Rolfe D. Mandel (born August 25, 1952) is a Distinguished Professor of archaeology in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Kansas as well as Senior Scientist and Executive Director of the Odyssey Geoarchaeological Research Program at the Kansas Geological Survey. [1] Initially trained as a geographer, he has been a major figure in defining the subdiscipline of geoarchaeology and has spent the last thirty years focusing on the effects of geologic processes on the archaeological record. [2] His primary research interests include geoarchaeology, Quaternary soils, geology, paleoecology, and paleoenvironmental reconstruction in the Great Plains region of the United States as well as the Mediterranean. [1] Over the years, Mandel has participated in numerous research projects and has served as an editor to multiple journals and a book. [2] His work has been key in promoting an interdisciplinary approach in archaeology, geology, and geography.
Rolfe Mandel was born in San Antonio, Texas. [3] In 1971, he moved to Austin, Texas to pursue a bachelor's degree (B.S.) in physical geography from the University of Texas at Austin. He completed this with Honors in 1975. [2] He remained in Austin for a year to work as a research associate in the resource planning section of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. [3] Trained as a geographer, Mandel's early work dealt with land use and natural resource planning. In 1976, he moved to Lawrence, Kansas to begin graduate study in the Geography Department at the University of Kansas. [3] It was around this time that his research interests began to shift from traditional physical geography, to a focus on paleoenvironments and archeology. He was awarded a masters (M.A.) through the Geography Department in 1980 for his work on paleosols in Texas, and a Ph.D. in 1991 through the university's Special Studies program for work on Holocene landscape evolution in southwestern Kansas. [2]
Following the completion of his B.S., Mandel spent a year working as a research associate for the resource planning section at the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. His primary job was to assist in an environmental analysis for the Houston-Galveston region in southeast Texas. [3] After moving to Kansas in 1976, he was hired as a research assistant to do similar work on land and resource sustainability by University of Kansas's Institute for Social and Environmental Studies (ISES). In June 1978, he started working at ISES full-time as a research associate and coordinator of the Environmental Research Program, a position he would hold until 1986. [3] For the next four years, Mandel worked as a physical geographer until a cultural resource management project with the Kansas Historical Society changed the trajectory of his career. [3]
Mandel's professional career in geoarchaeology began in 1982. For the rest of his time as coordinator of the Environmental Research Program, he focused predominantly on projects relating to archaeology and cultural resource management in the Midwest. He would also work in Egypt this year, the first of several projects in the Mediterranean. [3] Mandel left his position at ISES in 1986 and in 1987 became a lecturer in the Geography Department at the university. During this time he was also acting as a consulting geomorphologist on a number of archaeological projects, most notably 'Ain Ghazal in Northwestern Jordan and the Akrotiri-Aetokremnos Rockshelter on the island of Cyprus; both were multi-year projects with work at ‘Ain Ghazal continuing to this day. [3]
From 1989 to 1993 he left Kansas to take an assistant professor position at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. He returned to Kansas in 1993 as an adjunct professor while continuing to consult in the academic and private sector. [3] It was around this time that he would join the research team investigating the mound complex site known as Watson Brake in northern Louisiana. [3] Often cited as the earliest mound site in North America (5,400 B.P.), Mandel was key in establishing the chronology of the mounds construction. [3] Almost a decade later in 2002, Mandel would take a position at the Kansas Geological Survey (KGS) as a part-time project coordinator for the Geoarchaeology Research Program. He was also acting as the Editor-in-Chief of Geoarchaeology: An International Journal at this time; a position he stepped down from in 2004, but continued his affiliation with the journal first as a Co-Editor (2004-2007), and currently as an Associate Editor (2007–present). [3]
After a year at the KGS and over a decade in the Geography Department, Mandel would switch positions again, this time moving to the Department of Anthropology and becoming an associate scientist at the KGS in 2003. [3] He would also take charge of the newly created Odssey Geoarchaeological Research Program, an ongoing research project through the KGS funded by Joseph and Ruth Cramer to find the earliest inhabitants of the Great Plains and western Midwest. [4] Mandel was made a full professor of the Anthropology Department in 2009, and promoted to Senior Scientist at the KGS the same year. Some of his more recent work includes contributing to a team studying the cultural landscape and qanat systems of southern Afghanistan's Kandahar province. [3] Using remote sensing techniques the researchers were able to locate qanat irrigation systems and archaeological resources in an otherwise inaccessible part of the world. [3] In 2014 Mandel was awarded the title of University Distinguished Professor by the University of Kansas, a position he currently holds along with his research duties at KGS, and acting as an Associate Editor for Geoarchaeology. [3]
The Odyssey Geoarchaeological Research Program is a privately endowed research program funded by Joseph and Ruth Kramer and housed within the Kansas Geological Survey. It has been under the direction of Rolfe Mandel since its inception in 2003, its primary goal being “to search for evidence of the earliest people to inhabit the Central Great Plains and western portions of the Midwest, and to gain a better understanding of late the Pleistocene and early Holocene paleoenvironments that affected those people”. [4] This is done through laboratory methods at the KGS's Isotope Preparation Laboratory and Geoarchaeology and Paleoenvironmental Research Lab, in addition to field work in Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, South Dakota, and Missouri. The program funds a number of thesis and dissertation research related to Paleo-Indian archaeology and geoarchaeology in addition to supporting graduate and undergraduate students involved in summer field investigations. [4]
Geoarchaeology is a multi-disciplinary approach which uses the techniques and subject matter of geography, geology, geophysics and other Earth sciences to examine topics which inform archaeological knowledge and thought. Geoarchaeologists study the natural physical processes that affect archaeological sites such as geomorphology, the formation of sites through geological processes and the effects on buried sites and artifacts post-deposition. Geoarchaeologists' work frequently involves studying soil and sediments as well as other geographical concepts to contribute an archaeological study. Geoarchaeologists may also use computer cartography, geographic information systems (GIS) and digital elevation models (DEM) in combination with disciplines from human and social sciences and earth sciences. Geoarchaeology is important to society because it informs archaeologists about the geomorphology of the soil, sediment, and rocks on the buried sites and artifacts they are researching. By doing this, scientists are able to locate ancient cities and artifacts and estimate by the quality of soil how "prehistoric" they really are. Geoarchaeology is considered a sub-field of environmental archaeology because soil can be altered by human behavior, which archaeologists are then able to study and reconstruct past landscapes and conditions.
The Kansas Geological Survey (KGS), a research and service division of the University of Kansas, is charged by statute with studying and providing information on the geologic resources of Kansas. The KGS has no regulatory authority and does not take positions on natural resource issues.
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 Big Eddy Site (23CE426) is an archaeological site located in Cedar County, Missouri, which was first excavated in 1997 and is now threatened due to erosion by the Sac River.
Karl W. Butzer was a German-born American geographer, ecologist, and archaeologist. He received two degrees at McGill University, Montreal: the B.Sc. (hons) in Mathematics in 1954 and later his master's degree in Meteorology and Geography. Afterwards in the 1950s he returned to Germany to the University of Bonn to obtain a doctorate in physical geography. He obtained a master's degree in Meteorology and Geography from McGill University and a doctorate in physical geography from the University of Bonn in Germany.
Paul Goldberg is a geologist specializing in geomorphology and geoarchaeology who had done extensive worldwide field researches.
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 Baikal Archaeology Project(BAP) is an international team of scholars investigating Middle Holocene hunter-gatherers of the Lake Baikal region of Siberia, Russia. The Project focuses on long-term patterns of culture change in the context of dynamic interactions with the environment. The Baikal Archaeology Project is based at the University of Alberta with Irkutsk State University being its main research partner on the Russian side. Other institutional collaborators of the project have included the University of Calgary, University of Saskatchewan, Grant MacEwan University, British Columbia Institute of Technology, University of Pennsylvania, University of California-Davis, Cambridge University, Oxford University, University College London, University of Aberdeen, and Institutes of Geochemistry and Earth’s Crust, Russian Academy of Sciences in Irkutsk and Irkutsk State Technical University in Russia. The Baikal Archaeology Project has been extensively funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
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.
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.
Anna Curtenius Roosevelt 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. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 almost continuous human occupation, starting at least 16,000 years ago—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.
Shippea Hill SSSI is a 27.6-hectare (68-acre) geological Site of Special Scientific Interest east of Ely in Cambridgeshire, England. It is a Geological Conservation Review site.
Herbert Edgar Wright Jr was an American Quaternary scientist. He contributed to understanding of landscape history and environmental changes over the past 100,000 years in many parts of the world. He studied arid-region geomorphology and landscape evolution, as well as glacial geology and climate history. The study of these topics led him to the study of vegetation development and environmental history and allowed him to define the timing and mechanisms of climate-driven vegetational shifts in North America during the last 18,000 years and to recognize the role of natural fire in the dynamics of northern coniferous forests. He applied these insights to wilderness conservation and landscape management. He covered many other aspects of paleoecology including lake development and paleolimnology, and the history and development of the vast patterned peatlands of Minnesota and elsewhere in the Northern Hemisphere. Although his work was concentrated in Minnesota, he was also involved in a major synthesis of global paleoclimatology. Beyond Minnesota and the Great Lakes region, Wright studied a wide range of research questions elsewhere in North America, and in the Near East, Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Antarctica. He advised over 75 graduate students and mentored many more students, visitors, and colleagues world-wide.
Lisa-Marie Shillito is a British archaeologist and senior lecturer in landscape archaeology as well as director of the Wolfson Archaeology Laboratory and Earthslides at Newcastle University. Her practical work focuses on using soil micromorphology, phytolith analysis and geochemistry in order to understand human behaviour and landscape change. Her work includes the Neolithic settlements of Çatalhöyük in Turkey and Ness of Brodgar and Durrington Walls in Britain, but also Crusader castles and medieval settlements in Poland and the Baltic and in the Near East.
Lake San Agustín is a former lake in New Mexico, which developed as a pluvial lake in the Plains of San Agustín during Pleistocene glacial periods. During its highstands it covered an area of 1,200 square kilometres (460 sq mi) with a maximum depth of 70 metres (230 ft), and split into several separate lakes while drying out. The lake last appeared during the last glacial maximum (LGM) and dried out at the beginning of the Holocene, with the last remnant disappearing about 5,000 years ago.
