Lee Ann Newsom

Last updated
Lee Ann Newsom
Alma mater University of Florida
AwardsMacArthur Fellowship
Scientific career
Fields Anthropologist
Institutions Pennsylvania State University

Lee Ann Newsom is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the Pennsylvania State University at University Park. She has written numerous books and articles. She was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2002. [1]

Contents

Education

Newsom received all of her degrees in Anthropology, all from the University of Florida. [2]

Career

Newsom's investigations into ancient plant remains, have uncovered new methods for identifying and cataloguing early plant and wood species, as well as an important database of information for future research. Her work expands the range of prehistoric Caribbean archaeology; it is valuable to environmentalists, historians, and others outside the field of archaeology. [3] In 2002, [4] in honor of her groundbreaking research, in ancient plant remains, Newsom received a prestigious MacArthur Foundation fellowship, which provides a $500,000 stipend. [5] She stated in Archaeology "I'd like to use part of the money for comparative DNA analysis of botanical remains in the U.S. and Mexico." [5] While in the Daily Collegian it was stated that "Newsom said she will invest some of the money into laboratories and new microscopes for her students. She also said the money will help her to start new projects that she could not previously get funding for." [6] In 2018[ better source needed ], Newsom’s work had identified the earliest corn yet found in the Caribbean (dating to between AD1200- and AD 1300). [7]

Books

Selected Publications (1990 & forward) [8]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paleoethnobotany</span> Study of plants used by people in ancient times

Paleoethnobotany, or archaeobotany, is the study of past human-plant interactions through the recovery and analysis of ancient plant remains. Both terms are synonymous, though paleoethnobotany is generally used in North America and acknowledges the contribution that ethnographic studies have made towards our current understanding of ancient plant exploitation practices, while the term archaeobotany is preferred in Europe and emphasizes the discipline's role within archaeology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Archaic period (North America)</span> Period from c. 8000 to 1000 BC in North America

In the classification of the archaeological cultures of North America, the Archaic period in North America, taken to last from around 8000 to 1000 BC in the sequence of North American pre-Columbian cultural stages, is a period defined by the archaic stage of cultural development. The Archaic stage is characterized by subsistence economies supported through the exploitation of nuts, seeds, and shellfish. As its ending is defined by the adoption of sedentary farming, this date can vary significantly across the Americas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tibes Indigenous Ceremonial Center</span> Archeology museum in Ponce, Puerto Rico

The Tibes Indigenous Ceremonial Center in Sector La Vega de Taní, Barrio Tibes, Ponce, Puerto Rico, houses one of the most important archaeological discoveries made in the Antilles. The discovery provides an insight as to how the indigenous tribes of the Igneri and Taínos lived and played during and before the arrival of Christopher Columbus to the New World. Tibes is the oldest Antillean Indian ceremonial and sports complex yet uncovered in Puerto Rico. Within its boundaries is also the largest indigenous cemetery discovered to date – consisting of 186 human skeletons, most from the Igneri and the rest from the pre-Taíno cultures. Based on the orientation of the ceremonial plazas, this is also believed to be the oldest astronomical observatory in the Antilles. The museum was established in 1982 and restored in 1991.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Windover Archeological Site</span> Place in Florida listed on National Register of Historic Places

The Windover Archeological Site is a Middle Archaic archaeological site and National Historic Landmark in Brevard County near Titusville, Florida, United States on the central east coast of the state. Windover is a muck pond where skeletal remains of 168 individuals were found buried in the peat at the bottom of the pond. The skeletons were well preserved because of the peat. In addition, remarkably well-preserved brain tissue has been recovered from 91 skulls from the site. DNA from the brain tissue has been sequenced. The collection of human skeletal remains and artifacts recovered from Windover Pond represent among the largest finds of each type from the Archaic Period. It is considered one of the most important archeological sites ever excavated.

The Page–Ladson archaeological and paleontological site (8JE591) is a deep sinkhole in the bed of the karstic Aucilla River that has stratified deposits of late Pleistocene and early Holocene animal bones and human artifacts. The site was the first pre-Clovis site discovered in southeastern North America; radiocarbon evidence suggests that the site dates from 14,200 to 14,550 BP. These dates are roughly 1,000 to 1,500 years before the advent of the Clovis culture. Early dates for Page–Ladson challenge theories that humans quickly decimated large game populations in the area once they arrived.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aucilla River</span> River in Florida and Georgia, United States

The Aucilla River rises in Brooks County, Georgia, USA, close to Thomasville, and passes through the Big Bend region of Florida, emptying into the Gulf of Mexico at Apalachee Bay. Some early maps called it the Ocilla River. It is 89 miles (143 km) long and has a drainage basin of 747 square miles (1,930 km2). Tributaries include the Little Aucilla and Wacissa Rivers. In Florida, the Aucilla River forms the eastern border of Jefferson County, separating it from Madison County on the northern part, and from Taylor County to the south.

The Pineland Archeological District is a U.S. historic district located on Pine Island, near Pineland, Florida, and next to Pine Island Sound. The site was occupied by people of the Caloosahatchee culture, known as the Calusa in historic times, from 500 BCE until after 1700. The site includes shell and sand mounds and other structures and prehistoric canals and artificial lakes. It also includes structures from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ancient Maya cuisine</span> Diet of the Ancient Mesoamerican civilization

Ancient Maya cuisine was varied and extensive. Many different types of resources were consumed, including maritime, flora, and faunal material, and food was obtained or produced through strategies such as hunting, foraging, and large-scale agricultural production. Plant domestication concentrated upon several core foods, the most important of which was maize.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nodena site</span> Archaeological site in Arkansas, United States

The Nodena site is an archeological site east of Wilson, Arkansas, and northeast of Reverie, Tennessee, in Mississippi County, Arkansas, United States. Around 1400–1650 CE an aboriginal palisaded village existed in the Nodena area on a meander bend of the Mississippi River. The Nodena site was discovered and first documented by Dr. James K. Hampson, archaeologist and owner of the plantation on which the Nodena site is located. Artifacts from this site are on display in the Hampson Museum State Park in Wilson, Arkansas. The Nodena site is the type site for the Nodena phase, believed by many archaeologists to be the province of Pacaha visited by Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto in 1542.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Island 35 Mastodon</span>

The Island 35 Mastodon was discovered on Island No. 35 of the Mississippi River in Tipton County, Tennessee, United States.

Deborah M. Pearsall is an American archaeologist who specializes in paleoethnobotany. She maintains an online phytolith database. She is a full professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri, where she first began working in 1978. She received her Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1979, with a dissertation titled The Application of Ethnobotanical Techniques to the Problem of Subsistence in the Ecuadorian Formative.

The indigenous peoples of Florida lived in what is now known as Florida for more than 12,000 years before the time of first contact with Europeans. However, the indigenous Floridians living east of the Apalachicola River had largely died out by the early 18th century. Some Apalachees migrated to Louisiana, where their descendants now live; some were taken to Cuba and Mexico by the Spanish in the 18th century, and a few may have been absorbed into the Seminole and Miccosukee tribes.

The Gulf Coastal Lowlands is a geomorphological province in Florida. The province extends along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico from the western end of the Florida Panhandle to near Ft. Myers in southern Florida. The average width of the province is 40 km. While much of the province is less than 15 m above mean sea level (msl), it rises to about 100 feet (30 m) above msl along its inland side. It is the largest geomorphological province in Florida. Due to its low elevation, the province was at sea level during warmer periods of the Pliocene and Pleistocene, and features such as ancient dunes and sand bars are found far inland. Marine terraces found in the Gulf Coastal Lowlands include the Silver Bluff terrace, 1 to 10 feet above mean sea level (msl), Pamlico terrace, 8 to 25 feet above msl, Talbot terrace 25 feet (7.6 m) to 42 feet (13 m) above msl, Penholoway terrace, 42 to 72 feet above msl, and Wicomico terrace, 70 to 100 feet above msl.

Jefferson Chapman is an archaeologist who conducted extensive excavations at sites in eastern Tennessee, recovering evidence that provided the first secure radiocarbon chronology for Early and Middle Archaic period assemblages in Eastern North America. He also is a research professor in anthropology and the Director of the Frank H. McClung Museum at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Chapman’s professional interests include Southeastern archaeology, paleoethnobotany, museology and public archaeology.

Michael Waters is an American academic working as a professor of anthropology and geography at Texas A&M University, where he holds the Endowed Chair in First American Studies. He specializes in geoarchaeology, and has applied this method to the investigation of Clovis and later Paleo-Indian, and possible pre-Clovis occupation sites.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elizabeth Reitz</span> Zooarchaeologist

Elizabeth Jean "Betsy" Reitz is a zooarchaeologist and Professor Emerita in the Georgia Museum of Natural History and the Department of Anthropology at the University of Georgia. She was born in 1946 in Lake Alfred, Florida. She attended Florida Presbyterian College from 1966 to 1967. She received her BA (1969), MA (1975), and her PhD (1979) in Anthropology from the University of Florida. Her dissertation was directed by Elizabeth Wing. In 2012, she was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and in 2014, she was named to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She was the recipient of the 2016 Fryxell Award for Interdisciplinary Research in Archaeology, given by the Society for American Archaeology. The Fryxell Award is given to scholars who have made significant contributions in the application of the zoological sciences in archaeology. She is a member of the Committee of Honor of the International Council for Zooarchaeology (ICAZ). In 2019, Reitz was awarded the Southeastern Archaeological Conference's Lifetime Achievement Award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Naomi Miller</span> Archaeobotanist

Naomi Miller is an archaeobotanist who works in western and central Asia. Miller is based at the University of Pennsylvania.

The paleoethnobotany of the Mapuche focuses on archaeological evidence supporting plant use by past and present Mapuche populations collected from multiple sites in southern Chile and the Patagonia region of Argentina. Paleoethnobotany is the study of fossil and material remains from plants, mostly seeds and residues that can be analyzed from material remains. Data can be collected from archaeological sites with a particular interest in learning about the history of agriculture in a region or the use of plants for either subsistence or medicinal use. The Mapuche are an indigenous culture native to South America. The archaeological record has revealed that the Mapuche were present in modern-day south-central Chile and southwestern Argentina from at least 500-600 BC. It is also noteworthy, that while collectively the Mapuche use this endonym, there are often subsets of the culture that have more specific names based on geographic location as well as different ecological niches.

Archaeological diving is a type of scientific diving used as a method of survey and excavation in underwater archaeology. The first known use of the method comes from 1446, when Leon Battista Alberti explored and attempted to lift the ships of Emperor Caligula in Lake Nemi, Italy. Just a few decades later, in 1535, the same site saw the first use of a sophisticated breathing apparatus for archaeological purposes, when Guglielmo de Lorena and Frances de Marchi used an early diving bell to explore and retrieve material from the lake, although they decided to keep the blueprint of the exact mechanism secret. The following three centuries saw the gradual extension of diving time through the use of bells and submersing barrels filled with air. In the 19th century, the standard copper helmet diving gear was developed, allowing divers to stay underwater for extended periods through a constant air supply pumped down from the surface through a hose. Nevertheless, the widespread utilisation of diving gear for archaeological purposes had to wait until the 20th century, when archaeologists began to appreciate the wealth of material that could be found under the water. This century also saw further advances in technology, most important being the invention of the aqualung by Émile Gagnan and Jacques-Yves Cousteau, the latter of whom would go on to use the technology for underwater excavation by 1948. Modern archaeologists use two kinds of equipment to provide breathing gas underwater: self-contained underwater breathing apparatus (SCUBA), which allows for greater mobility but limits the time the diver can spend in the water, and Surface-supplied diving equipment, which is safer but more expensive, and can only be used in shallower waters.

References

  1. "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2006-09-13. Retrieved 2007-10-25.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  2. "CLAS for Faculty/Staff". www.clas.ufl.edu. Archived from the original on 2005-10-27.
  3. 1 2 3 4 "Lee Ann Newsom — MacArthur Foundation". 2015-09-12. Archived from the original on 2015-09-12. Retrieved 2024-01-19.
  4. "September 2002 - MacArthur Foundation". 2013-09-29. Archived from the original on 2013-09-29. Retrieved 2024-01-19.
  5. 1 2 "Conversations: Secrets of the Seeds - Archaeology Magazine Archive". archive.archaeology.org. Retrieved 2024-01-19.
  6. Young, James S. (2002-09-25). "PSU professor awarded grant". The Daily Collegian. Retrieved 2024-01-21.
  7. "Material Remains". Historical Archaeology. Retrieved 2024-01-19.
  8. 1 2 3 "Lee Newsom". Department of Anthropology. Retrieved 2024-01-19.