James Adovasio, Ph. D., provost and director of the Archaeological Institute at Mercyhurst College is photographed on their research vessel last summer on the first underwater excavation he participated in. July 23 marks the start of his second.
Mercyhurst archaeologists back at undersea beach
By JACKIE SMITH
jackie.smith@timesnews.comJuly 23. 2009
It's take two for one Mercyhurst College archaeologist, whose underwater excavation last summer off Florida's Gulf Coast will continue today.
James Adovasio, Ph.D., provost and director of Mercyhurst's Archaeological Institute, will travel 105 to 130 miles out into the Gulf of Mexico to search for ancient tools and artifacts used by a population he believes existed more than 13,500 years ago along what are now submerged beaches.
Through Aug. 7, Adovasio and a team of about 10 people will return to the submerged ancient stream and river channels they identified in 2008, west of what today is St. Petersburg, Fla.
"We know the stuff's out there, but no one's ever tried to systematically look for it," he said.
The focus is on locations up to 135 feet underwater. Adovasio said it's a region previously untouched by other excavations.
While there, they'll search for ancient camps, submerged tree-stump forests, fossilized animal remains and any other indications of early humans having been there.
The researchers are going with the belief that people lived along the coast before moving inland. This contradicts what was once the most dominant theory of the 20th century -- that humans migrated across the Bering Strait from northeastern Asia and moved toward North America's eastern coasts by land.
"I mean, essentially, you have people living in Pennsylvania 16,000 years ago," he said. "If they're here that early, then they're on the coast even earlier. You just don't sprint across the landscape. Populations tend to move slowly."
The idea has been discussed since the 1960s, said the mission's co-director, C. Andrew Hemmings, Ph.D., of Mercyhurst and of the Gault School of Archaeological Research in Austin, Texas.
"The problem is getting into the position to talk about it not just theoretically," Hemmings said.
The mission's primary funding source is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a federal agency.
NOAA is paying $120,000 of the Florida excavation's nearly $175,000 price tag. In 2008, the agency issued a $100,000 matching grant.
Fred Gorell, NOAA spokesman, said he is well aware of the research taking place in the Gulf.
"I think it's an exciting exploration that has the potential to move the time scale," he said.
Crew members will use a new vessel from the University of South Florida. Divers, sonar equipment and other photographic devices will be used to explore the buried beaches.
Depending on what is discovered, Adovasio said, the search could be moved closer or farther away from Florida's coast.
"One of the things we want to do, that NOAA's all excited about, is get Andy (Hemmings) or one of the archaeologists down on the beach and photograph them walking around on a beach that nobody's walked on in at least 13,500 years," he said.
After their observations and discoveries are recorded, it will take several months of analysis behind computer screens and in labs before preliminary results are released in January.
"The reward is, we get to see what no one has seen for 15,000 or 14,000 years -- at least 13,000," Hemmings said. "It's not exactly Armstrong on the moon, but it certainly goes a long way to stimulate your intellectual curiosity."
JACKIE SMITH
can be reached at
870-1714
or by e-mail.
