder | Tom, you indicated that you are currently working in Peru. What led you there? |
| Tom Dillehay | I did my Ph.D. work in Peru and have worked there every year since. Perhaps because the sites aren't so early few people know about this aspect. |
| Pat Garrow | what types of other sites have you worked on there Tom? |
| Tom Dillehay | : My initial work was with large Inca sites; later with Archaic and Formative (Woodland like) sites. |
| Pat Garrow | interesting path to early sites Tom |
| calico | Dr. Dillehay, any comments regarding the passing of Scotty MacNeish and his work in Peru (or at Pendejo Cave or elsewhere)? |
| Tom Dillehay | I knew Scotty well. He attained the maximum-hard worker and hard player. He was a great archaeologist; he had a good nose for the insightful data, albeit in later years his methods fell off a bit. As for Pendejo, I have problems with it; nonetheless, there are things (clay fingerprints and exotic pebbles?) that puzzle me. I hope the site is published. |
| Pat Garrow | hard to put humans in Pendejo as early as Scotty thought in my opinion |
| jharder | Why did you decide to move from the Inca to the earlier sites? |
| Tom Dillehay | The decision was made for me; Monte Verde came to me and I decided to test the site. |
| mohr | 'scuze me, but what are the Pendejo dates? |
| Pat Garrow | over 30,000 aren't they? |
| calico | yes |
| coop | 50k |
| mohr | That's dramatic |
| calico | We have other sites in the U.S. that date even earlier |
| Tom Dillehay | Pendejo dates vary, depending on what you date and read; they can go from 25 to 40k or more. |
| Pat Garrow | You said earlier that you think the arrival of the first people in the Americas will eventually be pushed back to 20k Tom. What do you think the earlier assemblages will look like? |
| Tom Dillehay | Pat Garrow: Don't know. It seems clear that unifaces just are not prevalent or non-existent in North America. Of course, they may exist in very small numbers but we don't "see them". The earliest assemblages may indeed b like what you see at Cactus Hill and Topper and lets not forget Meadowcroft. . |
| Pat Garrow | the Cactus Hill and topper assemblages look very different from what I understand. must beg ignorance of the early occupation at Meadowcroft beyond knowledge it exists |
| calico | We have old unifaces of the "Lake Manix Lithic Industry" on the surface in the Manix Basin of the Central Mojave Desert of Southern California (near Yermo) |
| IreneH1 | And at what k level does it become problematic? |
| coop | why quit excavating at 12k? |
| mohr | once again, is there any evidence to tie these sites together in the same sense that we discuss Clovis? |
| Tom Dillehay | Mohr: No, not like Clovis which is tied together by a narrow range of dates and a very clear diagnostic point. But Clovis may be exceptional. If one looks to other areas of the world, Korea, Australia, parts of China etc, there is no clear-cut early or first culture with a nicely defined diagnostic like Clovis. Let's face it, some early cultures may have been more diversified and less formalized than we thought. |
| nali | yes, and they may not all have been successful either. A lot of the time we look at these collections and try to establish some kind of continuity where it just can't exist |
| Pat Garrow | I understand there are some formal bifaces from Cactus Hill that may be ancestral to Clovis. Have you seen any of those Tom? |
| Tom Dillehay | I have seen some bifaces from Cactus Hill. Some look roughly similar to the deeper bifaces in Meadowcroft and, in some ways, represent the kinds of lanceolate-like points that should be early. |
