Several archaeologists said Baylor University stands to gain in stature because of two professors’ involvement in what is thought to be the discovery of the earliest known human habitation in the Americas.

A team led by Texas A&M University’s Mike Waters, and including Baylor geologists Lee Nordt and Steve Driese, found stone tools said to date back 15,500 years at the Buttermilk Creek site near Salado.

Baylor graduate student Gary Stinchcomb focuses in on a 6,000-year-old section of soil using a polarized light microscope.
Jerry Larson / Waco Tribune-Herald

The findings, according to the team, mark the possible demise of the “Clovis-first” theory — the once-prevailing view that inhabitants first came to the continent from Asia about 13,500 years ago when glaciers in the region retreated.

“From a Bayloresque perspective, the timing couldn’t be better for this,” said Jim Adovasio, an archaeologist who identified pre-Clovis artifacts at a Pennsylvania site called Meadowcroft in the 1970s.

Adovasio — who served on a panel four years ago that advised Baylor on how to enhance the visibility of its geology department — said the new find brings Baylor into one of the most controversial debates in archaeology at a time, he said, when two Texas powerhouse archaeology departments have shifted their focus.

“Over the past three or four decades, the leading archaeological entities in the state of Texas have been (the University of Texas), (Southern Methodist University) and A&M,” Adovasio said.

With the find, he said, Baylor is now “identified with research of early Texans at a time when UT is basically disengaged in that area, and when SMU is working outside the state now in New Mexico and Colorado.”

Though the findings are already the subject of debate in archaeology circles, he said “it’s a classic example of ‘There’s almost no such thing as bad academic publicity.’ ”

Science publicity

And publicity in the journal Science is an honor in and of itself, according to Dennis Jenkins, an archaeologist who worked at another site that appears to have pre-Clovis materials near the Oregon-California border.

Of Nordt and Driese’s involvement in the article, Jenkins said, “I’d certainly be selling it, because it doesn’t happen every day.”

The site also generated news coverage in major newspapers and academic trade publications, which Adovasio said could attract students to Baylor’s geology and anthropology departments, “enhancing the enrollment profile in that particular area.”

The involvement of Baylor faculty and the school’s proximity to the excavation site are both pluses for Baylor, Jenkins said.

“Any possibility for Baylor to be invited and for students to go to that field school under Mike Waters’ direction” would be a selling point, he said, referring to the lead author and A&M archaeologist.

“I’d say this is a high-profile sight, the work they’re doing is absolutely meticulous, and students will learn a phenomenal amount in just a brief time.”

Research gains

Baylor faculty said the two professors’ work on the project highlights research gains in hard sciences.

“They are phenomenal,” said Lori Baker, an archaeologist in Baylor’s anthropology department, of the geology department as a whole.

“They’ve hired really top-notch researchers, and some of the research coming out of their grad students is great stuff.”

Nordt focused on what the archaeological find brings Baylor more broadly.

“If the sciences move forward in a major way, it contributes to the reputation of the entire university,” he said.

“We’ve gotten a lot of coverage out of this, and it can only help, though that’s not what we think about when we go into a project.”

The find, Nordt said, also has the potential for creating research opportunities for scientists outside the geology department.

“It’s going to open up a flurry of research activity looking at archaeological materials across the Americas,” Nordt said.

Garrett Cook, a professor of cultural anthropology and archaeology, said Nordt and Driese “do very good work, and this is exciting for all of us to hear about.”

It’s also exciting, he said, because he can ask the two professors to give guest lectures as part of a local archaeology society.

mshapiro@wacotrib.com

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