I finally get why people are so defensive about the Clovis First theory

I was talking to a guy at a dig site near Santa Fe last weekend and he got super heated when I mentioned pre-Clovis sites. I mean, I get it, that's what he studied in school, but the evidence from places like Monte Verde is pretty solid now. He said 'if you don't believe in Clovis, you don't believe in standard archaeology' and I just kinda nodded. Has anyone else run into this level of pushback when talking about older sites?

4 comments

4 Comments

the_tessa1mo ago

Completely get what you mean. I had a similar thing happen at a conference in Tucson a few years back where I brought up the Meadowcroft Rockshelter dates and this professor just shut down the whole conversation. He kept saying "Clovis is the baseline" and acted like I was attacking his entire career. I was just trying to talk about some new carbon dating results but he wouldn't even look at the data. Have you seen how fast the pushback comes when you mention those ice free corridor problems?

nancyjones1mo ago

Has anyone else noticed how the old guard in archaeology acts like Clovis is some kind of sacred cow they have to protect at all costs... I remember reading about a study from a few years ago where they tested some of those old Clovis sites with new methods and found they were way off. But when you bring it up in certain circles, people just dig in their heels instead of looking at the evidence. It's like they built their whole understanding of the peopling of the Americas on that model and anything that shakes it up feels like a personal attack on their life's work. The ice free corridor thing is a perfect example though... more and more data shows it wasn't even open when it needed to be for the old timeline to work. I think the coastal migration route makes way more sense given what we know now, but getting folks to shift their thinking is like pulling teeth.

angelarivera1mo ago

Rightfully so, since that corridor being closed and wet for so long makes the whole coastal migration theory look a lot more reasonable than people used to give it credit for. It's strange more folks don't connect those two dots in public.

alicemurphy1mo ago

Right?! Academia hates changing its mind.