[OR_Archaeology] Some great upcoming talks at PSU!

[Susan White]

Sigma Xi and the Dept. of Anthropology at Portland State University are

sponsoring two talks this coming Thursday (May 20) by David Frayer, 
Professor of Anthropology at the Univ. of Kansas. 

Please contact Virginia Butler (503.725.3303/butlerv at pdx.edu) for
further information.

*4:00 pm /Homo floresiensis/: **The hobbit tale***

*238 Smith Memorial Center (PSU campus) ***

Discoveries from the Liang Bua cave on Flores Island (Indonesia) have 
been described as representing a species of miniature humans surviving

in isolation for more than 100,000 years until they went extinct about

12,000 years. These discoveries, commonly referred to as ‘hobbits,'
have 
great importance for models in paleoanthropology involving brain size 
and intelligence, the effect of isolation and endemism along with more

general ideas about the course of human evolution. Conclusions about
the 
fossils are controversial and alternate interpretations contradict the

idea that the specimens from Flores represent a new species.
*(Sponsored 
by Sigma Xi and PSU Dept. Anthropology)*

----------------------------------------------------

*8:00 pm* *Neandertals and Us ***

*327-329 Smith Memorial Center (PSU campus)*

Since their discovery in 1856, Neandertals have generally been 
considered a different species or offshoots from the subsequent
European 
line with little or no contribution to the people who followed them. 
Yet, a variety of morphological and metric traits link Neandertals with

their European successors. Along with new information from Neandertal 
biology and culture, it is becoming increasingly difficult to eliminate

them from a relationship to the Cro-Magnons who followed them in
Europe. 
*(Sponsored by Columbia-Willamette Chapter of Sigma Xi)*

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Frayer’s ongoing research concerns various projects about the
Croatian 
Neandertal site of Krapina, the dental anthropology of an early, 
preceramic Neolithic site of Merhgarh in Pakistan, early Homo from 
Eritrea and the so-called 'hobbit" from Flores, Indonesia. He has 
published widely in national and international books and journals on 
topics ranging from Neandertal toothpick use to evidence for human 
massacres in the German Mesolithic to evidence for language origins.

-- 
Virginia L. Butler
Department of Anthropology
Portland State University
Portland, OR 97207
503.725.3303
butlerv at pdx.edu