Letters Earliest Exploitation of Ground Sloth
Editor’s Corner
I found your News article “Earliest Evidence of Humans in Ohio” (Summer 2012) interesting, but disappointing. Evidently archaeologist Brian Redmond and his colleagues didn’t adequately review the literature involving his statement that “This discovery provides the first direct evidence for early human (PaleoIndian) exploitation of Jefferson’s ground sloth.” Actually, I published the first record in 2009 in Central States Archaeological Journal.
Skeptical of the David A. Easterla Ph.D. Solutrean Hypothesis
Distinguished University Professor of Biology Northwest Missouri State University
Brian Redmond Responds David Easterla is incorrect in his assertion that we did not conduct an adequate review of the literature in the course of our study. In fact, we read his article and cited his work on page 95 of our paper. Unfortunately, we found his presentation of evidence for butchering of the Iowa specimen incomplete and unconvincing. I stand by my statement. Brian G. Redmond, Ph.D. Curator and John Otis Hower Chair of Archaeology The Cleveland Museum of Natural History
Dennis Stanford and Bruce Bradley wove a story from half truths, misquotes, and absolute fiction in their book Across Atlantic Ice and then published it as scientific research. (“See Iberia, Not Siberia?” Summer 2012). On top of this they did not even use original ideas but just rehashed old and often Anglocentric claims from decades ago which have already been debunked. Readers need to be wary and understand that just because an individual is connected with a big name entity (Stanford is a curator of archaeology at the Smithsonian), it does not automatically mean what they write should be taken seriously. Dixie Dringman Rock Island, Washington
Sending Letters to American Archaeology American Archaeology welcomes your letters. Write to us at 5301 Central Avenue NE, Suite 902, Albuquerque, NM 87108-1517, or send us e-mail at tacmag@nm.net. We reserve the right to edit and publish letters in the magazine’s Letters department as space permits. Please include your name, address, and telephone number with all correspondence, including e-mail messages.
american archaeology
Richard Hansen, an archaeologist who is directing the excavation of El Mirador, a Maya site in Guatemala, once told me that Maya researchers used to focus on “stones and bones.” But that’s changing. Hansen is one of a number of researchers who practice what’s often called community archaeology. The concept behind community archaeology is that local people participate in the project. In some cases, the locals have a voice in the research objectives, in others the archaeology serves as a sort of engine that drives economic development to help impoverished people. This brings me to Christian Wells and his project on the Honduran island Roatán (See “Revealing the Real Roatán,” page 30). Wells is searching for stones and bones and the like, but his ambitions go well beyond recovering and interpreting artifacts. Little is known about Roatán’s past, so Honduran officials asked Wells, an American, to investigate the island to better understand its history. If that weren’t enough to keep him occupied, Wells is also assessing the impact of mass tourism on the island’s cultural resources. Roatán gets plenty of cruise ship traffic, and it’s been given a phony Maya pedigree to appeal to tourists. So, in a related project, he’s working to promote heritage tourism.That entails getting the island’s real indigenous peoples—such as the Pech and Garifuna— to value their heritage, and to have the cruise ship crowd value it as well. Some people think archaeologists shouldn’t engage in such extracurricular activities, and Wells expressed some concern about his role as archaeologist/ activist. But he, like Hansen and others, is pressing ahead, pushing the boundaries of what archaeology can achieve.
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