Archaeology First Thursdays Archive

Oct. 7, 2021

Melanie Chang, anthropology faculty, Portland State

This talk discusses the difficulties inherent in recognizing sex (much less gender) in Paleolithic art, and the consequences of such unfounded assumptions in scientific and popular discourse.

Nov. 4, 2021

Robert David, anthropology faculty, Portland State

This presentation considers how rock art imagery in the Klamath Basin served different purposes within three different socially-constructed contexts: settlement sites, frequently used areas and special use areas.

Dec. 2, 2021

Colin Grier, anthropology faculty, Washington State University-Vancouver

This talk discusses the broader context and role archaeological techniques and archaeologists can and should play in facilitating reconciliation after recent studies at Indian Residential Schools in Canada turned up hundreds of unmarked graves.

Jan. 6, 2022

Kimberli Fitzgerald, historic preservation officer, City of Salem

This talk explores Salem's urban archaeology program to see how their process works through a real world example, including the public education and interpretation about the archaeological work on the development site.

Feb. 3, 2022

Sandy Rogers, archaeology curator at the Maturango Museum in Ridgecrest, California

This talk explores obsidian hydration dating, a chronometric method based on measuring the water absorbed through a fresh surface of obsidian. It is relatively inexpensive, and has the benefit of directly dating obsidian artifacts.

March 3, 2022

Kate Shantry, archaeologist and graduate student, University of Washington-Vancouver

This talk is an overview of Kate’s landscape study concerning the Osceola Mudflow Event ca. 5700 years ago, covering Indigenous perspectives, experimental archaeology, as well as the way forward to a predictive model of documenting.

April 7, 2022

Jaime Kennedy, interim director, Archaeological Research Division at the Museum of Natural and Cultural History

This talk integrates diachronic datasets from several sites in the northern Great Basin to examine the role of plants in seasonal rounds, food preferences, and foraging decisions of people in the past.

May 5, 2022

Emily Van Alst, Ph.D. student, Indiana University Bloomington

This talk, grounded in methods of Indigenous archaeology and rock art research, will explore how we can improve our interpretations of rock art images by foregrounding Indigenous knowledge, and in particular, Indigenous women’s voices and experiences.

Jan. 7, 2021

Susan Charnley, research social scientist, U.S. Forest Service

This talk examines the question: How can we promote wildfire risk reduction through collective action to increase the resilience of fire-prone forest landscapes across property boundaries?

Feb. 4, 2021

Elizabeth Marino, anthropology faculty, OSU-Cascades, and Dennis Davis, self-taught Inupiat photographer

This talk discusses the climate change planning in Alaska and trying to pair experiences of climate change with policy analysis to understand how best to create community-based solutions.

March 4, 2021

Bradley Bowden, VP of operations and principal archaeologist, Historical Research Associates' Portland office

This presentation addresses fishing weir environments, terminology, and methodology, and takes a close look at some of the most interesting investigations to date.

April 1, 2021

Tammy Buonasera, anthropology researcher, UC Davis

This talk discusses how the application of molecular and isotopic techniques to northern Alaskan residues is providing new insights into what types of resources people were cooking in pots and burning in hearths.

May 6, 2021

Virginia Butler, anthropology faculty, Portland State

Butler reviews changes she has witnessed in the practice of archaeology in the Pacific Northwest since her 1975 field school at Lind Coulee, from changes in technology, analytic methods, research questions and goals, and the increasing role of Indigenous people.

June 3, 2021

William Brown, statistics lecturer, University of Washington

This presentation explores an alternative approach to temporal frequency analysis using a sample of archaeological radiocarbon dates from the Kuril Archipelago in the Northeast Pacific Rim.