Summer 2007 - SCANA Corporation

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Archaeological work at the Topper site is slow and painstaking, although the tools of the trade are simple. For most of the 20th century, archaeologists believed that the first people to inhabit North America were huntergatherers who migrated over the frozen Bering Strait bridge that connected Siberia and Alaska. These hunters followed the big game south and east. They were known as Clovis people following the discovery in the 1930s of complex spear points and tools in an excavation near Clovis, N.M. “For years they have been the most widely recognized human culture for this continent,” Goodyear said. In 1998, Goodyear led a group of amateur archaeologists to a patch of Allendale County land owned by Clariant Corporation, a Swissowned chemical company. He and the team had intended to excavate what he anticipated would be an artifact-laden Clovis site. Unfortunately, it had been raining pretty heavily and the soil the team intended to unearth had the consistency of peanut butter. It was impossible to dig there. Still, Goodyear had a group of people who had paid for the experience of excavating, so he picked an alternate site on higher ground near the Savannah River, known as Topper. When he and his team had exhausted their finds at the depth referred to as the Clovis level, they decided to dig deeper. A few feet below Clovis — representing thousands of years in time — the team began discovering distinctly different artifacts. Goodyear’s work at the Topper site has yielded archaeological evidence that suggests that humans may have been in the area as much as 50,000 years earlier than previously thought. “It was not just that the artifacts were older. They were much different than what we would expect to find if we were just looking at an older version of the same kind of tool.” Clovis tools yielded blade-like slivers of flint, known as prismatic blades. They were also long and often large. The pre-Clovis scrapers and blades are shorter, lack that distinctive appearance and tend toward beak-like hooked points rather than arrowhead-shaped ends. On the last day of the dig, the team found a charcoal deposit that allowed for radiocarbon dating. The Boulder, Colo. lab that tested samples from the deposit dated it at 50,000 years old. Working in open trenches under the hot summer sun may not have dampened anyone’s enthusiasm or 22 INSIGHTS • SUMMER 2007
Volunteers pay to spend a week excavating at the Topper site each summer, either camping or staying in nearby motels. hindered any important discovery, but it made for grueling labor. With a contribution SCANA made through the Southern Carolina Regional Development Alliance, Goodyear and his team were able to erect a shelter over the dig, providing much needed relief for the archaeologists and important protection for the dig itself. “It’s an impressive shelter,” Goodyear said. “Along with a viewing deck that Clariant employees built on their lunch hours, it provides a way for people to see the work as it happens without injuring themselves or damaging the dirt around the dig. Most important is that it stands over what may be the most significant earlyman dig in America.” The shelter is sturdy and stands 50 feet by 70 feet. “It more than covers the footprint of our dig,” said Bob Cole, an avocational archaeologist who has been with Goodyear since the discovery of the Topper site. “We dug about 30 centimeters below the Clovis level and came upon a feature that looked distinctly non- Clovis,” he said. Cole said the heat on those first digs was merciless. “The sun was brutal. It felt like it was 120 degrees, and we didn’t have any cover.” The team was easily dehydrated, drenched in perspiration, and the no-see-ums were so thick and aggressive that you could actually see them. The shelter also performs a function just as important as protecting the excavators — it protects the site itself. The pre-Clovis artifacts are about four meters below the surface. “When it would rain,” Goodyear said, “the runoff would wash leaves and plastic and other trash into the site.” Danny Black, executive director of the Southern Carolina Regional Development Alliance, said the Topper discovery provides the region with the prospect of tourism in the future. “From our standpoint, having this site with its potential impact on history has huge possibilities, from public tours to museum exhibits of the artifacts.” Goodyear said it is clear that people who came to this site, Clovis and those before, came there to quarry the rock. “They used it to make microlithic tools, that is tools to make other tools out of bone or wood or antlers. These people may have stayed for days or weeks at a time,” he said. These men and women from prehistory are somewhat like Goodyear’s band of volunteers who SUMMER 2007 • INSIGHTS 23
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Summer 2007 - SCANA Corporation

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