Specialists today disagree on many - perhaps most of the important issues concerning the peopling of the New World. That is as it should be in the pursuit of knowledge.

     We do not have a tight chronological framework for discussing and analyzing the biological and cultural origins of Paleoindians. It is safe to assume that Paleoindians were present in Beringia - the temporary, dry-land passage between Siberia and Alaska - sometime before 11,500 radiocarbon years ago (13,350 calendar years), and that they moved southward, hunting wild animals and gathering wild plants.

     But were these the first Americans? Disagreement swirls around who the first Paleoindians were, the timing of their arrival, the number and nature of migrations, and how quickly and by what strategies the people moved across the landscape, and how they are related to contemporary Native Americans. The answers to many of these questions hinge upon the exact timing of the arrival of the first people in North America.

     Essentially, there are two diametrically opposed models for the initial peopling of the Western Hemisphere: an early entry, sometime before 15,000 calendar years ago, and perhaps before the last glacial maximum some 20,000 years ago; and a late entry, sometime just before the appearance of Clovis, the oldest unambiguous cultural complex in the Americas, at about 13,350 years ago.

     Unfortunately, "paradigm bias" - an overcommitment to a favored model - has created a breakdown in communication among some Paleoindian specialists. Paradigm bias creates unrealistic expectations of the archaeological record by closing an investigator's mind to alternative explanations and possibilities.

     Some would argue that history is repeating itself. During the nineteenth century, proponents of an early entry presented - incorrectly as it turned out - crude, flaked-stone artifacts called "paleoliths" as evidence of ancient human occupation of North America. They looked nothing like the more sophisticated artifacts found at Folsom, New Mexico, which in 1927 finally proved an American antiquity.

     Actually, the Folsom artifacts were exactly what we should have expected to find in Ice Age deposits of North America. Folsom artifacts represent the last gasp of the Upper Paleolithic (the final phase of the Old Stone Age), which had been recognized 50 years earlier in the Old World. Even the fluted points of Folsom were not unique. In 1923, a fluted point was recovered from an Upper Paleolithic site in Dordogne, France.

     Several interpretations, some of them contradictory, will fit the current evidence on the peopling of the Americas. Consequently, our questions - and our minds should remain open as we seek more data, a choice between the early- and late-entry models should not be made arbitrarily.

     But we must also remember that possibility does not equal certainty. Despite intriguing possibilities of early human presence in the Western Hemisphere, the evidence so far is only suggestive - not conclusive. While we remain hopeful, we must remember that there may never be complete resolution between the unambiguous archaeological record at the end of the Ice Age and the equivocal evidence from earlier times.

     Meanwhile, our interpretations of Paleoindian livelihoods have changed dramatically. Recent evidence shows that Paleoindian hunting and mobility were unlike that of any modern hunter-gatherers. Sites have been discovered on landscapes previously considered too harsh to support hunter-gatherer bands. In western North America Paleoindian sites have been confirmed in the Rocky Mountains of Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado; others are found in the Appalachian Mountains of eastern states.

     The diversity of site locations across the Americas reflects versatile hunter-gatherers capable of sustaining themselves in a myriad of ways under whatever circumstances they faced.

     As excavations proceed around the Americas a number of archaeologists have tightened their ties to the biological community, focusing their research on skeletal biology and genetics. Direct evidence of human lineages can be obtained at the molecular level from ancient bone tissue. Molecular biologists use new technologies to extract, clone, and amplify even small lengths of DNA contained within bone collagen. Skeletal remains can thus provide an invaluable genetic link to the movements of past human populations.

     But such studies can be a source of pain for the Native American community. Working with tissue from the Paleoindian dead raises an important ethical question: Who owns the past? It's also a loaded political question because of potential racial bias and impacts on human rights and freedom of religion.

     For many archaeologists and most Indian people, the question of ownership was answered by the U.S. government in 1990 by the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). The law requires federal agencies and institutions (including museums and universities) that receive federal money to inventory and repatriate human remains. It also protects Indian graves and makes it unlawful to sell the remains of Native Americans. For some biological anthropologists NAGPRA remains a controversial and debatable issue.

     I am confident that interdisciplinary archaeology will provide a clearer picture of the peopling of the Americas. Many of the goals of Paleoindian archaeology have dramatically changed over the past century. Whether for good or ill, much of this change is related to advances in the fields of geology and biology. In fact, some archaeologists have completely retreated from theory and moved into the domain of technical expertise and instrumentation. I would like to think, however, that these new technological developments provide more questions than answers. And with these questions in hand, we will advance into the next millennium.

KENNETH B. TANKERSLEY, a geoarchaeologist and a specialist in peopling of the Americas, is Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Kent State University.