Anna Curtenius Roosevelt | |
---|---|
Born | 1946 (age 77–78) |
Alma mater | Foxcroft School Stanford University Columbia University |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Archaeology |
Institutions | University of Illinois Chicago Field Museum of Natural History Museum of the American Indian |
Anna Curtenius Roosevelt (born 1946 [1] ) is an American archaeologist and Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois Chicago. She studies human evolution and long-term human-environment interaction. She is one of the leading American archeologists studying Paleoindians in the Amazon basin. [2] Her field research has included significant findings at Marajo Island and Caverna da Pedra Pintada in Brazil. She does additional field work in the Congo Basin. She is the great-granddaughter of United States President Theodore Roosevelt.
Roosevelt recalls that, inspired by her mother, through reading and a trip to Mesa Verde, she became interested in archaeology at the age of nine. [3] [4] Roosevelt graduated from Foxcroft School, an all-girls' boarding school in Virginia, in 1964. She graduated from Stanford University in 1968 with a Bachelor of Arts in History, Classics, and Anthropology. [5] In 1977, she earned a Ph.D. degree in anthropology from Columbia University. [6]
From 1975 to 1985, she worked as a curator at the Museum of the American Indian. Roosevelt was a guest curator at the American Museum of Natural History from 1985 to 1989. She was later a curator of archaeology at the Field Museum of Natural History. [7] Her early field work took her to the Andes mountains of Peru, and then to Mexico and Venezuela. [7] She is currently a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. [8]
In 1991, Roosevelt published, Moundbuilders of the Amazon: Geophysical Archaeology on Marajo Island, Brazil, which detailed her work throughout the 1980s on pre-Columbian Marajoara culture. [9] Her research team employed remote sensing geophysical surveys, together with excavation. [9] The Marajo Island lies near the mouth of the Amazon River and contains evidence of pre-Columbian settlement. [7]
In this work, Roosevelt challenged the theory that the pre-Columbian Amazon was a "counterfeit paradise" unable to sustain increasingly complex human culture. [10] Roosevelt posited that this pre-Columbian society was "one of the outstanding indigenous cultural achievements," with a high population and territory, intensive subsistence agriculture, as well as public works. [11] These findings and arguments have led to continuing debates in South American archaeology and anthropology. [12] Meanwhile, they have led others to follow up and build upon her work. [13]
From 1990 to 1992, Roosevelt led the excavation of the Painted Rock Cave ( Caverna da Pedra Pintada ) near Monte Alegre in the State of Pará, Brazil. The Monte Alegre rock art contains many examples of ancient rock paintings, including handprints, as well as human and animal figures and geometrics. [14] Dating of these paintings suggests they are among the oldest art in the Western Hemisphere. [2] [15] Roosevelt's investigation found evidence for human habitation in the Amazon much older than previously known, perhaps twice as old. [14]
Over a 1000-year period, about 10,000-11,000 years ago, humans used the cave and left behind unique projectile points, as well as evidence that they had transported plant seeds from far away to the site. [2] [7] They lived in a different way from the cultures of the earliest-known, Western Hemisphere big-game-hunters, relying instead on the rivers and forest. [16] Also suggesting a later human reoccupation at the site and along the nearby riverbank was evidence of 7,500-year-old pottery, which would make it the oldest, or among the oldest pottery found in the Americas. [14] Roosevelt's findings suggested that the study of migration of humans into the Americas, as well as the development of civilization in the Amazon, needed to be revisited. [2] [15] [17] [18]
Roosevelt continues field work at various sites in Brazil, most recently at underwater sites in the middle Xingu, to look at the activities of Paleoindians in the interfluves of Amazonia. In addition, she has expanded her research focus to the African Congo Basin. Her archaeological work in the Congo basin has centered on preceramic sites in Bayanga in the southwestern Central African Republic. [19]
Roosevelt has been elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She has been awarded the Explorers Medal and the Society of Woman Geographers' Gold Medal. Brazil has awarded her the Order of Rio Branco and the Bettendorf Medal. In 1988, she received a five-year fellowship from the MacArthur Fellows Program. She has received honorary doctorates from Mount Holyoke and Northeastern University. In 2012 She received the University Scholar and Distinguished Professor awards from University of Illinois at Chicago. Her research has been funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fulbright Commission, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, and the University of Illinois. [19]
She is a daughter of Quentin Roosevelt II, and Frances Blanche Webb, [20] and granddaughter of Gen. Theodore Roosevelt Jr. Her great grandfather was United States President Theodore Roosevelt. Her sisters are Susan Roosevelt Weld, and Alexandra Roosevelt Dworkin. [21]
Indigenous peoples once comprised an estimated 2,000 tribes and nations inhabiting what is now the country of Brazil, before European contact around 1500 AD.
Marajó is a large coastal island in the state of Pará, Brazil. It is the main and largest of the islands in the Marajó Archipelago. Marajó Island is separated from the mainland by Marajó Bay, Pará River, smaller rivers, Companhia River, Jacaré Grande River, Vieira Grande Bay and the Atlantic Ocean.
Ceramics of Indigenous peoples of the Americas is an art form with at least a 7500-year history in the Americas. Pottery is fired ceramics with clay as a component. Ceramics are used for utilitarian cooking vessels, serving and storage vessels, pipes, funerary urns, censers, musical instruments, ceremonial items, masks, toys, sculptures, and a myriad of other art forms.
Paleo-Indians were the first peoples who entered and subsequently inhabited the Americas towards the end of the Late Pleistocene period. The prefix paleo- comes from the Ancient Greek adjective: παλαιός, romanized: palaiós, lit. 'old; ancient'. The term Paleo-Indians applies specifically to the lithic period in the Western Hemisphere and is distinct from the term Paleolithic.
Niède Guidon is a Brazilian archaeologist known for her work in pre-historic archeology of South American civilizations and her efforts to secure the conservation of the World Heritage Site Serra da Capivara National Park.
Emil Walter "Doc" Haury was an American archaeologist who specialized in the archaeology of the American Southwest. He is most famous for his work at Snaketown, a Hohokam site in Arizona.
Betty Jane Meggers was an American archaeologist best known for her work in South America. She was considered influential at the Smithsonian Institution, where she was long associated in research, and she wrote extensively about environment as a shaper of human cultures.
The Marajoara or Marajó culture was an ancient pre-Columbian era culture that flourished on Marajó island at the mouth of the Amazon River in northern Brazil. In a survey, Charles C. Mann suggests the culture appeared to flourish between 800 AD and 1400 AD, based on archeological studies. Researchers have documented that there was human activity at these sites as early as 1000 BC. The culture seems to have persisted into the colonial era.
Pedra Furada is an important collection of over 800 archaeological sites in the state of Piauí, Brazil. These include hundreds of rock paintings dating from circa 12,000 years before present. More importantly, charcoal from very ancient fires and stone shards that may be interpreted as tools found at the location were dated from 48,000 to 32,000 years before present, suggesting the possibility of a human presence tens of thousand of years prior to the arrival of the Clovis people in North America.
Juliet Morrow is an American archaeologist and a professor of Anthropology at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro, Arkansas.
This is a chronological list of significant or pivotal moments in the development of Native American art or the visual arts of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. Earlier dates, especially before the 18th century, are mostly approximate.
Caleb Vance Haynes Jr., known as Vance Haynes or C. Vance Haynes Jr., is an archaeologist, geologist and author who specializes in the archaeology of the American Southwest. Haynes "revolutionized the fields of geoarchaeology and archaeological geology." He is known for unearthing and studying artifacts of Paleo-Indians including ones from Sandia Cave in the 1960s, work which helped to establish the timeline of human migration through North America. Haynes coined the term "black mat" for a layer of 10,000-year-old swamp soil seen in many North American archaeological studies.
Vance T. Holliday is a professor in the School of Anthropology and the department of Geosciences as well as an adjunct professor in the department of Geography at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
Caverna da Pedra Pintada, is an archaeological site in northern Brazil, with evidence of human presence dating ca. 11,200 years ago.
The Pedra Pintada or "Painted Rock" is a large rock in the state of Roraima, Brazil. It is 85 metres long, 35 metres high and 30 metres wide, and is found in the Boa Vista savanna. There are many pictograms and other archaeological evidence inscribed on the walls of the rock.
Toca da Tira Peia is a rock shelter site, located in the municipality Coronel José Dias, Piauí state, near the Serra da Capivara National Park, Brazil, thought to hold evidence of prehistoric human presence in South America dating to 22,000 years ago.
The Pará mangroves (NT1427) is an ecoregion along the Atlantic coast of the state of Pará in Brazil. They constitute the western extension of the Maranhão mangroves ecoregion. The mangroves are relatively intact, although they are under some pressure from agriculture and logging.
The pre-Cabraline history of Brazil is the stage in Brazil's history before the arrival of Portuguese navigator Pedro Álvares Cabral in 1500, at a time when the region that is now Brazilian territory was occupied by thousands of indigenous peoples.
The Monte de Teso dos Bichos is an embankment that forms an artificial mound, located at the archaeological site of Camutins on the island of Marajó in Brazil, a place where one of the most elaborate civilizations of the pre-Columbian Amazon existed, occupying 2.5 hectares.
The history of Amazonas is the result of treaties, religious missions and a few indigenous rebellions in the Amazon territory. Initially, under the Treaty of Tordesillas, the site belonged to the Spanish Kingdom, but was later annexed by the Portuguese Crown. The state's international borders, undefined after Brazil's independence in 1822, were demarcated during the signing of the Treaty of Bogotá. Archaeological research suggests past occupations by Paleo-Indian hunter-gatherer groups, dated around 11,200 years before the present day.
anna c roosevelt field museum.