NYSAA Bulletin No. 52 — Archaic Sites: Croton Point & Dogan Point — Passage 25

[Various (1971)] Tennessee, and his own work at the Prickly Pear site in New York. In South America he singles out the El Jobo site in Venezuela and the Cerro Chivateros site in Peru. Although he discusses the difficulties in dating some of these sites, he tends to accept the validity of all of them as part of the early New World cultural foundation. This reviewer would agree with Brennan's basic thesis of the underlying cultural assemblages in the New World, but I believe that serious doubts can still be cast upon some of these sites, such as Calico, as representing actual discoveries of these early complexes. Brennan presents the many problems in dating remains of early cultures in an excellent discussion of the conflicts that often occur between carbon-14 dates and those derived from geological sources.

He tells of his excavations of Indian shell middens along the Hudson River where C-14 dates for cultural remains were in direct contradiction to the postulated fluctuations of water levels in the lower Hudson Valley. This example and others in the book should be a warning to the reader that knowledge from different fields should be cross-checked before a firm conclusion can be drawn on the age of a particular site. He also cautions that the lack of a firm date for a cultural assemblage should not be used to deny the existence and importance of that assemblage.