Archaeologica.org

You wouldn't think that would be a problem for a retiree, would you.

But I'm running a dog rescue and the little darlings need almost constant attention.

I know how that is.


My image

And, there can always be the unexpected.


[Not my image]

Awww.....

Farpoint wrote:Maybe now would be a good time to introduce the PIDBA, The Paleoindian Database of the Americas.

The Paleoindian Database of the Americas

Hello

I was looking through the pictures of points listed under Pennsylvania. I was struck by how colorful some of them are. Is this an enhancement of some sort such as NASA does with its pictures of the cosmos . It's quite something to see the striking blues, golds, and greens.

I really have no reason or way of knowing if you have any first hand knowledge of this or not but I thought I'd give it a shot.
thanks
Ernie

Ernie L wrote:

Farpoint wrote:Maybe now would be a good time to introduce the PIDBA, The Paleoindian Database of the Americas.

The Paleoindian Database of the Americas

Hello

I was looking through the pictures of points listed under Pennsylvania. I was struck by how colorful some of them are. Is this an enhancement of some sort such as NASA does with its pictures of the cosmos . It's quite something to see the striking blues, golds, and greens.

I really have no reason or way of knowing if you have any first hand knowledge of this or not but I thought I'd give it a shot.
thanks
Ernie

They certainly can be magnificent works of art. No enhancement, it is not unusual for pre-Clovis and Clovis points and tools to be made of high quality toolstone sometimes from great distances; chert and obsidian. By the Holocene it was more usual that the lithics would be made from local sources; chert cobbles or rhyolite, for instance.

Thanks for the links.

You can place the land crossings when the ice corridor is open, if you can only get the geologists to agree when those periods were. And good luck with that. Nothing more frustrating than to see a geological map with ice sheet overlying known artifact sites.

As far as sea crossings go:
http://archaeologica.boardbot.com/viewt ... f=9&t=3135

Boats will survive for very long periods on the bottom of the Black Sea, or on the bottom of Lake Superior, for that matter.

Other than that, the key is to determine the Pleistocene coast line, and then look for areas where seismic activity has resulted in an uplift of more than 300 feet.

Or else look for quarries near to ideal landing spots.

Remember that the ocean currents were different then as well.

Farpoint wrote:

Ernie L wrote:

Farpoint wrote:Maybe now would be a good time to introduce the PIDBA, The Paleoindian Database of the Americas.

The Paleoindian Database of the Americas

Hello

I was looking through the pictures of points listed under Pennsylvania. I was struck by how colorful some of them are. Is this an enhancement of some sort such as NASA does with its pictures of the cosmos . It's quite something to see the striking blues, golds, and greens.

I really have no reason or way of knowing if you have any first hand knowledge of this or not but I thought I'd give it a shot.
thanks
Ernie

They certainly can be magnificent works of art. No enhancement, it is not unusual for pre-Clovis and Clovis points and tools to be made of high quality toolstone sometimes from great distances; chert and obsidian. By the Holocene it was more usual that the lithics would be made from local sources; chert cobbles or rhyolite, for instance.

Thank you for the information.
Yes quite magnificent. There certainly must have been some pride of ownership. My idea of the points as slate gray or brick colored has changed forever.

The pictures are from http://pidba.org/pa_pics.html

If you are interested, here is a link to a site that describes flint knapping procedures:

Lithic Reduction Percussion and Pressure Flaking

Farpoint wrote:If you are interested, here is a link to a site that describes flint knapping procedures:

Lithic Reduction Percussion and Pressure Flaking

Terrific..Those videos sure beat the low resolution black and white photos I found many years ago when I was a young lad seeking information on the subject. I think we are living in an information revolution and I think it's wonderful.
Thanks again

The color of the first two, on my screen, is crazy.

The others are about right. (Yellow-brown Berks-Lehigh Jasper turns red when heated).

FWIW

Welcome farpoint. I am about to start university studying anthropology in alberta Canada and am also very interested in this topic. What does your research lead you to believe?

countrcultur wrote:Welcome farpoint. I am about to start university studying anthropology in alberta Canada and am also very interested in this topic. What does your research lead you to believe?

I know that I do not know. Metaphorically speaking, the peopling of the Americas is the greatest mystery novel of my life and I have more pages ahead of me than behind. The more I study the more I realize an exponential growth in the multidisciplinary studying yet to be done.

It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma

; Winston Churchill (1939).

I also think it is like "The Murder on the Orient Express", there is not just one cause. In an age of more and more narrowly defined specialties in science, and since at my age it is unlikely that I could focus that precisely, I am relegated to being a generalist and try to assimilate the big picture as best I can. It being that I do not have a Phd, I am reluctant to express any kind of scientific opinion, but I can conjecture my tail off, therefore, I doubt that the first ones came through the "Ice Free Corridor".

Something that I run into constantly in studying this time period is the radio carbon plateau. Both for my own purposes and for, as Richard Feynman would say, your entertainment I am including a link to Hughen et. al. 2000:

Synchronous Radiocarbon and Climate Shifts During the Last Deglaciation

Also, for the same reasons, I am including a link to Stanford J. D. et al. 2006; Please see Page 32 it is very important:

Timing of meltwater pulse 1a and climate responses to meltwater injections

Thank you for indulging me.

Hi Farpoint -

I can usually blame all the mistakes in my book on archaeologists, and this case is no different. When it came to dating the Holocene Start Impact Event I was presented with 14C dates that varied by several thousand years. That is no longer the case, they re down to several hundred years now. So 10,750 BCE is approximate.

Dr. Firestone is of the opinion that the isotopic variants seen are due to a nearby supernova, which acted as an injection mechanism for the comet.

I am of the opinion that the isotopic variants, including the 14C and 10 Be, are the result of neutrons and protons released from the nucleon by photons raised to very high energy levels during the impacts themselves.

( I should mention here that one of the first things Lilly did after developing 14C dating was to look at the Tunguska event.)

A study of isotopes near Barringer Crater might throw a lot of light on the question, but most of the isotopes may by very short lived.

I am currently working through a detailed palaeo-botanical sequence from Ohio which is not available online.

Aside from that, I have an HSIE crater with artifacts likely to be nearby. With Clovis points fetching $1,000 per inch, and given the archaeologists usual disregard for Native American rights, this presents me with some difficulties.

Please excuse my lack of comment on the articles you link to.
Could you summarize your questions further?

E.P. Grondine wrote:
Could you summarize your questions further?

First, I wish you the best on your project, please stay at it.

Second, in October 2008 in Houston I had a sit down discussion with David Kring and Arthur Dyke. The discussion covered many things including the possibility of an YD impact. They were both adamant that there was not any macroscopic ground evidence of a crater dated to that time.

But, this is the wrong thread for this discussion. Start a new one if you wish.

G'day