| dc.description.abstract | It is hard to identify another topic in world archaeology still as hot, controversial, mysterious,
shifing, and continuously confictive as the Ice
Age archaeology of Americas. For decades, passions have surged, egos have clashed, academic
politics have boiled, and paradigms have risen
and changed. Now, almost a century since the
initial discoveries that began to challenge the
thick ice of preconceptions, we are living in a
new era of exciting fnds that show us that archaeological knowledge is never defnitive.
America’s two hemispheres have lived these
experiences in separate manners and from relatively divergent positions. To the north, the
more homogenous Anglo world (principally,
the United States) was long haunted by the conservative theories of single-route recent human
arrival on the continent. Scholars developed a
culture of caution and skepticism around the
strongholds of tough paradigms such as Clovisfrst. To the south, the more rebel and eclectic
Latin world traditionally stood apart from the
northern postures and felt freer to sustain outof-the-box ideas, ofen constructed upon expedient conjectures, and frequently cemented by
their own regional paradigms. Between the two,
dialogue and constructive communication were
not the rule, and the creation of models upon the
particular archaeological records of the North
and the South manifested as parallel, rarely compatible interpretations of the past. | |
