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TOPPER SITE - Pre-Clovis In South Carolina

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Author Topic: TOPPER SITE - Pre-Clovis In South Carolina  (Read 4075 times)
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Bianca
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« on: July 14, 2009, 08:07:03 pm »




             


               The Topper site and its close environment

               red - the Topper site

               gray - chert outcrops










Chert is a fine-grained silica-rich cryptocrystalline sedimentary rock that throughout tool-making prehistoric times was used by early humans for making tools and and for striking sparks to make fire. Even in later historic times one major use for chert was as flints in flintlock firearms.

It is no coincidence that the Topper site is right in the midst of a major outcrop of this most useful stone type. Even its oldest human users were there for the chert.
 


The Topper site had been known as a source of chert to local people for a long time but it only came to the attention of professional archaeologists in 1981 during a survey of chert sources when a local resident, the eponymous David Topper, showed it to Dr. Albert Goodyear III of the University of South Carolina.

Three years later, Dr. Goodyear started excavating Topper - and has never looked back. What he found has shaken up north American prehistory and incidentally bringing it into line with the latest results of south American archaeology where dates older than 12,000 years had become ever more frequent. It has been, and still is, a rather painful experience for some US archaeologists who have for decades pushed the "Clovis first" theory (i.e. the idea that the Clovis people from around 12,000 years ago onwards were the first human inhabitants of America). This pain is usually circumambulated in the US by calling the Topper findings "controversial". A site that in one fell swoop pushes back the known frontier of north American prehistory from around 12,000 years to 20,000 and to perhaps as much as 50,000 years is bound to be controversial, even without the "Clovis first" theory to add spice to the sauce. Excavations at Topper continue and analysis of the finds is far from complete, new surprises and controversies are sure to erupt. What is beyond question is that Topper is among the the most important archaeological sites ever found in the Americas - and that it will remain among the top few even if its most sensational claims cannot be confirmed.

The Topper site is not a cave or rock shelter site in which the archaeological strata have been shelter throughout the milennia from the worst weather and other naural forces can do. The site is open to rain and flowing waters. This tend sto mix up layers and artefacts and makes dating much more difficult, thereby providing room for more future controversies.
« Last Edit: July 14, 2009, 09:25:52 pm by Bianca » Report Spam   Logged

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