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MVN, Thursday, Thursday, April 29, 1999, MVN wrote among other things: > Among the many examples of this phenomenon that I can think of are >1) the almost psychotic inability of North American prehistorians to accept >any of the evidence from Latin America for pre-Clovis occupations, and 2) >the evident inability of most North American processualists and >neo-evolutionists to accept that migrations have had any meaningful impact >on prehistory. This kind of thinking and its rampant over-generalization is what gives post-processualist thinking a bad name. Not all of us North American prehistorians are unable to accept pre-Clovis occupation as a reasonable idea, nor were we ever unanimous that Clovis was the first occupation. Many simply thought, and still think, that it is far too early in our understanding of continental prehistory to draw conclusions about "oldest" anything. Here in California for instance, our ideas about the anitquity of acorn economies are changing drastically. Papers read at the recent SCA meetings more than doubled the known antiquity of acorn processing. But they were based on solid evidence. Until Monte Verde there was no truly unequivocal evidence for a pre-Clovis cultural horizon even though many of us argued that it was a logical necessity. I recognize some of the reported finds by the French in Brazil, and there are important sites in other parts of S. America that looked very promising even before Monte Verde, just as there were sites in N. America that looked promising before Folsom, New Mexico. Merely because something is reasonable does not necessarily advance it to the level of a proven "fact." The emphasis by neo-evolutionists of social change by processes other than replacement (migration) is a means of widening the discussion about process. Migration does not explain much of anything, any more than diffusion. Why does a society migrate? Why does a society accept the diffusion of some material and social culture but not others? Are there archaeologically discernible correlates that can help model such processes as migration and diffusion? Prior to the processualist shift almost all models of prehistoric social change focused around migration ideas. Their proponents were at least as opposed to "processualist" ideas as you seem to think processualists are to "popro" thought. I doubt that any North American prehistorian would ever discount the significance of migrations to prehistory. If they weren't important there would BE no North or South American prehistory. On the other hand, the vast variety of American Indian languages can't simply be explained by migration either, or diffusion, replacement or any other simple model. The real reason processualists tend to discount post-processualist arguments is the "popro" tendency to emphasize "critique" over substance. JWDougherty mailto:[log in to unmask] %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%