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Peruvian archaeologist accuses two US archaeologists of plagiarism (22 Jan 2005)

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Ashley Washington
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« on: April 20, 2008, 08:50:04 pm »

Peruvian archaeologist accuses two US archaeologists of plagiarism (22 Jan 2005)

In a matter that may have international implications for research, Ruth Shady Solis, a Peruvian archaeologist, has accused US archaeologists Jonathan Haas and his wife Winifred Creamer of plagiarizing her work on the Caral Complex, recently determined to be part of a precocious early civilization. Caral, 200 km north of Lima, is one of several sites with large earthen platform mounds in a region known as Norte Chico. This has been dated at 4,800- 5,000 years old - making it the earliest complex society yet known in the Americas. Recent work led by Shady Solis uncovered five 20 meter-high terraced platforms in Caral. The site has been known for over 40 years, but only in the past ten years has it been intensively surveyed.

In 2001, Shady Solis coauthored a paper in Science with Haas, a curator at the Field Museum in Chicago, and Creamer, a professor at Northern Illinois University, establishing the early date of about 4700 BP from the site  (Solis et al. 2001). Now Haas and Creamer have recently published a separate report on the early civilization in the Norte Chico region in the December 23, 2004 issue of the journal Nature, which according to Ruth Shady Solis has plagiarized from her own work. The article by Haas et al. cites two publications by Solis without mentioning her in the article,  while  reporting radiocarbon dates from sites in three Norte Chico valleys including Caral, in a broad study documenting more than 20 major residential centers with platform mounds.   

As reported in accounts in the official Peruvian news agency Andina (6 Jan 2005) and ABC news (22 Jan 2005), Shady Solis regards the interpretations on the development of complex societies in Peru, published by Haas and Creamer in Nature, as plagiarized from the results of ten years of work by her own project.  A former student of Shady Solis, Alvaro Ruiz, who has received a scholarship to Northern Illinois University where Creamer is a professor, is a coauthor of the recent Nature paper.

The accusations of plagiarism, made in writing by Shady Solis to the Society for American Archaeology (SAA), have been supported by a Jan.6, 2005 letter to the SAA's ethics committee by distinguished archaeologist Luis Lumbreras, head of  Peru's National Institute of Culture (INC).  US archaeologists  including Betty Meggers (US Nat.Museum) and Michael Mosely (Univ. of Florida) have also backed the position of Ruth Shady Solis. Meggers wrote a letter of complaint on the ethics of the Haas and Creamer project to the National Geographic Society, one of their funding sources. Peru's Education Minister Javier Sota Nadal said he and Foreign Minister Manuel Rodriguez were pressing their concerns about the dispute through Peru's embassy in Washington.

Andina (6 Jan 2005); http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200501/s1277690.htm; Nature 23 Dec 2004; Solis et al. Science 2001; http://www.guardian.co.uk (22 Jan 2005)


Early civilization on Peru's coast as early as 5000 years ago (Dec.23, 2004)

The Norte Chico region 200 miles north of Lima on the Peruvian coast has yielded the earliest known evidence of a complexly organized society in the Andean region. As described in the the journal Nature (23 Dec 2004) by US archaeologists  Jonathan Haas (Field Museum,Chicago), Winifred Creamer (Northern Illinois Univ.), and Alvaro Ruiz (Project co-director), this civilization lacked both an grain food staple and pottery, traits usually found with early sedentary civilizations.Yet the society developed monumental architecture, in the form of large platform mounds and circular structures, based on a mixed economy of  irrigation -based agriculture and marine foods from the nearby coast.

The mound complexes were first dated at Caral, a site in the Norte Chico region, from plant materials recovered by Ruth Shady Solis, a Peruvian archaeologist who has surveyed the region for years and has recorded numerous monumental platoforms. Shady Solis published early dates of about 2700 BC for the early mound levels, in a 2001 paper in the journal Science co-authored by Haas and Creamer. The National Science Foundation and the National Geographical Society have each provided funding for the current project.

Nature 23 Dec 2004.

http://www.athenapub.com/archnew2.htm
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