Location of the Topper site
54. Possible Relatives in the Americas
Topper site (South Carolina, USA)
by George Weber
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Table of Contents
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Location of the Topper site |
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On a personal note: The Topper site is owned by Clariant Corporation whose world headquarters is just outside Basel, Switzerland and only a short distance down the valley from where our own organisation, The Andaman Association, has pitched its tents. Small world! We are very happy to hear that our big local neighbour
and fellow-taxpayer is actively supporting the
archaeological exploration at Topper in South Carolina, USA.
Keep up the good work! |
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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 John 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.
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The Topper Site |
1998:
Digging below Clovis levels. Unusual and unclassifiable stone tools
are discovered 2 m below the surface.
1999:
Independent outside geologists visit the Topper site, are
intrigued and propose a thorough geological study of the site.
2000:
The proposed geological study is carried out and confirms the ice age
soil of the pre-Clovis strata.
2001:
Geological samples of plant remains taken from levels above the
pre-Clovis strata date these by OSL (Optically Stimulated
Luminescence method) to at least 14,000 years.
2002:
Geological samples from new profiles with layers between Clovis and
pre-Clovis show pre-Clovis to date back to 16,000 to 20,000
years.
2003:
More pre-Clovis finds are being made.
2004:
Hand- excavation reaches 4 m below ground surface. Tools similar to
the pre-Clovis tools found in the higher levels keep being found. A
black stain in the soil (called the "Hearth") provdes sufficient
charcoal for C14 dating which results in a date of 50,000 at the
outermost level of the C14 method's range.
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The Topper Strata 1999 Dres. Mike Waters and Steve Forman examine Topper's Holocene-Pleistocene stratigraphy: 0 -100 cm zone - Mississipian/Clovis 100 - 200 cm zone - Pleistocene Alluvium (white area 16-20,000 years before present) 200 - 270 cm zone - Pleistocene Terrace |
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The Topper strata 2005 black dots: post-Clovis (Archaic and Wooland) Indian tools blue dots: Clovis tools red dots: pre-Clovis artefacts
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Left:
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Below:
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The main Topper excavation site is explained at the Topper Conference of October 2005 to attentive participants by Dr. Goodyear. 1 - Clovis levels
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A mechanically excavated exploratory trench at the Topper site, clearly showing the layered archaeological strata. |
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The riverbed strata of the Topper site: 1. present 2. Clovis era (ca. 13,000 years before present) 3. Red soil (17-19,000 years before present) 4. Pleistocene riverbed
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Left: Classical Clovis tools were found in the first
meter or so of the site.
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A whole assembly of pre-Clovis tools as unearthed by the archaeologists |
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Pre-Clovis bend-break tools. |
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Pre-Covis microliths. |
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A pre-Clovis scraper. |
An entirely new Aspect of prehistoric tools?
Alan Day lives in the town of Cambridge, Ohio, USA. He has put together an amazing collection of evidence on a truly off-beat subject. He argues that some seemingly random forms and dents on ancient stone tools are not as random as they look. When I first saw the following two pictures, I had to laugh out loud. But...
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... once I started to investigate Mr. Day's claims by looking for tell-tale scratches and dents in European samples available to me, by golly, they were everywhere! But I am still not sure if this is a visual/psychological effect (like children seeing castles and animals in clouds) or whether this is real.
If you see faces in a few palaeolithic tools, you may have a medical problem or an over-active imagination. On the other hand, if you spot scratches and dents in the right places on large numbers of ancient stone tools, then you must admit that Mr. Day not only could be but probably is right. I certainly have found dents and scratches (though many too faint to be entirely sure) in stone tools in all the right places and in large numbers. I appeal to anyone in a position to do so, to quietly have a look at Alan Day's sites and then to go to their stone tool collections. I will say only so much: from my inadequate initial observations, the phenomenon is not limited to north Americam stone tools, it is global.
See Mr. Day's site(s) at - http://www.daysknob.com/Topper_A.htm and at - http://www.daysknob.com/RndmBrd.htm
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Mr. Day has the following to say on the subject:: "It is interesting to speculate on the origin of the Bird Spirit image. Cave paintings by humans of the Paleolithic, with their magnificent depictions of animals of all sorts, often include people only as stick figures if at all. It has been conjectured that humans of that time considered themselves to be separate from the natural world, having come from above. One of this author's possibly bizarre hypotheses is that this Bird Spirit figure is the manifestation of a sort of "collective unconscious". Many or perhaps most of us have had vivid flying dreams, particularly in childhood. It seems reasonable to think that if we do it, people hundreds of thousands of years ago did it also, and took it much more seriously and literally. And early humans poking around on the ground must have regarded birds with more than a little wonder. When people first began to think of themselves as transcending their earthbound condition, birds must have quickly come to mind, and a "morphing" of human and bird in their physically rendered imagery seems a logical extension of this." |
To close this (for our web site) most unusual subject, we reproduce a bird's image from Mr. Day on which there is no doubt what it does represent.
Among web-sites with further information are:
- http://www.centerfirstamericans.org/photos/thumbnails.php?album=21
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Last change 6 March 2007
