Friday, October 21, 2005
James Adovasio and pre Clovis
Last night James Adovasio came and gave a guest lecture on the current changing views of Clovis and info on pre-Clovis groups. It was pretty darn good. He talked about some of the reasons that Clovis has always been seen as a big game hunting culture and how excavations in the past 20 years have really been changing this view. It's looking, he says, more and more like Clovis subsistence and settelment was much more like the Archaic than anyone wanted to recognize. Then he went on and talked about his Meadowcroft Rockshelter excavations and the old dates he got out of there (in addition to Clovis dates he had some as early as 14,000). Finally he wrapped up discussing some current sites with dates ranging from 20,000BP on up into the Archaic. He says the the archaeologists working on these sites have been really careful and he believes the dates. It was really interesting. I'm pretty sure North Creek Shelter is going back at least into the 20,000's! Adovasio got his degree from the good ole University of Utah. We went out to dinner with him before the lecture and he talked a little about Jennings. And let me say this, although he was the man, the more I hear about him the more I'm glad I wasn't around the same time he was. Sounds like a tough dude. Anyway, so there's your dose of daily Paleo info. (Paleo info, cool...say it again Paallleeeoooo iinnnnffffoooo)
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4 comments:
So I showed a video to a class yesterday about The First People in America, by NOVA. Anyway, Adovasio was on it and back in 1992, he was saying that the oldest date he got there at Meadowcroft for human occupation was 16,000 BP, not 14,000. What's up with that? He was also talking about when they found a Clovis point, how they went into town and threw back 9 kegs. He was dressed like Burt Reynolds in Smokey and the Bandit. I just think archaeologists are conservative with these earlier dates because it is all based on indirect evidence. I think the clovis point found at Meadowcroft was dated by charcoal found near it, but there were no human or animal remains associated with the point. Can we say that these dates are true? Well, that explains a little more of why Dr. J was so careful and skiddish at Northcreek this past summer.
Yeah...Mike, you could have screwed it up for us all. It wasn't field school you know.
Dave, that's cool that you heard Adovasio talk. Dr. J told a story about him in the GB seminar. Apparently after pubilishing meadowcroft, everyone was up in arms against him. At the time, Adovasio was into body building and was rather huge. He got up at one of the conferences, all pumped up, and said, and I paraphrase,
"Yes, it is I, Jim Adovasio".
Hey, great blog! It's obvious you've spent a lot of time on it.
I really enjoy reading it.
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toolreplication.blogspot.com
Did that sound like a spammer's comment? I hope so. Anyway, this blog is kind of a splinter blog, so who knows if it will work out. It's still in the preliminary stages, but I think it's got potential.
your reply: "Silly Aaron, splinter groups never work, they just get killed by the ATF"
My reply: "I'm not afraid of the ATF..."
That's to funny. Not only was Adovasio dressed like a modern Bandit, at dinner he couldn't stop talking about how great the gym at the Venician was. No lie.
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