Chert Provenance Supports a ∼4000-year Late Pleistocene through Early Holocene Connection between the Flint and Aucilla Rivers in the Lower Southeastern United States

Page-Ladson has produced compelling geoarchaeological evidence of the earliest recorded people in the southeastern United States. This research brief presents new chert provenance data on one artifact from the older-than-Clovis component at Page-Ladson and situates it within the broader late Pleistocene and early Holocene provenance framework in the region. The goal of this manuscript is to present this datapoint and generate new and testable hypotheses that inform the initial settlement of the American Southeast.