All models for the migration of Native American ancestors transit Beringia (modern day Alaska-Yukon), and the region is important to understand adaptative strategies during dramatically changing climates and megafaunal extinctions at the end of the last Ice Age. I will present current data and interpretations on the timing, routes, economy, and land use for the earliest Beringians, and connect them with both the Siberian Late Upper Paleolithic and the earliest widespread Paleoindian lifeways south of the continental Ice Sheets. Topics include new genetic data from Siberia and the Americas (2018-2025), shifts from mammoth to bison and elk predation, the earliest evidence of freshwater and anadromous fishing in the Americas, and paleodiet reconstructions of Anzick (Montana) and Upward Sun River (Alaska) individuals. Current models of the peopling of the Americas are evaluated in light of these new Beringian data.
Sponsored By:
As a public service, the Institute, along with the Wyoming Association of Professional Archaeologists and the State Historic Preservation office sponsors a public lecture each fall near the end of September in conjunction with the fall board meeting. These lectures are given by a prominent archaeologist, but are aimed at a general audience. The lectures are free and open to the public.
Some recent lectures:
2024: Dr. Jesse Casana, Dartmouth College, Lost Landscapes and Looted sites: Archaeological
investigations using declassified spy satellite imagery.
2023: Dr. Calegero Santoro, Universdad de Tarapacá, Is the Atacama Desert an Imperfect
Human Artifact?
2022: Dr. Barbara Mills, The University of Arizona, From Frontier to Center Place:
The Dynamic Trajectory of the Chaco World
2021: Dr. Jessi Halligan, Florida State University, Dark Waters and Murky Models:
Perspectives on the Peopling of the Americas from Page-Ladson
2019: Dr. John Verano, Tulane University, Human Sacrifice in Ancient Peru.
2018: Dr. Stuart Fiedel, Louis Berger Group, Native American Origins.
2017: Dr. Charles Stanish, University of California at Los Angeles, New Insights on
the Nazca Lines of Ancient Peru.
2016 Dr. Bonnie Pitblado, University of Oklahoma, The Role of the Rocky Mountains
in the Peopling of the Americas.
2015 Dr. Stephen H. Lekson, University of Colorado, Boulder, A Millennium on the
Meridian: One Thousand Years of Political and Ritual Power in the Ancient American
Southwest.
2014 Dr. Jon McVey Erlandson, University of Oregon, From Coast to Coast: New Insights
into the First Peopling of the Americas.
2013 Dr. Vance Holliday, University of Arizona, Hunting Gomphotheres at the End
of the World: El Fin Del Mundo (Sonora, Mexico) and Clovis Archaeology in the Greater
Southwest
2012 Dr. Curtis Marean, Arizona State University, Survivors on the Edge of Land
and Sea: Modern Human Origins and How Coastal Life Helped Make Us Unique.
2011 Dr. Mary Stiner, University of Arizona, Hunters of the European Late Lower
Paleolithic.
2010 Dr. Ted Goebel, Texas A&M University, The Beringian Origins of the First Americans:
Do Genes, Bones, and Stones Tell the Same Story?
2009 Dr. Janine Gasco, California State University at Dominguez Hills, Cacao Production
and the economic and social role of chocolate in Mesoamerica.
2008 Dr. Gustavo Politis, University of La Plata, Argentina.
2007 Dr. Mark Aldenderfer, Arizona State University, high altitude adaptations
in Tibet.
2006 Dr. Gary Haynes, University of Nevada, Reno, Clovis as a colonizing population.
2005 Dr. Margaret Conkey, University of California Berkeley
2004 Dr. David Meltzer, Southern Methodist University
2003 Dr. Dena Dincauze, University of Massachusetts
