Tag: National Academy of Sciences

Archaeology: “Undiscovery of Year” to Meltzer for refuting comet theory

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date January 4, 2011

Archaeology magazine, published by the Archaeological Institute of America, recognized
SMU archaeologist David Meltzer and his colleague Vance Holliday of the University of Arizona for their “undiscovery” that the important ancient Clovis culture didn’t die out from the impact of a comet.

Melter and Holliday, who published their research in the October issue of Current Anthropology, challenged the controversial theory that the impact of an ancient comet devastated the Clovis people, one of the earliest known cultures to inhabit North America.

Nothing in the archaeological record suggests an abrupt collapse of Clovis populations, said Meltzer and Holliday.

“Whether or not the proposed extraterrestrial impact occurred is a matter for empirical testing in the geological record,” the researchers wrote in their article. “In so far as concerns the archaeological record, an extraterrestrial impact is an unnecessary solution for an archaeological problem that does not exist.”

Their point-by-point refutation was awarded the “Undiscovery of the Year” by Archaeology as part of the magazine’s list of Top 10 Discoveries of 2010.

EXCERPT:

By Zach Zorich
Archaeology Magazine
It’s commonly believed that North America’s Clovis culture came to an end around 12,900 years ago, when their characteristic spear points disappeared from the archaeological record. At the same time a number of large animal species such as mammoths and saber-toothed tigers became extinct. In 2006, a team led by geologist Richard Firestone of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory put forth a theory that a comet struck the Earth around this time, engulfing the continent in forest fires and causing the mass extinctions as well as the demise of the Clovis culture. They deduced this from the existence of a one-millimeter-thick soil layer at several Clovis sites that contains a high concentration of particles that appear to have extraterrestrial origins.

Read the full story.

Tags David Meltzer, Dedman College, National Academy of Sciences, SMU Department of Anthropology

Culture, Society & Family Earth & Climate Fossils & Ruins Researcher news SMU In The News

USA Today: Researchers — Clovis people didn’t disappear because of comet

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date October 1, 2010

“An extraterrestrial impact is an unnecessary solution for an archaeological problem that does not exist.”

USA Today has written about the research of SMU archaeologist David Meltzer that challenges the controversial theory that an ancient comet devastated the Clovis people, one of the earliest known cultures in North America.

Writing online in USA Today’s Science Fair section, journalist Elizabeth Weise notes in her article “Researchers — Clovis people didn’t disappear because of comet” that Meltzer demonstrates in a recent study that there is nothing in the archaeological record to suggest an abrupt collapse of Clovis populations.

The study was published in the October issue of Current Anthropology, Meltzer and archaeologist Vance Holliday from the University of Arizona argue that there is nothing in the archaeological record to suggest an abrupt collapse of Clovis populations.

“Whether or not the proposed extraterrestrial impact occurred is a matter for empirical testing in the geological record,” the researchers write. “In so far as concerns the archaeological record, an extraterrestrial impact is an unnecessary solution for an archaeological problem that does not exist.”

EXCERPT:

What caused the Clovis people of North America to disappear? A 2006 book suggested a massive comet strike over the Great Lakes 12,900 years ago cooled the climate, killing off mammoths and dispersing the people and their ancient culture. But a paper in the October issue of Current Anthropology disputes this theory, saying the evidence presented for it is easily explained away.

The Clovis people are known for their characteristic spear points, which vanished from the archaeological record close to 13,000 years ago. Those in favor of the comet theory say few of the Clovis sites show evidence of people living in them after the Clovis left, and that there are sediment layers empty of human habitation between the occupations.

But archaeologists Vance Holliday of the University of Arizona and David Meltzer of Southern Methodist University argue that people in those hunter gatherer cultures routinely moved around.

Read the full story.

Tags David Meltzer, Dedman College, National Academy of Sciences, SMU Department of Anthropology

Culture, Society & Family Earth & Climate Fossils & Ruins

No evidence for ancient comet devastating Clovis, says SMU archaeologist’s research

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date September 29, 2010

“An extraterrestrial impact is an unnecessary solution for an archaeological problem that does not exist.”

New research challenges the controversial theory that the impact of an ancient comet devastated the Clovis people, one of the earliest known cultures to inhabit North America.

Writing in the October issue of Current Anthropology, archaeologists David Meltzer, Southern Methodist University, and Vance Holliday, University of Arizona, argue that there is nothing in the archaeological record to suggest an abrupt collapse of Clovis populations.

“Whether or not the proposed extraterrestrial impact occurred is a matter for empirical testing in the geological record,” the researchers write.

“In so far as concerns the archaeological record, an extraterrestrial impact is an unnecessary solution for an archaeological problem that does not exist.”

Comet theory devised to explain apparent disappearance
The comet theory first emerged in 2007 when a team of scientists announced evidence of a large extraterrestrial impact that occurred about 12,900 years ago.

The impact was said to have caused a sudden cooling of the North American climate, killing off mammoths and other megafauna.

It could also explain the apparent disappearance of the Clovis people, whose characteristic spear points vanish from the archaeological record shortly after the supposed impact. The findings are reported in the article “The 12.9-ka ET Impact Hypothesis and North
American Paleoindians.”

As evidence for the rapid Clovis depopulation, comet theorists point out that very few Clovis archaeological sites show evidence of human occupation after the Clovis.

At the few sites that do, Clovis and post-Clovis artifacts are separated by archaeologically sterile layers of sediments, indicating a time gap between the civilizations. In fact, comet theorists argue, there seems to be a dead zone in the human archaeological record in North America beginning with the comet impact and lasting about 500 years.

Evidence at Clovis sites doesn’t support a disaster scenario
But Meltzer, a professor in the SMU Department of Anthropology, and Holliday dispute those claims. They argue that a lack of later human occupation at Clovis sites is no reason to assume a population collapse.

“Single-occupation Paleoindian sites — Clovis or post-Clovis — are the norm,” Holliday said. That’s because many Paleoindian sites are hunting kill sites, and it would be highly unlikely for kills to be made repeatedly in the exact same spot.

“Those of us who do our research in the archaeology of this time period,” Meltzer says, “would actually be surprised if these sites were occupied repeatedly.”

“So there is nothing surprising about a Clovis occupation with no other Paleoindian zone above it, and it is no reason to infer a disaster,” Holliday said.

No evidence of post-comet gap in radiocarbon dating
In addition, Holliday and Meltzer compiled radiocarbon dates of 44 archaeological sites from across the U.S. and found no evidence of a post-comet gap. “Chronological gaps appear in the sequence only if one ignores standard deviations (a statistically inappropriate procedure), and doing so creates gaps not just around (12,900 years ago), but also at many later points in time,” they write.

Sterile layers separating occupation zones at some sites are easily explained by shifting settlement patterns and local geological processes, the researchers say. The separation should not be taken as evidence of an actual time gap between Clovis and post-Clovis cultures.

Disappearance more likely a cultural choice
Holliday and Meltzer believe that the disappearance of Clovis spear points is more likely the result of a cultural choice rather than a population collapse.

“There is no compelling data to indicate that North American Paleoindians had to cope with or were affected by a catastrophe, extraterrestrial or otherwise, in the terminal Pleistocene,” they conclude. — Kevin Stacey, University of Chicago Press

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Tags David Meltzer, Dedman College, National Academy of Sciences, SMU Department of Anthropology

Culture, Society & Family Earth & Climate Fossils & Ruins Researcher news

National Academy of Sciences: “Peopling of the Americas” researcher awarded highest honor

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date April 28, 2009

An SMU archaeologist whose work centers on how people first came to inhabit North America has been elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). David Meltzer, chair of SMU’s Department of Anthropology, has been elected a member of the NAS in recognition for his achievements in original scientific research.

david-meltzer

Meltzer’s work looks at the origins, antiquity, and adaptations of the first Americans. Paleoindians colonized the North American continent at the end of the Ice Age. Meltzer focuses on how these hunter-gatherers met the challenges of moving across and adapting to the vast, ecologically diverse landscape of Late Glacial North America during a time of significant climate change.

Membership in the NAS is one of the highest honors given to a scientist or engineer in the United States.

The Henderson-Morrison Professor of Prehistory in Dedman College, Meltzer will be the third SMU professor to be inducted into the NAS. All three have come from the University’s highly regarded anthropology department. Meltzer is also director of QUEST Archaeological Research Program.

Meltzer was elected April 28 along with 71 other scientists, joining more than 2,000 active NAS members. More than 180 living Academy members have won Nobel Prizes. NAS members have included Albert Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer, Thomas Edison, Orville Wright, and Alexander Graham Bell.

“It’s really an honor to be in that wonderful company,” Meltzer said shortly after being notified of his selection by phone. “I am thrilled, excited, shocked, humbled. It’s a great day.” He said he was particularly touched that the NAS members who voted him in then passed a cell phone around to offer their individual congratulations.

“David Meltzer serves as the model of a professor whose research contributes to his discipline and our understanding of civilization, and who uses that knowledge to enliven his classroom,” said SMU President R. Gerald Turner. “His election to the NAS brings much-deserved recognition to Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences and honor to SMU.”

“One of the hallmarks of top universities is the election of their faculty to the prestigious National Academy of Sciences,” said Paul Ludden, university provost and vice president for academic affairs. “SMU is so proud of its top-tier anthropology faculty member, David Meltzer, for his election today.”

Meltzer’s archaeology and history research has been supported by grants from the National Geographic Society, the National Science Foundation, The Potts and Sibley Foundation and the Smithsonian Institution. In 1996, he received a research endowment from Joseph and Ruth Cramer to establish the Quest Archaeological Research Program at SMU, which will support in perpetuity research on the earliest occupants of North America.

His research has appeared in more than 130 publications, and Meltzer has written or edited half a dozen books, including “First People in a New World: Colonizing Ice Age Americans,” recently published by The University of California Press. He received his Ph.D in anthropology/archaeology from the University of Washington in Seattle and joined the faculty at SMU in 1984.

Two emeritus faculty members in SMU’s Anthropology Department are also NAS members: Lewis Binford was elected to the NAS in 2001 and Fred Wendorf was elected in 1987. Only an Academy member may submit formal nominations to the NAS, and supporting nomination materials and candidate lists remain confidential. The evaluation process occurs throughout the year, culminating in a final ballot at the Academy’s annual meeting in April.

The National Academy of Sciences is a private, nonprofit honorific society of distinguished scholars engaged in scientific and engineering research, dedicated to the furthering science and technology and to their use for the general welfare. Established in 1863, the National Academy of Sciences has served to “investigate, examine, experiment, and report upon any subject of science or art” whenever called upon to do so by any department of the government.

HOW I BECAME AN ARCHAEOLOGIST

David Meltzer said that although he had told it many times, this story first appeared in print in “The Dallas Morning News” on Dec. 24, 2001. Photo shows him (below) on his first day in the field in June 1971.

One June day after school let out (I had just finished 10th grade), my mother asked me what my plans were for the summer. I told her I hoped to slouch on the couch and watch television.

“That,” she announced, “isn’t good enough.” She showed me a piece in The Washington Post (our local newspaper) about excavations beginning in a week’s time in the nearby Shenandoah Valley, at the recently-discovered Thunderbird Paleoindian site.

“Would you like to join the group?”

“Sure,” I said, figuring at that late date the university’s plans must already be set and they couldn’t possibly want to take some snotty high school kid. I went back to watching My Favorite Martian.

Never underestimate your mother.

A day later she’d made fast friends with the administrative assistant at the office, who then talked the project director — Bill Gardner, of Catholic University — into taking me on. He wasn’t so keen on my being there, either! That was over 30 years ago. I went on to excavate for four consecutive seasons at the Thunderbird and nearby Fifty site, and I’ve been doing archaeology ever since.

I’m not sure why that newspaper story caught my mother’s eye, or why she thought her son would enjoy the experience. And I’m certain she didn’t imagine it would set me on a career. But I guess that’s just a mother’s gift, now, isn’t it?

Tags David Meltzer, Dedman College, National Academy of Sciences, SMU Department of Anthropology

“An extraterrestrial impact is an unnecessary solution for an archaeological problem that does not exist.”

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“An extraterrestrial impact is an unnecessary solution for an archaeological problem that does not exist.”

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HOW I BECAME AN ARCHAEOLOGIST