LaDuke and Wright will report on recent work at the Palmer site, and what it tells us about Michigan hunters of the Late Glacial period.

On Thursday, December 6, Henry Wright, curator of Near Eastern archaeology at UMMAA, and avocational archaeologist Thomas LaDuke will speak in the Whitney Auditorium (Room 1315, School of Education Building) at noon as part of the UMMAA Brown Bag Lecture Series.

LaDuke and Wright will summarize what we have learned about a formative step in the evolution of Late Glacial foragers based on recent excavations at the Palmer site. Some 13,500 years ago, the first Michiganders arrived in a land of glacial hills and ice-edge lake features covered with a mosaic of tundra and spruce parkland. This was very different from the rich Carolinian forests whose remnants we can see today in lower Michigan. These earliest colonists were foragers adapted to harsh and rapidly changing environments, determined to exploit their populations of caribou, elk, mammoth, mastodon, peccary, and other animals. Wright and LaDuke will close with some predictions about the directions of future research.

The Museum’s Brown Bag Lecture Series is free and open to the public.