Past Seminars

Jarrod Burks is a professional archaeologist specializing in the application of geophysical surveys in archaeological contexts. Dr. Burks is the Director of Archaeological Geophysics for Ohio Valley Archaeology, Inc., a private archaeology firm in Columbus, Ohio. He received his PhD and MA degrees in anthropology (archaeology) from The Ohio State University and his BA degree in anthropology from the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign. Dr. Burks’s training in archaeological geophysics has been honed through over 20 years of work in the field, as well as attending and teaching at the National Park Service’s “Current Archeological Prospection Advances for Non-destructive Investigations” since 2001.

Magnetometer surveys are an important part of the archaeologist’s toolkit. In this seminar, we will explore the nuts and bolts of magnetometry from the beginner to moderate level. Topics will range from the basics of why and how the archaeological record is magnetic, to exploring the various kinds of instruments available today, and how to process data. We will look at good data and bad, small archaeological features and large. Examples include pre-contact period American Indian sites and historic-era sites such as farmsteads and urban/industrial sites. Finally, we will spend some time examining the use of magnetometers in burial surveys.

1. Understand how magnetometers work and the range of instruments now available to archaeologists.
2. See what good and bad data processing look like to help establish expectations in those who want to do magnetic survey or evaluate the results of others.
3. Explore the different settings (terrestrial) in which magnetometers can be used.
4. See how different kinds of archaeological features appear in magnetic data, and develop an understanding of the importance of contrast as it relates to detectability.

Gerardo Gutiérrez is an Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Colorado-Boulder. His current research focuses on applied sciences and the introduction of new technologies to anthropological and archaeological research. The geographical focus of his research is Mesoamerica, but he has worked in the American Southwest, Peru, and Vietnam. He directs a regional project in Eastern Guerrero, Mexico, in the upper basin of the Balsas River examining the origins and development of complex societies from 1800 BC to AD 1522, which has been supported by the National Science Foundation, ACLS, among others. He developed a mobile laboratory of atomic and molecular spectrometry to analyze constituent elements and molecules in archaeological objects. He has participated in genetic studies of indigenous populations of Mesoamerica, particularly in understanding population dynamics between Europeans, African, and Native American populations in Colonial Mexico. He has contributed to the edited volume, Beyond Germs: Native Depopulation in North America, a CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title for 2016.

Catherine M. Cameron is Professor Emerita in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Colorado-Boulder. She works in the northern part of the American Southwest, focusing especially on the Chaco and post-Chaco eras (AD 900–1300). Her research interests include prehistoric demography, the evolution of complex societies, and processes of cultural transmission. She has worked in southeastern Utah at the Bluff Great House, a Chacoan site, and in nearby Comb Wash, publishing a monograph on this research in 2009 (Chaco and After in the Northern San Juan, University of Arizona Press). She also studies captives in prehistory, particularly their role in cultural transmission. She is co-editor and contributor to the volume, Beyond Germs: Native Depopulation in North America, a CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title for 2016.

Maria A. Spyrou uses molecular means, specifically ancient DNA, to investigate the presence of pathogens in ancient populations and address key questions regarding their evolution and adaptation. This work has been possible through the implementation of both laboratory and computational methodologies specifically designed for the detection and authentication of pathogen DNA in ancient human remains as well as for its enrichment, high-throughput sequencing and genomic reconstruction. A large portion of Dr. Spyrou's research to date has focused on the genetic history of the plague pathogen, Yersinia pestis, a bacterium that has been associated with humans for at least the last 5,000 years and has been a major culprit of historical epidemics in Europe and beyond. This research is currently being expanded using untargeted computational approaches for the identification and authentication of a broad range of pathogens from both historic and pre-historic archaeological contexts.

Based on archaeological evidence and historical data, the instructors address key questions and topics on the complex dynamics between environments, pathogens, and human populations. This seminar will review the co-evolution of human’s immunological system with good microbiota and pathogens and how our sociocultural practices mitigate or facilitate local outbreaks, regional epidemics, or global pandemics. It will explore how sedentism and early urban dwelling brought together large numbers of domesticated animals and human populations to facilitate zoonotic infections and how the lack of sanitary conditions in our early settlements attracted and promoted the reproduction of vectors for the deadliest pathogens (rats, mosquitoes, flies, fleas, body lice, etc.). It will examine how political and economic agendas of large imperial powers have facilitated the process of infection by depleting ecosystems, impoverishing colonized populations, and speeding up the movement of vectors and pathogens at continental scales. The study of the social and historical construction of vulnerability, risk management, evolutionary medicine and germ theory guide this presentation of case studies to illustrate the history and archaeological study of epidemics.

1. Understand the complex co-evolution of human populations with their microbiota and pathogens.
2. Study outbreaks and epidemics as biological hazards.
3. Explore how our early cities provided the perfect ecosystem for zoonotic transmission and the breeding of vectors.
4. Examine the archaeological and molecular evidence we can recover from areas affected by past epidemics.
5. Create a long-term perspective to frame the current COVID-19 epidemic in a long list of historical outbreaks.
6. Learn from the current pandemic and start preparing for the future pandemics.

1. Familiarize seminar participants with drone formats and their potential applications.
2. Instruct participants on the basic workflow of drone use in archaeology (flight planning, permissions to fly, site preparation, automated and manual flights, post-flight processing of aerial imagery).
3. Provide information on the legal and safe operation of drones in the United States.

Dr. Eldon Yellowhorn (Otahkotskina) is from the Piikani (Peigan) Nation. At home, he developed an interest in astronomy because the prairie sky is a canopy of stars. He heard old stories of the sky country in the Blackfoot language, and at university, he studied them as an anthropology student. Dr. Yellowhorn got his first job in archaeology in 1980, and subsequently he worked at many sites while studying at the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada. He received a MA degree in 1993 from the Department of Archaeology at Simon Fraser University. Although contract archaeology was where he found employment, his interest in the origins of large-scale communal bison hunting has motivated by his studies. He received his PhD from the Department of Anthropology at McGill University in 2002, the same year he was appointed an assistant professor in the Department of Archaeology at Simon Fraser University. He was a faculty member there until he established the Department of Indigenous Studies in 2012, where he now teaches. In his research program he studies the ancient and recent history of Indigenous people through archaeological fieldwork.

When John Wesley Powell wrote, “Mythology is primitive philosophy” in the first volume of the Bureau of American Ethnology in 1881, he crystalized a notion that dismissed myths as hearsay and unworthy of study. Boasian anthropologists collected oral narratives in their ethnographic work but they considered myths as psychological devices that people used to put their mind in balance with the world, exempted from any chronological context. Archaeologists have not ventured far from Powell’s original position that there is no truth to be found in old stories that emanated from oral traditions. Native Americans see narratives as real sources of information that chronicle the lived experiences of ancestors. Old stories and the archaeological record are the only archives of their ancient presence. Therefore, I triangulate data from Blackfoot oral narratives, material culture studies, and archaeoastronomy to create explanations for the cultural manifestations in the archaeological record of the northern plains. I use insights gained from astronomical studies to interpret the structural metaphors that ancient Peigans devised to organize their astronomical knowledge. Archaeoastronomy also offers methods that help to determine the antiquity of some old stories.