Archaeological Geology
Research in the interdisciplinary fields of archaeological geology and archaeometry has become well established and widespread in the last 10 years. However, few people have an overview of what is being done where. The situation is particularly frustrating for students who wish to get into interdisciplinary research. Therefore, in this year’s review, I will try to summarize the activities of a few of the many institutions in the U.S. and Canada that have programs integrating anthropology and archaeology with other fields of science.
The University of Maine at Orno recently received a grant to study and publicize the origins of early man in the new world. It Center for the Study of Early Man will work with the Institute for Quaternary Studies and will eventually accept graduate students specializing in both anthropology and geology. For more information, write to Robson Bonnichsen (anthropology department), director of the Center.
The Center for Archaeological Research and Development, directed by Jonathon Ericson, is sponsored by the Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology at Harvard University. The Center’s laboratories, available to graduate students, include thermoluminiscence, obsidian hydration and radiocarbon-dating systems, an organic-analysis facility for organic residue, pollen and soils laboratories, petrographic microscopes and x-ray equipment. Other analysis are done in laboratories at Harvard or at other cooperating universities. Some examples of current research projects include organic chemical analysis of mummies, study of the alkaline earths in teeth and bone to determine diet, ancient metal-lurgy in India, petrographic and chemical analyses of ceramics, and thermoluminiescence susceptibility of obsidian.
The Center for Materials Research in Archaeology & Ethnology was set up by 9 educational, research and cultural institutions in the Boston area. Massachusetts Institute of Technology has agreed to serve as the Center’s coordinating institution, and Heather Lechtman is the director. The Center’s program is based on a 4-year cycle of graduate-level courses covering analysis of ceramics, stone, metal, flora and faunal materials, and interpretation of their cultural use. Students from member institutions are eligible to enroll in any of those courses for credit. Scholars and graduate students from non-member institutions are encouraged to use the Center’s laboratories.
The Cultural Resources Management Program at the University of Pittsburgh is sponsored by the Department of Anthropology, and is directed by James Adovasio and Ronal Carlisle. The program acts as the contractual branch of the Department of Anthropology and works with the geology department. Graduate students may work with Jack Donahue on sedimentological projects or with Harold Rollins on vertebrate paleontology. There is heavy-mineral analysis, x-ray, and petrographic equipment in the geology department; scanning-electron microscope, clay-mineral analysis, palynology, and radiocarbon-dating facilities are available through other universities and institutions. Among major interdisciplinary projects have been the excavations at the Meadowcroft and Tom Bigby rock-shelters.
3 members of the Department of Geology at the University of Delaware, Neward, are involved in coastal-environment projects that have archaeological aspects. John C. Kraft is working on the effects of shoreline changes on habitation patterns along the East Coast, and the coasts of Greece and Turkey. Robert Sheridan uses geophysical techniques to study continental-shelf environments and to detect sunken ships. John Wehmiller is using amino-acid racemiztion methods (with U.S. Geological Survey) to relate ancient Quaternary shorelines to early man. That group and their students work with researchers at the Quaternary Research Center at the University of Washington, in Seattle, and with George Rapp Jr and John Figgord in the Archaeometry Laboratory at the University of Minnesota, in Duluth.
The University of Kansas at Lawrence has no formal program; however, Wakefield Dort (geomorphology, Department of Geology) reports that there is cooperation among the anthropology, geology, geography, and vertebrate-paleontology departments. Examples of graduate research: one geology student is studying the geomorphology and soils at the Eldorado Reservoir archaeological project. Another, an archaeologist, is attempting to type cherts at the same site, and hopes to map chert occurrences across Kansas. Students have access to the soils laboratory and other facilities on campus, which will include a new pollen-recovery laboratory, to open soon in the geography department.
The Center for Ancient Studies at the University of Minnesota is an interdisciplinary program that integrates graduate-student research in the departments of classics, anthropology, geology, computer sciences, history, geography, civil engineering, agriculture and economics. Students in those programs may use the archaeometry, chemistry and metallurgy laboratories. An example of current research is the continuing work by George R. Rapp Jr. and many others on the prehistoric archaeology of the Eastern Mediterranean. Interested students should get in touch with Stanley Ascehnbrenner in the anthropology department at Duluth, John Gifford or George Rapp, both in the Archaeometry laboratory at Duluth, or Herbert Wright in the geology department at Minneapolis.
The University of Colorado, Boulder, has no organized program; however, 2 professors in the geology department encourage interdisciplinary archaeoligcal-geology research and have students working on such projects. Peter Birkeland specializes in soils and Quaternary stratigraphy, and William Bradley, in geomorphology. The university has a soils laboratory, and students may use the other laboratories on campus.
The Quaternary Paleoenvironmental Studies Program at the University of Arizona, Tucson, involves both the anthropology and geoscience departments. The major research fields is dating and interpreting materials from archaeological sites. Graduate students use the radiocarbon- and K/Ar-dating laboratories int he geochemical division of geosciences, and the palynology and tree-ring-dating laboratories. Research projects include work by C. Vance Haynes on dating sites in the Western Desert of Egypt and the Sudan, by Victor Baker on fluvial-sediment geochronology, and by Austin Long on C14 dating of ground water (a method used in Egypt to correlate Neolithic occupation). Aside from the dating research, Paul martin and others in the geosciences department have done much work in palynology to reconstruct climate changes in the arid parts of the western United States.
The emphasis of the interdisciplinary research at Stanford University is on coastal archaeological geology, with cooperation from the classics, anthropology and geology departments. For example, Tjeerd Van Andel (geology) specializes in geophysics and geology, and is involved, along with students, in work in the southern Argolid, in marine archaeology in Thessaly (central Greece), and in Mayan river-valley environmental studies in Honduras. He is also working with an anthropologists on marine environmental conditions along the coast of Peru. Other projects involve the U.S. Geological Survey, the dating facilities at the University of Southern California, and the Australian National University.
The Human Evolution, Prehistory & Paleoenvironmental group at the University of California, Berkeley, is primarily concerned with Old World paleoanthropology. The interdisciplinary program for students involves the anthropology, geology, paleontology and zoology departments. Examples of research include the work of Roger Byrne (geography) on pollen analysis and the beginnings of agriculture, Garniss Curtis (geology) on K/Ar dating of East African sites, Richard Hay (geology) on stratigraphy, paleoenvironments, and Glynn Isaac (anthropology) on stratigraphy, paeloenvironments and archaeology of East African Sites. Graduate students working in those areas may use the K/Ar laboratory, the sedimentary-petrology laboratory, and the vertebrate-fossil collections, as well as various other laboratories on campus and elsewhere.
The archaeological geology program int he Department of Anthropology at Washington State University, Pullman, involves 3 faculty members: Carl Gustafson (study of vertebrate remains from archaeological sites, paleoecology), Fekri Hassan (geomorphology, sediment studies(, and Peter Mehringer (paleoecology, fossil pollen, Quaternary climates). Anthropology graduate students working with those professors use the palynology, sedimentology and vertebrate-paleontology laboratories. There is close cooperation with John Sheppard, director of radiocarbon laboratory in the engineering department. Other equipment such as a scanning-electron microscope and an electron microprobe, is available on campus. Examples of current projects are Gustafon’s work on early archaeological sites on the Olympic Peninsula; Hassan’s research in Jordan, central Egypt and the Nile Delta; Mehringer’s work with Vance Haynes in the Libyan Desert; and the Steens Mountain Project, a program with the universities of Oregon and Washington.
The Quaternary Research Center at the University of Washington, Seattle, does not have a degree-granting program, and most of the faculty have joint appointments with other departments. Examples: Estella Leopold, director of the Center, specializes in palynology and paleoecology, Stephen Porter in the geology department does glacial-geology research, and Julie Stein in the anthropology combines sedimentology and archaeological work. The Center has palynology and periglacial laboratories, and cooperates with Minzi Stuiver in the radiocarbon-dating laboratory, as well as with Linda Burbaker in the dendrochronology laboratory.
The interdisciplinary program sponsored by the Collegium Archaeometricum of the University of Toronto involves the departments of anthropology, material sciences, earth sciences, geophysics, physics and chemical engineering as well as the Archaeology Division of the Royal Ontario Museum. The university has neutron-activation, C14, research-reactor, and stable isotope laboratories. A 3- to 4-year undergraduate archaeology major, physics in archaeology, trains students in dating methods. Visiting scientists lecture at interdisciplinary monthly seminars. On the graduate level, joint faculty committees are assigned to students choosing interdisciplinary fields, and the possible combinations are many. For example, a student might specialize in neutron-activation analysis and ceramic mineralogy, and receive an archaeology degree. The group, especially the museum archaeologists, cooperates with Ian Brookes (geomorphology) at York University, and with Henry Schwarcz (geochronology) at McMaster University. For more information, get in touch with Ursula Frankin, in the Department of Metallurgy & Material Sciences.
This is just a sample of the variety of programs existing today. I would appreciate receiving information on other institutions and facilities so that I can assemble a more complete list.