Dennis J. Stanford (13 May 1943 in Cherokee, Iowa,- 24 April 2019) was an archaeologist and Director of the Paleoindian/

Paleoecology Paleoecology (also spelled palaeoecology) is the study of interactions between organisms and/or interactions between organisms and their environments across geologic timescales. As a discipline, paleoecology interacts with, depends on and informs ...

Program at the National Museum of Natural History at the

Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded ...

. Along with Professor Bruce Bradley, Stanford was known for investigating the

Solutrean hypothesis The Solutrean hypothesis on the peopling of the Americas claims that the earliest human migration to the Americas took place from Europe, with Solutreans traveling along pack ice in the Atlantic Ocean. This hypothesis contrasts with the mainstre ...

, which contends that stone tool technology of the

Solutrean The Solutrean industry is a relatively advanced flint tool-making style of the Upper Paleolithic of the Final Gravettian, from around 22,000 to 17,000 BP. Solutrean sites have been found in modern-day France, Spain and Portugal. Details ...

culture in prehistoric northern Spain and Portugal may have influenced the development of later Clovis tool-making culture in the Americas by way of an earlier trans-atlantic maritime travel along a sea ice shelf to North America during the Last Glacial Maximum. In 2012, they published details concerning their hypothesis in ''Across Atlantic Ice: The Origin of America's Clovis Culture''.

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Department of Anthropology Staff, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution
2019 deaths American archaeologists 1943 births Smithsonian Institution people {{US-archaeologist-stub