GEOARCHAEOLOGY OF THE MIDLAND (PALEOINDIAN) SITE, TEXAS

In 1953 human remains and a new type of Paleoindian artifact were disc overed eroding from a ''blowout'' in a small dune field along Monahans Draw: near Midland, Texas, on the Southern High Plains. The projectil e points became the type ''Midland'' collection. Stratigraphy, radiome tric dating paleontology, and geochemistry suggested that the artifact s and bones dated to at least 10,000 B.P. and that the human remains w ere possibly as old as 20,000 B.P. The researchers believed that the h uman bones were from below a red sand that in turn was below a Folsom occupation. The dating of the human remains has long been problematic, however, and recent attempts to apply U-series dating further confuse the story. Geoarchaeological investigations were carried out at the s ite from 1989 to 1992 to reevaluate the geochronology, with particular reference to the age of the skeletal material. We reach several concl usions: (I) there are two Red Sands, (2) the human remains are from be low the upper Red Sand, but the Folsom material is from above the lowe r Red Sand and, therefore, the Red Sand stratigraphy is riot relevant to the age of the human remains. (3) the human remains were associated with the valley-margin facies of a lacustrine carbonate that is well dated iii the region and rarely is > 10, 000 B.P.; and (4) all numeric al dating methods applied at the site produced unreliable results. We find no compelling evidence that the human remains from the Midland si te are older than Folsom age, they may be contemporary with or. younge r than tile Folsom occupation.