John Bertram Broster (born 17 May 1945) is an American archaeologist formerly serving as the Prehistoric Archeological Supervisor at the Tennessee Division of Archaeology, Department of Environment and Conservation.[1][2] He is best known for his work on the Paleoindian period of the American Southwest and Southeast, and has published some 38 book chapters and journal articles on the subject.
John Broster was born in 1945, in Tallahassee, Florida. Broster currently lives in the Nashville, Tennessee area with his wife, Diane Gusky. John and Diane have been married for over 30 years. John has had an interest in archaeology all his life, and for this reason Broster has been quoted saying, "My work is my hobby".
Academic career
Broster began his undergraduate career in Tennessee and attended the George Peabody College of Education and Human Development at Vanderbilt University. He attended the school from 1965 to 1968, and received his B.A. in sociology-anthropology in 1968.
Upon completion of his undergraduate degree in the spring of 1968, John enrolled as a graduate student at the University of New Mexico and started there in the fall of 1968. Focusing on paleoindian studies, John spent several years in New Mexico alongside his friend and colleague, Dennis Stanford and completed his master's degree in 1971.
John continued his studies at the University of New Mexico until 1973, when he began working for the Tennessee Division of Archaeology.
Archaeological career
During his undergraduate career, Broster attended several field projects in the Mixteca Alta in the State of Oaxaca, Mexico, which is a site dedicated to understanding Mixteca origins.[3] The field seasons of 1966 and 1967 that John attended consisted of survey work, and he returned two years later in 1970 to participate in excavations.
Later on, after completing his M.A. at New Mexico, Lewis Binford had arranged for Broster and other graduate students to attend a field season with Robert Whallon[4] at a Mesolithic site in the Netherlands in 1973.
In the summer of 1973, Broster took a job with his colleague; Dennis Stanford-who was then working at the Smithsonian Institution. Under Stanford, Broster was involved with the first field season at the Jones-Miller Bison Kill Site in northeast Colorado and participated in some of the first excavations at the site.[5]
After the Jones-Miller project ended in the summer of 1973, the newly established Tennessee Division of Archaeology, Department of Environment and Conservation hired Broster as the regional archaeologist for Western Tennessee. John worked for the Tennessee Division of Archaeology from 1973 to 1975.
In 1975, Broster left the Tennessee Division of Archaeology and took a job as the project director at the Office of Contract Archaeology (OCA)[6] at the University of New Mexico in 1976-1977. He oversaw numerous excavations and published in several journals at the school.
In 1977, Broster left the OCA and was hired by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) Forestry Department[7] as the field director in 1978. Broster was later promoted to the archaeological program director, where he oversaw a series of surveys on a multitude of Native American reservations. Some of these surveys included work at the, Jicarilla and MescaleroApache reservations, and Acoma and IsletaPueblo reservations. While working for the BIA, John Broster was awarded two consecutive Achievement Awards for his outstanding work as the archaeological program director in 1983 and 1984. Broster worked with the BIA until early 1984.
In the latter half of 1984 until early 1985, Broster worked for and helped operate the Cultural Resources Management Company, "San Juan Basin Archeological Consultants", with Stephen Lentz, Bradley Vierra and John Ackland. In 1985, Broster was re-hired by the Tennessee Division of Archaeology, where he remains to this day.
Division of Archaeology career
Broster served as the Middle Tennessee regional archaeologist for the Tennessee Division of Archaeology and was the prehistoric archaeological supervisor for many years, until his retirement in 2013.[1] It was Broster's job, and the responsibility of the division to survey, excavate, and preserve prehistoric and historic sites in Tennessee, as well as research and publish on their findings in popular and scientific formats. Most importantly, it is the goal of the division to maintain public interest in Archaeology in order to encourage public cooperation with site preservation.[1]
Broster and his colleagues have practiced a "systematic approach"[8] to recording Paleoindian projectile points at each site they've worked on since the late 1980s.[9] At sites like the Carson-Conn-Short site and the Johnson site, where there are thousands of artifacts, a systematic approach helps to add information to the bigger picture of southeastern archaeology. Broster and his colleagues have contributed a great deal of information to the University of Tennessee's Paleoindian Database of the Americas (PIDBA).[10]
Key sites and excavations
During his time with the Tennessee Division of Archaeology, John Broster and his co-workers at the Tennessee Division of Archaeology have conducted fieldwork at many important sites critical to the understanding of Tennessee Prehistory and Paleoindian research in the Southeast.
Broster and his colleagues have been heavily involved in archaeological research along the Cumberland River and in the Kentucky Lake Region of Tennessee. Sites examined by Broster in these areas include, the Johnson (40DV400) and the Carson-Conn-Short (40BN190) sites, which according to Broster are "probably two of the most important Clovis sites in the history of southeastern Paleoindian studies".[11] In addition, both of these sites seem to support a southern beginning for the fluted clovis point tradition, in that they seem to resemble the tool kit used in the western United States.[12][13]
The artifact concentration of the Carson-Conn-Short site and the Johnson site (40DV400) indicate that these sites may have been Paleoindian base camps, where the knapping of projectile points and other daily activities of hunter-gatherers took place.[14] Over 40 hearths were unearthed at the Carson-Conn-Short site, and many were found at the Johnson site as well. These hearths evidence the possibility of base camps proposed by Broster and Norton.
At the Johnson site, occupations were preliminarily dated to around 11,700-11,980 B.P. based on radiocarbon samples from Stratum III/IV processed by the University of Texas radiocarbon lab.[15] The standard deviations for these early dates from Johnson are significant, in two cases exceeding 900 years. Other diagnostic artifacts and dated material from features in Stratum III at the Johnson site returned radiocarbon dates of 8000-9000 B.P., suggesting that the early dates from Johnson may be in error.
Both the Johnson and Carson-Conn-Short sites proved essential in furthering the study of Paleoindian history of the southeast, and dating of these sites is critical in understanding the origins of Clovis culture, and how and when it spread across the United States.[8] Broster once said that Carson-Conn-Short (40BN190) had been the most rewarding site he has ever worked on. It is thanks in part to Broster and his colleagues that we now know Tennessee was a major focus of Paleoindian settlement.
Research and selected publications
Though the majority of John Broster's archeological career has been based more or less in government office rather than in strict academia, he has produced some 50 publications over the last 40 years. Of these, 38 have been focused on Paleoindian research.
Book Chapters
•Broster, John B., and Norton, Mark R. 1992. Paleoindian Projectile Point and Site Survey in Tennessee: 1988-1992. In Paleoindian and Early Archaic Period Research in the Lower Southeast: A South Carolina Perspective, edited by D. G. Anderson, K. E. Sassaman, and C. Judge, pp.263–68. Council of South Carolina Professional Archaeologists, Columbia.
•Broster, J. B., M. R. Norton, D. J. Stanford, C. V. Haynes, Jr., and M. A. Jodry 1996. Stratified Fluted Point Deposits in the Western Valley of Tennessee. In Proceedings of the 14th Annual Mid-South Archaeological Conference, edited by Richard Walling, Camille Wharey, and Camille Stanley, pp.1–11. Panamerican Consultants, Special Publications 1. Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
•Broster, John B., and Norton, Mark R. 1996. Recent Paleoindian Research in Tennessee. In The Paleoindian and Early Archaic Southeast, edited by D. G. Anderson and K. E. Sassaman, pp.288–297. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa.
Journal Articles
-Current Research in the Pleistocene-
•Broster, John B. 1989. A Preliminary Survey of Paleo-Indian Sites in Tennessee. Current Research in the Pleistocene 6:29-31.
•Broster, John B., M. R. Norton, and Richard Anderson 1991. Clovis and Cumberland Sites in the Kentucky Lake Region. Current Research in the Pleistocene 8:10–12.
•Broster, J. B., D. P. Johnson, and M. R. Norton 1991. The Johnson Site: A Dated Clovis-Cumberland Occupation in Tennessee. Current Research in the Pleistocene 8:8–10.
•Broster, John B. and Mark R. Norton 1993. The Carson-Conn-Short Site (40BN190): An Extensive Clovis Habitation in Benton County, Tennessee. Current Research in the Pleistocene 10:3-5.
•Broster, J. B., M. R. Norton, D. J. Stanford, C. V. Haynes, Jr., and M. A. Jodry. 1994. Eastern Clovis Adaptations in the Tennessee River Valley. Current Research in the Pleistocene 11:12–14.
•Breitburg, Emmanuel, and John B. Broster. 1994. Paleoindian Site, Lithic, and Mastodon Distributions in Tennessee. Current Research in the Pleistocene 11:9-11.
•Breitburg, E., J.B. Broster, A.L. Reesman, and R.G. Stearns. 1996. The Coats-Hines Site: Tennessee's First Paleoindian-Mastodon Association. Current Research in the Pleistocene 13:6-8.
•Norton, Mark R., John B. Broster, and Emanuel Breitburg. 1998. The Trull Site (40PY276). Current Research in the Pleistocene 15:50-51.
•Norton, Mark R., and John B. Broster 2006. Clovis Blade Manufacture: Preliminary Data from the Carson-Conn-Short Site (40BN190), Tennessee. Current Research in the Pleistocene 23:145-147
-Tennessee Anthropologist-
•Broster, John B. 1982. Paleo-Indian Habitation at the Pierce Site (40Cs24); Chester County, Tennessee. Tennessee Anthropologist 7:93–104.
•Broster, J. B., and M. R. Norton. 1990. Lithic Analysis and Paleo-Indian Utilization of the Twelkemeier Site (40HS173). Tennessee Anthropologist 15:115–131.
•Norton, Mark R. and John B. Broster. 1992. 40HS200: The Nuckolls Extension Site. Tennessee Anthropologist 17:13-32.
•Broster, John B., and Gary L. Barker. 1992. Second Report of Investigations at the Johnson Site (40Dv400): The 1991 Field Season. Tennessee Anthropologist 17(2):120-130.
Related Research Articles
Clovis points are the characteristically fluted projectile points associated with the New World Clovis culture, a prehistoric Paleo-American culture. They are present in dense concentrations across much of North America and they are largely restricted to the north of South America. There are slight differences in points found in the Eastern United States bringing them to sometimes be called "Clovis-like". Clovis points date to the Early Paleoindian period, with all known points dating from roughly 13,400–12,700 years ago. As an example, Clovis remains at the Murry Springs Site date to around 12,900 calendar years ago. Clovis fluted points are named after the city of Clovis, New Mexico, where examples were first found in 1929 by Ridgely Whiteman.
The Clovis culture is an archaeological culture from the Paleoindian period of North America, spanning around 13,050 to 12,750 years Before Present (BP). The type site is Blackwater Draw locality No. 1 near Clovis, New Mexico, where stone tools were found alongside the remains of Columbian mammoths in 1929. Clovis sites have been found across North America. The most distinctive part of the Clovis culture toolkit are Clovis points, which are projectile points with a fluted, lanceolate shape. Clovis points are typically large, sometimes exceeding 10 centimetres (3.9 in) in length. These points were multifunctional, also serving as cutting tools. Other stone tools used by the Clovis culture include knives, scrapers, and bifacial tools, with bone tools including beveled rods and shaft wrenches, with possible ivory points also being identified. Hides, wood, and natural fibers may also have been utilized, though no direct evidence of this has been preserved. Clovis artifacts are often found grouped together in caches where they had been stored for later retrieval, and over 20 Clovis caches have been identified.
Topper is an archaeological site located along the Savannah River in Allendale County, South Carolina, United States. It is noted as a location of artifacts which some archaeologists believe to indicate human habitation of the New World earlier than the Clovis culture. The latter were previously believed to be the first people in North America.
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.
The Meadowcroft Rockshelter is an archaeological site which is located near Avella in Jefferson Township, Pennsylvania. The site is a rock shelter in a bluff overlooking Cross Creek, and contains evidence that the area may have been continually inhabited for more than 19,000 years. If accurately dated, it would be one of the earliest known sites with evidence of a human presence and continuous human occupation in the New World.
The Stanfield-Worley Bluff Shelter, located on private property in Colbert County in northwestern Alabama, United States, is one of the most important prehistoric sites excavated in the state due to the archeological evidence deposited by the Paleo-Indians who once occupied the rock shelter. Lying in Sanderson Cove along a tributary of Cane Creek approximately seven miles (11 km) south of the Tennessee Valley, the shelter and the high bluffs of the surrounding valley provided a well-protected environment for the Native American occupants.
David G. Anderson is an archaeologist in the department of anthropology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, who specializes in Southeastern archaeology. His professional interests include climate change and human response, exploring the development of cultural complexity in Eastern North America, maintaining and improving the nation's Cultural Resource management (CRM) program, teaching and writing about archaeology, and developing technical and popular syntheses of archaeological research. He is the project director of the on-line Paleoindian Database of the Americas (PIDBA). and a co-director, with Joshua J. Wells, Eric C, Kansa, and Sarah Whitcher Kansa, of the Digital Index of North American Archaeology (DINAA)
The Thunderbird Archaeological District, near Limeton, Virginia, is an archaeological district described as consisting of "three sites—Thunderbird Site, the Fifty Site, and the Fifty Bog—which provide a stratified cultural sequence spanning Paleo-Indian cultures through the end of Early Archaic times with scattered evidence of later occupation."
The archaeology of Iowa is the study of the buried remains of human culture within the U.S. state of Iowa from the earliest prehistoric through the late historic periods. When the American Indians first arrived in what is now Iowa more than 13,000 years ago, they were hunters and gatherers living in a Pleistocene glacial landscape. By the time European explorers visited Iowa, American Indians were largely settled farmers with complex economic, social, and political systems. This transformation happened gradually. During the Archaic period American Indians adapted to local environments and ecosystems, slowly becoming more sedentary as populations increased. More than 3,000 years ago, during the Late Archaic period, American Indians in Iowa began utilizing domesticated plants. The subsequent Woodland period saw an increase on the reliance on agriculture and social complexity, with increased use of mounds, ceramics, and specialized subsistence. During the Late Prehistoric period increased use of maize and social changes led to social flourishing and nucleated settlements. The arrival of European trade goods and diseases in the Protohistoric period led to dramatic population shifts and economic and social upheaval, with the arrival of new tribes and early European explorers and traders. During the Historical period European traders and American Indians in Iowa gave way to American settlers and Iowa was transformed into an agricultural state.
Juliet Morrow is an American archaeologist and a professor of Anthropology at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro, Arkansas.
The Coats–Hines–Litchy site is a paleontological site located in Williamson County, Tennessee, in the Southeastern United States. The site was formerly believed to be archaeological, and identified as one of only a very few locations in Eastern North America containing evidence of Paleoindian hunting of late Pleistocene proboscideans. Excavations at the site have yielded portions of four mastodon skeletons, including portions of one previously described as being in direct association with Paleoindian stone tools. The results of excavations have been published in Tennessee Conservationist, and the scholarly journals Current Research in the Pleistocene, Tennessee Archaeology, and Quaternary Science Reviews. The site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on July 12, 2011.
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.
The Paleoindian Database of the Americas (PIDBA), is a website dedicated to the compilation of projectile point and other relevant data pertaining to Paleoindian site assemblages across the Americas. As of April 2011, the PIDBA database contains information pertaining to locational data (n=29,393), attribute data (n=15,254), and image data on Paleoindian projectile points and other tools in North America and also includes bibliographic references, radiocarbon dates, and maps created making use of database and GIS data. The PIDBA site provides a database that is useful in studying stylistic and morphological variability, lithic raw material usage and procurement strategies, geographic distributions of technology, and land use strategies during the Paleoindian period, which took place prior to ca. 11,450 cal year BP. The PIDBA database also serves a function as an intermediary between academic and advocational archaeologists in the collection and integration of primary projectile point data. Overall, the PIDBA project aims to compile data from multiple sources into a comprehensive database, while simultaneously seeking out and including new data. The PIDBA website contains a large amount of primary data collected and donated by researchers and advocational archaeologists from all over the Americas ranging from metric measurements to the type of chert any particular piece is made from. It is the voluntary contributions of primary data from these researchers that makes PIDBA possible. While it is understandable that researchers would like to fully examine and publish on their data, the site's philosophy is that it is important to disseminate information freely, so that other researchers can work with it. This allows researchers to make new discoveries that they perhaps would not be possible otherwise.
Dust Cave is a Paleoindian archaeology site located in northern Alabama. It is in the Highland Rim in the limestone bluffs that overlook Coffee Slough, a tributary of the Tennessee River. The site was occupied during the Pleistocene and early Holocene eras. 1LU496, another name for Dust Cave, was occupied seasonally for 7,000 years. The cave was discovered in 1984 by Dr. Richard Cobb and initially excavated in 1989 under Dr. Boyce Driskell from the University of Alabama.
Shawnee-Minisink Site is a prehistoric archaeological site located in Smithfield Township, Monroe County, Pennsylvania in the upper Delaware Valley. It was the site of a Paleoindian camp site. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2007.
Hell Gap is a deeply stratified archaeological site located in the Great Plains of eastern Wyoming, approximately thirteen miles north of Guernsey, where an abundant amount of Paleoindian and Archaic artifacts have been found and excavated since 1959. This site has had an important impact on North American archaeology because of the large quantity and breadth of prehistoric Paleoindian and Archaic period artifacts and cultures it encompasses. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2016.
The Gault archaeological site is an extensive, multicomponent site located in Florence, Texas, United States on the Williamson-Bell County line along Buttermilk Creek about 250 meters upstream from the Buttermilk Creek complex. It bears evidence of human habitation for at least 20,000 years, making it one of the few archaeological sites in the Americas at which compelling evidence has been found for human occupation dating to before the appearance of the Clovis culture. Archaeological material covers about 16 hectares with a depth of up to 3 meters in places. About 30 incised stones from the Clovis period engraved with geometric patterns were found there as well as others from periods up to the Early Archaic. Incised bone was also found.
The Quad site is a series of Paleoindian sites and localities in Limestone County near Decatur, Alabama. It was first reported by Frank Soday in 1954, and later findings were also documented by James Cambron, David Hulse and Joe Wright and Cambron and Hulse. The Quad Locale can seldom be viewed at current lake levels, even during normal winter pool, due to extensive erosion, but is considered one of the most important and well known Paleoindian sites in the Southeastern United States.
The Heaven's Half Acre complex is a concentration of Paleoindian sites situated on a series of Pleistocene terraces overlooking a sinkhole in northeastern Colbert County, Alabama, near the town of Leighton. Over one hundred and fifty fluted points have been recovered on these sites, making it one of the most dense fluted point localities in North America.
Sheriden Cave is a Paleo-Indian archaeological site from the late Ice age in Wyandot County, Ohio. Glacial deposits sealed off the cave more than 10,000 years ago. Sheriden Cave is a karst sinkhole on a dolomite ridge that crosses Hancock and Wyandot Counties. It is associated with the Indian Trail Caverns that opened in 1927. Sheriden Cave was discovered in 1989. The cave is unique because in addition to stone tools, there were also bone tools, remains of extinct animals, and organic matter found in the cave. Radiocarbon dating of artifacts indicate that they were used 11,000 and 12,000 years ago.
↑ "Department of Environment & ConservationRobert Martineau, Commissioner." The Official State of Tennessee's Department of Environment and Conservation, State Parks Website. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Nov. 2012. <http://www.tn.gov/environment/>
1 2 Broster and Norton, 1996. Recent Paleoindian Research in Tennessee. In The Paleoindian and Early Archaic Southeast, edited by D. G. Anderson and K. E. Sassaman, pp. 288–297. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa.
↑ Projectile point survey in Tennessee 1992 Paleoindian Projectile Point and Site Survey in Tennessee: 1988-1992. In Paleoindian and Early Archaic Period Research in the Lower Southeast: A South Carolina Perspective, edited by D. G. Anderson, K. E. Sassaman, and C. Judge, pp. 263–68. Council of South Carolina Professional Archaeologists, Columbia.
↑ Anderson, David G., Dr. "The Paleoindian Database of the Americas." The Paleoindian Database of the Americas. University of Tennessee, 15 Mar. 2012. Web. 17 Nov. 2012. <http://pidba.utk.edu/>.
↑ Broster, John B., 1993. The Carson-Conn-Short Site (40BN190): An Extensive Clovis Habitation in Benton County, Tennessee. Current Research in the Pleistocene 10:3–5
↑ Bryan, Alan L., 1991. The Fluted-Point Tradition in the Americas: One of Several adaptations to Late Pleistocene American Environments. In Clovis origins and Adaptations, edited by Robson Bonnichsen and Karen L. Turnmire, pp. 15–34, Corvallis: Center for the Study of the First Americans, Oregon State University
↑ Stanford, Dennis J., 1991. Clovis Origins and Adaptations: An Introductory Perspective. In: Bonnichsen, Robson and Turnmire, Karen L., Clovis: origins and adaptations. Corvallis, OR: Center for the Study of the First Americans, Oregon State University, pp.1–13
↑ Broster, John B. and Mark R. Norton 1993 The Carson-Conn-Short Site (40BN190): An Extensive Clovis Habitation in Benton County, Tennessee. Current Research in the Pleistocene 10:3-5
↑ Barker, Gary and John B. Broster, 1996. The Johnson Site (40Dv400): A Dated Paleoindian and early Archaic occupation in Tennessee's Central Basin. Journal of Alabama Archaeology 42(2):97-153
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
