lECTURES & sYMPOSIA
Saturday, February 25, 9am
We are pleased to continue our symposium series with a lecture titled The Initial Settlement of North America, by Jeb Taylor, in which is explored several possible migration models with routes and times for the earliest migration and occupation of North America. 

In 1936, John L Cotter found distinctive fluted projectile points associated with Pleistocene mammoth bones in Blackwater Draw near Clovis, New Mexico. Previously, archaeologists believed that man had been in North America for only 3,000 - 4,000 years. The Clovis discovery pushed the date back to ca 11,200 BP, establishing a new paradigm in the initial settlement of North America. Since then, archaeologists have reported discoveries of earlier complexes, but none of them have definitively supplanted Clovis as the earliest complex. 

Nevertheless, because there have been so many claims of pre-Clovis sites in North and even South America since then, nearly everyone now assumes that man was in North America long before Clovis. If so, that presents some logistical problems regarding how people got here. The generally accepted migration model at that time was that humans entered North American from Asia through Beringia and traveled down the Mackenzie River corridor into the United States. Unfortunately, it is believed that the Mackenzie River corridor was blocked by ice before 11,500 BP. 

Consequently, archaeologists have recently proposed several alternative migration models. The first entailed a trans-Atlantic migration by boat ca 18,000 - 17,000 BP and the second involved a Pacific coastal migration by boat early enough to get people into the southern North and South America prior to 11,500 BP. These models have received wide-spread exposure and they, or at least aspects of them, have gained general acceptance. Unfortunately, they present serious logistical problems of their own. This discussion will address these issues - objectively. 

Jeb Taylor is an avocational archaeologist who has worked to promote responsible collecting and to serve as a bridge between collectors and professional archaeologists. He has authored many articles, is an associate editor for Prehistoric American, and has written a book titled Projectile Points of the High Plains.

Also on Saturday at 1pm, a lecture by Betty Goerke, Feathers and Beads: Unique Ceremonial Regalia of the San Francisco Bay Area, a colorful and critical look at the clothing of native people as pictured in artists' drawings of the early 19th century.

Betty Goerke, retired Professor of Anthropology at College of Marin, is author of "Chief Marin: Leader, Rebel and Legend." She lectures widely, and is a producer of videos about archaeology and anthropology. Her field experience includes excavations in California, Colorado, Holland, Africa, and Germanyauthor and retired Professor of Anthropology at College of Marin.

Sunday, February 26, 10am
This year's annual Friends of Ethnic Art lecture, Eighteenth Century Native American Art from the Great Lakes Region: A Legacy of Diplomacy, Warfare and Curiosity, features Dr. Ruth Phillips, one of the leading researchers of historical Native American art of the Woodlands. Her insights into the peoples and cultures of the area are profound, meticulously researched, and, at the same time, very accessible in presentation. 

Dr. Phillips writes: We owe the earliest examples of Great Lakes Native American art that can be clearly dated and attributed to specific peoples, to military officers, who fought in the eighteenth-century wars for political control of the region. In general, they were motivated by the fashion for collecting curiosities, but officers that engaged in diplomatic negotiations might also be presented with fine clothing through ritual adoption that made them members of Aboriginal families. This talk will discuss the major collections that have come down to us from the period in order to demonstrate the two different collecting paradigms and the contrasting experiences of Indigenous life that lie behind them. 

Dr. Ruth Phillips holds the Canada Research Chair in Aboriginal Art and Culture and is Professor of Art History at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada.