Excavation at Taima-taima in 1976 recovered artifacts of the El Jobo complex in direct association with the butchered remains of a juvenile mastodon. Radiocarbon dates on associated wood twigs indicate a minimum age of 13,000 years before the present for the mastodon kill, a dating significantly older than that of the Clovis complex in North America. The El Jobo complex must have evolved independently in northern South America.

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Neutron activation analysis was used to determine the chemical composition of sources of obsidian artifacts from the Paleoindian site of Los Tapiales in Guatemala with an occupation date of around 10,700 radiocarbon years ago. Three different sources were detected, all between 50 and 75 km from Los Tapiales. The predominant source represented in our ten samples was in the Rio Pixcayá area, and another was in the Tajumulco area. A third source, identified by comparison with other work, appears to be in the area of San Bartolomé Milpas Altas.

Parallel to the Essex coast north of the mouth of the Thames, a series of gravel spreads ranging in altitude from near sea level westward to more than 200 ft O.D. (mean sea level) proved to be the remnants of an abandoned Thames/Medway terrace system, rather than a series of “raised” beaches, as their location had suggested. The seaward side of the ancient river valley has subsequently been “captured” by subsidence.Evidence is given for five terraces, with surface levels between 5 and 75 ft O.D. Because of subsidence of the Essex coast, the terrace levels are not easily correlatable with either the Thames or Medway terrace levels. Temporal placement is attempted on the basis of one site in the 25 ft Barling terrace, which yielded a Middle Acheulian archaeological assemblage associated with a cool temperate fauna including an early form of mammoth. An ice wedge cast in the Barling terrace was filled with floodloam which weathered to a parabraunerde soil during an interglacial climate warmer than now. For these reasons man is thought to have lived on the floodplain of the Barling terrace either at the onset of the Wolstonian (Riss) glacial or during an interstadial of that stage. The question of possible linkages between Swanscombe and Clacton terraces is discussed.