It is Dr. Surovell’s impression that most archaeologists believe the Clovis/Pre-Clovis debate has been resolved, and that there is clear evidence for humans in North and South America prior to the appearance of fluted points in regions south of the continental ice sheets.  Todd disagrees.  The primary method for addressing the timing of first human arrival to the Americas is an approach he likes to call “The Oldest Site Wins.”  After careful evaluation of stratigraphy, artifacts, and dates from the many thousands of sites that have been investigated across two continents, it is argued that the first date of human arrival must predate the oldest known site.  American archaeology has operated via this paradigm now for almost 120 years without resolving the question of the date of colonization.  The inability to reach a clear conclusion suggests to Dr. Surovell that this paradigm is inherently flawed. In this presentation, Todd approaches the problem using basic principles of human population dynamics, archaeological site formation, and archaeological sampling to simulate the age range of the plausible earliest archaeological sites.  He argues that the archaeological record is consistent with humans first arriving south of the American ice sheets, between 14,200 and 13,400 BP, with a most likely colonization date falling in the century surrounding 13,800 BP.