Thursday, November 12, 2009

MORE ON PAISLEY SITE IN OREGON BY THE EXCAVATOR JENKINS

I was so intrigued with the story about the Paisley site (see previous BLOG where I noted the early dates of Meadowcroft outside of Pittsburgh) that I contacted Dennis Jenkins, the excavator of Oregon's Paisley site explaining that we had Professor Jim Adovasio, the excavator of Meadowcroft, speak to our AAG organization very convincingly about the site and its dates. Now that there is actually a visitors pavilion at Meadowcroft, I thought we should clarify. Jenkins promptly replied and I asked him if I could share his reply on my BLOG. So with many thanks, Dennis, here it is:
Dear Nancy,
The story writer added some glitz to his piece for sure but the fact is the Meadowcroft Rock shelter site is still debated. Indeed, the Paisley Caves are being debated but the Paisley site is unique in that there we have human remains (DNA), with Pleistocene megafauna, and now we have directly radiocarbon dated artifacts in excellent chrono-stratigraphic contexts. All date to the same time period according to multiple AMS labs. The more we work with the Paisley Caves the better they are
proving to be. In my opinion, there is no doubt about the site and its pre-Clovis cultural component. To be honest, Meadowcroft certainly looks good to me as well.

Sincerely,

Dennis L. Jenkins

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