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USF alum's big dig stirs earth scientists

An archaeology professor finds 50,000-year-old artifacts, putting into question theories about the Americas' earliest inhabitants.

By JON WILSON
Published March 12, 2006

ST. PETERSBURG - As a teenager, Al Goodyear roamed the city's backwaters, seeking artifacts from an era before European explorers showed their sails.

Lyman Warren and Frank Bushnell, widely respected amateur archaeologists in St. Petersburg, were among his mentors.

"I visited the Indian mounds. I used to walk the beaches at Pinellas Point," Goodyear said.

Now the 1964 Boca Ciega High School graduate is helping revise theories about when the first human occupants of North America arrived.

Goodyear is the lead archaeologist at a dig callled the Topper site near the Savannah River in Allendale County, S.C. He and his teams have excavated material that has been radiocarbon dated to 50,000 years ago. Pieces of tools and the residue from tool production have been found at the same level.

Conventional wisdom says the first humans came to North America perhaps 13,000 years ago and used what was then a land bridge between Siberia and Alaska.

But the material from the Topper site suggests a much earlier arrival, long before the last ice age.

Several other digs in South America and the eastern United States bolster Goodyear's findings. All are bound to ignite debate in the scientific community.

Since 1998, when Goodyear first found artifacts below the "Clovis," or 13,000-year level, the subject has been attracting media attention. This week's Time magazine used recent discoveries as its cover story, titled "The Untold Saga of Early Man in America."

The Topper site is mentioned, as are several other sites that are poking holes in long-held archaeological theory.

Goodyear, who also attended St. Petersburg Junior College and the University of South Florida, returns to his early stalking grounds this week.

The University of South Carolina professor will speak at 1 p.m. Saturday at the Science Center, 7701 22nd Ave. N in St. Petersburg. The event is free and open to the public and is part of a daylong American Indian exhibition at the center.

Goodyear's presentation, "North America's First Peoples," also proposes that the continent's first humans arrived not only through Alaska, but from Europe, perhaps on a northern track that brought them through Newfoundland.

After earning a bachelor's degree in anthropology from USF, Goodyear, who is 59, went on to get a master's degree from the University of Arkansas and a doctorate from Arizona State University.

He has spent 30 years researching America's earliest humans.

But the discoveries at Topper stunned him.

"I was sort of in shock, to tell you the truth," he said.

It was a find that required careful handling.

To suggest habitation earlier than the Clovis era was professionally dangerous.

"In my generation, it was a career-killer," Goodyear said.

But sites in Monte Verde, Chile, Cactus Hill, Va., and Meadowcroft, Pa., have also supported the earlier arrival dates.

The discoveries bear on the most profound of questions: who are we and why are we here.

"When you go back into the ice age, you're tapping into our species," Goodyear said. "It's philosophic, it's religious, it's scientific."

Work is continuing this year at the Topper dig, and volunteers are invited. For information, visit www.allendale-expedition.net

[Last modified March 12, 2006, 01:18:21]