Cueva Fell - Site Significance - The Colonization of The New World

The Colonization of The New World

The colonization of the America’s may be one of the most contentious archaeological debates today. The issue involves a large body of research and numerous theories as to how and when this event began. For decades, the Clovis-first model trumped all other theories for the Settlement of the Americas. This theory basically holds that the Clovis culture constituted the first peoples to inhabit North America. Entering the Americas from Asia via the Bering Land Bridge and migrating south through the ice free corridor, the Clovis people populated southern North America. This population spread through Central America and finally South America.

At the time the theory was proposed, no archaeological evidence had been discovered in the Americas which pre-dated 11,050 to 10,800 14C yr B.P., or the onset of the Clovis culture (Waters 2007: 1122). However, in the last few decades a multitude of sites have been found, which at first challenged this theory and now demanding a new model to explain the peopling of the Americas. Based on the current understanding of archaeological evidence, it is now widely accepted that a pre-Clovis culture colonized the Americas via a Pacific coastal route sometime between ca. 14,000–12,000 BP.

Some of the evidence supporting the coastal theory come from the Southern-most portions of South America. Many researchers now agree that occupation of Tierra del Fuego, 11,000-10,500 years ago, simply does not provide enough time for mid-continental migration. A similar argument is made about Monte Verde, which may be the most well-known and widely accepted of these sites and which pre-dates Clovis by approximately 1000 years.

Although site discovery and excavation were not recent, Cueva Fell is representative of occupation of southern South America. The earliest occupation at Cueva Fell, c. 11,000 B.P. +- 170 years to 10,080 B.P. +-160 years, does no pre-date but is coeval with Clovis. Other Late Pleistocene sites in Argentina, Cerro Tres Tetas, Cueva Casa del Minero, and Piedra Museo, are also contemporaneous with Clovis and the early occupation at Fell’s Cave.