The Arlington Springs site is located on an island in the northern Channel Islands off the coast of southern California in the western United States. The site, excavated by Phil C. Orr in the 1950s, is a deeply stratified alluvial site, belonging with a group of sites called the Paleocoastal Tradition such as Daisy Cave and Eel Point. Eleven meters below the surface of the site were the partial skeletal remains of a single adult female, thought to have been washed into the site.
Although Orr believed the bones were dated to 10,000 years ago, recent reanalysis of the data indicates that Arlington Springs Woman, as the skeleton is known, is between 10,900 and 13,500 years old, and thus one of the very few skeletal remains associated with Paleoindian period in the New World.
Sources
This glossary entry is a part of the About.com guide to the Paleoindian Period, and the Dictionary of Archaeology.
Orr, Phil C. 1962 The Arlington Spring Site, Santa Rosa Island, California. American Antiquity 27(3):417-419.
Kennett, Douglas J. 2005. The Island Chumash: Behavioral Ecology of a Maritime Society. University of California Press, Berkeley.
Waters, Michael R. and Thomas W. Stafford Jr. 2007 Redefining the Age of Clovis: Implications for the Peopling of the Americas. Science 315:1122-1126.
