James M. Adovasio | |
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James M. Adovasio
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Born | February 17, 1944 |
Citizenship | American |
Nationality | American |
Fields | archaeology |
Institutions | University of Pittsburgh, Mercyhurst College |
Alma mater | University of Utah |
Known for | Meadowcroft Rockshelter |
Influences | Jesse D. Jennings |
James M. Adovasio (born 17 February 1944) is the director of the anthropology and archaeology department at Mercyhurst College as well as director of the Mercyhurst Archaeological Institute in Erie, Pennsylvania. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Utah in 1970, where he had studied under Jesse Jennings, and a D.Sc. from Washington and Jefferson College in 1983. As of 2011[update] he served as commissioner of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (PHMC), and has had an active role with law-enforcement agencies helping to apprehend and convict people who loot archaeological sites.
Before arriving at Mercyhurst in 1990, Adovasio was chairman of the anthropology department at the University of Pittsburgh, where he founded the cultural resource management program (CRMP) and directed the Meadowcroft-Cross Creek project beginning in 1973.
Adovasio worked on the Meadowcroft Rockshelter site in Pennsylvania and was involved in the debate on the colonization of the American continents. His work at Meadowcroft began in June 1973; ongoing research there has been funded by the NSF, the National Geographic Society, the State of Pennsylvania, the University of Pittsburgh, and others.
Adovasio has worked throughout North America and Eastern Europe, studying lithic technology and perishable materials (basketry, clothing, textiles, cordage, etc.). A topic that he discusses often is the role of women, children, and elderly people in prehistory and their relative absence from discussions of archaeological materials and theory. He has worked to reverse the gender bias in archaeology, focusing on crafts that are usually associated with females to demonstrate that the stereotypical way that ice-age life is typically portrayed (groups of men running around with spears, killing big animals) are incorrect and often outlandish. Although perishable artifacts can outnumber lithics by as much as 20:1 in sites with good preservation, stone tools are typically the only materials that are recovered in most contexts and, since they are associated with men (and since most archaeologists historically have been men), our interpretations of the past are often biased and incorrect.
He has been involved in the Clovis first debate based on his work at Meadowcroft for the past 30 years. The Clovis first hypothesis states that the initial colonization of the New World began about 12,500 years ago with the opening of an ice-free corridor between the two ice sheets that covered most of North America at the time. People walking across the then-exposed Bering land bridge from Siberia followed herds of animals into the Americas and subsequently populated the entire hemisphere to the tip of South America.
However, Adovasio discovered culturally distinct stratigraphic levels at Meadowcroft that date to over 16,000, and possibly as much as 20,000 years, before the present, invalidating the Clovis first hypothesis. Some archaeologists, including Vance Haynes at the University of Arizona, claim that the radiocarbon samples taken from the early levels at Meadowcroft have been contaminated by nearby coal seams, resulting in artificially old dates. His very public and emotional defense of his data has caused people to disagree with his results for personal, instead of scientific, reasons.