Summer 2018 in the Field!
Center students had another productive field season.
Florida
Exploring prehistoric chert quarry sites in the Wacissa Quarry Cluster in northwest Florida, with the goal of improving our understanding of how Paleoindian and Early Archaic peoples used these toolstone sources. The Wacissa Quarry Cluster, in the region of the Wacissa, Aucilla, Wakulla, and St. Marks Rivers, was a prolific source of chert during all of prehistory.
Center grad student Adam Burke’s research will allow archaeologists to reconstruct past human mobility across Florida through chert sourcing, while also helping to strengthen our understanding of toolstone quality in the Wacissa Quarry Cluster region. After microscopically and geochemically describing chert from this region, we can begin to analyze Paleoindian and Early Archaic projectile points in an effort to source these stone tools back to a region or specific outcrop, thus informing prehistoric movement across the landscape.
Chert in northwest Florida has been historically understudied, and Adam’s dissertation research aims to help improve our understanding of the raw-materials available to past peoples such as those that were present at the Page-Ladson, Sloth Hole, and Ryan-Harley sites.
What’s inside the latest issue of Mammoth Trumpet?
We take a look at the grand show that is Arroyo Seco 2 (Dry Gulch 2). Are resourceful South American monkeys challenging definitions in archaeology? We look at the career of Dr. Tom Dillehay and we remember Ruthann Knudson. Subscribe today!
The Center’s newest book, Clovis Mammoth Butchery: The Lange/Ferguson Site and Associated Bone Tool Technology, can be ordered through Texas A&M University Press. Center members get a 20% discount!
In Clovis Mammoth Butchery: The Lange/Ferguson Site and Associated Bone Tool Technology, L. Adrien Hannus provides a comprehensive look at one of the few New World Clovis-era sites with in-place buried deposits exhibiting evidence for an expedient bone tool technology.
A report in the journal American Antiquity by Jeff Speakman and co-authors ranks Texas A&M University as one of the top 10 institutions to get a PhD in Anthropology with a focus on archaeology! We rank 7th in the country of programs to successfully place our archaeology PhD graduates in academic positions! To see a table of their results, visit their article and be sure to download the Supplemental Table.
Human Dispersal from Siberia to Beringia: Assessing a Beringian Standstill in Light of the Archaeological Evidence
Kelly E. Graf and Ian Buvit
Current Anthropology – A new article by Kelly Graf and Ian Buvit in which they present an overview of the Siberian and Beringian Upper Paleolithic records and discuss them in the context of a Beringian Standstill. They report that not every expectation of the model is met with archaeological data at hand.
PaleoAmerica – To learn more about the first
Americans, consider subscribing to the Center’s journal PaleoAmerica.
CSFA members can subscribe to the journal at the member’s only yearly price of $22 for online, electronic access, and $35 for printed issues. Visit our Join/Renew page for more information.
If you are interested in submitting a manuscript, please do not hesitate to contact the journal’s editor, Ted Goebel at goebel@tamu.edu, or visit Taylor & Francis’ web site at tandfonline.com.
PaleoAmerica is available at a discounted rate for current Center members.
Join the Center and save!
Discovery – Co-principal investigators Mike Waters and Jessi Halligan (former CSFA student) report on the discovery of artifacts dating back to 14,550 years ago at the Page-Ladson site Florida in the journal Science Advances. To read about the discoveries at the Page-Ladson site visit Science Advances. The full article is open-access and free to read!
Mike Waters and Center graduate student Morgan Smith look over the Pre-Clovis biface found at Page-Ladson, Florida!
Explore this website to learn more about the first inhabitants of the Americas and how you can become involved!
North, Central, and South America were the last continents to be populated by humans during the Ice Age.
When did the first people enter the Americas?
Who were the first immigrants?
How did they get here?