COLUMBIA, S.C. - A University of Texas archaeologist opened the highly anticipated "Clovis in the Southeast" conference at the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center Thursday by rejecting the premise on which many experts once based their theories on man's North American origins.

At the meeting, sponsored in part by the University of South Carolina, Michael Collins called the idea that the first inhabitants traveled by way of a land bridge from Asia "primal racism." Instead, Collins said, they arrived by water, because "the rich marine environments" along the northern Atlantic and Pacific coasts are "very attractive regions for human exploitation."

Conference staffer Thomas McDonald said that roughly 400 people had pre-registered for the four-day conference on Clovis - the culture traditionally thought to have been the first in North America. In recent years, many experts have begun to consider other explanations, such as migration from Europe, and not Asia. That idea was advanced by Dennis Stanford, head of the archaeology division of the department of anthropology at the Smithsonian Institute's National Museum of Natural History.

Other speakers talked about the wide array of paleo-Indian artifacts throughout the southeastern region. University of South Carolina archaeologist Al Goodyear discussed his research at the Topper site in Allendale County, calling the spot "the Goldilocks location to be doing archaeology." In 1998, Goodyear announced that he had discovered artifacts thousands of years older than Clovis materials at Topper.

University of Tennessee professor David Anderson also encouraged private collectors to consider sharing their artifacts with the public. Be "thinking about where you're going to be 100 years from now," he said. "We're all part of the archaeological record."

Afternoon speakers discussed the discoveries of Clovis tools from sites throughout the Tennessee River Valley. Showing slides of the dozens of samples recovered from a Tennessee location, John Broster of the Tennessee Department of Conservation said, "It sorta gets boring in a way, after a while, I guess, but it's still really exciting."

On Friday, Jim Welch will moderate a discussion that Goodyear said "might get a little hot and heavy." Goodyear said he hoped artifact collectors would attend and help to heal some of the "antipathy" between professionals and collectors in the field.

Scheduled events culminate in a Saturday visit to the Topper site.