Adovasio
I'm reading more of Jim Adovasio's book, and I'm actually to the part where he's describing his own field work
(took him about 120 pages, but you know, that's cool).
Anyway, the man's fieldwork is so fucking detailed.
You compare it to what we did at Broken Mammoth and it's like using a bulldozer vs a toothbrush to move dirt.
We only looked for rather large items (unless it came to debitage, small rock chippings) whereas Adovasio looked for pollen and other such deterrioratable objects, such as baskets and weavings (his specialty).
What this is making it look like though, is a much better argument for the legitamacy for the site.
Many people chalk up bad dates to contaminated coal flowing through the rockshelter, but Adovasio talks his way out of it saying that the people doing it were the best in the country and that he has multiple (11) that was much more that most sites at that time could boast.
I'm still looking to get through it, but he has stomped on the problem that most people seem to have with the site:
At the time, Meadowcroft was only about 40-some miles away from the glacial maximum. Most people hypothesize that this would make life (not only human life, but other biota) impossible.
This is, in fact untrue, if you check out areas around Alaska, where people can walk around in tee shirts in good weather with the forests sustaining animal life.
before this, Adovasio was getting into the overkill vs. climatic change argument.
whether or not people killed off all large megafauna, or if the receding glaciers took its toll on the animals.
Adovasio is very opinionated, but for the life of me i can't remember which way he leaned.
I'm sure he made his point clear... He was ragging on Metzler. Who wrote shit with my prof Grayson. who were saying that there wasn't much proof of interaction between Pleistocene fauna and man. Maybe they were going for the climate, and Adovasio was for overkill.
don't know for sure, but we'll go with that.
either way, it doesn't really matter (for my purposes).
why i mentioned this, was cuz today at the pool, i saw a guy carrying a book entitled "fieldbook".
i was interested, cuz it looked like outdoorsy stuff was on the pages he was looking at.
come to find out, it was a boy scout handbook.
it wasn't anything archaeologically related, but it just so happened to be another topic that i'm fairly well-versed in. his kid's 12 and a tenderfoot.
anyway. we were talking about how boy scouts is the best thing for young people cuz it exposes them to so much stuff that normal kids wouldn't really get to see, namely nature.
somehow this took us to the weather.
where he tells me that weather patterns here have changed a lot in the last 40 years.
it used to drizzle all the time and have generally many overcast days.
he says (i guess) that it's different now. the rain comes a little harder and when its done raining, the sun usually is able to burn away the clouds.
then he goes to say that spring comes about a week earlier and that it messes with the herding animals.
that's what i've always wanted to know!
if animals can get fucked up in 40 years time, imagine what one thousand years of climatic change can do.
breeding will be off, young can't keep up, food might be scarce.
things will die or not propagate properly.
16,000 years ago, people may have been in meadowcroft, PA, but now it seems somewhat possible that nature may have done it on its own.
personally i had been leaning more on the overkill side, but now this opens up a whole new avenue of thought!
dammit! the more you learn, the less you know!
i always had the notion that climatic change was the main killer, but overkill was the final dagger.
i guess that could still be true.
look around at island examples.
well. actually most of those are advocates of overkill: hawaii, pitcairns, where ever the crap the dodo's are from.
but i guess there's still places like easter island and new zealand that hold out for a bit of hope that environment is the real killer and man is just stupid enough to bring the final demise of a given (tasty) species.
(took him about 120 pages, but you know, that's cool).
Anyway, the man's fieldwork is so fucking detailed.
You compare it to what we did at Broken Mammoth and it's like using a bulldozer vs a toothbrush to move dirt.
We only looked for rather large items (unless it came to debitage, small rock chippings) whereas Adovasio looked for pollen and other such deterrioratable objects, such as baskets and weavings (his specialty).
What this is making it look like though, is a much better argument for the legitamacy for the site.
Many people chalk up bad dates to contaminated coal flowing through the rockshelter, but Adovasio talks his way out of it saying that the people doing it were the best in the country and that he has multiple (11) that was much more that most sites at that time could boast.
I'm still looking to get through it, but he has stomped on the problem that most people seem to have with the site:
At the time, Meadowcroft was only about 40-some miles away from the glacial maximum. Most people hypothesize that this would make life (not only human life, but other biota) impossible.
This is, in fact untrue, if you check out areas around Alaska, where people can walk around in tee shirts in good weather with the forests sustaining animal life.
before this, Adovasio was getting into the overkill vs. climatic change argument.
whether or not people killed off all large megafauna, or if the receding glaciers took its toll on the animals.
Adovasio is very opinionated, but for the life of me i can't remember which way he leaned.
I'm sure he made his point clear... He was ragging on Metzler. Who wrote shit with my prof Grayson. who were saying that there wasn't much proof of interaction between Pleistocene fauna and man. Maybe they were going for the climate, and Adovasio was for overkill.
don't know for sure, but we'll go with that.
either way, it doesn't really matter (for my purposes).
why i mentioned this, was cuz today at the pool, i saw a guy carrying a book entitled "fieldbook".
i was interested, cuz it looked like outdoorsy stuff was on the pages he was looking at.
come to find out, it was a boy scout handbook.
it wasn't anything archaeologically related, but it just so happened to be another topic that i'm fairly well-versed in. his kid's 12 and a tenderfoot.
anyway. we were talking about how boy scouts is the best thing for young people cuz it exposes them to so much stuff that normal kids wouldn't really get to see, namely nature.
somehow this took us to the weather.
where he tells me that weather patterns here have changed a lot in the last 40 years.
it used to drizzle all the time and have generally many overcast days.
he says (i guess) that it's different now. the rain comes a little harder and when its done raining, the sun usually is able to burn away the clouds.
then he goes to say that spring comes about a week earlier and that it messes with the herding animals.
that's what i've always wanted to know!
if animals can get fucked up in 40 years time, imagine what one thousand years of climatic change can do.
breeding will be off, young can't keep up, food might be scarce.
things will die or not propagate properly.
16,000 years ago, people may have been in meadowcroft, PA, but now it seems somewhat possible that nature may have done it on its own.
personally i had been leaning more on the overkill side, but now this opens up a whole new avenue of thought!
dammit! the more you learn, the less you know!
i always had the notion that climatic change was the main killer, but overkill was the final dagger.
i guess that could still be true.
look around at island examples.
well. actually most of those are advocates of overkill: hawaii, pitcairns, where ever the crap the dodo's are from.
but i guess there's still places like easter island and new zealand that hold out for a bit of hope that environment is the real killer and man is just stupid enough to bring the final demise of a given (tasty) species.
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