Texas A&M's Dating of Artifacts Discovered at Hueyataco,

[DougWeller]

Doesn't it get at all boring using this mythical 'Club' as an excuse?

Archaeologists love the Internet because it opens up so many possbilities to share information, particularly databases.

Doug

[Minimalist]

It's naive to insist that there is no "establishment," Doug. There is. In every field.

They may not have much control over amateurs but professionals need to be wary of crossing them.

In fields such as medicine and law they have made it a crime for non-club members to practice. Fortunatelly, archaeology does not have that kind of power.

[Manystones]

Even the best "models" need to be constantly re-examined, reappraised and reviewed. Just seems sometimes that the official line can be so inflexible as to preclude real discussion.

[Charlie Hatchett]

Even the best "models" need to be constantly re-examined, reappraised and reviewed. Just seems sometimes that the official line can be so inflexible as to preclude real discussion.

I second that.

[Cognito]

In fields such as medicine and law they have made it a crime for non-club members to practice. Fortunatelly, archaeology does not have that kind of power.

Just try picking up anything old on BLM land in California and you'll see just how much power archaeologists have while you're viewing events from behind bars. The Antiquities Act is alive and well here, albeit not run by any "Club". BTW, if being a PhD gets me into the Club ... will a Doctor of Divinity from a Wheaties boxtop do?

[Minimalist]

Try practicing medicine in your own home and they will still cart you off to jail.

See the difference?

[Cognito]

Try practicing medicine in your own home and they will still cart you off to jail. See the difference?

Sure, unless your home falls in a California historic preservation area. Start digging in the back yard without a permit and you'll wind up in jail just as fast. Every commercial project out here requires an archaeologist to accompany the grading of a new site just in case something old is found. If it is, your project is screwed.

[DougWeller]

There is an 'establishment', but the question is how powerful is it?

Most archaeolgists in the US do not work within academia. Their money comes from developers, etc. No publish or perish for them. No worry about acadmic grants.

[DougWeller]

In fields such as medicine and law they have made it a crime for non-club members to practice. Fortunatelly, archaeology does not have that kind of power.

Just try picking up anything old on BLM land in California and you'll see just how much power archaeologists have while you're viewing events from behind bars. The Antiquities Act is alive and well here, albeit not run by any "Club". BTW, if being a PhD gets me into the Club ... will a Doctor of Divinity from a Wheaties boxtop do?

I certainly don't think people should be allowed to help themselves to artefacts from public lands, why shouldn't they get in trouble? But as you say, this has nothing to do with any 'club'.

[Beagle]

All government lands in the US and in Canada as well I think prohibit the removal any flora, fauna, rocks, or minerals unless specifically allowed (such as a few places where you may pan for gold for example).

[Charlie Hatchett]

Here's an interesting post made by lithic expert, Chris Hardaker, over at the Ma'at forum:

Re: Valsequillo dating
Posted by: Chris Hardaker (IP Logged)
Date: October 29, 2006 09:28AM


Howdy Folks,

I have been reading a number of the posts on Valsequillo and, both good and bad, I can really empathize with the questions, doubts, and all the other takes on the subject. I first heard of the place in 1977 when I visited Calico for the first time. It was before Virginia et al's paper was published in 1981, and it sounded as amazing then as it does now. Modern (Upper Paleolithic) artifacts in a 250k+ context. (Yeah, right!) I can also empathize with Mike Waters and his initial take on the site. I was down there in 2001 when they opened up Hueyatlaco for the first time archaeologically since 1966. I knew there had to be a rational explanation, like insets or somesuch and that everyone who had looked at the site previously must have really f#$!!ked up somehow, that it was really a no-brainer, that there was no way such a technological component could be that old. 20-40k, no problema, in my mind. My deep down problems about the site were purely social: why did my archaeological elders never go back? There were multiple art pieces as well as artifacts recovered from the general region.

5 weeks and ten hours of footage later, I saw no obvious unconformities that would allow insets. But I'm no geologist. The geologists that were there could not see any either. There was a lot of talk about facies changes, where the sands, silts and clays tend to grade down to silts and clays and then only clays as the stream losing steam, so to speak, as it enters a marsh or somesuch. All I can say is there were no obvious breaks in the stratigraphy that demonstrated insets. In 2004, Waters thinks he found an unconformity on the west end of the site. Diatoms seem to reject that notion, and the original lead geologist, Hal Malde, calls Mike's idea a vacant hypothesis. Mike's insets would have left some kind of unconformity from the top to the bottom of the Valsequillo Gravels and there are no signs of these features. It is all still quite complex and mind-bending but hopefully during the next year things will be a bit clearer.

About the new dates, Paul Renne, hired by Waters for Argon/argon dating, pulled out some gut-wrenching dates.
Stratigraphy

Lake beds
Hueyatlaco Ash -- 1.1 million (is that BP or BC, I forget -- ha ha)
Lakebeds
Creek sediments (artifact beds)
Lake Beds
Xalnene Tuff -- 1.3 million (same Tuff as the Footprints a few miles away found by Sylvia Gonzalez)

So things have gotten a bit crazy down there again.
Thing is, scientific protocols advise that Renne reconcile these dates with all past dating techniques that seem to center on a 200-400k date. He must state why his dates are good, and all others were full of s___; this has yet to happen so we are still in a limbo. Fenne published his 1.3ma dates in response to Gonzalez's announcement of roughly 40k dates, but he has published nothing about the Hueyatlaco Ash dates. Why? I haven't the foggiest, but it has been over a two year wait.

My thing is lithics and not geochemistry. But there is one thing that I can understand that happened back at the site around the time Malde, Fryxell and Virginia were there in 1973.
JC Liddicoat checked the polarity of the Hueyatlaco Ash and the sediments below it. He found normal polarity which means a date less than 780k. The Ar/Ar dates have to be reconciled with this, at least. Expect another attenpt to examine polarity again.

Liddicoat, J.C., R.S. Coe, P.W. Lambert, H.E. Malde, and V. Steen-McIntyre, 1981, Paleomagnetic investigation of Quaternary sediment at Tlapacoya, Mexico, and at Valsequillo, Puebla, Mexico, Geofisica International, 20:3, pp.249-262.

Anyway, I am glad to hear there is interest in the discoveries again. God willing, my book on the subject should be out by late Spring called The First American. Hopefully it will fill in some holes. It still leaves the main question unanswered: Why did nobody ever go back? Both Vance Haynes and Paul Martin were involved with the finds, though tangentially. Still we had to suffer with Clovis First for the next thirty years even though the minimal dates of 20k were generally accepted by everyone at the time. They came from a tributary several miles away called Caulapan. The buzz back then was to thus establish a stratigraphic link to the sites on the Tetela Peninsula (El Horno, Tecacaxco and Hueyatlaco). That's when Barney Szabo tried out his U-Series dating method. The rest is history... Point is, there was EVERY indication that the artifacts were coming out of beds that had Clovis beat by at least ten thousand years, and they still flushed it down the toilet. grrrrr. All I can figure is Clovis Groupthink plus Isolationism = orthodox. Heresy would be anything else, especially in a boat-free paradigm like that.

With respect to the Upper Paleolithic tech in 200k+ sediments, the best thing I can offer is a reference to the new and improved look at Africa's Middle Stone Age. Opened my eyes.

McBrearty, S. & Brooks, A. 2000. The revolution that wasn't: a new interpretation of the origin of modern human behaviour. Journal of Human Evolution 39(5): 453-563

The Upper Paleolithic had to start somewhere and they found prepared platform tech going back 330k with blades, and then bifaces, all during the Middle Stone Age of Africa. Takes up the entire issue. Prepare yourself though. Have a bottle of scotch handy.


Chris Hardaker
Tucson

ps. And I think I have finally found that rational explanation: We don't know enough yet to know what is impossible and what is not. We are still students of our ancestors. If you want to see what I mean, Google: Erectus Ahoy.
You might want to have some mushrooms on hand for this one.

Lmao @ "You might want to have some mushrooms on hand for this one."

[Minimalist]

Sounds as if his book may well be worth reading.

Let me know when it comes out, Charlie.

[Cognito]

Might eventually explain this:

http://deseretnews.com/dn/print/1,1442, ... 98,00.html

[Minimalist]

A claim of 250,000-year-old human tools near Mexico's Valsequillo reservoir was widely laughed at in the 1970s, though other researchers are once again working at that area.

A standard tactic of The Club....certainly easier than investigating.

[Charlie Hatchett]

Fenne published his 1.3ma dates in response to Gonzalez's announcement of roughly 40k dates, but he has published nothing about the Hueyatlaco Ash dates. Why? I haven't the foggiest, but it has been over a two year wait.

I'd guess political pressure had something to do with it.