[OR_Archaeology] First Thursday Lectures at PSU

[POULEY John * OPRD]

Hello all--
Please join us for two talks next week presented by Dr. Todd Surovell (University of Wyoming).  Surovell is a being brought to PSU campus by Sigma Xi (Columbia-Willamette Chapter), as part of the Distinguished Lectureship series.

On Wed, April 12, 7:30, Smith Memorial Center, Room 26, Surovell will present,

"What happened to the mammoths? Exploring the cause of North America's most recent mass extinction."

For most of the last two million years, North America was home to more than 40 species of large animals, like mammoths, mastodons, camels, and ground sloths.  These megafauna suffered a rapid extinction only 13,000 years ago at a time when the planet's climate was warming, ecological communities were undergoing significant changes, and humans first appeared on the continent.  Disentangling the causes of this mass extinction event has been complicated and contentious to say the least.  In this talk, I will provide a personal narrative of my experience with the overkill hypothesis, and how I came to believe that if humans had never migrated to the New World, mammoths would still be roaming the continent today.

   and on

Thur, April 13, 4:00, Cramer 41, he will present,

"Using the present to figure out the past: an ethno-archaeological study of Mongolia's reindeer herders".

Spatial patterning in archaeological sites results from: 1) where people choose to do things; 2) where people choose to throw things away, and 3) post-depositional disturbance processes that modify the patterns produced by the first two.  Of these, surprisingly, the first has received the least attention.  Inspired by ten years of fieldwork at a Folsom site in Middle Park, Colorado, where the focus of our research was the spatial and social organization of a winter campsite, the Dukha Ethnoarchaeological Project  is interested in how people decide where to do what they do, and how such decisions are manifested spatially in the archaeological record.  The Dukha, the subjects of this work, are nomadic reindeer herders living in the Mongolia taiga near the border with Russian Siberia.


Todd Surovell is a Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Frison Institute at the University of Wyoming.  He received his B.S. in Anthropology and Zoology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Arizona.  He is an expert in Paleoindian archaeology, New World colonization, lithic technology, and geoarchaeology.  He has worked throughout the Rocky Mountain west and Great Plains.  He has also participated in fieldwork in Denmark, Israel, and Mongolia.  He has three active field projects, two in Wyoming and one in northern Mongolia.

Please see the attached flyers -- and share with your friends and neighbors!

I look forward to seeing you at one or both of these talks next week.

--
Virginia L. Butler
Department of Anthropology
Portland State University
Portland, OR 97207
503.725.3303
virginia at pdx.edu<mailto:virginia at pdx.edu>
http://www.pdx.edu/anthropology/
http://web.pdx.edu/~virginia/

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