[SatinDoll]

We subscribe to Archaeology (magazine) and they featured an impressive spread on this find a few months ago. All the gory details about the legal and bureaucratic details were included.

In conjunction, that month’s issue of Archaeologis also had an article on contract archaeologists. It was a group of “rent-a-diggers”, working for the Corps, who made the discovery in Puerto Rico, and the guys were quoted as saying that it was finds like this, a once in a lifetime event, made this their dream job.

Just a thought I’ve had lately: sea level 20,000 - 12,000 bce was about 400 feet lower than it is today and large areas of the Caribe were above water at that time. More work needs to be done, both standard terrestrial digging and marine exploration. The key to the ancient peoples who spawned the Mayan and pre-Toltec/Aztec civilisations may, perhaps, be found there. (Much of North America would have been too cold and dry.)

As you can tell, I don’t hold to the idea of no one before Clovis. The aborigines made it to Australia by boat 40,000 years ago: I doubt it was a one time boating event but a long time practice for many people around the world. The most recent dna evidence for Tierra del Fuegans showed they are descendents of aborigines in Australia! It will be interesting to discover whether some of the suspected older sites in the western hemisphere were those of these aboriginal descendants.

[DavemiesterP]

Yeah, ‘shovelbums’. Job postings are located both on yahoogroups/shovelbums and on facebook/shovelbums, although the latter I have not subscribed to. I found my first job doing this through yahoogroups. Since I got my foot in the door, I've worked for several companies via that daily posting. I have not seen the article you are referring to, but I heard it bashed the practice of living out of a hotel and laptop as you're ‘slutted’ around to different companies. It's not that bad. It's just mainly your first step in ‘paying your dues’ in the field. Some do it forever, some, like me, get picked up by a major firm eventually. I was hired as a permanent employee just in the last few weeks by another firm than the one in PR and we'll have to see if that's a good thing or not. But, everyone has to start somewhere. If someone is ONLY an archaeologist, with no other skills to offer, but a masters or PhD, sometimes they get stuck in the shovelbum life. I've worked as an archaeological tech side by side with PhDs, and we were both making $14/hr. I'm not a PhD, but I bring alot more to the table than most of the people in this field. Many kids that get into this after spending years in school don't have a clue as to how to sniff out a location for a site. That kind of thing just comes built into your DNA from birth. I also have a very broad level of experience in other things that, until now, I didn't understand why God had sent me down those weird paths in life. Now, it all makes sense. Ironically, I'm not the only one in this field that that has happened to. Now, don't get me wrong, I have seen posts on shovelbums that would have left me screwed several hundred miles from home if I had not thought it out first, but most companies just won't let that happen. The worst part of traveling for work is that I'm married with kids and almost the whole time I'm gone I'm daydreaming of playing with my wife and kids. But, on the flip-side of that, when I'm home I'm dreaming about archeology and the thrill of discovery. It's a stressful life, having two mirror images of emotion and passion all the time. Thank God my wife loves me so much. I'd have to say that probably 90% of this field is ‘rent-a-diggers’, but we all have alot of fun on the road. Some guys have their XBOX360’s and tote around 46” flat-screen TV's. Others fish all weekend, and then have a fish-fry in midweek for the entire crew(donations accepted). Some are just complainers who sit in their room and don't socialize with anyone. But, really, how can you beat the chance to be on a boat surveying shorelines and finding EVERY single artifact there is there (legally), then get shipped off to PR for 4 months, then get to record for the first time overhangs and caves with sites in them in the canyons of North Central TN, all in the space of 6 months. I love my job, I love my job, I love my job!!! lol.

As for what you said about the pre-Clovis era peopling of the Americas, I personally completely agree. Check out these three links. I really think the second is compelling evidence for something that the world cannot begin to digest as being a recurring event.
http://www.subversiveelement.com/BiminiRoad.html
http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/FrozenMammoths6.html
http://www.oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/
I've written many papers over the years on the coming ice age, and have occasionally been accused of being a hack that needs shock-treatment, but if you read all the way through the second ebook link you may end up on the same belief path as me. Or, you may laugh and shake your head...lol.

Many groups are currently mapping the continental shelf in search of civilizations that once existed. One is off the southern edge of Texas on the shelf extending from Galveston Bay. Some others are off the coast of Florida, off the north side of Cuba, in the English Channel, the North Sea, the Black Sea, and off the southern coast of Puerto Rico. People got around back then, and I firmly believe that that will be proven in the next few years to those that are overly conservative in their beliefs about that. Not any archaeologists that I've spoken to actually still believe that native peoples only arrived here via the land bridge during the Clovis era. There's just too much stuff that we see in the field that discounts that theory. It's like someone still believing that photos really steal your soul...lol. I've personally dug down beneath the paleo layer (in TX), beneath the caliche layer(usually another 2 feet), and found LARGE flakes that came off of tools that had to have been massive in size, but never seen the tools that they actually came off of. The tools themselves aren't there, but the materials left behind from their manufacture are. The type of flaking is COMPLETELY different from anything above them in the strata, so much so that a 5 year old kid would see the difference. But, they ARE flakes, and you would have to be a moron not to admit that. I've also seen layers of almost permanent occupation (in TX) that are sometimes as deep as 40 feet along large rivers in Central Texas. I've got one of those sites in my back pocket, just in case I eventually trust a local archaeologist to excavate it without taking advantage of the landowner, which I know. That particular site is well hidden, the evidence of it is only just beginning to show, it's buried in such a way as to be a deathtrap to any looters, and it's guarded by river-folk with no bones about using trespassers as trot-line bait for catfish.

The evidence is overwhelming for these pre-Clovis peoples and I'm happy to be one of those trying to prove it to the rest of the nay-sayers. ‘The Truth is Out There’, as they say.