National Geographic is reporting the discovery of stone tools in Minnesota that might be 13,000 years old, dating them to the late Ice Age. While they've only been dated by the layer in which they were found at this point, the discovery hints at the continual pushing back of the date at which humans are believed to inhabited North America. If confirmed, the tools would push back known habitation in Minnesota at least 4,000 years.

I was browsing through The Debris Field Blog today and ran across a website that's apparently been up a while, but which I've never seen. It's about the possibility of a pre-Clovis site in Ohio which is being excavated and studied.

This material is presented for consideration by anyone with an interest in the early habitation of North America, describing artifacts first recognized and re- corded in 1987 at an unglaciated hilltop site in southeastern Ohio. These have appeared in large quantity, at depths of from near the surface to well over a meter below, and the surface of this large site has only been scratched. At this point, five doctorate-level professionals - archaeologists, geologists, and a forensic biologist - have identified human agency in both lithic and organic material. The Ohio Historic Preservation Office has included the site in the Ohio Archaeological Inventory, recognizing evidence of prehistoric habitation, although they are unable at this point to identify temporal or cultural associa- tion. Since they lack the funding and staffing needed even to keep up with Ohio's many typically "Indian" sites, this is as far as their involvement seems likely to progress.

The website has a ton of great information on the dig site, and includes many pictures of artifacts gathered there, such as this one below.

In the leftmost photo, this small figure depicts a human profile facing left. As the stone is rotated horizontally counterclockwise, the image "morphs" into the classic part-human part-bird creature. The second photo is at 45º rotation, and the third at 90º.

While the archaeological site doesn't seem to have been studied exhaustively, the author states that he believes it to be from at least several thousand years before present, and due to local glaciation, probably less than 14,000 years old. I've e-mailed the author hoping to find out more about the dating of it, and I hope there's more coming on discoveries at this site in the future.