Early Man and the Age of the Champlain Sea

Abstract

Various dating techniques have yielded an approximately synchronous absolute chronology for fluted points characteristic of one phase of the Early Man or Paleo-Indian horizon in southern New England, the Upper Great Lakes, the high plains, and the southwestern United States. On the basis of these chronologies and on typology, some archeologists believe that closely similar artifacts elsewhere should be of nearly the same age. A recent attempt at geologically dating fluted points in areas formerly occupied by Lake Iroquois and the Champlain Sea has suggested, on the contrary, that this archeological assumption is incorrect and that the northeastern Paleo-Indian artifacts are not nearly as old as their counterparts elsewhere. The following paper examines this thesis and concludes with a reinterpretation of the geologic sequence in the Ontario basin and St. Lawrence Valley that seems to be supported by radiocarbon and by the most recent geological investigations involved and that, if correct, removes the archeological enigma. It is suggested that the available radiocarbon dates for the Champlain Sea are substantially correct, that Lake Iroquois is older than heretofore thought, and that the reinterpretation is more compatible with archeological sequences outside the area discussed.