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The Age of the Calaveras Skull: Dating the “Piltdown Man” of the New World

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

R. E. Taylor ,
Louis A. Payen  and
Peter J. Slota Jr.
R. E. Taylor
Affiliation:
Radiocarbon Laboratory, Department of Anthropology, Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, University of California, Riverside, CA 92521
Louis A. Payen
Affiliation:
Radiocarbon Laboratory, Department of Anthropology, Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, University of California, Riverside, CA 92521
Peter J. Slota Jr.
Affiliation:
Radiocarbon Laboratory, Department of Anthropology, Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, University of California, Riverside, CA 92521
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Abstract

The Calaveras skull, first reported in 1866, represents the earliest purported fossil human discovery in California and one of the earliest in the New World. The specimen is in the possession of the Peabody Museum, Harvard University. The validity of the original "Tertiary" age assignment was rejected by the first generation of professional American archaeologists early in the twentieth century. Radiocarbon analyses using both conventional decay counting and accelerator mass spectrometry indicate a late Holocene age for the Calaveras skull.

Resumen

Resumen

El cráneo de Calaveras, descubierto en 1866, constituye el fósil humano más antiguo de California y es, supuestamente, uno de los más tempranos del Nuevo Mundo. A principios del Siglo XX, la primera generación de arqueólogos Norteamericanos profesionales rechazó la validez de la edad terciaria originalmente atribuida a este ejemplar. Análisis radiocarbónicos utilizando cuentas de desintegración convencionalesy espectrometría con acelerador de masas indican que el cráneo de Calaveras data del Holoceno tardío. El espécimen se encuentra actualmente en poder del Peabody Museum, Universidad de Harvard

Type
Reports
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 57 , Issue 2 , April 1992 , pp. 269 - 275
Copyright
Copyright © Society for American Archaeology 1992

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