Vance T. Holliday’s research while affiliated with University of Arizona and other places

... Nearly a meter of mostly culturally sterile sediment accumulated on top of this Terminal Pleistocene occupation before being reoccupied by foragers and herders at the onset of the Late Holocene, approximately 4000 years ago (Albarracin-Jordan and Capriles, 2011;Capriles et al., 2016a). Similarly, many intensively occupied sites in the south-central Andes during the Terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene exhibit substantial occupation hiatuses afterwards (Latorre et al., 2013;Loyola et al., 2019;Meinekat et al., 2022;Núñez et al., 2002;Ugalde et al., 2024;Workman et al., 2020). This period of "archaeological silence" initially documented in the highlands of northern Chile (Núñez et al., 2013(Núñez et al., , 2005 likely resulted from a demographic statis that has been documented along the entire arid Andes and strongly connected with climatic drivers (Borrero and Santoro, 2022;Riris and Arroyo-Kalin, 2019;Timpson et al., 2021). ...

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Early Human Foraging Paleoecology in the Highlands of Potosí, Bolivia

... The Paleoindian levels at Lubbock Lake include Edwards chert from central Texas and Alibates agate and Tecovas jasper from the northern part of the Texas Panhandle, but they also include significant amounts of relatively low quality (and sometimes extremely low quality) stone from local gravels and outcrops (Bamforth, 1985). This local material is much less common after the Paleoindian period: Archaic and later assemblages from Lubbock Lake are composed primarily of Edwards chert (Bamforth, unpublished data; Johnson, 1987). We might, then, interpret the Paleoindian occupants of the site as having moved to a smaller, not a larger, territory than later groups, and argue that they imported exotics out of necessity. ...

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High-Tech Foragers? Folsom and Later Paleoindian Technology on the Great Plains

... For example, understanding archaeological site formation processes (objective 2) is part of an important research agenda for archaeologists, because misinterpretations of these processes, and how those processes produce artifact patterning, can result in errors in reconstructing past human behavior (Mandel et al., 2017). Schiffer (1987, p. 7) defined site formation processes as "the factors that create the historic and archaeological records." ...

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Planetary geoarchaeology as a new frontier in archaeological science: Evaluating site formation processes on Earth's Moon

... Opponents would do that in the next article we review. Holliday et al. (2023) announced in an article of nearly 100,000 words their "comprehensive refutation" of the YDIH. The abstract concluded: "Evidence and arguments purported to support the YDIH involve flawed methodologies, inappropriate assumptions, questionable conclusions, misstatements of fact, misleading information, unsupported claims, irreproducible observations, logical fallacies, and selected omission of contrary information" (Italics added). ...

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Data vs. Derision: The Ethics of Language in Scientific Publication. The Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis as a Case Study

... This argument is misplaced because there is no modern analog associated with Lake Lucero that is directly applicable to the aggradational environment of the late Pleistocene. The Tularosa Basin has been subject to deflationary processes since at least the middle Holocene (Kocurek et al. 2007;Langford 2003) and possibly earlier (Holliday et al. 2023). The Quaternary sediments exposed at the ground surface that have been exhumed by these processes are present in both plan view and outcrop around the shores of Lake Lucero and contain a combination of in situ Quaternary pollen and modern pollen. ...

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The Geochronology of White Sands Locality 2 is Resolved

... However, this estimate is based almost entirely on the dating of Ruppia and ostracod samples which are subject to HWE problems. At several other Late Pleistocene paleolakes in the region where the geochronological effects of 14 C reservoirs containing "old" groundwater have been assessed or avoided in dating, the reported highest lake levels date to between ∼17,000 and ∼15,000 cal yr BP (e.g., Allen and Anderson 2000;Hudson et al. 2023;Kowler 2015;Menking et al. 2018;Waters 1989). As a result, if the 14 C reservoir in the Tularosa Basin were to be fully accounted for, the highest levels of Lake Otero may also have occurred between ∼17,000 and ∼15,000 cal yr BP, and not between ∼28,000 and ∼18,500 cal yr BP as had been suggested by Allen, Love, and Myers (2009). ...

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Unresolved: Persistent Problems with the White Sands Locality 2 Geochronology

... The evidence includes the late Lower Paleolithic site of Schöningen, Germany (Altamura et al. 2023), and 1.5 Ma tracks recovered near Ileret, Kenya (Roach et al. 2016). Later human lineages such as Homo heidelbergensis, Neanderthals, and modern humans, also left footprints that they walked along elephant trails, as recovered from Tora-Piccilli in central Italy (350 ± 3 Ka) (Palombo et al. 2018); the coastal dunes of Gibraltar on the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula (28 ± 3 Ka) (Muñiz et al. 2019); the Last Glacial Maximum in the Arabian Peninsula (Stewart et al. 2020), and possibly during the Last Glacial Maximum in New Mexico (Bennett et al. 2020, though contested by Haynes 2022Pigati et al. 2022). Thus, the ichnological evidence consistently illustrates human presence at the same locales as proboscideans whenever and wherever these two species co-existed on Earth. ...

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Quarries as Places of Significance in the Lower Paleolithic Holy Triad of Elephants, Water, and Stone

... Seven of the Naco fluted points are illustrated in Figure 8(a-g). They were found among the bones of the more complete Naco mammoth, for which associated charcoal has been dated to a mean of 10,985 14 C yr BP (13,067-12,767 cal yr BP) (Huckell et al. 2022). They are of variable length, with Figure 8(b-f) likely affected by subsequent re-sharpening. ...

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Parsing Fluted Point Technological Variability in the South-Central Ice-Free Corridor

... Currently the highest levels are thought to have occurred between ∼28,000 and ∼18,500 cal yr BP (Allen, Love, and Myers 2009). If the interpretations of Bennett et al. (2021) and Pigati et al. (2022aPigati et al. ( , 2022b are correct, the footprints were laid down near the end or immediately following this period. However, this estimate is based almost entirely on the dating of Ruppia and ostracod samples which are subject to HWE problems. ...

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Unresolved: Persistent Problems with the White Sands Locality 2 Geochronology

... Hay disponibles, además, numerosos artículos de discusión y aplicación de estos estudios en idioma inglés, español y portugués (p.e.Araujo, 2013Araujo, , 2018 Bermúdez Restrepo, 2010;Farrand, 2001;Favier Dubois, 2009;Ferring, 1986;Hassan, 1978;Holliday, 1990;Kligmann y Díaz País, 2010;Ozán, 2012;Posada Restrepo, 2007;Roldán et al., 2015;Rubin et al., 2013;Sampietro Vattuone y Peña Monné, 2019;Stein, 1987Stein, , 1990Stein, , 2001bTchilinguirián et al., 2016;Waters, 2000), así como varios otros textos citados en este trabajo, con énfasis en la producción latinoamericana.En términos de compilaciones, el GEGAL ha promovido la publicación de 3 libros y de 5 volúmenes especiales en revistas, que reúnen artículos de geoarqueología latinoamericanos escritos en español, portugués e inglés 2 . Existen asimismo otros dos volúmenes especiales(Salemme et al., 2016;Sitzia et al., 2022) y un libro sobre geoarqueología regional (Sampietro Vattuone y Peña Monné, 2016) que se suman como ediciones temáticas.En la actualidad, muy pocas carreras de grado en Antropología/Arqueología en Latinoamérica incluyen algún contenido de geoarqueología, tratándose al momento de unos pocos casos en Argentina, en Colombia y en Brasil 3 . Otras carreras poseen una o más materias de geociencias en su plan de estudios. ...

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¿Qué excavamos cuando excavamos? La geoarqueología en la formación disciplinar de los arqueólogos latinoamericanos