Radiocarbon dating of the earliest occupational phases at the Cooper’s Ferry site in western Idaho indicates that people repeatedly occupied the Columbia River basin, starting between 16,560 and 15,280 calibrated years before the present (cal yr B.P.). Artifacts from these early occupations indicate the use of unfluted stemmed projectile point technologies before the appearance of the Clovis Paleoindian tradition and support early cultural connections with northeastern Asian Upper Paleolithic archaeological traditions. The Cooper’s Ferry site was initially occupied during a time that predates the opening of an ice-free corridor (≤14,800 cal yr B.P.), which supports the hypothesis that initial human migration into the Americas occurred via a Pacific coastal route.

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Monagrillo pottery (ca. 4500‐3200 14C yr B.P.) is the earliest in Panama and one of the first ceramics in the New World. It is found in two distinct site types: (1) shell‐bearing middens of the northeastern Azuero Peninsula and (2) rock shelters of the Pacific plains, foothils, and cordillera, and the Caribbean slopes of central Panama. Here, I present a study that sources Monagrillo ceramics using petrography to distinguish locally produced from transported wares. Results indicate that ceramics were mainly produced in two zones: northeastern Azuero, and the Pacific slopes around Río Grande. Diachronic changes in ceramic sources were not observed. A number of vessels found in the Pacific plains rock shelters in the intermediate area were wares transported from both production zones. Most ceramics from the Caribbean slopes were manufactured on the Pacific slopes. As the first systematic pottery sourcing project conducted in Panama, this research provides the basis for future evaluations of degrees of sedentism, patterns of human mobility, and exchange, which can improve the knowledge of the context of ceramic origins in New World tropics.

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The timing and character of the Pleistocene peopling of the Americas are measured by the discovery of unequivocal artifacts from well-dated contexts. We report the discovery of a well-dated artifact assemblage containing 14 stemmed projectile points from the Cooper’s Ferry site in western North America, dating to ~16,000 years ago. These stemmed points are several thousand years older than Clovis fluted points (~13,000 cal yr B.P.) and are ~2300 years older than stemmed points found previously at the site. These points date to the end of Marine Isotope Stage 2 when glaciers had closed off an interior land route into the Americas. This assemblage includes an array of stemmed projectile points that resemble pre-Jomon Late Upper Paleolithic tools from the northwestern Pacific Rim dating to ~20,000 to 19,000 years ago, leading us to hypothesize that some of the first technological traditions in the Americas may have originated in the region.