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David J. Meltzer

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David J. Meltzer
Born1955
NationalityAmerican
Alma materUniversity of Maryland
University of Washington
Known forInfluential studies of Paleo-Indians and extinction of Pleistocene mammalian extinction
Scientific career
FieldsArchaeology, Anthropology
InstitutionsSouthern Methodist University
Doctoral advisorRobert Dunnell

David Jeffrey Meltzer (born 1955) is an American archaeologist known for his influential studies of Paleo-Indians and Pleistocene mammalian extinction in the Americas. He is currently Henderson-Morrison Professor of Prehistory at Southern Methodist University and Affiliate Professor at the Centre for GeoGenetics at the University of Copenhagen.[1]

Meltzer's scholarship on ancient human populations and fieldwork in the High Plains and Rocky Mountains have earned him widespread acclaim and "forced a revision of the received wisdom that Pleistocene people were exclusively big-game hunters or were responsible for Pleistocene mammalian extinction."[2] He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and American Academy of Arts and Sciences, as well as a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Medicine, Engineering and Science of Texas.[3]

Early life and education

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Thunderbird Archaeological District in Front Royal, Virginia

Meltzer first encountered archaeology at the age of 15, when he participated in the excavation of the Thunderbird Site, an important Paleo-Indian Clovis site near Front Royal, Virginia.[3] Meltzer would later enroll at the University of Maryland, where he would graduate in 1977 with a BA in Anthropology. He then moved to University of Washington to complete an MA in Anthropology/Archaeology. Following a one-year stint as a Predoctoral Fellow in the Department of Anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution, he returned to the University of Washington. Working under the supervision of archaeologist Robert Dunnell, Meltzer received his PhD in 1984.

Career

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Heroy Hall, home of the Department of Anthropology at Southern Methodist University

In 1984, Meltzer accepted a position in the Department of Anthropology at Southern Methodist University.[3] At SMU, he would come to work alongside leading archaeologists and cultural anthropologists, including Fred Wendorf, Lewis Binford, David Freidel, Caroline Brettell, and Carolyn Sargent.

A year after joining the faculty, Meltzer launched the Texas Clovis Fluted Point Survey.[4] In 1996, he was made inaugural Executive Director of the Quest Archaeological Program at SMU, an initiative endowed by Joseph and Maude Cramer to advance research on the first peoples of the Americas.[5][6] Under Meltzer's leadership, Quest would help fund studies across the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains.[7]

Revisiting Folsom

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A Folsom Point

Between 1997 and 2000, Meltzer used new archaeological techniques to re-excavate and analyze the famous Paleo-Indian site at Folsom.[8] He and his team studied excavated bison teeth from the site's bison-kill to determine that the hunt had happened in the fall. They further confirmed that Folsom witnessed at least 32 such kills.[9]

One of the project's other objectives was to find the location of the hunt's associated campsite. In this, Meltzer and his team were unsuccessful.[8] By sourcing the stone for "Folsom points" to Texas and Colorado, however, they were able to show that the Folsom site was part of a much larger area across which people of the Folsom tradition moved.[8] Meltzer would document his findings in a 2006 book, Folsom.

Peopling of the Americas

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Meltzer's research has made him one of the world's leading experts on the colonization of the Americas and mammalian extinctions of the Late Pleistocene.[10] In his work, he has demonstrated the role of climactic and environmental changes in the disappearance of North American megafauna (against the "overkill" thesis),[11][12] challenged the controversial theory that the Clovis culture was destroyed by a comet,[13][14] and made the case that the domestication of dogs occurred in ancient Siberia.[15]

In recent decades, archaeology has been revolutionized by breakthroughs in DNA sequencing. In 2010, evolutionary biologist Eske Willerslev became the first scientist to successfully reconstruct an entire ancient human genome.[16] Meltzer and Willerslev would become close collaborators,[17] leading to a joint 2021 paper in Nature describing the peopling of the Americas based on the most up-to-date ancient genomic evidence.[18]

Works

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  • Folsom: New archaeological investigations of a classic Paleoindian bison kill (2006)
  • The Great Paleolithic War: How Science Forged an Understanding of America's Ice Age Past (2015)
  • The Mountaineer site: a Folsom winter camp in the Rockies (2021, with B.N. Andrews and M. Stiger)
  • First peoples in a new world: Populating Ice Age America (2021)

References

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  1. ^ "David J. Meltzer". www.nasonline.org. Retrieved 2024-04-02.
  2. ^ "David J. Meltzer". American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Retrieved 2021-05-11.
  3. ^ a b c "David J. Meltzer – Archaeologist, SMU". people.smu.edu. Retrieved 2024-04-02.
  4. ^ "College of Liberal Arts | The University of Texas at Austin". liberalarts.utexas.edu. Retrieved 2024-04-02.
  5. ^ "SMU anthropology chair elected to NAS". EurekAlert!. Retrieved 2024-04-02.
  6. ^ rdunlap@smu.edu, Rachael Dunlap, Contributing Writer. "Quest funds student research". The Daily Campus. Retrieved 2024-04-02.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  7. ^ "Quest Program – David J. Meltzer". people.smu.edu. Retrieved 2024-04-02.
  8. ^ a b c Sapiens (2017-08-29). "Why the Famous Folsom Point Isn't a Smoking Gun". SAPIENS. Retrieved 2024-04-02.
  9. ^ Meltzer, David J.; Todd, Lawrence C.; Holliday, Vance T. (January 2002). "The Folsom (Paleoindian) Type Site: Past Investigations, Current Studies". American Antiquity. 67 (1): 5–36. doi:10.2307/2694875. ISSN 0002-7316. JSTOR 2694875.
  10. ^ Wilford, John Noble (November 9, 1999). "New Answers to an Old Question: Who Got Here First?". The New York Times.
  11. ^ Magazine, Smithsonian; Mann, Charles C. "The Clovis Point and the Discovery of America's First Culture". Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved 2024-04-02.
  12. ^ Meltzer, David J. (2015-10-21). "Pleistocene Overkill and North American Mammalian Extinctions". Annual Review of Anthropology. 44 (1): 33–53. doi:10.1146/annurev-anthro-102214-013854. ISSN 0084-6570.
  13. ^ "Archaeology: "Undiscovery of Year" to Meltzer for refuting comet theory – Research". blog.smu.edu. Retrieved 2024-04-02.
  14. ^ McMullan, By Dawn (2011-09-21). "Dallas' Big Thinkers". D Magazine. Retrieved 2024-04-02.
  15. ^ Gorman, James (January 25, 2021). "In Ice Age Siberia, a Meeting of Carnivores May Have Given Us Dogs". The New York Times.
  16. ^ Zimmer, Carl (May 16, 2016). "Eske Willerslev Is Rewriting History With DNA". The New York Times.
  17. ^ PhD, Anjali A. Sarkar (2021-06-18). "Ancient Human Genomes Reveal Peopling of the Americas". GEN - Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News. Retrieved 2024-04-02.
  18. ^ Willerslev, Eske; Meltzer, David J. (June 2021). "Peopling of the Americas as inferred from ancient genomics". Nature. 594 (7863): 356–364. Bibcode:2021Natur.594..356W. doi:10.1038/s41586-021-03499-y. ISSN 1476-4687. PMID 34135521.
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