Marine science major Angie McManus stood calf deep in mud, swatting mosquitoes and looking out for snakes, but she was aware that she might be helping to make history. “It was always in the back of my mind: if this is true, it will rewrite textbooks,” she said.

Having worked at Sea World in Cleveland during her middle and high school years, McManus knew she wanted to study marine science and she was accepted into Coastal’s program in fall 1998. Although she is primarily interested in ocean-related studies, when she heard one of her professors, Paul Gayes, talking about an unusual archaeological excavation going on near Allendale, S.C., she was intrigued. When Gayes, who is director of Coastal’s Center for Marine and Wetland Studies, called for volunteers to work for a weekend at the site, known as “ Topper,” she and 10 other students signed on.

There they met Topper project director Albert Goodyear, archaeologist with the University of South Carolina’s Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology. Goodyear has worked on the site since 1983, shortly after a local man named Topper first took him there to inspect what turned out to be a Stone Age quarry. Digs in 1985 and 1986 unearthed many prehistoric blades and tools. But it wasn’t until 1998 that Goodyear hit archaeological pay dirt.

Angie McManus and Professor Paul Gayes examine core samples taken from the Topper site near Allendale.

The accepted textbook theory, which has held sway for more than 70 years, is that the first Americans were descendents of East Asian tribes who followed herds of big game from Siberia into Alaska and then spread out across the Great Plains and eventually reached the East Coast. This is known as the Clovis model, so named for artifacts found in Clovis, N.M., in the 1930s which were dated at 12,000 years old and held to belong to the oldest human settle-ment in the New World.

The Clovis theory began to be challenged in the late 1990s by the discovery of artifacts in Monteverde, Chile, and Cactus Hill, Va., which purported to be older than those found in Clovis. These finds inspired Goodyear and his team of scholars and students to dig deeper into the Topper site, which had up to this point yielded only Clovis-era artifacts. Going down to depths between six and seven feet, Goodyear began finding tiny tools, microblades, stone flakes and other materials unlike anything he had ever seen before. He believed he had found another significant breakthrough in the “Clovis barrier.”

Coastal’s involvement with the project began with a series of parking lot encounters among scientists at USC. One day last year, Goodyear ran into Doug Williams, a geochemist and associate dean of USC’s Honors Program, and they chatted about Goodyear’s progress at the Topper site. His archaeological digs there had unearthed all sorts of potentially revolutionary finds – possibly pre-Clovis tools and artifacts – but he was having trouble establishing the age of the discoveries. One of Goodyear’s problems in accurately radiocarbon-dating his artifacts was the presence of modern charcoal in the soil. More and better soil testing was needed in order to develop a geographical history of the site area. Later that day, Williams bumped into Paul Gayes, who was at USC for a meeting, and told him about Goodyear’s dilemma. Gayes thought he could help.

“Stratigraphy is one of the things we do best – drilling and analyzing core samples of earth and sediment,” says Gayes. The Center for Marine and Wetland Studies has earned a high reputation internationally in the field of marine geology for its work in charting the geological history of the coastline. The fact that the Topper site is located on the banks of the Savannah River made it ideal for Coastal researchers, who have long experience in studying coastal waterways. “What we do along the coast we could do just as well at Allendale,” said Gayes. Goodyear welcomed Gayes’ offer and invited him to the site one weekend in August 2000.

Given the significance of the Topper project – it had already been reported in Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report, National Geographic and several other national science publications, Gayes knew that it would provide an extraordinary opportunity for student involvement. A group of about 10 students traveled to Allendale with him and other Center staffers to help with the coring on two separate weekends in August and November. Another 10 USC students accompanied Doug Williams.

“This was something that Angie and the other students did solely because they wanted to,” says Gayes. “We didn’t have a grant for this, so no one got paid. It was not part of a class, so no one got credit. But it gave these students the best possible opportunity to see how what they’ve learned in the classroom can be applied. And it’s also an example of reaching out to help solve someone else’s problem, which is extremely important in scientific research today. Nobody out there is an island. Nobody is an expert in everything.”

Gayes and Williams are working to put together other student collaborative projects. McManus and several other Coastal students met with a group of USC students in March 2001 to talk about future student-driven research projects.

“Coastal has resources which USC doesn’t have, and USC has resources Coastal doesn’t have,” says McManus. “By working together, sharing facilities and drawing on the unique strengths of each institution, students can get involved in some really interesting research – above and beyond our regular course work.”

In February 2001, dating specialists in thermo luminescence, a new dating technique, officially determined that the Topper artifacts are at least 15,000 years old, older than Clovis by approximately 3,000 years. It is likely that textbooks will be rewritten, or at least amended, because of Topper and other digs – which points to a whole new theory of the First Americans. Researchers analyzing recently discovered skull and skeletal remains found throughout the Western hemisphere are also making a claim for diverse, un-Clovis-like migrations to this continent by ancient peoples from many parts of Asia and even from Europe.

Whether or not Topper and other discoveries change the course of prehistory, the experience of participating in the dig has changed the course of McManus’ next few years. “It was such a great experience and such an exciting process,” she said. “Before Topper my plans after graduation were undecided, but now I’m definitely planning to go on to graduate school in geology.”