Perspectives on a Post-White Sands Coast: Re-Evaluating Research into Early Peopling of the Northwest Coast of North America

Abstract

ABSTRACT In light of new dates associated with the White Sands human footprints in New Mexico that suggest humans were in North America south of continental ice sheets during (or before) the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), I discuss the implications for the late Pleistocene archaeology of the Northwest Coast – the presumed “Pacific Coastal Route” for entry into the continent. I argue that we can and should employ state-of-the-art methods to push our paleoenvironmental reconstructions back through the LGM to enable a search for evidence of people entering North America via this route. However, I more strongly emphasize that documenting the earliest postglacial occupations of the Northwest Coast remains a significant endeavor, both from a disciplinary perspective, but also for the Indigenous descendent communities inhabiting the region. Rather than rendering our archaeological efforts on the Northwest Coast wasted, White Sands opens new and exciting research questions, with implications reaching throughout the Americas.