Jon Erlandson
@viking1000.bsky.social
Archaeologist & retired professor/museum director; worked at the University of Oregon for >30 years. Fieldwork along the Pacific Coast of North America (CA/OR/AK), +7 seasons digging Viking Age Iceland. Islands, Coasts, & Deep History.
Clovis-first is dead in the water. Try as they might, they can’t put the Pre-Clovis genie back in the proverbial bottle 🫡
Kristina M. Gill@kmgill.bsky.social · 5mo ago30 SCIENTISTS SLAM STRAT STUDY 30 experts just published a series of three eLetters in Science May 4-9. The letters systematically dismantle the claims made by Surovell et al. that Monte Verde is <8k yr old, upholding the rigorously documented conclusion that Monte Verde really is 14.5kyo 🏺🧪🌎
April saw an attack paper in Science arguing that Chile’s 14,000 yr old Monte Verde site is less than 8000 yrs old. Surovell’s small team spent 4 days in the area, compared to Dillehay’s decade or more. Be skeptical: multiple rebuttal e-letters are going to Science, which no longer prints comments.
That is what Jon and I were talking about last night. Like…It has to be, right? But so far no DNA has been recovered from H. erectus, while Denisovans (until now) were only known through DNA. I guess we’ll see 😆 It’s so cool what we’re learning with these new technologies! @viking1000.bsky.social
I’ve been quiet on BlueSky for a couple months while Scott Fitzpatrick and I finished editing “The Oxford Handbook of Island & Coastal Archaeology.” 48 chapters in all—by a global group of top scholars—many of them already available online. Hope to see the complete volume by the end of 2025!
Meta, AI, and stolen knowledge. Out fricken RAGEous!
Kristina M. Gill@kmgill.bsky.social · 2y agoI’m just a small fry, only 6 of my articles shows up in this search. But they stole ONE HUNDRED SEVENTY FIVE (175!!!) articles/books by Jon M. Erlandson. One. Hundred. Seventy. Five. 175. Looking forward to a major settlement 🥴🫠 @viking1000.bsky.social
In Science (p. 462) this week, my colleagues--Scott Fitzpatrick, Kristina Gill, Patrick Kirch, John Ruiz, Victor Thompson, Jason Younker--and I warn of the dire threat rising seas (0.81 cm in 2024!) and marine erosion pose for coastal archaeological sites worldwide. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Rising seas endanger maritime heritage
science.org
The last gasp of the “turn to the sea recently” hypothesis came in 1987 when one of top coastal archaeologists of the time declared it a “historical fact” that humans only systematically harvested marine resources during the past 15,000 years or less. Not a theory or hypothesis, a FACT. Wrong!
The 2024 Volume 19 of the Journal of Island & Coastal Archaeology arrived in December, 878 pages of great articles from around the world! Unfortunately I spilled an elaborately crafted smoothie on it! Still readable, but pretty sticky . . . so it goes.
Humans only turned to the sea, they said—harvesting “marginal” aquatic foods—fish, shellfish, sea mammals, seaweeds, etc—after large land mammals were decimated. A deer equaled 177,000 oysters, they said, why bother? Forget what the Tlingit in Alaska say: When the tide is out, the table is set!
I created an island and coastal archaeology starter pack! Let me know if you’d like to join. go.bsky.app/CRAuPY6
I grew up swimming & surfing in the Pacific. In grad school, I found it odd that top anthropologists said our ancestors ignored marine ecosystems for >99% of our (Homo sp.) deep history. 🌍 Yet coastlines-where land & sea meet-are hotspots of biodiversity, rich in resources. Something didn't add up.
I was born in a port city and have always thought the discipline underestimated the relationship of the people with the past and the sea. People have their biases. They don't know the sea so it is a threat. They don't know the forest so it is impenetrable. They don't know the desert so...
An oddity of 20th century archaeology was the widely held theory that “coastal adaptations” only appeared worldwide in the last 10,000-15,000 years. South Africa’s Middle Stone Age shell middens, dated between 164,000 & 55,000 years ago, effectively demolished this theory for this part of the world.
In 2005, Scott Fitzpatrick and I started as founding coeditors of the Journal of Island & Coastal Archaeology. In 2025, under Scott’s continued leadership, JICA will publish its 20th volume! Still going strong, with more than 8,000 pages on our deep entanglement with island & coastal ecosystems.
