problems of prehistoric Old World- New World relationships were to be resolved, it would eventually require cooperative research efforts within the world community of archaeologists. At that time, the pre-Clovis problem in New World archaeology was foremost in the minds of many North American researchers: tool technology and assemblages were being studied as a possible means of establishing cultural relationships across the Bering Strait, Clovis sites and mammoth kills were being looked at with new ideas for interpretation, and New World researchers realized that to resolve these questions they had to become familiar with the archaeological record of northeast Asia. A chance meeting of the writer with Olga Soffer in 1983 led to serious discussions of the sites on the Russian or East European Plain.