Monte Alban, Chile Redated? So, In this case Pre-Clovis Sceptics Maybe had a Point?

An early dating of the site at Monte Verde in southern Chile took a bit of time to be accepted, as the evidence found in excavations 1979-onwards was seen as ambiguous for so long. In particular, the items that were presented by the excavator Tom Dillehay as artefacts made by human hands were not accepted as such by everyboidy who saw them, they were rather difficult to unequivocally diagnose. In the end, in the 1990s, the excavator managed to persuade critical colleagues that there was early occupation of this site that was evidence for an Ice Age pre-Clovis human presence in this part of the Americas, dated at roughly 14,500 years old.

New research is however shaking the foundations of this dating. It now looks as if a recent geoarchaeological study has produced data once again challenging these conclusions 

A study [...] in Science (which has a related Perspective) aims to shatter that bedrock. It suggests the stratigraphic layers at Monte Verde are scrambled, with older wood and other organic material mixed into younger sediments, resulting in misleading radiocarbon dates. The site is just 8200 to 4200 years old, the study concludes. 

That means the site might actually date to the Holocene.  That actually would tie in better with the typology of the stone tools found on (other parts of) the original site. The new study was led by Todd Surovell, an archaeologist at the University of Wyoming working with Claudio Latorre, a paleoecologist at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, whose team found when the examined the evidence from their fieldwork carried out in 2023 that:

" Flooding has since destroyed the site of the original excavation near Chinchihuapi Creek, so Surovell and Latorre’s team examined several places along the creek’s banks where they could see layers of sediments that had been deposited over the course of the landscape’s history. They took samples of wood and other organic material for radiocarbon dating, as well as minerals that can be tested to determine when they were last exposed to sunlight. They concluded that 14,500 years ago, the area was a forest. Later, sediment from a wetland settled over the wood and other debris from the forest floor, followed by volcanic ash from an eruption 11,000 years ago. Then, Chinchihuapi Creek formed, cutting into the landscape and carrying some of the older wood and other organic material into the river channel. Some 8600 years ago, gravel and sand started to fill in part of the creek, sealing the 14,500-year-old organic material inside much younger sediments. The original Monte Verde dates, obtained from that older organic material “are actually good,” Latorre says. "

The results of the 2023 work are already being questioned, and it is unfortunate that the original site was no longer available for excamination and establishing the continuity of contexts across the whole investigated area. 

What is interesting in this particular context of this blog is that the so-called "Clovis-First" debate (a local spat in just a narrow field of the archaology of a distant country the other side of an ocean) is represented as typical of the allegedly dogmatic behaviour of archaeologists worldwide. The casus of the alleged mistreatment of Tom Dillehay is displayed as "what happens to ANY archaeologist who dares to put forward a new idea" in the discipline.  Let us see what happens to this staple of the Pseudo-archaeologists' mantra-narrative as the discussion over Dillehay's site progresses. 

References
University of Wyoming (edited by Sadie Harley), ' Monte Verde fieldwork resets age of famous South American archaeological site' March 19, 2026.

Lizzie Wade, 'Debate explodes over age of key South American archaeological site ' Science 19 Mar 2026.

John Bartlett, 'Archaeological site in Chile upends theory of how humans populated the Americas … again' Guardian Thu 19 Mar 2026.

video interview:  David Ian Howe 'The Peopling of the Americas never made sense until now'. YouTube Mar 19, 2026 (the story of how the project came about is really interesting and thought-provoking and will ring a bell with anyone who's ever worked on sites on floodplains of braided river sediments: here onwards - but you might want to see the 'seaweed' bit before it too). 

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