2001-gladfelter

2001 Rip Rapp Geological Archaeology Award

presented to BRUCE GLADFELTER

Citation by CURTIS E. LARSEN

Bruce Gladfelter is one of the pioneers in geoarcheology or archeological geology. Those of us who became interested in geoarcheology in the 1960's and 1970's, (when Quaternary, let alone Holocene, were bad words in geology departments), were drawn to Karl Butzer's first edition of "Environment and Archeology" when it appeared in 1964. Bruce was a student in the geography department at the University of Wisconsin while Karl was writing this book.

Bruce became Karl's first graduate student at Chicago in geomorphology and geoarcheology. His doctoral dissertation, "Meseta and Campina Landforms in Central Spain; a geomorphology of the Alto Henares Basin", was published as a monograph in the Research Papers series of the university's Department of Geography in 1971. This was followed two years later by his first work in geoarcheology, which addressed the glacial stratigraphy of British Lower Paleolithic sites. His work focused on the deposits at Hoxne and their associated lithic artifacts.

Bruce went on to help define the role of the geomorphologist as archeologogist in his 1977 American Antiquity paper: "Geoarcheology: The geomorphologist and archeology,” and again in 1981 with "Developments and directions in geoarcheology," which appeared in Michael Schiffer's edited volume: Advances in Archeological Method and Theory. I consider his 1985 paper, "On the interpretation of archeological sites in alluvial settings" in Julie Stein and Bill Farrand's co-edited book Archeological Sediments in Context to be a significant contribution. Bruce forcefully introduced the concepts of sediment storage and geomorphic process as a check on simplistic views of paleoclimate as the driving force behind the sediment sequences in alluvial archeological sites.

In the 1970's, he began a close collaboration with Jim Phillips at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Bruce worked with Jim in the major efforts at the American Bottoms projects in and around Cahokia and again in the Sinai peninsula in the 1980's. He helped to integrate a program in geoarcheology into the Master's degree curriculum in anthropology at the university. In addition, through his cooperative efforts with Jim Phillips and Bob Hall he has helped to incorporate geomorphology and geoarcheology into cultural resources management work at the University of Illinois. More recently, Gladfelter's work on the Sinai is appearing after his academic tenure as an administrator during a turbulent time of departmental reorganization at his university. His 1990 and 1992 papers on the geomorphic settings for upper paleolithic sites in the Wadi el-Sheikh and Wadi Feiran are good examples.

In preparation for this nomination, I consulted several of Bruce Gladfelter's contemporaries about his work. In one of the responses about Bruce, I received the following: "I have worked in the field with a number of well known and accomplished North American and foreign geomorphologists, including Vance Haynes, Karl Butzer, Bill Farrand, and Fekri Hassan. Bruce Gladfelter is, without question, not only in their league, but in some ways has surpassed them in his wonderful eye for landscape and inclusive knowledge of geomorphological process”. It is within this same spirit that I proudly nominate Bruce for this award.


Response by BRUCE GLADFELTER

I had no idea in 1977, the year that this division was established, that a paper I published in American Antiquity about geomorphology and geoarchaeology would lead me here today. In retrospect, I suspect that I had no idea where I was going at all. I did know, however, that the aspects of geography and geomorphology with which I was fascinated should be of obvious interest to archaeologists, or at least I thought they should. Over the subsequent years, however, I learned that the perspective I had, and the things that interested me, had not occurred to many archaeologists, or if they did, these things had not been pursued or applied by them. Much has changed since then.

Curt referred to my work in England, Illinois and Sinai. In each of these cases, I was fortunate to be part of a larger, multi-disciplinary, archaeological project. The excavations of the Lower Paleolithic, Clactonian flake industry at the golf course at Clacton-on-Sea (1969-1970) were my introduction to geoarchaeology. That project was a spring board for a protracted excavation of the Acheulian at Hoxne, Suffolk which is the type-site for the Hoxnian interglacial. Details of deposits burying the interglacial, lacustrine clay-mud were clarified and elaborated, and it was established that the Paleolithic material is in the Upper Sequence, and hence not within the Hoxnian interglacial senso stricto. Controversy endures, however, about the age of these deposits and their correlation with marine oxygen isotope stages, primarily because of the biases of palynologists and faunal specialists which are not in agreement with some of the chronostratigraphic data that have been developed at Hoxne.

My subsequent introduction to the Mississippi Valley was at Cahokia, as Curt noted, in the flood plain of the American Bottom (1976-1981) - an appropriate name because this is, without doubt, the most miserable place in which to work, at least in the summer. At that time, archaeologists were content to scrape the surface for Woodland and Mississippian sites; more deeply buried and possibly older occupations seemed not to be of interest or, worse, not thought to be preserved. The ages of the surface of the flood plain, the relict geomorphic features on it and certain buried channels were established by extensive boring and trenching that allowed for sites to be placed in their respective, prehistoric hydrogeomorphic environment, and for an appropriate assessment of the completeness of the diachronic pattern of settlement that has survived.

The excavations in southern Sinai (1982-1993) centered on the Ahmarian tradition of the Levantine Upper Paleolithic. The thick deposits in which the sites are found contain a succession of Late Quaternary, marl sediments that is unmatched in Egypt or the Middle East. Publication of all of this information is not yet complete, but the sedimentary sequence ultimately may be shown to reveal abrupt, short term episodes of climate change and to perhaps provide a terrestrial link between Late Pleistocene events in the North Atlantic and the Indian Ocean.

Archaeologists are an inquisitive and stimulating bunch - an eclectic breed hungry for insights or answers that others might provide and, at the same time they are keen to protect their intellectual turf. But the "interdisciplinary" nature of geoarchaeology and of archaeological geology is still largely a one-way street: while archaeology benefits from the participation of the geoscientist, the geosciences have yet to fully embrace or appreciate the potential that can be realized from archaeological research.

I am keenly aware of the patience extended to me over the decades by archaeologists, field workers and students who tolerated my interruptions, endured annoying queries and engaged my arguments. But we all share interests in the temporal and spatial variations of human activity and in the space it occupies, and without these interactions I would have been unable to fulfill my objectives, and the archaeological research would not have been complete.

The Archaeological Geology Division does me great honor by this recognition, and I thank my colleagues for bestowing upon me this valued award.