Bridging Generations, Disciplines Researcher Shelby Jones
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Shelby Jones has been fascinated by the Earth’s magnetic field since high school. “When I first heard that the characteristics of Earth’s magnetic field could be preserved in rocks, I was 15 and was blown away,” she says. “The more I learned and worked in the field, the more my passion grew.” After devoting the last 15 years to studying the topic, Jones now contributes her expertise as a researcher and educator at the Office of Archaeological Studies, while also completing her dissertation at Scripps Institution of Oceanography (University of California, San Diego). Archaeology has a reputation for poaching concepts and methods from other sciences, but Jones’s research is payback, transforming an extensive archive of obscure archaeomagnetic data into a valuable resource for the international geophysics research community. “I love that I can combine my interests in geomagnetism and archaeology,” Jones says. “The idea that research in two very different fields can be mutually beneficial is the hallmark of modern scientific research.” Office of Archaeological Studies Director Eric Blinman adds, “I never realized quite how valuable our efforts could be outside of archaeology.” Archaeomagnetism is the study of the preserved magnetic signatures within archaeological materials. These signatures, when compared with models of variation in the Earth’s magnetic field over time, have proved to be a useful dating technique. Dr. Robert DuBois initiated the technique in the Americas in the early 1960s. In 1988, Dr. Daniel Wolfman established a Santa Fe
Field photo of a rock component of an Archaic heating feature prepared for archaeomagnetic sampling. Photo by Terracon Inc.
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