1998_highlights

During recent years geoscientist have increasingly reinvestigated previously excavated archaeological sites, and they have joined the effort to develop GIS-based archaeological predictive models. These trends continued in 1997.

Before the 1980s, few archaeologists considered either the geological context of archaeological deposits or the nature of the sediments containing the cultural materials - major oversights because the sediments contained many clues about the cultural processes responsible for the formation and subsequent history of the site. Better analytical methods, such as micromorphological analyses and AMS, TL, and ESR dating help researchers determine the age and geologic history of archaeological sites.

At the Wilson Leonard site in central Texas (a reinvestigated site), Mike Collins (University of Texas at Austin), Vance Holliday (University of Wisconsin), Paul Goldberg (Boston University), and Britt Bousman (University of Texas at San Antonio) studied a 6-meter-thick sequence of alluvial fan deposits that contains well-preserved archaeological deposits representing the major cultural periods of the Holocene and terminal Pleistocene (Wilson Leonard: An 11,000-year Archaeological Record of Hunter-Gatherers in Central Texas, M.B. Collins, ed., in press). Collins and his colleagues placed the archaeological deposits into a stratigraphic framework and resolved questions about site formation and the integrity of the archaeological record. Tom Stafford (University of Colorado) developed a 12,000-year chronology (based on nearly 100 radiocarbon dates) that constrains each major cultural component.

Vance Holliday’s book, Paleoindian Geoarchaeology of the Southern High Plains (University of Texas Press, 1997) discusses the Wilson Leonard site and other reinvestigated Paleoindian sites in the Southern High Plains. This region has one of the highest concentrations in North America of known Paleoindian sites (including Clovis, Lubbock Lake, Plainview, and Midland) and also has a long tradition of Paleoindian archaeological studies that integrate geoscientific and other interdisciplinary research.

At Refuf Pass in Egypt’s Western Desert, Kathleen Nicoll (University of Arizona) and her colleagues reinvestigated artifact-bearing fossil-spring tufas that were studies by G. Caton-Thompson and E.W. Gardner during the early 1930s. Uranium-series dates on the tufas indicate that the spring discharged at various times between circa 300,000 and 120,000 years ago (Nicoll and others, Geological Society of American Annual Meeting Abstracts and Programs, p. A-319, 1997). Uranium-series data put minimum ages on the cultural materials in direct stratigraphic context with the tofas and provide the first absolute chronology for Earlier and Middle Stone Age occupations in the Western Desert.

Archaeological geology is rapidly integrating geomorphologic, stratigraphic, and archaeological data within geographic information systems (GIS). GIS, which displays clearer spatial and temporal relationships can be used to develop and apply models that predict the location of archaeological deposits in complex landscapes.

Art Bettis (Iowa Geological Survey), Jeff Anderson (Anderson Environmental Services), and archaeologist Dave Benn (Bear Creek Archaeology), funded by the Rock Island District of the Corps of Engineers, mapped landform sediment assemblages of the 566-kilometer reach of the Upper Mississippi river Valley. Maps of these assemblages, which show landforms and underlying sediment packages and soils that have predictable genetic and chronologic relationships, were compiles at 1:24,000 scale, digitized, and developed into an ArcInfo coverage by the Illinois State Museum. They are being used to evaluate the cultural resources of the valley and minimize conflicts related to the river’s navigation, recreation, and wildlife.

In Minnesota, Curtis Hudak and Ed Hajic (Foth & Van Dyke, Inc.) Are assessing landform sediment assemblages, preliminary subsurface investigations, and radiocarbon dating in order to predict the location of surface and buried cultural deposits in the seven largest river valleys in the state. This work is part of the MN/Model, a statewide GIS-based archaeological predictive model funded by the Minnesota and U.S. Departments of Transportation. MN/Model will be used to minimize potential damage to the archaeological record occasioned by new highways or other construction projects.

A rockshelter developed in sea cliffs along the southern coast of Cyprus contains archaeological deposits dating to 10,600 B.P. This discovery has dramatically changed scientists' perceptions of when the Mediterranean islands were first inhabited by people.

Other research highlights

Paleoindian studies, such as those at Monte Verde in southern Chile, are yielding new information about the the peopling of the New World (T.D. Dillehay, Monte Verde: a Late Pleistocene Settlement in Chile:The

Archaeological Context, Vol. II, Smithsonian InstitutePress, 1997). A rich cultural zone at this site was dated to ca. 12,500 B.P., and a second possible occupation surface dated to ca. 33,000 B.P. Specialist who examined the site in 1997 concluded that although the integrity of the older material has not been proven, the younger material shows that people occupied the site ca. 12,5000 B.P. (American Antiquity, v. 62, p. 659-663, 1997). Considering that Monte Verde is approximately 16,000 kilometers south of the Bering Land Bridge, this chronology points to a colonization history of the New World much different from the traditional Clovis-first model.

Other recent investigations also shattered long-standing paradigms. On the basis of thermoluminiscence ages, Michael Waters and others (Science, v. 275, p. 1281-1284, 1997) concluded that an artifact-bearing zone at Diring Yuriakh in central Siberia dates to between 260,000 and 370,000 B.P. This site demonstrates that people were in Siberia about 100,000 years earlier than previously believed and that these people were able to endure the harsh Siberian environment.

The Akrotiri Aetokremnos rockshelter in southern Cyprus was documented as the oldest archaeological site (10,600 B.P.) On the island (Mandel and Simmons, Geoarchaeology, v. 12, p. 567-605, 1997). The pygmy hippopotamus, an endemic species thought to have become extinct before people arrived on Cyprus, is associated with this site. This association suggests that the Mediterranean islands also were populated much earlier than previously believed.

Finally, the 11-mound Watson Break site in northeastern Louisiana was shown to predate other known mound complexes n North America by about 2,000 years (Saunders and others, Science, v. 277, p. 1796-1799, 1997). Hunter-gatherers who occupied the site ca. 5,400-5,000 B.P. established the earlier monumental architecture in North America and may have begun the eventual domestication of weedy plants in the region.