It was the summer of 1998, and University of South Carolina archaeologist Al Goodyear had a problem on his hands.
Fourteen years of digging at an ancient chert quarry outside Allendale had begun to bear fruit: At a site called Big Pine Tree, Goodyear was well on his way to establishing that a substantial Clovis population lived here. If you’ll recall your history lessons from high school, the Clovis people — named such because the first evidence of them was found at a site near Clovis, N.M. — were believed to be the first Americans who came into the North American continent across the Bering Sea land bridge from Asia some 13,000 years ago.
I still don't like the whole 'Clovis as Gospel' or 'Clovis as Dogma' idea. Nearly everyone was well aware that pre-Clovis was possible and it was just a matter of finding an appropriate site. Trouble was there were a lot of pretty dubious claims floating around so the bar got pretty high (though not unreasonably so, IMO). Good article though, so read it all.