The Florida Anthropological Student Associations hosts weekly colloquia to showcase our graduate students’ and faculty’s research interests, to give them valuable opportunities to practice or refine their presentation techniques, and to help connect UF anthropologists.
Our fourth colloquium will be Wednesday, October 1 at 3pm in Rinker Hall 230.
Dr. Kathleen Holen
“When People Broke Bones:
Early Human Technology and Experimental Archaeology”
Our guest lecturer Dr. Kathleen Holen is from the Archaeological Institute of America. Dr. Kathleen Holen’s talk will be held at 3:00 pm in Rinker Hall, room 0230. Rinker Hall is just south of Turlington on Newell Rpad.
Abstract: Early hominids in Africa learned how to break large animal limb bones with hammerstones to extract marrow at least 2.5 million years ago. Our experimental research replicates this technology. Using elephant and cow limb bones, we show how bone modification patterns were produced on large prey animals found at North American archaeological sites. By analyzing distinctively shaped notches made by hammerstone percussion technology we can distinguish human modification from natural bone breakage caused by carnivore gnawing or trampling. Our analysis compares patterned bone breakage and flaking of limb bones at numerous late Pleistocene mammoth sites in the Americas and provides evidence of human technology and behavior in geological contexts at least 30,000 years old.