Archaeology First Thursdays
Archaeology First Thursdays are an opportunity to take a deep dive into archaeology practice.
Each month our distinguished guests present research. You have the opportunity to ask questions and discuss their research directly with them.
RECORDINGS:
PDXScholar Archive
The final presentation in the series happened May 5, 2022.
Past Events:
Indigenous Women and Pre-Contact Rock Art in the Northern Plains Region
Emily Van Alst
Petroglyphs in the Northwest Plains region of the United States transmit Indigenous knowledge across generations and require interpretations rooted in Indigenous ontologies to fully contextualize and understand these images. An …Read More
People and Plants in the American Far West: Synthesizing Archaeobotanical Data from Oregon’s Great Basin
Jaime Kennedy
Archaeobotanical data from sites in the Great Basin and surrounding areas have demonstrated the persistent and continuous presence of specific plant taxa in cultural features…Read More
People and Places on the Dynamic Shoreline Landscape of Southern Puget Sound
Kate Shantry
This talk is an overview of Kate’s landscape study concerning the Osceola Mudflow Event ca. 5700 years ago…Read More
Archaeological Chronometrics by Obsidian Hydration Dating
Alexander (Sandy) Rogers
Obsidian hydration dating (OHD) is a chronometric method based on measuring the water absorbed through a fresh surface of obsidian, and is widely used in the inter-mountain west…Read More
Urban Archaeology in the City of Salem
Kimberli Fitzgerald
Archaeology practiced within an Urban Setting is often more challenging than archaeology practiced in more rural settings because of the challenges to excavation …Read More
Truth, Reconciliation and Ground Penetrating Radar: The Role of Archaeologists in Recent Research on Indian Residential/Boarding Schools
Colin Grier
The summer of 2021 produced a series of geophysical studies at Indian Residential Schools in Canada. The results — the discovery of hundreds of unmarked and/or undocumented graves…Read More
The Landscape of Klamath Rock Basin Art
Robert David
Robert David’s presentation is based on his dissertation research, in which he considers how rock art imagery in the Klamath Basin served different purposes…Read More
The Vulva Monologues: ‘Female’ signs in the Upper Paleolithic
Melanie Chang
Binary models of sex and gender are often uncritically applied in paleoanthropology. In the Upper Paleolithic, abstract representations ranging from simple bifurcating lines to overt representations of secondary sex characteristics …Read More
Kernels of Truth in Archaeological Temporal Frequency Analysis
William A. Brown
Temporal frequency analysis (TFA) broadly refers to statistical tools both for the description of temporal fluctuations in the abundance of recovered archaeological material…Read More
Reflections on the Past 40 Years of Archaeology in the Pacific Northwest
Virginia L. Butler
Butler reviews changes she has witnessed in the practice of archaeology in the Pacific Northwest since her 1975 field school at Lind Coulee. While enormous changes have occurred in technology …Read More
Investigating Ancient Cooking Practices in Northern Alaska: Molecular and Isotopic Analysis of Pottery Residues and Hearth Sediments
Tammy Y. Buonasera
Animal fats used as food and as fuel preserve exceptionally well in may Alaskan sites, even where bone preservation is poor. Focusing on recent collaborative work with Shelby Anderson…Read More
Intertidal Fishing Weirs: “Go-Help-Yourself” Subsistence on the Oregon Coast
Bradley Bowden
Intertidal fishing weirs were used by indigenous Oregonians as an efficient and dependable method of procuring several fish species. Investigation of fishing weirs is challenging…Read More
Pulling at the Thread: Why Climate Change Driven Relocation is such a Difficult Problem to Solve
Elizabeth Marino and Dennis Davis
This talk will discuss the climate change planning in Alaska. We will first show a series of photographs by Inupiat photographer and Shishmaref resident Dennis Davis. Following we will talk …Read More
Collective Action to Reduce Wildfire Risk Across Land Ownerships in the Pacific Northwest
Susan Charnley
The past two decades have made it clear that there is a need to increase the resilience of fire-adapted forest landscapes to wildfire. One part of the equation is to …Read More