The 2012 Paisley paper argued that the Western Stemmed points from the caves were found in contexts demonstrating that this technology was present in the region at least as early as Clovis — and possibly earlier, depending on how the specific dates were interpreted.

The significance of this finding for the broader debate about the peopling of the Americas was considerable.

If Clovis technology had been the first technology to spread across the Americas — as the Clovis-first model implied — then Western Stemmed technology should either postdate Clovis or derive from it.

The Paisley evidence suggested instead that Western Stemmed technology was contemporaneous with Clovis in at least some regions of the Far West, and that the two technological traditions might have developed in parallel rather than in a simple linear succession from one to the other.

This parallel development hypothesis had significant implications for models of the initial American dispersal.