2012 New York State Archaeology Season

Today marks the official start of the 2012 New York State Archaeology season.

New York State has a rich and long history and prehistory. Each year new archaeological sites are discovered across the state. These provide important information for understanding human activity and interaction with the landscape over the last 12,000 years. However, all archaeological sites represent fragile, non-renewable resources that are in danger of being impacted on a daily basis. For more than a decade archaeologists across the state have worked together to help raise awareness of the archaeological resources of the state, as well as to encourage stewardship of these important pieces of our human history and to provide opportunities for the general public to become involved.  In recognition of the fact that important archaeological work continues throughout the year, the organizations involved have decided to celebrate Archaeology Season. Archaeology Season stretches from the Spring through the Fall and offers plenty of opportunities for the public to get involved through visiting excavations in progress, attending presentations on important sites, artifact identification days, and other events.  Events will be sponsored by many individuals and organizations and will take place throughout the season.  A list of events can be found here.

For the next five months I’ll be giving precedence to archaeological happenings in the Empire State.  Are you digging in New York?  Is your research based on the Empire State’s exciting history or prehistory?  Sexy Archaeology would love to help raise awareness!  Send your links, stories and photographs to sexyarchaeology@gmail.com, tag your tweets on Twitter with #NYSArch and #pubarch, and join our Facebook page.

Happy digging!

Douglas County's Lamb Spring archaeological dig could rewrite human history

Molly the Columbian mammoth lived, grazed, and died, about 13,000 years ago near a spring in what is now a fast-developing chunk of Douglas County. Five thousand years later, early North American humans spent time at the same spring, where they killed and butchered bison.

We don't know if humans visited the spring at the same time as Molly, but if the Lamb Spring site produces evidence that they did — and it tantalizes with hope — the site could rewrite the scientific and cultural history of North America. And perhaps offer the Denver area a new attraction.

Lamb Spring sits in the Chatfield Basin, between South Platte Canyon Road and Chatfield Reservoir. "Stand on that site (Lamb Spring) and look around. You realize you are in the middle of one of the fastest-developing areas in Colorado," said Jim Walker, southwest regional director for The Archaeological Conservancy, an Albuquerque nonprofit that buys archaeologically promising land and safeguards it from development. The conservancy bought the Lamb Spring site in 1995. "The fact that we were able to find that site, buy it and preserve it, at the time we did, was a miracle. I'll bet within 10 years that area is going to be covered in houses."

Walker believes further excavation of Lamb Spring could show human activity between 13,000 and even 25,000 years ago, in which case "there would be a lot of rewriting of the peopling of North America."

"I would place Lamb Spring really high, in terms of its importance," he said. "If I were ranking Lamb Spring among the other 450 preserves we have, it would be in the top 10."

Evidence of Pleistocene megafauna like mammoths makes the Lamb Spring dig compelling in its own right, but mammoth sites pepper the West. Early-human findings, in contrast, are rare. Placing both in the same location sets Lamb Spring — the largest "mixed dig" in the country — apart.

The findings may do more than just embellish what we already know: that humans roamed North America as far back as 11,200 years ago. Some archaeologists believe Lamb Spring could provide solid evidence, instead of just speculation, that people lived in North America much earlier.

Today, the Lamb Spring dig amounts to little more than a weed-choked and trash-sprinkled depression in the ground, a cavity surrounded by 35 acres of undulating, fenced-in prairie. An informational plaque sits beside the gated dirt path that leads to the site. Once a month for half the year, people can watch a video about the site andthen follow a tour guide to the swale to observe the grass.

If it weren't for a rancher's desire for a stock pond 50 years ago, the bones of Molly and 30 other mammoths — the largest find in Colorado, and the third- biggest in North America — would likely remain buried. But in 1960 Charles Lamb decided to use a spring on his land to make a fishing pond, and while digging he struck some big bones. Geologists identified them as mammoths.

In 1981, Smithsonian Institute archaeologist Dennis Stanford excavated the site and found many more mammoth bones, as well as camels, horses, sloths, llamas and wolves.

Stanford also found a 30-pound rock. Marks on the stone suggested it had been used as a butcher block. Geological forces could not have brought the stone to the site. Instead, Stanford theorized, early humans must have done it, and based on its location in the sediment, that could have happened 16,000 years ago. If the theory can be proved, it will mean humans dwelled at Lamb Spring at least that long ago.

For North American archaeologists, the faintest whisper of "paleo-Indian" usually sends hearts racing. Walker said he'll "drop everything" if he hears of a site that could be purchased. Signs of early humans in North America are scarce, largely because the population was small and nomadic. Most evidence amounts to a scrap here, a smidgen there.

But in addition to Lamb Spring's threat to upend the history of the peopling of North America, it also shows clear signs of a 9,000-year-old "Cody complex" bison kill, a site, similar to one found in Cody, Wyo., where humans camped, slaughtered buffalo, cut the meat, and hammered at bone with rocks to withdraw marrow. That alone makes Lamb Spring beguiling to archaeologists. But Lamb Spring, too, holds hints that the site was more than a quick way station for early hunters.

"I think Lamb Spring could yield what would be a jackpot — a campsite or village," said Walker. "That would be incredible."

"The site tells us about the ancient environment, about the environment of the Front Range and the foothills, what they were like in the past, how it has changed, how climate has changed," said James Dixon, a University of New Mexico anthropology professor who has been active in Lamb Spring. "And it has the archaeological story, a later chapter. It has a lot of potential."

That potential seems to spread beyond Lamb Spring, too. Just three-quarters of a mile away, archaeologists from the Denver Museum of Nature & Scienceare unearthing mammoth bones and signs of early humans at a site they call Scott Spring.

"It's like a mini-Lamb Spring," said Steven Holen, curator of archaeology for the museum. "At Scott Spring we are seeing bones even older (than at Lamb Spring) that appear to have been broken by humans. That's what we are doing there — looking for evidence of humans older than Clovis (11,200 years ago)."

The team began excavating the site in 2010, and dug a test bed where a prairie dog had burrowed down into a mammoth tusk.

"There was ivory lying all around," Holen said. So far, they have identified a mammoth, a camel and a Pleistocene horse.

"These spring sites have great promise," he said. "They used those springs and hunted around those springs for thousands of years."

Denver-area's Lamb Spring archaeological dig hints at early North American humans

This month, officials with Colorado Economic Development Division will consider a proposal to fund Lamb Springas a Regional Tourist Project, turning one of the most promising digs in North America into a "living museum" where patrons can watch archaeologists and paleontologists wield brushes on mammoth bones in the archeological treasure trove.

The same application — titled "Colorado Sports and Prehistoric Park" — calls for a nearby 93-acre sports complex, an assortment of fields, gyms, hotels, spas and restaurants that would draw athletic competitors from the region, and the nation, for tournaments and games. It is competing for funding with several other proposalsacross the state, including a riverwalk in Pueblo, an adventure park in Estes Park and an entertainment complex in Glendale.

If approved, the park will live in the midst of a massive development called Sterling Ranch, a proposed 3,400-acre, 12,000-home mixed-use development in the Chatfield Basin, with Roxborough Park to the southwest and Chatfield Reservoir to the north.

For many proponents of the development, the model is The Mammoth Site of Hot Springs, S.D. The museum encases an ongoing mammoth dig, and visitors — more than 100,000 of them a year — observe scientists at work while learning about the area's Ice Age history through tours and museum installments. That museum draws people from around the world, but it is remote. The town's population? About 4,000.

Nearly 3 million people call the Denver metropolitan area home.

County officials want the project, in part, because they believe it will draw tourists and their dollars. Archaeologists pull for Lamb Spring because of its scientific importance .

"There is evidence to suggest it may be one of the oldest sites in America," said James Dixon, an anthropology professor at the University of New Mexico. "I imagine there is a rich and long history there that has yet to be understood."

Team closes in on Amelia Earhart

Ric Gillespie may be closer than anyone ever thought possible to solving one of the greatest mysteries of the 20th century.

But he still struggles to understand the complicated woman at the heart of it all.

Recently, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton joined Gillespie -- head of the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) -- in announcing a new expedition to solve the disappearance of famed aviator Amelia Earhart.

A worldwide celebrity and American heroine, Earhart, along with her navigator Fred Noonan, vanished in 1937 as they were trying to fly around the world.

There have been countless theories, but Gillespie and his team of researchers, archaeologists and crash investigators -- his own specialty -- believe they are close to solving the riddle.

"I'm a horseman, so we're on the back straight and coming to the wire," Gillespie reasons.

Even oceanographer Robert Ballard, who discovered the remains of the Titanic in 1985, says TIGHAR's research looks promising.

In July, Gillespie's team will set out on a 220-foot research vessel from Honolulu, and head toward the Phoenix Islands in Kiribati.

They believe there's compelling evidence Earhart may have landed in shallow waters near Nikumarro island, and an analysis of a photo taken in 1937 -- showing what could be a piece of mangled landing gear sticking from the surf -- could be the best spot to search.

During past searches, they've found other clues, including an eye-witness account of someone who saw wreckage as a little girl, bones that seem to be those of a woman castaway, bits of makeup and a camp site littered with the bones of countless birds, turtles and fish.

But the newly enhanced picture may lead them to the remains of the plane.

What they're looking for is an "any idiot artifact" -- the thing you hold up and any idiot will say, 'mystery solved'.

Gillespie has been chasing Earhart for decades -- at first not wanting any part of the search, because so many others had already tried.

But clue by clue, he and his team have built a case.

Around his office in Delaware, there are pictures of Earhart and Noonan that sit near a photo of Gillespie's granddaughter.

The flyer has become a part of his life.

But he seems surer of the trail they follow than the pilot they're searching for.

"I have struggled to understand this woman, " he says. "I still don't know who she was, but she's not the Amelia Earhart of legend.

"She's someone else."

The adventurer was among the biggest celebrities of her day. And she used that as currency.

During times when Americans had very little, she offered the clouds - an ambitious woman, Gillespie reasons, who mass-marketed the dream of flight.

"I don't know if I would have liked her very much," he admits, saying that's something he's never come out and said before.

But he knows she did well for aviation.

And he's found a certain connection, beyond the search.

Earhart knew headlines were the way to move forward onto the next great quest.

Standing with Clinton during the recent announcement - happy to have the attention on a project that demands a lot of money -- something came to mind.

"The uncomfortable realization that I do the same thing (as Earhart)," he says. "It gives new perspective on Amelia."

Though it doesn't help to know what her last moments were like -- some suggesting Noonan could have died during the crash.

If only she made it onto the island, with no antibiotics and in 37 C heat amid coconut crabs and isolation, experts say she could have lasted months. But drinkable water would have been limited and death certain.

Now a man who doesn't quite understand her may be the one to finally locate her.

But like the aviator, he knows no course is certain until you actually get there. 

New research suggests European Neandertals were almost extinct long before humans showed up

Western Europe has long been held to be the "cradle" of Neandertal evolution since many of the earliest discoveries were from sites in this region. But when Neandertals started disappearing around 30,000 years ago, anthropologists figured that climactic factors or competition from modern humans were the likely causes. Intriguingly, new research suggests that Western European Neandertals were on the verge of extinction long before modern humans showed up. This new perspective comes from a study of ancient DNA carried out by an international research team. Rolf Quam, a Binghamton University anthropologist, was a co-author of the study led by Anders Götherström at Uppsala University and Love Dalén at the Swedish Museum of Natural History, and published in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution.

"The Neandertals are our closest fossil relatives and abundant evidence of their lifeways and skeletal remains have been found at many sites across Europe and western Asia," said Quam, assistant professor of anthropology. "Until modern humans arrived on the scene, it was widely thought that Europe had been populated by a relatively stable Neandertal population for hundreds of thousands of years. Our research suggests otherwise and in light of these new results, this long-held theory now faces scrutiny."

Focusing on mitochondrial DNA sequences from 13 Neandertal individuals, including a new sequence from the site of Valdegoba cave in northern Spain, the research team found some surprising results. When they first started looking at the DNA, a clear pattern emerged. Neandertal individuals from western Europe that were older than 50,000 years and individuals from sites in western Asia and the Middle East showed a high degree of genetic variation, on par with what might be expected from a species that had been abundant in an area for a long period of time. In fact, the amount of genetic variation was similar to what characterizes modern humans as a species. In contrast, Neandertal individuals that come from Western Europe and are younger than 50,000 years show an extremely reduced amount of genetic variation, less even than the present-day population of remote Iceland.

These results suggest that western European Neandertals went through a demographic crisis, a population bottleneck that severely reduced their numbers, leaving Western Europe largely empty of humans for a period of time. The demographic crisis seems to coincide with a period of extreme cold in Western Europe. Subsequently, this region was repopulated by a small group of individuals from a surrounding area. The geographic origin of this source population is currently not clear, but it may be possible to pinpoint it further with more Neandertal sequences in the future.

"The fact that Neandertals in western Europe were nearly extinct, but then recovered long before they came into contact with modern humans came as a complete surprise to us," said Dalén, associate professor at the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm. "This indicates that the Neandertals may have been more sensitive to the dramatic climate changes that took place in the last Ice Age than was previously thought."

Quam concurs and suggests that this discovery calls for a major rethink of the idea of cold adaptation in Neandertals.

"At the very least, this tells us that without the aid of material culture or technology, there is a limit to our biological adaptation," said Quam. "It may very well have been the case that the European Neandertal populations were already demographically stressed when modern humans showed up on the scene."

The results presented in the study are based entirely on severely degraded ancient DNA, and the analyses have therefore required both advanced laboratory and computational methods. The research team has involved experts from a number of countries, including statisticians, experts on modern DNA sequencing and paleoanthropologists from Sweden, Denmark, Spain and the United States.

"This is just the latest example of how studies of ancient DNA are providing new insights into an important and previously unknown part of Neandertal history, "said Quam. "Ancient DNA is complementary to anthropological studies focusing on the bony anatomy of the skeleton, and these kinds of results are only possible with ancient DNA studies. It's exciting to think about what will turn up next."