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The Kennewick Skeleton: Chronological and Biomolecular Contexts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2016

R E Taylor,
David Glenn Smith and
John R Southon
R E Taylor
Affiliation:
Radiocarbon Laboratory, Department of Anthropology, Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, University of California, Riverside, USA. Email: retaylor@citrus.ucr.edu.
David Glenn Smith
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of California, Davis, California, USA
John R Southon
Affiliation:
Center for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry, University of California, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California, USA
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Abstract

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A human skeleton recovered near Kennewick, Washington, USA in 1996 has been dated to the early Holocene on the basis of multiple radiocarbon determinations, an analysis of a style of a temporally diagnostic projectile point found embedded in the ilium of the skeleton, and geological investigations of the locality where the skeleton was recovered. Based on morphological criteria, the Kennewick skeleton, which is one of the most complete early Holocene human skeletons recovered so far in the Western Hemisphere, appears to be more similar to those of modern South Asians and Europeans than to modern Native Americans or to contemporary indigenous populations of Northeast Asia.

Information

Type
II. Our ‘Wet’ Environment
Information
Radiocarbon , Volume 43 , Issue 2B: Proceedings of the 17th International Radiocarbon Conference (Part 2 of 3), Conference Editors: Israel Carmi, Elisabetta Boaretto , 2001, pp. 965 - 976
Copyright
Copyright © 2001 by the Arizona Board of Regents on behalf of the University of Arizona 

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