1996 Rip Rapp Geological Archaeology Award

presented to LARRY D. AGENBROAD

Citation by: JIM I. MEAD

I am very pleased to help acknowledge the achievements of Larry Agenbroad. I have known Larry for what seems to be a thousand years, as a mentor, a colleague, and best of all, a compadre. Larry has a charisma about him that effervesces friendliness about education and an excitement about research on mammoths, geology, and archaeology. As a senior in anthropology and geology, I felt that I really knew the direction that I wanted to go, and I was headed in that direction, but when I met Larry at the excavation of the Lehner Mammoth Kill Site, southeastern Arizona, in 1974, it was he who really provided the catalyst for my future. I am where I am today thanks to Larry. I know that this is a similar scenario for many previous students of his.

Larry has given many gifts to the profession (take a look at his CV), but probably the one that has affected the most people, students and professionals alike, is his ability to get people excited about doing research. He has an innate ability to create new projects - projects with a different twist in design than what most of us can and do produce.

In the panhandle of Nebraska, :Larry was shown a bunch of "sheep" bones eroding from a dozer cut near a spring. Upon examination of the deposit, his internal fossil-archaeology ticker went off - he knew that the site had more potential. Methodical and detailed excavations, typical of his techniques, proved that the locality was in fact a bison kill site (now known as the Hudson-Meng Bison Kill Site) with hundreds of animals. Larry not only recorded the use of bison by Paleoindians of the Alberta point tradition, but also trained scores of students (including me) to look for details and to think from multidisciplinary framework - archaeology and geology.

Although some might consider Larry a loner, he is actually an ideal co-PI. For years we have worked side-by-side (him tall, me short) on the Colorado Plateau. He would always examine the locality from the holistic view, placing it within the area-wide framework, while I would be overly immersed in the detail. He never would push into someone else’s "territory", he always had his area and you yours, but he always wanted to know what you were finding so that he could learn.

He never really seemed to care about being in the limelight, but his charisma and expertise often forced him right to the front line. He has been in so many TV news blurbs, educational snapshots, interviews, and documentaries that I have no space here to go into them all. Once while filming with the BBC, Larry and I were doing a shot of walking up a canyon, side by side, casually talking about the dried dung remains of mammoth that we were going to examine in a nearby alcove. As we approached the hillslope entrance to the shelter, he insisted that I go first, right into the cave and the camera’s view. I was thoroughly honored by his gesture. Later on I thanked him but insisted that he should have gone first, as he was the prime person for the film. Then he informed me, with a laugh, that if he had gone first, the sound recorder would have heard two voices and the camera would have seen only him, because I, being short, would have been hidden. We were truly a "Mutt and Jeff" team.

One of the best, if not greatest, of his achievements is the Mammoth Site of Hot Springs, South Dakota. Not only did he assess a "strange and new find" in small-town USA, but he found the deposit to be unique and convinced the local people that they could capitalize on the find. Larry knew that the bones of tens of mammoths would be found in the filled sinkhole on the edge of that economically depressed town. He knew that to recover all of them and adequately curate and archive the remains would be a mammoth project in more ways than one! Using his innate ability, Larry convinced the town to form a private corporation to create a working museum. Today the site, under a beautiful and expanding building complex, curates and displays bones of more than 50 mammoths and educates over 100,000 interested tourists and students a year about the Ice Age.

Now what is he up to? Larry has begun the slow and methodical process of evaluating the numerous deposits of mammoth being recovered on the Channel Islands off southern California. He is trying to determine when and what these mammoths were doing on an island. Were they all pygmy mammoths or were there occasional strays swimming across the channel? Larry loves the intrigue of finding out the answers to a truly "mammoth problem." I think that the boat ride reminds him of his navy days during the Korean War.

I could go on and on and on - I have not mentioned his works in hydrogeology, engineering geology, and Quaternary geology. The best way to witness his success is to go to the Mammoth Site, just 6 hours north of Denver (the Hudson-Meng site is nearby). He, with the help of others in his entourage, have assembled a truly world-class research-education-tourist monument. It is a monument to geology and paleontology, to education via the private sector, to the Ice Age, and to what a determined professional who cares about this profession and about students of all ages can do.

Response by JOHN P. ALBANESE

I am honored, and humbled, by the receipt of the Rip Rapp Archaeological Geology Award for 1996, especially because I am aware of the other worthy colleagues in this field of research. I express my appreciation to the award panel and the Society for this recognition. In part, this honor is shared with many persons who have influenced me, supported me, and collaborated with me, as well as numerous students. My wife, Wanda, and my sons, Brett and Finn, spent many field sessions with me, and put up with my absences as well.

As a Korean War veteran, I got a late start at higher education. It seemed that each time I earned a degree, there was no employment opportunity in whatever field I had just completed. As a result, I worked in underground mining; as a geophysicist for oil exploration in the Southwest; as a geophysicist-hydrologist with the Nevada Bureau of Mines in AEC-sponsored underground atomic device detonations; and as a hydrogeologist in the High Plains and the Colorado Plateau. Throughout this period, I continued working on advanced degrees, and in my final years at the University, I was a graduate teaching assistant in both the geology department and the anthropology department. It was then that I decided to go into teaching and research, a combination I have enjoyed since.

Applications of geology to archaeological investigations include Murray Springs Mammoth Kill Site and the Lehner Ranch Mammoth Kill Site in southeastern Arizona; The Lone Hill Desert Culture Site in the central San Pedro Valley, Arizona; investigations of the alluvial geology and it’s relation to the archaeology of Grand Gulch, Utah; archaeological investigations of White Mesa, Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, Canyonlands National Park, Arches National Monument, Cedar Breaks national Monument, and Natural Bridges National Monument in Utah; the Five Fingers, and ‘Y’ buffalo jumps on southwestern Idaho; the Hudson-Meng Paloeindian bison Kill of northwestern Nebraska; the Sanson Buffalo Jump of the southern Black Hills, South Dakota; plus numerous Utah Department of Highways mitigation projects. It was during these investigations that two major changes in my research efforts began: (1) the at first subconscious, and later, conscious, transfer of my focus from the hunter to the hunted - the Pleistocene megafauna, mammoths and bison, in particular - that early peoples had subsisted on; and (2) the realization that a geochronologic framework was necessary to tie the archaeological paleontological, and geological environmental phenomena to a temporal setting within a region of study.

Archaeological geology is, of necessity, a hybrid of at least two disciplines. I have always been an advocate of interdisciplinary work; my bachelor’s degree is in geological engineering, a hybridization of geology and civil engineering. As I have already indicated, my teaching experience, as a graduate student, and later as a professor, encompassed more than one discipline. At Northern Arizona University, I initiated a graduate program in Quaternary studies, integrating anthropology, biology, geography, and geology.

Single discipline research is somewhat analogous (in my opinion) to the dark room experience of developing black and white film - especially at the hypo stage, where the image is faintly taking shape, yet the picture is still unclear, and certainly not sharp in all the details. To use that example applied to archaeological geology, most archaeological field techniques rely on geological principles such as stratification, guide fossils (artifacts), sedimentary and hydrologic processes, source materials, and geochronology. More fundamentally, even the artifacts recovered, including ceramics, are in large part geologic origin. Similarly, engineers construct their projects on, or in the crust of the earth, and their success (or failure) can largely be connected to the understanding (or lack of understanding) of geological principles. What puzzles and alarms me is that most archaeological, and nearly all civil engineering programs fail to include geology in their programs of study. I feel this is a major error in our system of higher education.

Integration of geologic knowledge, principles, and processes with archaeology, paleontology, and engineering research has provided some of the most rewarding experiences of my career. Seeing the same data sets with different eyes and training has often enhanced the final outcome. It prevents the myopia of single-discipline studies.

Some of my geological colleagues have referred to Quaternary geology, especially archaeological geology, as "dirt geology". They want to hear their rock hammer ring when it strikes the outcrop, although many sedimentologists studying older deposits may get the characteristic thud of a hammer on soft sediments. My response to such banter is usually in the form of three questions: (1) Do you believe in the validity of Hutton’s principle of uniformitarianism - i.e., the present is the key to the past? Usually the response can be paraphrased as "of course." My second question (2) is: What do you know about geological processes in the Quaternary period? Specifically the Pleistocene and the Holocene epochs? A typical response is "very little." My third question (3) is, Then how can you be such an expert on the Permian )or Pennsylvanian, or whatever) if you don’t understand the rates and processes preserved in the most recent geologic deposits - the Quaternary deposits?

I have beleaguered the Southwest archaeological community, 90% of whom deal only with ceramic cultures (ca. 2000 yr B.P.), with questions like, "Why don’t you get into the REAL excitement of Southwest archaeology - the archaic and Paleoindian periods?" I am here to convince you that there are at least 9000 of prehistory prior to their period of study. Using the Colorado Plateau as an example, I can provide ample paleontolgical evidence of the abundance of late Pleistocene megafauna (mammoth, bison, horses, camels, sloths, etc.); even an abundance of Paleoindian (Clovis, Folsom, and Plano) artifacts; plus rock art (petroglyphs and some pictographs), yet almost no one is exerting any research effort in this exciting and potentially rewarding area of prehistory.

Quaternary paleontology has made additional contributions to archaeological geology. Paleontological research of mammoths and contemporary Pleistocene megafauna and their possible association with early humans has led to reevaluation of spiral-fractured mammoth bones as proof of human presence in North America. The deposits at the Mammoth Site of Hot Springs, South Dakota, continue to yield spiral-fractured bones from a geohydrolic natural trap that predates human presence in the area (in my opinion). The discovery of Pleistocene megafaunal dung in hyperarid localities on the Colorado Plateau promises chronologically controlled paleoenvironmental-paleoclimatic indicators for late Pleistocene human habitats and provides models to demonstrate the ensuing degradation of those environments.

Most recently, I have been working from the "far side" (apologies to Gary Larson), chronologically speaking, looking at the distribution, evolution, and temporal history of the mammoths of the California Channel Islands and their possible association with the increasing temporal depth of human occupation or presence of those islands. Given the evidence from several archaeological colleagues, it appears we have a temporal gap of slightly more than 1000 years between the youngest (yet dated) pygmy mammoth remains and the oldest (yet dated) human presence on the islands. Perhaps Phil Orr (1941-1968) was partially correct; the earliest human islanders met the last of the pygmy mammoths. In that regard, I am often asked, "Won’t it be exciting when you find a pygmy mammoth bones with a projectile point in it?" Taking a slightly less anthropocentric view, my reply is "I’m looking for a human ribcage with a mammoth tusk in it!"

Academically, students sometimes are of the opinion that "everything has already been done or researched so what can I contribute?" Off hand, I can think of at least 140 alluvial/fluvial valleys in the Great Basin which beg investigation; probably an equal number of canyons on the Colorado Plateau; uplands and high plains stretching throughout western North America; and countless caves, alcoves, and rock shelters that await the investigations of trained researchers. Add to those potentials all the salvage and mitigation activity produced by the expansion of industry, housing, and transportation systems, and it seems archaeological geology will be an active, vital area of research for a long time in the future.