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Hot Springs, South Dakota, USA September 22-25,  2005


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The Quaternary Times
Newsletter of the American Quaternary Association
Volume 29 Number 2 December 1999

Conference Reports

Geologic Research in Death Valley NP

The U.S. Geological Survey, National Park Service, and Department of Energy sponsored a three-day (April 9-11, 1999) conference in Las Vegas, NV, to discuss the "Status of Geologic Research and Mapping in Death Valley National Park." The conference was organized to foster communication and increase awareness among the various government agencies, universities, and individuals who have been conducting geologic research in and around Death Valley National Park. The Proceedings volume (U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 99-153) contains: (1) short papers written by the keynote speakers, (2) abstracts of research presented during poster sessions, and (3) a one-day field trip guidebook to areas of both "type locality" status and new research. Contact: Janet Slate, USGS; jslate@usgs.gov  

Haynes Symposium

Between 80 and 100 former students of C. Vance Haynes held a two-day symposium (September 24-25, 1999) in Tucson, Arizona to honor their mentor on the occasion of his retirement. Haynes is a Regents Professor of anthropology and geosciences at the University of Arizona. A member of the National Academy of Sciences, Haynes is a leading authority on the geology of early humans, both in the New World and in Africa. Speakers highlighted Hayne’s contributions to the fields of Paleoindian Prehistory, geochronology, Quaternary geology and geoarchaeology, and Egyptian archaeology and geology.

 

 

Workshop on Arctic Dinoflagellate Cysts

An informal workshop was held March 15-19, 1999 in Montréal, Quebec to focus on the systematics of recent dinoflagellate cysts from the arctic and subarctic regions and their applicability for paleoenvironmental reconstructions. Participants from Canada and several European countries who are currently working in the polar regions attended this meeting. The major goals of this workshop were to initiate a joint approach to standardizing the taxonomy and nomenclature of cold-water dinoflagellate cysts and to establish a common modern ecological database for the arctic regions. More information about the workshop can be obtained from: Martin Head; head@quartz. geology. utoronto.ca

 

Western Lake/Catchment Systems Workshop

About 30 geoscientists attended a three-day workshop (September 22-24), which was held at Utah State University’s Bear Lake Training facility in Garden City Utah, to discuss progress and plans for a U.S. Geological Survey project entitled "Western Lake/Catchment Systems". Attendees included members of the USGS as well as collaborators from the Utah State Geological Survey, Kansas State University, the University of Minnesota, the University of Southern California, Northern Arizona University, the University of Utah, and Utah State University.

The goals of the project, which is funded by the USGS Earth Surface Dynamics Program, are to obtain paleoclimate/paleoenvironmental records from lake sediment cores, and to understand these records in terms of the responses of lakes and land surface to environmental change. One day was devoted to ongoing studies of each of three lakes; Owens Lake, CA, Great Salt Lake, UT, and Bear Lake UT/ID. For Owens Lake, the discussion centered on work to use pollen-based correlations to transfer U-series ages from Searles Lake to the Owens Lake core OL-92 (which has yielded excellent climate proxies for the past 800 ka but lacks a well-constrained chronology), and on new high resolution sedimentological and geochemical results for the Holocene, which is largely missing from core OL-92. For Great Salt Lake, efforts are focused on determining a high-resolution post-Bonneville (last 15 ka) record of lake level; this portion of the record is much more poorly known than the lake level history during filling of Lake Bonneville. For Bear Lake, presentations included a wide variety of studies bearing on past environments (diatoms, pollen, geochemistry, mineralogy, sedimentology, environemtal magnetism) and chronology (210Pb, 14C, amino acids). Late Wisconsin sediments in Bear Lake are largely comprised of lithic detrital material from the Bear River until about 15 ka, and may provide a continuous record of glacial history for the Uinta Mountains. After about 15 ka, the Bear River apparently abandoned Bear Lake. Since that time the lake has been largely spring fed, and the biota and geochemistry of carbonate-rich sediments reflect changing lake conditions.

Joseph Rosenbaum
U.S. Geological Survey, Denver

Clovis and Beyond

The Clovis and Beyond Conference, organized by the Center for the Study of the First Americans at Oregon State University, was held in Santa Fe October 28-31, 1999. Santa Fe was an appropriate venue, being the location of one of the first meetings on the question of peopling of the Americas over 30 years ago. The conference was extremely well-attended, with over 1,200 registrants. The conference was unique in a number of ways. First, it brought together for the first time both avocational and professional archaeologists interested in Paleoindians (or Paleoamericans, as some prefer), with one large meeting room reserved for the display of both public and private collections dealing with these early materials. (In fact, the meeting was in part funded and organized by G. Fenn, an avid avocational archaeologist, and discoverer of the Fenn Clovis Cache.) Second, while the meeting emphasized the validation of the pre-Clovis model, based particularly on analysis of the excavations at Monte Verde, but on a number of other sites as well, there was ample opportunity for the expression of alternative viewpoints, in a mostly cordial manner (although discussions became more heated by the end of the second day). Fourth, while archaeology was emphasized, there was also an opportunity for consideration of other kinds of data, particularly from early human remains and genetic studies of modern populations. Fifth, while most of the meeting emphasized scientific issues, there was also an opportunity (on the first morning) to consider the political issues as well, with representatives of federal agencies, Native organizations, and other groups debating the importance of scientific access to the remains of such infamous west coast skeletons as Kennewick Man, Spirit Cave Man, and Wizard Beach Man (casts of each of which were displayed in the exhibit room). New synthetic publications by the Center for the Study of the First Americans ("Ice Age Peoples of the Americas") were available, along with high quality reproductions of Paleoindian artifacts.

Although the purpose of the meeting was to summarize current knowledge about Paleoindian prehistory in the Americas, and not necessarily to toss new ideas into what is already a boiling cauldron, little new ground was broken in these talks. Some presented new information about recently excavated possible pre-Clovis sites, such as Al Goodyear’s work at the Topper site in South Carolina; others simply represented excellent regional syntheses, such as Ted Goebel’s synthesis of eastern Beringian (Alaskan) archaeology, and Ruth Gruhn’s summary of South American sites (one of the few papers that dealt with that whole continent). While these papers revealed the complexity involved with the acceptance or rejection of pre-Clovis sites, particularly in South America, the papers by the biological anthropologists (e.g., Joe Powell on Paleoindian skeletal materials and Ted Schurr on mtDNA and Y-chromosomes) revealed the complexity involved with assigning biological affiliations to either ancient or contemporary indigenous populations in the Americas. The meeting concluded with a provocative address by Dennis Stanford, Chair of the Department of Anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution, on typological linkages between the Paleoindian cultures of North America and the 20,000-year-old Solutrean culture of Upper Palaeolithic France and Spain. More detailed comparisons of such assemblages are still required, as well as more detailed considerations of hypothetical migration routes, including the more traditional route through Beringia. There was also relatively little discussion of the subsistence base of both possible pre-Clovis and Paleoindian populations. Hopefully, these issues will be addressed at an INQUA Bering Working Group meeting planned for Anchorage, Alaska in early August, 2001.

David Yesner
AMQUA Councilor for Archaeology

 

CANQUA—Canadian Geomorphology Research Group

The joint meeting of CNAQUA and the Canadian Geomorphology Research Group was held in Calgary, Alberta on August 23-27, 1999. The first day of the meeting featured a symposium to honour Nat Rutter, who retired from the University of Alberta last year. The following days included excellent sessions on: Palaeolimnology of the Great Plains and the Mountains; Glacial and periglacial; Geomorphic response to climate variability and extreme climatic events; Sub-glacial processes: review of past and recent findings; Geoarcheology: coastal and inland routes for the peopling of North America; Holocene climate and glacier fluctuations; Rivers: a stream of new ideas; Geochronology methods, applications and limitations; and Applied and economic Quaternary studies

Of note were CANQUA awards during the meeting. The WA Johnston award, given for notable achievement in Canadian Quaternary science was awarded to Jim Ritchie. The Dave Proudfoot award for best student presentation was awarded to ZeUve Gedalof for his paper "Blips and bellyflops: dendroclimatic evidence for regime-scale climate shifts during the Little Ice Age", co-authored with Dan Smith. The Guy Lortie award for best poster went to Dave Clements for his poster on "In-grade braiding and wandering on the gravel-bed middle-reach of the Yukon River, Alaska", co-authored with Derald Smith. Cheryl McKenna Neumann, recipient of the CGRG J Ross Mackay award of the CGRG presented an overview of her recent work entitled "Particle supply restrictions in aeolian systems - how damp, lumpy, crusty surfaces mess up sediment transport models."

Dave Liverman
Newfoundland Geological Survey