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Both of these lectures were very intriguing and they eloped me gain a wider and greater deal of understanding on the subject of Archaeology. Dry. Daniel Joyce is one of the top archaeologists currently studying how Pre-Cloves peoples were able to hunt Unmanaged In the Western Great Lakes region. His work is focused in Kenosha County in Western Wisconsin where there are 33 known Unmanaged sites (Joyce). These sites are all believed to be older than the development of the Clevis spear point (Joyce).
Of the 33 Unmanaged locations, most were Isolated archaeological finds, and Joyce focused on the 5 most Important sites In is lecture: Fens, Mud Lake, Schaefer, Hobbler, and Lucas. These 5 sites all provided valuable information as to how Unmanaged were hunted and butchered all with Pre- Clevis technology. The remains from the Mud Lake site date all the way back to 13,500 RECAP (Radio Carbon Years before present), and the bones of the Unmanaged had wedge marks on showing the a stone tool was used to butcher the meat from the bones (Joyce).
Joyce also mentioned that at the Schaefer site, which is at the edge of a glacial lake, a 36-year-old Elephants remains were found, and only 2 vertebrae had to been torn apart and butchered (Joyce). This provided further evidence that the pre-Cloves people were able to take down and butcher these large animals without advanced stone tools. Near the end of his lecture Joyce also discussed the extinction of Unmanaged in the region.
He provided evidence that they were not killed off quickly by the humans and that there was a long coexistence between the two before they went extinct. Joyce then went on to give the 3 current hypotheses for their extinction, Kill, Chill, and Ill. The Kill hypothesis states humans eventually prevented them, Chill says that a climate shift killed them off, and Ill states that there become an illness that spread and killed off the Unmanaged (Joyce). Jockey’s Lecture had many similarities to concepts that we have discussed In class.
During Assignment 2, we visited the Geology Museum and saw one of the Unmanaged that were hunted in this period, this helped give me an appreciation for Just how massive these creatures were. Also, Jockey’s Lecture discussed radiocarbon dates, which we discussed In sections. Finally, the lecture gave greater Insight into the debate of hat came before the Clevis people and how they got there. We watched a film about this mystery in Lecture, and Jockey’s lecture gave great evidence that there were humans in North America before the Clevis point was developed.
Dry. Mark Hauser from Northwestern gave the second lecture I attended from. Dry. Hauser focused on the small Caribbean Island of Dominica and how archaeological remains gave light onto the presence of slavery and other economic decisions made on this island in the settled by French Coffee Planters (Hauser). Many of the issues on the Island in the ass’s revolved around how much land people were allowed to buy and what crops could be planted.
Only about 5% of the Island had land flat enough to grow certain crops like sugar and this led to slavery and construction of boiling houses (Hauser). Hauser said looking for the location and number of these boiling houses is key archaeological evidence as to what took place here, and how society devolved because of it. Other evidence Hauser used to make conclusions included documents such as the one written by Sir William Young and household archaeology used to determine the living conditions of slaves at the time (Hauser).
Putting all of this together, Hauser can better understand the History of Dominica. This lecture had less in common with topics covered in class than did Jockey’s lecture due to the recent occurrence of the events compared to what we have studied in class, but there are still some similarities. The glass bottles that were found on Dominica served as multi-use tools and were reused very frequently over time. This is very similar to early stone tools that we handled in sections as they served many different purposes for the users.
Also, the interpretation of written documents such as the one written by Sir William Young comes into play; this is similar to the written accounts by both sides during the Spanish Conquest of Mesospheric. The two lectures from Dry. Joyce and Dry. Hauser that I attended provided a great deal of additional knowledge and helped me better grasp topics discussed in class. These were two very different topics, but both were very interesting to listen to and have helped me think in more depth about all the archaeological work that goes into understanding the past.