Saturday August 23
2-4 pm
Museum of the Great Plains
601 NW Ferris Ave., Lawton
Monthly Meeting and Special Guest
Dr. Don Wyckoff, Curator of Archaeology at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History.
"Clovis and the End of Mammoths"
Synopsis: Between 12,000 and 10,500 years ago, 33 major species of mammals became extinct in North America. Among them such large forms as horses, camels, ground sloths, cave bears, lion, mastodons, and mammoths. Because the period of extinction overlaps with archaeological evidence for the arrival of humans, particular those carrying the Clovis material culture, it has been argued that Clovis people were responsible for the die-off. Such an explanation is increasingly in question as new evidence is available about the arrival, and point of arrival, of Clovis groups as well as significant climatic changes occurring around 10,900 years ago. Dr. Wyckoff's talk will delve into these questions and some of the new findings that bear on the interaction of people spreading across the North American continent.
Biography: Dr. Don Wyckoff's PH.D. is from Washington State University; graduated in 1980 when Mt. St. Helens erupted! He has worked as an archeologist in Oklahoma for 47 years, first for the Oklahoma River Basin Surveys here at the University of Oklahoma, then as Oklahoma's first State Archaeologist. From 1968 to 1996 he was Director of the Oklahoma Archaeological Survey. From 1996 to present: teaching half time for the Department of Anthropology at OU and half time curator of archaeology for the Oklahoma Museum of Natural History at OU. In April of 2008, O.U. President David Boren announced Dr. Wyckoff as the recipient of a David Ross Boyd Presidential professorship. Dr. Wyckoff is involved with research on ice-age environments in Oklahoma, with hunter-gatherer societies here between 10,000 and 2,000 years ago, and with the sources of knappable stone favored by hunting and gathering people throughout prehistory on the Southern Plains.
Other interesting links where you'll find out more about Dr. Wycoff and his work include this interview with the History Detectives, and this one at OU' faculty pages.