ASC Earth Science Professor presents Paper (11-16-07)
At the 119th annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Philadelphia, in October, Dr. Jared M. Beeton co-presented his paper over the Late-Quaternary Landscape Evolution and Geoarcheology of the Cottonwood River Basin, Flint Hills, Kansas.
Beeton said his research is on late-Quaternary landscape evolution and geoarchaeology of the Cottonwood River basin in the Flint Hills of eastern Kansas. The late-Quaternary in this case refers to the past 12,000 years and landscape evolution refers to how the environment (and the landscape) has changed in the basin. Geoarchaeology is the use of geoscience field techniques to assist in archaeological investigations.
"In general, I'm mapping and determining the age of landforms in the river basin in order to construct a GIS-based archaeological prediction model," Beeton said.
The idea is that if we can systematically map where sediments of particular ages are stored in the basin, then we can say something about where in the basin archaeological deposits of particular cultural periods are more likely to be found."
