Our next monthly meeting will be held in person and on Zoom on Wednesday, May 8th, at 7:00 p.m. in the Lyceum at the Center of Southwest Studies at Fort Lewis College. After a brief business meeting, Jeff Pigati and Kathleen Springer, research geologists with the U.S. Geological Survey, will present, “Evidence of humans in North America during the Last Glacial Maximum (Dating of White Sands footprints).” A reception will start things off at 6:30 p.m. in the foyer of the Center of Southwest Studies.
Archaeologists and researchers in allied fields have long sought to understand human colonization of North America. Questions remain about when and how people migrated, where they originated, and how their arrival affected the established fauna and landscape. Here, we present evidence from excavated surfaces in White Sands National Park (New Mexico, United States), where multiple in situ human footprints are stratigraphically constrained and bracketed by seed layers that yield calibrated radiocarbon ages between ~23 and 21 thousand years ago. Independent chronologic controls have recently confirmed these ages. This timing coincided with a Northern Hemispheric abrupt warming event, Dansgaard-Oeschger event 2, which drew down lake levels and allowed humans and megafauna to walk on newly exposed surfaces, creating tracks that became preserved in the geologic record. These findings confirm the presence of humans in North America during the Last Glacial Maximum, adding evidence to the antiquity of human colonization of the Americas and providing a temporal range extension for the coexistence of early inhabitants and Pleistocene megafauna.
Kathleen Springer is a research geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Denver, Colorado. She specializes in deciphering complex stratigraphic sequences and reconstructing paleoenvironmental conditions, and studies how springs and other hydrologic systems responded to climate change in the recent geologic past.
Jeff Pigati is a research geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Denver, Colorado. His research is focused on understanding the response of hydrologic systems in arid environments to past episodes of abrupt climate change. He is also an expert in radiocarbon dating.
Link to join Webinar
https://fortlewis.zoom.us/j/96274904694
Meeting ID: 962 7490 4694
Spring PAAC Classes
An online 10-week course, “Introduction to Archaeology,” will take place from March 25 to May 31. In addition, the two classes that were offered last fall will be available again. To find out more about these and other classes, please visit the History Colorado website at PAAC Class Offerings.
SJBAS Newsletter – Moki Messenger
Moki – April 2024
Previously Recorded SJBAS Zoom Presentations on YouTube
Previously Recorded Presentations
The San Juan Basin Archaeological Society (SJBAS) is a Colorado Nonprofit Corporation. SJBAS consists of people who are interested in the archaeology, culture, and early history of the Four Corners region. We have members of all ages and backgrounds, some with extensive training in archaeology and others with more limited knowledge, but a strong desire to learn.
Our mission is to advocate for and promote public awareness and preservation of archaeological, cultural, and historical resources, primarily of the Four Corners region of the American Southwest.
Members are eligible to participate in SJBAS field trips and they receive a monthly newsletter, the Moki Messenger, with information about current SJBAS activities and other matters of archaeological and historical interest.