Site Update: Final Thoughts

by Eric Deetz

As an archaeologist that works mostly on American historic period sites (sites that date after 1492) the Topper site was a real departure for me. The biggest difference was the date of the site — 13,000 years before present and possibly reaching back considerably older than that. This is at least 4,000 years older than any site I had worked on in the past. At Topper, I was one of the team that was working on the Paleo-Indian period level where there were an overwhelming number of stone flakes that represented the quarrying of stone and the first steps of tool production. The site is so extensive and productive that Al Goodyear could tell us in good faith that the area we were slated to work in would produce some Clovis-period artifacts. I have been lucky enough to work on a late Paleoindian period site but nothing as significant as Topper.

The excavation techniques were as rigorous as we encountered anywhere. Not only does the location and depth of every flake of stone get recorded but the angle that the flake is sitting in the soil is also carefully recorded. This is really important when you are trying establish whether or not you are actually working on an intact buried ground surface or excavating material that has been disturbed or re-deposited. If the flakes that we were finding were in fact discarded on an existing surface, most of them should be lying flat or at least close to horizontal. In disturbed or re-deposited contexts, the flakes would be more jumbled.

The crew at Topper had done a lot of the heavy lifting for us. Based on nearby excavation units, they were pretty sure we would hit a bona fide Clovis land surface. In the three days we were there we uncovered hundreds of stone flakes from the making of stone tools. You have to flake the stone in a very specific way to create a clovis point. To the trained eye, it was possible to tell that many of the flakes we uncovered were in fact from the making of Clovis tools. We were also lucky enough to find a near-complete Clovis point. It was likely broken before it was finished but it was definitely a Clovis point, one of only a handful found at the site. Needless to say we were all pretty excited.

Another exciting development at Topper was the geophysics results. Because we were working in a very small area, Meg and Brian were able to take the Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) to a level of detail. The results were difficult to interpret at first, but Meg and Brian believe that they were able to identify the Clovis level through geophysics. To identifuy archaeological material to the artifact level is unheard of, but the density of material and the sandy soils made it possible.

In the end, we were all pleased to contribute to the fascinating and important work being done at the Topper site. And I enjoyed stepping back a few thousand years to explore the early history of humans in North America.