Early colonization of Beringia and Northern North America: Chronology, routes, and adaptive strategies

Recent archaeological and paleoecological work along both interior and coastal routes for early colonization of the New World has suggested that the interior route was impossible, leaving the coastal route as the only colonization route taken by Clovis ancestors. We review the geological, paleoecological, and archaeological record for Eastern Beringia and adjacent areas. Spatio-temporal patterning of known sites and evaluation of early interior and coastal route radiocarbon, luminescence, and cosmogenic dating, along with new analyses of obsidian distribution and adaptive strategies of early Beringians, indicate this assessment is premature and the interior route remains a viable hypothesis, available by at least 13,560 and possibly 14,900 years ago.