INT 500 Climate, Culture and the Biosphere
Peopling of South America – Fall 2007

Note: All Lecture Notes Are PDF files, and you must have Adobe Acrobat Reader or a similar program to view them. The files made available here are for the use of class participants only and will be removed after the last class meeting.

Instructors:

Prof. George L. Jacobson, Jr.
320 Bryand Global Sciences
581-2991
jacobson at maine.edu Prof. Daniel H. Sandweiss
120 Alumni Hall
581-1889
dan.sandweiss at umit.maine.edu

 

 

Class schedule: 5 -7:30 pm Mondays, 307 Bryand Global Sciences
Previous class meetings: September 24th, October 1st, October 15th, October 25th,
November 5th, November 12th, November 19th, November 26th

Monday, December 3

Topic: Paleoindian Archaeology of South America

Discussion Leaders: Dan Sandweiss, Chris Gardner, David Reid

Questions

  1. What does the diversity of sites in South America tell us about the “Peopling of the Americas”? Think of subsistence, settlement patterns, paleoecology, technology, and the processes that would have created such diverse sites.
  2. As scientists studying the past, how do we deal with negative evidence (e.g. boats, ice-free corridor, submerged continental shelf)?
  3. What models from paleoindian studies, that we’ve covered as a class, can be put to rest and which models are still compelling? Think about past classes and articles dealing with settlement patterns, technology, origins, subsistence, and paleoclimate.
  4. What is the "way forward" in researching the first peoples of South America? What can we learn from the numerous models and papers that we've read throughout the semester? This topic can be geared towards a discussion on actual field research models as well as a more theoretical discussion on how we interpret the paleo-record.

Readings

Roosevelt et al. 2002. The Migrations and Adaptations of the First Americans Clovis and Pre-Clovis Viewed from South America. In. “The First Americans: The Pleistocene Colonization of the New World” (Jablonski ed.) California University Press, San Francisco, pp.159-223. (read pages 179-191 which focus on South America, skim the rest of the article)

Piperno and Stothert 2003. (255K) Phytolith Evidence for Early Holocene Cucurbita Domestication in Southwest Ecuador. Science 299 (5609):1054-1057.

Sandweiss et al. 1998. (319K) Quebrada Jaguay: Early South American Maritime Adaptations. Science 281 (5384): 1830-1832.

Grosjean et al. 2005. (353K) Palaeoindian Occupation of the Atacama Desert, Northern Chile. Journal of Quaternary Science 20(7–8): 643–653.

Monday, December 10

Class Presentations

y Science 20(7–8): 643–653.

Monday, December 10

Class Presentations