The Archaeology of Ushki Lake, Kamchatka, and the Pleistocene Peopling of the Americas

Abstract

The Ushki Paleolithic sites of Kamchatka, Russia, have long been thought to contain information critical to the peopling of the Americas, especially the origins of Clovis. New radiocarbon dates indicate that human occupation of Ushki began only 13,000 calendar years ago—nearly 4000 years later than previously thought. Although biface industries were widespread across Beringia contemporaneous to the time of Clovis in western North America, these data suggest that late-glacial Siberians did not spreadinto Beringia until the endof the Pleistocene, perhaps too recently to have been ancestral to proposedpre-Clovis populations in the Americas.