Topper is an archaeological site located along the Savannah River in Allendale County, South Carolina in the United States. It is noted as the location of controversial artifacts believed by some archaeologists to indicate human habitation of the New World as far back as 50,000 years ago.
Since the 1930s, the prevailing theory concerning the peopling of the New World is that the first human inhabitants were the Clovis people, who are thought to have appeared approximately 13,500 years ago. Artifacts of the Clovis people are found throughout most of the United States and as far south as Panama. The standard theory has been challenged in recent decades with the emergence of pre-Clovis sites such as Monte Verde and other possible pre-Clovis candidates such as Cactus Hill. To date, no consistent pre-Clovis cultural patterns have been established and the accuracy of these claims have been found controversial and unverified.
In 2004, Albert Goodyear of the University of South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology announced that radiocarbon dating of a bit of charcoal found in the Topper Site dated to approximately 50,000 years ago, or approximately 37,000 years before the Clovis people. Goodyear, who began excavating the Topper site in the 1980s, believes that the artifacts are stone tools, although other archaeologists dispute this conclusion, suggesting that the artifacts may be natural and not human-made. Other archaeologists have challenged the radiocarbon dating procedure of the Topper artifacts. Goodyear discovered the artifacts by digging 4 m deeper than the Clovis artifacts. Before discovering the oldest artifacts, he had discovered other artifacts that he claimed were tools dating around 16,000 years old, or about 3,000 years before Clovis. Until the recent challenges to the Clovis theory, it was unusual for archaeologists to dig deeper than the layer of the Clovis culture, on the grounds that no human artifacts would be found older than Clovis.
External links
- Topper Site layers photo Stratigraphic layers photo of the Topper Site and the Pre-Clovis layers.
- Topper Site: Beyond Clovis at Allendale
- South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology
- Another Perspective on the Topper pre-Clovis Material
- CNN: Man In Americas Earlier Than Thought The University of South Carolina announces radiocarbon tests that dated the first human settlement in North America to 50,000 years ago
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