On a Passionate Mission to Track the First Americans

THE FIRST AMERICANS

In Pursuit of Archaeology's Greatest Mystery

By J.M. Adovasio with Jake Page

Random House

332 Pages, $26.95

Powerful intrigue. Name-calling and blackballing. Treachery, collusion among archeologists on an all-out hunt for a holy grail. An Indiana Jones movie? No. The actual search to identify the first humans to inhabit North America. In 1974, archeologist J.M. Adovasio was a young authority on perishable artifacts--baskets, cloth, sandals, etc.--looking forward to a life in "a tiny pond in the mostly stone-filled archaeological landscape," when fate intervened. Overseeing an excavation designed to teach field techniques to student archeologists at the Meadowcroft Rockshelter, 35 miles southwest of Pittsburgh, Adovasio and his team unearthed what turned out to be the earliest dated archeological site in North America.

The remnants of two hearths in the shelter, when radiocarbon-dated by the Smithsonian Institution, showed that humans had been using the hearths in about 13,000 BC, predating by thousands of years the earliest identified evidence on the continent. "That meant that people had been here in western Pennsylvania some four thousand years before any human being was supposed to have set foot anywhere in this hemisphere," he explains.

Before the discovery, common archeological wisdom held that the earliest Americans were the Ice Age humans termed "Clovis Man"--so named for the spear points found in the New Mexico region of Clovis in the 1930s--said to have lived from 9250 BC to 8850 BC. According to Adovasio, "no one could find any evidence that people had lived in North America earlier than Clovis Man," thus, the so-called Clovis Bar was erected, delineating the point before which no human was thought to have inhabited these lands, a designation staunchly held in place by the archeological community for decades. When Adovasio's discovery threatened the bar, all hell broke loose. His life and career--and North American archeology itself--would never be the same.

Adovasio, who became an internationally known archeologist and academic, has created in "The First Americans" a book that pulses with plot-drive. The compelling narrative is filled with passionate writing and fiercely held arguments. Co-written with Jake Page, who has been an editor at Smithsonian and Natural History magazines, "The First Americans" illuminates the powerful pull archeology has had on Adovasio's life and shows how happenstance thrust him into the fiery fray.