Early Evidence
Extraordinary Claims, Extraordinary Evidence: The Coronado Expedition's 1541 Suya Settlement
Deni Seymour
American Antiquity, July 2025, Pages 419-445
Abstract:
The first Coronado expedition site discovered south of Zuni, in Arizona, represents the first European settlement in the American Southwest-a place called Suya (San Geronimo III). Investigations have revealed an impressive assortment of early sixteenth-century artifacts and features. The structured layout is reflected in concentrations of both household- and battle-related artifacts. Artifacts and substantial adobe-and-stone structures indicate a diversity of residential activities and the presence of a sizable and varied group of people who expected to stay. They brought a range of household goods that are not appropriate for a traveling expedition but that are of the type expected in a settled context where social maneuvering and status display characterized daily life. Suya's occupants had access to a range of European household goods and weaponry, including the most expensive guns (matchlocks, wheel locks, crossbows, bronze cannon). Weapons and ammunition provide evidence of a battle, as do their fragmentary nature and clustered distribution. Documents convey that this was the first successful Native American uprising in the continental United States. This site exhibited attributes characteristic of a Coronado expedition settlement, so viable alternative explanations were sought, including other entradas. Work has proceeded for five years, revealing the richness, extent, and complexity of the site.
Shocked quartz at the Younger Dryas onset (12.8 ka) supports cosmic airbursts/impacts contributing to North American megafaunal extinctions and collapse of the Clovis technocomplex
James Kennett et al.
PLoS ONE, September 2025
Abstract:
Shocked quartz grains are an accepted indicator of crater-forming cosmic impact events, which also typically produce amorphous silica along the fractures. Furthermore, previous research has shown that shocked quartz can form when nuclear detonations, asteroids, and comets produce near-surface or "touch-down" airbursts. When cosmic airbursts detonate with enough energy and at sufficiently low altitude, the resultant relatively small, high-velocity fragments may strike Earth's surface with high enough pressures to generate thermal and mechanical shock that can fracture quartz grains and introduce molten silica into the fractures. Here, we report the discovery of shocked quartz grains in a layer dating to the Younger Dryas (YD) onset (12.8 ka) in three classic archaeological sequences in the Southwestern United States: Murray Springs, Arizona; Blackwater Draw, New Mexico; and Arlington Canyon, California. These sites were foundational in demonstrating that the extinction or observed population bottlenecks of many megafaunal species and the coeval collapse/reorganization of the Clovis technocomplex in North America co-occurred at or near the YD onset. Using a comprehensive suite of 10 analytical techniques, including electron microscopy (TEM, SEM, CL, and EBSD), we have identified grains with glass-filled fractures similar to shocked grains associated with nuclear explosions and 27 accepted impact craters of different ages (e.g., Meteor Crater, 50 ka; Chesapeake Bay, 35 Ma; Chicxulub, 66 Ma; Manicouagan, 214 Ma) and produced in 11 laboratory shock experiments. In addition, we used hydrocode modeling to explore the temperatures, pressures, and shockwave velocities associated with the airburst of a 100-m fragment of a comet and conclude that they are sufficient to produce shocked quartz. These shocked grains co-occur with previously reported peak concentrations in platinum, meltglass, soot, and nanodiamonds, along with microspherules, similar to those found in ~28 microspherule layers that are accepted as evidence for cosmic impact events, even in the absence of a known crater. The discovery of apparently thermally-altered shocked quartz grains at these three key archaeological sites supports a cosmic impact as a major contributing factor in the megafaunal extinctions and the collapse of the Clovis technocomplex at the YD onset.
Recent DNA Studies Question a 65 kya Arrival of Humans in Sahul
Jim Allen & James O'Connell
Archaeology in Oceania, July 2025, Pages 187-190
Abstract:
Recent reports present evidence of Neanderthal introgression among all non-African human populations after 50 kya. Here we trace the implications of this claim for Sahul history. If correct, ancestral Sahul populations bearing Neanderthal DNA must have arrived after this date. Such data offer no support for a purported 65 kya human presence on the continent.
The Minoan Thera eruption predates Pharaoh Ahmose: Radiocarbon dating of Egyptian 17th to early 18th Dynasty museum objects
Hendrik Bruins & Johannes van der Plicht
PLoS ONE, September 2025
Abstract:
The huge volcanic eruption at Thera (Santorini), situated in the Aegean Sea, occurred within the Late Minoan IA archaeological period. However, its temporal association with Egyptian history has long been a controversial subject. Traditionally, the eruption was placed in the early 18th Dynasty, associated with Pharaoh Thutmose III as the youngest option or with Pharaoh Nebpehtire Ahmose as the oldest possibility. We investigated museum objects from the 17th and early 18th Dynasty, at the transition from the Second Intermediate Period to the New Kingdom, a period hardly studied with radiocarbon dating. Our research facilitated the first-ever direct radiocarbon time comparison between this Dynastic transition period and the Minoan Thera eruption. Detailed results are presented of a mudbrick from the Ahmose Temple at Abydos (British Museum), a linen burial cloth associated with Satdjehuty (British Museum), and wooden stick shabtis from Thebes (Petrie Museum), evaluated within a comprehensive context of historical Egyptian chronology options. Since the above items cannot be arranged in a stratigraphic sequence, Bayesian analysis could not be used. We adopted an alternative strategy within radiocarbon time space. Comparing our uncalibrated dates of 17th and early 18th Dynasty objects with a robust series of uncalibrated radiocarbon dates for the Minoan Thera eruption, it becomes clear that the two data sets have a different time signature. The Minoan eruption is older than the reign of Nebpehtire Ahmose, the first king of the 18th Dynasty, who reunited Upper and Lower Egypt. Our calibrated results support a low chronology for his reign and the beginning of the New Kingdom. Previous radiocarbon dates of king Senusert III support a high chronology for the Middle Kingdom. Therefore, the Second Intermediate Period, sandwiched in between these united Egyptian Kingdoms, embodies a significant time interval, as also indicated by Bennett's genealogical studies of the El-Kab governors.
9,000-year-old barley consumption in the foothills of central Asia
Xinying Zhou et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 9 September 2025
Abstract:
Scholars are increasingly favoring models for the origins of agriculture that involve a protracted process of increasing interdependence within a series of mutualistic relationships between humans and plants, as opposed to a rapid single event or innovation. Nonetheless, these scholars continue to debate over when people first started foraging for grass seeds, when they began to readily utilize sickles, how prominent the early selection pressures were, and when the first traits of domestication fully introgressed into the cultivated grass population. Here, we present complementary archaeobotanical and archaeological (stone tool) evidence for cereal foragers from Toda-1 Cave in the Surkhan Darya, dating to 9200 cal BP. We conclude that early Holocene foragers were processing grains along with nuts and fruits as far north as the rich river valleys of southern Uzbekistan. These data expand the known range that preagricultural cereal foragers covered in the early Holocene, adding to our understanding of the cultural processes that led to farming. Additionally, we present the earliest evidence for people interacting with the progenitors for pistachios and apples (or a close apple relative). The complex foraging behaviors that led to cultivation were being undertaken by people during the early Holocene across a wider area of Eurasia than previously thought.
A Late Bronze Age foreign elite? Investigating mobility patterns at Seddin, Germany
Anja Frank et al.
PLoS ONE, September 2025
Abstract:
During the Late Bronze Age (ca. 11th-8th century BCE), far-reaching and extensive trade and exchange networks linked communities across Europe. The area around Seddin in north-western Brandenburg, Germany, has long been considered as at the core of one such networks. The degree of which the exchange practices involved in the circulations of goods and ideas was facilitated by people of different origins settling along the networks remains to be understood. To address this question, this study presents Sr isotope data of 29 cremated petrous bones from five neighbouring Late Bronze Age burial sites around Seddin, including the 9th century BCE Wickbold I burial mound. Modern environmental samples and archaeological soil samples were also analysed for 87Sr/86Sr to establish a bioavailable reference baseline for the region. The results suggest that modern water and archaeological soil samples appear to be best suited proxies for defining a 87Sr/86Sr baseline that can reliably be used to trace Bronze Age mobility at Seddin, while the modern soil and plant sample 87Sr/86Sr data seem to reflect changes inherent to natural carbonate leaching of the glaciogenic surface sediments over time and/or recent anthropogenic contamination, such as fertilizers, rendering their use as representative archives for bioavailable Sr in the study of past human mobility, at least in the greater Seddin region, problematic. The comparison of the petrous bone 87Sr/86Sr signatures to the proposed water Sr isotope baseline reveals an overwhelming presence of non-locals in the investigated grave sites, with only two of 22 individuals falling within the local baseline. This study suggests complex mobility patterns of the elite community around Seddin during the Late Bronze Age.
Does Size Matter? What the Projectile Points from Oregon's Mill Creek Archaeological Complex Tell Us
Thomas Connolly & Paul Baxter
American Antiquity, July 2025, Pages 573-591
Abstract:
A dramatic increase of small ("arrow-sized") points, typically beginning after about 2,000 years ago (depending on locality), has often been characterized as marking the introduction of the bow and arrow throughout the Americas, eventually replacing earlier dart-and-atlatl weaponry in most areas. We analyze a large point assemblage from sites in the central Willamette Valley of western Oregon with a 6,000-year-long cultural record. We easily sorted the assemblage into small ("arrow-sized") and large ("dart-sized") sets using standard metrics, but we noted extreme temporal overlap, suggesting that (1) atlatls and bows continued in regular use as companion weapons; (2) both large and small projectile tips were affixed to arrows, depending on the target; or (3) there was some combination of these factors. Given the range of point forms, it appears that some served specialized functions (e.g., social conflict, hunting conditions, prey type), suggesting that the uses of stone-tipped weaponry may be more nuanced than has generally been acknowledged. Consequently, we find that assigning points to specific weapon systems requires assumptions we cannot support.