David J. Meltzer

David J. Meltzer (* 1955 ) is an American archaeologist . His research focuses on the Paleo-Indians , on climatic and environmental conditions during the late Pleistocene and Holocene , on the prehistory of the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains, and on the history of North American archeology.

Life

Youth, studies and academic teaching

Meltzer participated in an excavation at the Thunderbird Paleoindian site , an archaeological site near Front Royal , Virginia , at the age of 15 as a high school student . This sparked his interest in archeology. He later studied anthropology at the University of Maryland , where he received a Bachelor of Arts in 1977 . He then continued his studies at the Graduate School of the University of Washington in Seattle . There he received a Master of Arts in 1979 and a Ph.D. in 1984. , each in anthropology and archeology. After receiving his doctorate , he went to Southern Methodist University in 1984 . In the course of his teaching activity there he went through the appointments from Assistant Professor to Henderson-Morrison Professor of Prehistory .

Meltzer is a member of the National Academy of Sciences , a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science .

Archaeological research

Meltzer's archaeological research is primarily aimed at the Paleo-Indians , who settled North America at the end of the last glacial period. In doing so, he considers, among other things, the role of human adaptability to a new living space and the associated demographics as well as the possible course of the same processes, and how these can be proven archaeologically. Meltzer is also interested in climatic conditions and the composition of flora and fauna of the late Pleistocene and Holocene. He also researched, among others with Don Grayson , what role the Clovis culture played in the extermination of animal species. Meltzer and Grayson assume a rather subordinate influence.

In his archaeological field research, he focuses primarily on hunter-gatherer cultures of the late Pleistocene and Middle Holocene as well as on the paleoecology of the High Plains and the Rocky Mountains. Since 2000 he has been investigating sites of the Folsom culture in particular .

Publications (selection)

• Archaeological excavations at an historic drydock, Lock 35, Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. (1979, National Park Service, Denver)
• with Jim I. Mead [Ed.]: Environments and extinctions: man in late glacial North America. (1985, Center for the Study of Early Man, University of Maine, Orono)
• with Don D. Fowler, Jeremy A. Sabloff [Eds.]: American archeology: past and future. (1986, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC)
• with Tom D. Dillehay [Ed.]: The first Americans: search and research. (1991, CRC Press , Boca Raton, Florida)
• with Robert C. Dunnell [Ed.]: The archeology of William Henry Holmes. (1992, Classics of Smithsonian Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC)
• Search for the first Americans. (1993, Smithsonian Books, Washington, DC, St. Remy's Inc., Montreal)
• Folsom: new archaeological investigations of a classic Paleoindian bison kill. (2006, University of California Press, Berkeley)
• First Peoples in a New World: Colonizing Ice Age America (2009, University of California Press, Berkeley)
• Lewis Roberts Binford, 1931-2011. (2011, Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences Volume 96) ( online ).
• The Great Paleolithic War: how science forged an understanding of America's Ice Age past. (2015, University of Chicago Press)

Web links

• Entry on the Southern Methodist University website
• List of publications , Southern Methodist University website