Hard Facts in an Imperfect Site: The Evidence of Human Presence in the Arroyo del Vizcaíno. Reply to Holcomb et al.

ABSTRACT With the excuse of writing a critique to Domínguez-Rodrigo et al. (2021, duly replied here: Domínguez-Rodrigo & Baquedano, 2022), Holcomb et al. (this volume) intend to deny the proposal that the Arroyo del Vizcaíno (AdV, Fariña et al. 2014) is a site with evidence of human presence in South America before the LGM. Among the flaws of their critique, it must be mentioned that they decide to utterly ignore a few lines of evidence that sustain the questioned hypothesis (mortality profile of the individuals of the megafauna found there, representation of their anatomical regions, relative proportions of the Voorhies groups, etc.), state misled interpretation of the chronology and stratigraphy, refuse to accept the presence of human-modified lithics and show also non-acceptance of the conclusions of our thorough study of the key evidence, the cut-marks (Fariña et al. 2014, Fariña 2015, Domínguez-Rodrigo et al. 2021), based on a purported ideal of how a site should be researched, which leave aside those that point out at different conclusions from theirs.