Sandweiss comments in Science story

UMaine anthropologist Dan Sandweiss was quoted extensively in an Oct. 21 story in Science, looking at new evidence suggesting a human presence in the Americas 13,800 years ago. That date precedes the Clovis culture, long believed to be the New World’s first, by almost 1,000 years.  The new findings, developed by a group led by Texas A&M’s Michael Waters, are based on sophisticated research techniques that place pre-Clovis hunters on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula.  Sandweiss, who also serves as associate provost and dean of the graduate school, points out that the coastal location of this evidence is significant and that it “point(s) to a more widespread and complex early settlement system than some might have suspected.”