ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, July 31, 1996 TAG: 9607310056
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C4 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: SALTVILLE
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
MEMO: shorter in Metro edition.
A Saltville-area flood plain may yield evidence that human life existed in the Western Hemisphere 2,000 years earlier than previously thought.
Beginning Monday, researchers will return to Saltville for two weeks to continue their studies of the environmental history of the middle Appalachians during the Ice Age.
Jerry McDonald will lead the team, which will work until Aug. 16 at the site in Smyth County. In April, McDonald reported findings from the Saltville area that may represent evidence of the oldest human life in the Western Hemisphere so far.
Objects and features from the site researched in earlier years attest to the presence of human beings in North America 14,000 years ago - nearly 2,000 years earlier than previously thought. That research showed that early human beings butchered and cooked a mastodon over an open fire on the flood plain of the dying Saltville river, using bone, stone and ivory tools made locally and elsewhere.
Work this year will include a search for more remains of the mastodon and a probe of sediments more than 14,000 years old.
Visitors may come to the site while the team is working, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Someone will be on hand to explain what is being done.
The research is being carried out through the Museum of the Middle Appalachians and the Virginia Museum of Natural History. The Museum of the Middle Appalachians, which is working on a permanent facility in the Saltville area, will offer several other programs during August.
McDonald will speak on the earlier findings regarding Paleo-Indians in Saltville at 8 p.m. Aug. 3 Saturday at the Coomes Center in Abingdon. Admission is free. The lecture is co-sponsored by the Virginia Highlands Festival Local History Committee.
An exhibit on the Paleo-Indian cultural period will be displayed at the Visitors' Center in Saltville from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. from Monday to Aug. 16. Admission is free.
Tours of the excavation and of historic Saltville will also be held those days, leaving Abingdon's Fields Penn House by air-conditioned bus at 10 a.m. on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and returning at 3 p.m. The transportation cost is $5 per person. Lunch can be purchased at any of several restaurants in Saltville. Seating is limited to 24 people, so reservations will be taken on a first-come, first-served basis.
People providing their own transportation may join the tour at the Madame Russell United Methodist Church in Saltville. Further information is available by calling the museum office at (540) 496-3633.
LENGTH: Medium: 55 linesby CNB