SEATTLE, WASHINGTON—A tool-making site estimated to be more than 10,000 years old has been found along Bear Creek in suburban Seattle. Thousands of stone flakes and bifaces, scrapers, and hammerstones were recovered, along with two projectile-point fragments that are concave-based, “something not seen at any time in the local projectile point sequence,” Robert Kopperl of SWCA Environmental Consultants told Western Digs. The artifacts were found under a layer of peat radiocarbon dated to about 10,000 years ago. Burned bits of willow, poplar, and pine dated to between 10,000 and 12,500 years ago were found in the layer with the artifacts. “It’s the oldest artifact assemblage from western Washington, and the excellent context in which we were able to do our excavations and sampling is now providing a picture, much clearer than ever before, of the environment these people were living in during the transition out of the Ice Age,” Kopperl explained. To read in-depth about the first people to reach the New World, see "America, in the Beginning."
