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Dr. Terrance Martin identified a small sample of animal remains from the Huber phase site 11WI2739 in order to verify the presence of bison at the request of Joe Wheeler, archaeologist at Midewin (October 21).
Dr. Terrance Martin compiled species composition tables by excavation unit, level, and feature for the 91 animal remains that were recovered during the 2014 excavations.
Dr. Terrance Martin (as member of the CFCS Board of Directors) participated in the 2014 Annual Meeting of the Center for French Colonial Studies in St. Louis, which was attended by more than 97 registered individuals (October 17-19).
Dr. Terrance Martin continues the zooarchaeological analysis of the late prehistoric (late Fisher and Huber phases) habitation site located south of Chicago. The Upper Mississippian site was mitigated by ITARP/ISAS for IDOT between 2001 and 2003. Currently, more than 13,700 records had been entered on animal remains through Feature 1600.
Dr. Robert Warren continued his analysis of freshwater mussel faunas in the Illinois River Basin. Public programs on this research include an ISM Brown Bag lecture presented on October 15. An article summarizing the results of this research will be written and submitted for publication in an archaeological journal in 2015.
In October, Zoology Curator H. David Bohlen continued his monitoring of birds in Sangamon County. He documented 164 species, of which 29 were new fall migrants, mostly ducks and sparrows. Nearly all warblers, vireos, tanagers and other insectivores migrated south in October. On October 26, he observed a male Varied Thrush, the earliest in fall by several weeks and the seventh record for Sangamon County. Some species showed very low numbers such as Broad-winged Hawk, Northern Bobwhite, Dunlin, Northern Mockingbird, and Scarlet Tanager.
Dr. Meredith Mahoney extracted DNA and sequenced target genes from samples of Hine's Emerald Dragonfly from two populations in Missouri. The data generated will be included in on-going studies of population dynamics of this endangered dragonfly species.
Timothy Townsend of the Lincoln Home National Historic Site, Dennis Naglich, and Dr. Terrance Martin met at the RCC with Jori Lewis (independent reporter and writer) concerning the Jameson Jenkins archaeological project and its connection to the Underground Railroad on October 10.
Pat Burg assisted the Anthropology department by locating previously scanned items (by ISAS) in the library manuscript collection. A Nickerson map (Aiken Mound Group) was previously scanned and the library received a notebook and printout of the scanned plate(s). Additionally, three field and photograph notebooks by George Langford and Cutter-Deuel Correspondence were scanned. The notebooks were titled: "Fisher's Site Volume I," by George Langford; "Fisher's Site Volume II: Post European Mounds SE;" and "Indian Sites Near Joliet." The library received a CD with the scans of all four items in 2008. Pat also assisted Dee Ann Watt with Cahokia objects using the library's vertical files, museum quarterly reports, and director's correspondence in the archives.
Dr. Chris Widga and Matt G. Hill (Iowa State University) began a collaborative re-analysis of a classic midwestern Quaternary vertebrate locality, Peccary Cave near Fayetteville, Arkansas. Peccary Cave was excavated by paleontologists from the University of Arkansas in the late 1960s and again in the 1990s. Although the microfauna have been published and are consistent with a glacial age, the large mammal fauna has only seen limited analysis. Preliminary results indicate that the large mammal fauna is diverse, including flat-headed peccary (Platygonus compressus), stag-moose (Cervalces scotti), mammoth or mastodon (Proboscidea), beautiful armadillo (Dasypus bellus), and dire wolf (Canis dirus). The assemblage shows extensive carnivore modification, which is likely the result of dire wolf denning behavior.
Dr. Chris Widga traveled to the Kenosha Public Museum (KPM) in Kenosha, Wisconsin to sample mammoth, mastodon, and helmeted muskox specimens for radiocarbon dating. These specimens are part of the KPM collections, primarily from southeastern Wisconsin. Radiocarbon analysis of the proboscidean specimens is funded through NSF support.
Several ISM curators, research associates, and adjunct research associates participated in the joint meeting of the 58th Annual Midwest Archaeological Conference (MAC) and the Annual Meeting of the Illinois Archaeological Survey (IAS) in Champaign, October 2-4, which was attended by 373 registered participants. Museum staff members presented numerous papers and posters at the meeting (see Professional Presentations). As part of the IAS's annual meeting, Illinois Archaeology Career Achievement Awards were presented to ISM Museum Director Emeritus Dr. R. Bruce McMillan (citation and presentation by Dr. Bonnie W. Styles) and to former Northwestern University Professor and Director of the Center for American Archeology Dr. Stuart Struever (citation and presentation by Dr. Michael D. Wiant). Dr. Wiant served as a panelist for the MAC Student Workshop on Current Issues in Midwestern Archaeology.
As part of this the 10th annual Midwest Historical Archaeology Conference in Niles, Michigan (September 26-27), Dr. Terrance Martin participated in a session "Archaeology and Heritage Management: The Future of the Past at Fort St. Joseph, Niles, Michigan" highlighting the significance of the faunal assemblage and what it is teaching us about subsistence and the fur trade. About 120 students and adults attended the session. Dr. Martin also continues to advise Joseph Hearns (Western Michigan University) on his Master's thesis concerning spatial distributions of the Fort St. Joseph site's archaeofauna and several specific activity areas.
Dr. Terrance Martin finished the chapter on the animal remains from 15 features from the Zimmerman site, Grid A (1970-71 excavations) (La Salle County, IL), which were reanalyzed for a volume that is being assembled and edited by Robert F. Mazrim for the "Studies in Archaeology" series of the Illinois State Archaeological Survey. Dr. Martin identified animal remains from five Early Historic sugar maple sites in Michigan's Upper Peninsula in the Hiawatha National Forest just west of St. Ignace that were investigated by Forest Service archaeologists John Franzen and Eric Drake. This work will be presented at the Midwest Archaeological Conference in Champaign in October. Dr. Martin continues the zooarchaeological analysis of the late prehistoric (late Fisher and Huber phases) Hoxie Farm site (11CK4), a habitation site located south of Chicago. The Upper Mississippian site was mitigated by ITARP/ISAS for IDOT between 2001 and 2003. Currently, more than 13,400 records have been entered on animal remains (through Feature 1593).
Dr. Jonathan Reyman submitted a manuscript entitled "The Feather Distribution Project: Applied Archaeology and Anthropology to Preserve Traditional Pueblo Religions, Native Bird Populations, and Their Habitats" to the University of Utah Press (157 pages) (September 25).
Dr. Robert Warren presented "Multivariate Ordination of Freshwater Mussel Faunas in the Illinois River Basin, Illinois: Cultural and Environmental Correlates" in a special session on mollusk remains at the International Conference of Archaeozoology in San Rafael, Mendoza, Argentina (September 24).
Pat Burg lent a volume of the Transactions of the Illinois Academy of Science to Elizabeth Bazan for a temporary exhibition in the Museum's lower level. Pat also assisted Elizabeth with primary research on the Tilden Meteorites, including photographs, from the Director's Correspondence in the Museum Archives collection. Pat also provided specimen accessions records from the Museum Archives to Dr. Meredith Mahoney and David Bohlen.
Dr. Bonnie Styles and Mona Colburn hosted an organizational workshop for an NSF grant-funded project to incorporate archaeofaunal databases from the interior Eastern United States into the Digital Archaeological Record (tDAR) and conduct research of increasing use of aquatic resources in the Archaic Period. Dr. Sarah Neusius, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, is the Principal Investigator and Dr. Bonnie Styles is the Co-Principal Investigator for this project. Dr. Neusius and her graduate student Allen Huber, Dr. Kate Spielmann and Dr. Tiffany Clark (Arizona State University) participated in the organizational meeting. Dr. Keith Kintigh and Adam Brin (Arizona State University) and Dr. Eric Grimm participated in the part of the meeting via Webex.
During the fall migration, Zoology Curator H. David Bohlen continued his monitoring of birds in Sangamon County. He documented 45 new arrivals of the 176 species totaled in 249 field hours. The second county record for Ash-throated Flycatcher, a western Species, occurred at the Lincoln Land banding area (banded on September 29, and Bohlen photographed it September 30). Most species were in moderate to low numbers especially shorebirds, marsh birds, and grassland species. A few ducks, grebes, and one loon arrived. Many of the fall arrivals were later than usual.
Drs. Angela Perri and Terrance Martin met with Ken Farnsworth to review old photographs of cut mandibles and maxillae from Middle Woodland mound sites to verify or revise species identifications (September 19). Drs. Perri and Martin are collaborating with Farnsworth on an article re-examining Burial 22 at Elizabeth Mound 7 in Pike County, Illinois.
Dr. Everett Cashatt and Ed DeWalt, aquatic entomologist at the Illinois Natural History Survey, collaborated to produce a list of aquatic insects to be submitted to the Illinois Department of Natural Resources for their Species of Concern document. This list may be used for reference in funding future surveys and research on these Illinois species.
A recent article published in Trends in Ecology & Evolution 29:433-434 reported a bimodal pattern in the frequency distribution of the maximum heights of woody plants and developed a theory to explain the pattern. Understanding the frequency distribution of the maximum heights of woody plants is critical to understanding assembly rules of plant communities. Dr. Hong Qian and his collaborator Dr. Robert E. Ricklefs (University of Missouri-St. Louis) conducted a study testing the generality of the bimodal pattern of woody plant heights. A manuscript resulting from this project has been submitted to Trends in Ecology & Evolution, a top journal in ecology.
At the behest of Dr. Leslie Fay (Rock Valley College, Rockford, IL), who is preparing a manuscript on the Hopwood Farm site in Montgomery County, Dr. Jeffrey Saunders assembled materials summarizing the discovery, excavations, and research. These items include the original discovery of fossils in 1992 by Curtis Hopwood, systematic excavations in 1980 by the ISM focusing on a mastodon specimen, and salvage work in 1990 following torrential rains and flooding.
Northern Michigan University provided a letter of authorization for Dr. Terrance Martin to identify and prepare a technical report on animal remains from the Goose Lake Outlet #3 site (20MQ140), Marquette County, Michigan, a Proto-Historic (AD 1630-1640) encampment (September 10). A co-authored report on the site will be presented at the annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology in a symposium on Great Lakes research organized by Fernanda Neubauer (Ph.D. candidate, University of Wisconsin Madison).
Andrew Boehm, a Ph.D. student at Southern Methodist University in Dallas is working on the isotopic ecology of Paleoindian-age bison in the western plains. He processed samples in Dr. Chris Widga's lab in September.
Geology curators Drs. Chris Widga and Jeff Saunders hosted Dr. Angela Perri of the Department of Human Evolution at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. Dr. Perri was interested in Drs. Widga and Saunders research on dire wolves and early domesticated dogs. Dr. Perri was an R. Bruce McMillan intern at the ISM in 2010.
In the last week of September, Dr. Chris Widga travelled to the University of Nebraska State Museum to document mammoth and mastodon localities in their collections and to sample four specimens for radiocarbon dating, including a specimen from Mammuthus jeffersonii, collected by C.B. Schultz from the vicinity of Annawan, Illinois. This specimen is from the most complete skeleton of this species ever found in Illinois.
Dr. Jonathan Reyman completed the text for the manuscript for a proposed book, "The Feather Distribution Project: Applied Archaeology and Anthropology to Preserve Traditional Pueblo Religions, Native Bird Populations, and Their Habitats." The manuscript is 152 pages in length and will be submitted to a prospective publisher.
Dr. Terrance Martin finished drafting species composition tables for 15 features that were reanalyzed for a chapter on the Zimmerman Site, Grid A (1970-71 excavations) (La Salle County, IL). Dr. Martin's chapter will be part of a volume that is being assembled and edited by Robert F. Mazrim that will be published by the Illinois State Archaeological Survey. Dr. Martin continues the zooarchaeological analysis of the late prehistoric (late Fisher and Huber phases) Hoxie Farm (11CK4) habitation site located south of Chicago. The Upper Mississippian site was mitigated by ITARP/ISAS for IDOT between 2001 and 2003. Currently, more than 13,400 records have been entered on animal remains through Feature 1,593. Dr. Martin made editorial corrections to text and tables in the section on the animal remains (Chapter 13) in a revision of the ISAS Research Report No. 27 on the Hoxie Farm Fortified Village (August 15). Dr. Martin continues to advise Joseph Hearns (Western Michigan University) on his master's thesis concerning spatial distributions of the Fort St. Joseph site's archaeofauna and several specific activity areas.
Dr. Terrance Martin participated in Western Michigan University's archaeological field school and presented two zooarchaeology workshop sessions using data from the site of Coalwood, a cord wood lumber camp near Munising, Michigan in the Hiawatha National Forest. The lumber camp was owned by the Cleveland Cliffs Iron Company. It was in operation from 1900-1912 and was occupied by as many as 217 workers, many of whom lived there with their families. The site had been heavily looted and excavations directed by Forest Service archaeologist Eric Drake and Dr. LouAnn Wurst (WMU) attempted to document the extent of the looters' damage and evaluate the remaining site integrity and research potential for understanding the everyday life of these workers and their families. Much of the disturbed materials consist of well-preserved bones from domesticated animals, and the workshop sessions provided the opportunity for the field school students to identify these fragmentary bones by species, anatomical part, and skeletal portion/butchering unit.
Dr. Terrance Martin finished the technical report on three faunal assemblages for sites 20OT283, 20OT3, and 20OT344, which are late prehistoric habitation sites along the lower Grand River in Ottawa County, Michigan that were investigated and/or mitigated by CCRG for the Michigan DOT in 2011. He submitted his report to CCRG to be included in the final completion report to the Michigan DOT. The concluding section features inter-site comparisons to Berrien phase (Upper Mississippian) sites and faunal assemblages in southwestern Michigan as well as to Upper Mississippian sites in northwestern Indiana and the Chicago area.
Dennis Naglich continued preparing a technical report on this summer's excavation of 2.5 m2 of area within the northwestern portion of the Jameson Jenkins lot at the Lincoln Home National Historic Site.
In August, Zoology Curator H. David Bohlen continued his monitoring of birds in Sangamon County, during the tail end of nesting period and the beginning of the fall migration. Post-nesting dispersal of herons again this year was very low. There were a few Great Egrets, but only one Little Blue Heron and two Snowy Egrets. Ducks that were seen (both the teals and Shoveler) arrived late. The most unusual bird of the month was a Mississippi Kite (juvenile) at the south end of Lake Springfield. A few shorebirds continued to trickle through the county with rains keeping the water levels too high to hold any numbers of birds (only small numbers of 14 species were found). Bohlen noted 10 species of flycatchers, 6 species of swallows, and 20 species of warblers migrating in August. In total, he observed 148 species of birds in August during 203 field hours.
Dr. Everett Cashatt submitted the final report for the 2014 Survey of the Hine's Emerald Dragonfly to the Illinois Department of Natural Resources. Several team members of the Missouri Hine's Emerald Recovery Team, including Dr. Cashatt, are working on a draft paper on the mark-recapture study of Hine's Emerald Dragonfly at Kay Branch, and Johnson's Shut-ins State Park, Reynolds County, MO.
Dr. Robert Warren examined a freshwater mussel collection from a Late Woodland occupation at the O'Donnell site (11JY290) to determine which ecophenotypes of Amblema plicata and Fusconaia flava are represented. The analysis confirmed that large-river forms are represented in both cases: A. p. peruviana and F. f. undata. With these identifications in hand, Dr. Warren revised all of his statistical analyses correlating mussel habitat scores (UNIO program) with detrended correspondence analysis coordinates (DECORANA program) for shell samples from archaeological sites in the Illinois River Basin. Graphs illustrating these relationships were also revised. This research is part of a larger project for which he prepared a preliminary presentation (Freshwater Mussel Faunas in the Illinois River Basin: Compositional Variation and Change) for a special session on mollusk remains at the International Conference of Archaeozoology (ICAZ) in San Rafael, Argentina (Sept 22-27).
On behalf of the Geology Section, Museum Director Dr. Bonnie Styles sent a letter of invitation to Dr. Sergey Leshchinskiy, Department of Paleontology and Historical Geology, Tomsk State University, Tomsk, Russia, to come to the ISM Research and Collections Center to study the Geology collections this fall (October or November) to facilitate his research of mammoths and mastodons. Dr. Leshchinskiy met Dr. Widga at the International Mammoth Conference in Greece in May, and Dr. Widga will act as collections coordinator for his research.
Dr. Eric Grimm has continued work on software development for the Neotoma Paleoecology Database, focusing on the input of rodent midden and faunal data. In August, he conducted six WebEx sessions to train database stewards in the use of the software.
One of the most consistent patterns in biogeography is that species richness generally peaks where climates are warm and wet and declines as climates become colder and drier. Although the gradient of declining species richness with increasing environmental harshness in general and latitude in particular has been known for over two centuries, the mechanisms underlying the gradient remain poorly understood. The tropical conservatism hypothesis has been proposed to explain why warm, wet tropical regions harbor more species than colder, drier regions but the hypothesis has been rarely tested. Curator of Botany Dr. Hong Qian is testing this hypothesis with data on tree species from Asia. He is working on a manuscript reporting the results of the study.
Seven additional mammoth bone samples were submitted to the University of Arizona AMS lab as part of the NSF-funded Proboscidean chronology and paleoecology project. These samples come from purported late mammoths in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa.
Dr. Chris Widga submitted two sets of samples for radiocarbon dating. The first set, submitted to Aeon Labs (Tucson, AZ), consisted of two Stag Moose specimens (Argyle, IA and Big Bone Lick, KY) that are part of a large review of this taxon in Midwestern Quaternary sites (collaboration with Matt G. Hill, Iowa State University). A sample from a recently donated elk (Vlahovich Elk, Sugar Creek, Logan County, IL) was also submitted.
A manuscript by Geology adjunct Dr. Dennis Lawler (DVM) and curator Dr. Chris Widga on the paleopathology of dogs from the Cherokee Sewer Site was accepted for publication by the International Journal of Paleopathology. The Cherokee Sewer Site in northwestern Iowa is one of the best documented early Plains Archaic assemblages in Iowa (~6500 BP). The faunal assemblage is dominated by bison, but canid remains are also common. This research describes a case of hypertrophic osteopathy in a large canid (likely a domesticated dog) from the site, as well as possible evidence of canid nutritional deficiencies.
The Neotoma Paleoecology Database is a collaborative project funded the NSF Geoinformatics Program. The ISM and Penn State are the two lead institutions. The project has a number of working groups, including one for rodent middens, which are important fossil archives in desert regions. In the American Southwest, packrats (Neotoma) are the primary midden builders; although other rodents construct similar middens in other parts of the world. These middens are especially known for plant macrofossils; however, they also contain animal bones and often pollen. The Neotoma Midden Working Group is charged with developing a strategy for incorporating midden data into Neotoma. The working group held a workshop at Penn State on July 28-30, which Dr. Eric Grimm attended. The workshop included scientists from both North and South America (the Atacama Desert in Chile is rich with rodent middens). Grimm has been developing the software used to upload data to the database, and the midden data have a number of different attributes that need to be accommodated.
Paleontological and archaeological work in western Missouri at a number of springs sites and at Rodgers Shelter was conducted in the late 1960s and 1970s by personnel who later came to the Illinois State Museum and continued that work at the ISM. The individuals included future director of the Museum, R. Bruce McMillan, as well as James King, Jeffrey Saunders, Rick Purdue, Marvin Kay, and others. This research program initiated the interdisciplinary Landscape History Program at the ISM. On July 21-22, Dr. Chris Widga travelled to western Missouri with former Director McMillan to visit Jones Spring, Trolinger Spring, and Rodgers Shelter to explore the logistics of conducting additional coring and fieldwork at the localities with the potential aim of doing new kinds of radiocarbon and isotopic analyses not yet developed in the 1970s.
In July, H. David Bohlen's monitoring of birds in Sangamon County dealt with breeding species. Since most of the county (83 %) is in agriculture, birds are left with little space in which to nest. Even places that are set aside specifically for wildlife are mowed too often and at the wrong time. DNR's schedule for mowing is after August 1. This is probably too early and destroys lots of young and the insects they feed on. In addition, most are areas also mowed in June and July. Many agencies and private citizens spray herbicides, insecticides, and pesticides. These not only kill some birds outright, but expose the bird nests, kill the insects they feed on, and limit the number of young birds they can produce. Humans should not spray the environment, only themselves and their abodes. Bohlen also noted the very low numbers of butterflies, especially Monarchs, and other insects this summer. Two bird species dropped out of Carpenter Park Nature Preserve this summer - Kentucky Warbler and Summer Tanager. This could be due to mosquito spraying. Also observed in July, were 10 species of fall migrant shorebirds, two species of gulls, and three species of terns. All together 126 species were seen in a total of 179 hours of field work.
On July 16, Dr. Leslie Fey (Rock Island Community College, Rock Island, Illinois) visited the RCC for research pertaining to his analysis of the fossil assemblage from Hopwood Farm, notably the collection (primarily screen-washable material containing gastropods and small vertebrate fossil remains) made by Dr. Neal Woodman in 1988. Dr. Fey and and Dr. Jeffrey Saunders coauthored a book-length treatment of the Pleistocene fossil vertebrates from Illinois. He is also coauthor with Dr. Brandon Curry (Illinois State Geological Survey/Prairie Research Institute, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) and others of a comprehensive manuscript discussing the results of research (commencing in January 1979 and continuing) at the Hopwood Farm locality.
Dr. Jonathan Reyman submitted the manuscript for his article, "The 150th Anniversary of the Battle of Brice's Crossroads, Mississippi: A Parson's Perspective," to the Chase Camp Gazette (July 15).
Dr. Everett Cashatt has spearheaded research into the endangered species, Hine's Emerald Dragonfly for the past several years. The primary purpose of this year's Illinois Hine's Emerald Dragonfly (HED) survey was to confirm breeding habitat outside of the Des Plaines River drainage. Presently all known breeding sites for Hine's Emerald Dragonfly (HED) are located in the Des Plaines River drainage near industrial development. During a typical season HED emerges and begins to breed near the second or third week of June. This year, because of the late rainfall and cool weather in northeastern Illinois, the emergence was near the end of June, so we scheduled surveys for potential breeding sites in early July. Richard Day and Dr. Paul Switzer spent several hours surveying at each of the following sites: Boloria Fen and Sedge Meadow, Boone Creek Fen, Wheeler Fen Land and Water Reserve, and Alden Sedge Meadow, all of which are mostly in McHenry County. Of the five sites visited, two areas were identified as suitable for Hine's, one of which Hine's had been observed by other visitors before and after our visit. We were able to classify three of the fens as Low or Very Low suitability for Hine's emerald, due to dry conditions, encroachment by Reed Canary Grass, and surrounding human development. However, the presence of some suitable sites, in combination with observations of Hine's at one location, makes it seem likely that an established Hine's population may be in this area. We suggest that future surveys be conducted on additional potentially suitable fens in the vicinity of this year's surveys. Since the adult was found in the northwest part of Cook County, areas in the bordering counties, Kane, McHenry, and Lake, should also be surveyed for potential habitat. Based on a photograph of HED taken by Debra Antlitz near Spring Creek , Forest Preserve District of Cook County, Richard Day, Dr. Switzer, and Marla Garrison surveyed the area near the HED site. Marla Garrison was able to schedule an additional visit with Debra Antlitz and was able to observe a HED on a territorial patrol (reproductive behavior). This new site is approximately 34 miles from the nearest HED breeding site. Finding HED near Spring Creek (Fox River drainage) is a significant discovery and a major step toward developing a more stable and secure population of HED in Illinois.
On July 14, Dr. Jodie O'Gorman, Chairman of the Anthropology Department at Michigan State University began a one-year sabbatical at the Research and Collections Center. She is preparing manuscripts for publication focusing on various aspects of her collaborative research with Dr. Michael Conner (Dickson Mounds Museum) based on their excavations at the mid-14th century Morton Village site. Working with Dr. Conner and other colleagues and students, Dr. O'Gorman's writing will examine topics such as migration, foodways, ritual, and the nature and special layout of the multi-ethnic community.
Angela Goebel-Bain continued her research on Illinois topics for the second floor redevelopment and her fashion history research for the Bevier website exhibition.
Dr. Jonathan Reyman continued work throughout July on the manuscript for a proposed book, "The Feather Distribution Project: Applied Archaeology and Anthropology to Preserve Traditional Pueblo Religions, Native Bird Populations, and Their Habitats." The manuscript is currently 103 pages in length, about 50% complete. Dr. Jonathan Reyman made a research trip to the Southwest United States in conjunction with the Feather Distribution Project.
Dorothy Washburn and colleagues (Dorothy K., William N. Washburn, Petia A. Shipkova, and Mary Ann Pelleymounter) published their research based on chemical analyses undertaken on objects in the Museum archaeological collections at the RCC and at Dickson Mounds Museum ("Chemical Analysis of Cacao Residues in Archaeological Ceramics from North American: Consideration of Contamination, Sample Size and Systematic Controls." Journal of Archaeological Science 50:191-207. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2014.07.011).
Dr. Eric Grimm spent two weeks (July 7-18) in the field excavating a cave site in the Black Hills, South Dakota, with former ISM Geology Curator Dr. Russell Graham, now director of the Museum of Earth and Mineral Sciences at Penn State. The crew comprised about 20 students and volunteers from Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Colorado. The site actually has two pit caves called Parker's Pit and Don's Gooseberry Pit. Both pit caves have served as traps for animals and contain a wealth of fossils, primarily small mammals and herps, as the cave openings are small. Parker's Pit also has well preserved pollen. Ancient DNA extracted from collared lemmings from Don's Gooseberry Pit dating to about 17,000-18,000 years ago indicates that this species is Dicrostonyx richardsoni. Paleontologists have always assumed that the species of collared lemming south of the ice sheet during the last glacial maximum was today's high Arctic species Dicrostonyx groenlandicus, but often identified as a Siberian species Discrostonyx torquatus. Modern DNA studies have shown that the North American high Arctic species is not Discrostonyx torquatus, and now the aDNA studies from Don's Gooseberry Pit indicate that, in fact, the species south of the ice sheet was probably not the high Arctic species at all. Today Dicrostonyx richardsoni occurs in a very restricted range just of west of Hudson Bay in a forest-tundra environment that, in fact, is more like the environment reconstructed for glacial times from other fossil evidence. During glacial times, Dicrostonyx richardsoni was probably much more widespread than today.
Faunal research for the Grand Haven Bypass Highway Project (Southwestern Michigan) continued under the direction of Dr. Terrance Martin. Sites 20OT283, 20OT3, and 20OT344 are late prehistoric habitation sites along the lower Grand River in Ottawa County, Michigan, that were investigated and/or mitigated by CCRG for the Michigan DOT in 2011. All sections of the technical report on the three faunal assemblages by Dr. Martin are finished except for the concluding discussion centered on inter-site comparisons to other Berrien phase sites and faunal assemblages in southwestern Michigan. Dr. Martin continued the zooarchaeological analysis of the late prehistoric (late Fisher and Huber phases) from the Hoxie Farm Site, located south of Chicago in Cook County. This Upper Mississippian site was mitigated by ITARP/ISAS for IDOT between 2001 and 2003. By the end of July, more than 13,400 records had been entered on animal remains through Feature 1,593. Under the supervision of Dr. Martin, Autumn Beyer (graduate student at Illinois State University) finished identifying animal remains from the Kuhne site (Putnam County, Illinois) at the ISM for her master's thesis project. During July, she wrote her thesis proposal and constructed species composition tables for the faunal assemblage. Dr. Martin finished verifying Joseph Hearns' (Western Michigan University) identifications of animal remains from excavation unit N25W2 at the Fort St. Joseph site (Niles, Michigan) as part of his master's thesis research.
Visiting scholar Dr. Xiaozhong Huang of Lanzhou University, China, has completed his one year (July 3, 2013 to July 4, 2014) visit to the ISM RCC. Dr. Huang is a palynologist/paleoecologist and was hosted by Director of Sciences, Dr. Eric Grimm. During his time in Illinois, he prepared three papers for publication with assistance from Dr. Grimm. These papers are in various stages of submission and review.
Dr. Terrance Martin, Dennis Naglich, and the National Park Service's Cultural Resource Diversity Internship Program intern Shawn Fields (graduate student in anthropology at UIUC) conducted an excavation of 2.5 m2 of area within the northwestern portion of the Jameson Jenkins lot at the Lincoln Home National Historic Site from June 12 through July 3. Chris Young (DNR Communications) made a short digital video at the site on July 2 and it premiered on the DNR website and the Museum's Facebook page. During July, the artifacts and animal remains were analyzed at the RCC by Naglich and Fields, and work on the technical report was initiated. Timothy Townsend (Lincoln Home National Historic Site) met with Dennis Naglich, Shawn Fields, and Claire Martin on the project in the RCC (July 30).
On June 24, Dr. Bonnie Styles finalized negotiations for a half and half split for Nick Klobuchar's work on the archaeological site file. The Museum will cover half and federal funds from the Lands Unsuitable for Mining Program (LUMP), administered through DNR's Mines and Minerals Section, will cover the other half. This strategy ensures at least half-time support for maintenance of the site file should LUMP funds be reduced or eliminated. The Museum digitized and maintains the site file. It contains information on almost 60,000 sites that is vital to archaeological research and cultural resource management.
Dr. Everett Cashatt conducted a mark-recapture study of Hine's emerald dragonflies the week of June 15-20 at Johnsons Shut-Inns State Park in Reynolds County, Missouri to estimate the size of the population. Individual dragonflies were netted and uniquely marked with colored paint markers to indicate the date they were netted and released. Daily, from 8:00 a.m. to noon five to six people netted and marked 110 Hine's emerald dragonflies over the 5-day period. Re-sightings of those marked on previous days were also recorded to estimate the population size at that site. The data are presently under analysis and will be incorporated with last year's study for a publication.
Dr. Eric Grimm is developing the software interface for uploading new data to the Neotoma Paleoecology Database (www.neotomadb.org). In June, he conducted four WebEx sessions to remotely train database "stewards" in the use of this software interface.
The pace of data upload to the Neotoma Paleoecology database is quickening, with 148 datasets validated and uploaded from the ISM in June.
Dr. Meredith Mahoney conducted a number of analyses on the genetics dataset for the dragonfly genus Somatochlora, looking at relationships among species. ISM research associate Tim Vogt presented the results at the annual meetings of the Dragonfly Society of the Americas, June 13-15.
On June13, Dr. Bonnie Styles, Dennis Lawler, Dr. Chris Widga, and Dr. Jane Buikstra (Center for American Archeology and Arizona State University) met to discuss desires to convene a group to discuss interdisciplinary research of disease processes in animals and humans. The group is potentially considering a project on tuberculosis, which is expressed in humans and other animals, is recognizable on skeletal elements, and has great time depth in the archaeological record.
Dr. Terrance Martin, Dennis Naglich, and CRDIP intern Shawn Fields (graduate student in anthropology at UIUC) conducted an excavation of 2.5 m2 of area within the northwestern portion of the Jameson Jenkins lot at the Lincoln Home National Historic Site beginning on June 12. This project was a continuation of a limited archaeological investigation that occurred last June (2013) that involved the exploratory excavation of two adjacent 1 x 1 meter units to a depth of ca. 3 feet below the modern ground surface. An extensive zone of a deeply buried hand-made bricks, mortar, and plaster was encountered in the southwestern-most excavation unit, and preliminary field impressions suggest that associated artifacts are primarily from the early half of the nineteenth century. Hundreds of National Park site visitors stopped to witness and learn about the work, and there was abundant press coverage (see Publicity section).
Bob Sill continued working on a new exhibition, PROTEXT ART: When Words Enter Visual Art selecting artists, locking in loan requests, and conducting studio visits with perspective exhibitors.
Mona Colburn and Dr. Chris Widga submitted revisions to an article that will be published in the journal Quaternary Research. This article describes paleontological work undertaken under contract with the National Park Service in 2008 to analyze materials from Mammoth Cave, Kentucky that would be impacted by trail rehabilitation activities. The article describes significant late Quaternary fossil assemblages in the cave spanning at least the last 100,000 years. It also explores the diet and habitat of bats in the region during the last interglacial period.
Dr. Chris Widga received the results for three 14C samples from Aeon Labs in Tucson, Arizona. The Woodyard bison from Fulton County, Illinois dates to 490 ± 25 BP. The bison also has a C4 dietary signature, which identifies it as the earliest dated Illinois bison to be an obligate grazer. A Stag Moose skull from Woodbury County, Iowa dates to 11,480 ± 60 BP. This specimen will be integrated into a review of Iowa Cervalces (collaboration with M. G. Hill, Iowa State University). Finally, a black bear from the Embarras River dates to 210 ± 25 BP.
H. David Bohlen's bird monitoring in June dealt with nesting species in Sangamon County. Of the 125 species observed in June, at least 100 were suspected of breeding in the county (many of these were confirmed). However, there were some lingering waterfowl (Lesser Scaup & Common Mergansers), and a few shorebirds were still migrating north (Semipalmated Plover & Semipalmated Sandpipers). By the end of June a Marbled Godwit was migrating south. Unfortunately a kill of 80-100 Chimney Swifts occurred at Lake Springfield Dam on June 11. The factors causing this kill (it has happened before) are cool, rainy weather, in which the swifts fly lower trying to obtain food for young in the nests. They mass at the dam, because the water going over the dam causes a small aquatic insect to fly and the swifts feed on this insect (there being little other food). The trouble is caused when the swifts fly up over the causeway and the human traffic fails to slow down killing the swifts. Signs have been put up by City Water Light & Power, but very few people notice the birds or slow down. The kill zone along the road is not that long and if a series flags were put on top of the bridge abutment, the swifts would probably fly over the traffic (Dave contacted Ted Meches at CWLP about this). Not only do the adult swifts get killed, their young starve in the nests. Bohlen conducted 154 hours of field work in June.
Dr. Terrance Martin continued writing sections of text for the technical report on the faunal assemblages from sites 20OT283, 20OT3, and 20OT344. These late prehistoric habitation sites along the lower Grand River in Ottawa County, Michigan were investigated and/or mitigated by CCRG for the Michigan DOT in 2011. Dr. Terrance Martin continued the zooarchaeological analysis of the late prehistoric (late Fisher and Huber phases) of the Hoxie Farm site (11CK4), a habitation site located south of Chicago. The Upper Mississippian site was mitigated by ITARP/ISAS for IDOT between 2001 and 2003. By the end of June, more than 12,400 records had been entered on animal remains through Feature 1,400. Dr. Terrance Martin identified the last few specimens of animal remains from the Moses Camp site in the Hiawatha National Forest of northern Michigan and updated species composition tables for Forest archaeologist Eric Drake. Under the supervision of Dr. Martin, Autumn Beyer (graduate student at Illinois State University) finished identifying animal remains from the Kuhne site Middle Woodland faunal assemblage (Putnam County, Illinois) as her master's thesis project and continued entering her findings on a database. Dr. Martin continued verifying Joseph Hearns' (Western Michigan University) identifications of animal remains from the Fort St. Joseph site (Niles, Michigan) as part of his master's thesis research.
Bob Sill met with Allison Lacherion, Stanley Bly, and Thom Whalen to select work and secure loan requests for works to be included in his upcoming exhibition, PROTEXT: When Words Enter Visual Art.
H. David Bohlen's bird monitoring continued with spring migration, in which 50 more migrants were added in May out of 201 species observed in 269 field hours. It was dry most of the month, with very few shorebirds. Passerine migration was spotty, with Lake Springfield unusually poor and areas such as Carpenter Park Nature Preserve producing the most birds. Some birds arrived late, and most migrants left this county early. Even some common birds such as Indigo Bunting and Killdeer had lower numbers than usual. Some rarer birds were seen such as Neotropic Cormorant, White-faced Ibis, Tropical/Couch's Kingbird (could not be identified to species), and Fish Crow; all of which could be classified as southern birds moving north.
Zoology Curator Dr. Meredith Mahoney prepared a short presentation of slides and text summarizing her genetic research and results on Hine's Emerald Dragonfly titled "Genetics studies on Hine's Emerald Dragonfly in Missouri." Dr. Everett Cashatt presented the summary as part of a training workshop on dragonflies he gave in May. Dr. Mahoney conducted a number of analyses to make evolutionary trees showing relationships of dragonflies in the genus Somatochlora. Research associate Tim Vogt will present the trees as part of an upcoming meeting presentation on their research.
Drs. Chris Widga and Meredith Mahoney hosted Tom Clarke, a scanning electron technician from Cleaner Image, Inc., on May 15-16. Mr. Clarke installed the new ISM scanning electron microscope, a Topcon ABT-32, and trained Mahoney and Widga in its operation. It was transferred to the Museum by SIU-E.
Botany Curator Dr. Hong Qian collaborated with Dr. John J. Wiens of University of Arizona, Dr. Jian Zhang of University of Alberta (Canada), and Dr. Yangjian Zhang of Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research (China) in conducting a study, which determines the relative importance of ecological and evolutionary processes in influencing species richness patterns of trees across North America. A manuscript resulting from this study was submitted to Ecography, a top international journal on ecology and biogeography.
Dr. Eric Grimm is the principal investigator of the NSF funded Neotoma Paleoecological Database, and he has been developing the software in collaboration with the IT team at Penn State to remotely upload data to the database. The software is now operational, and Dr. Grimm has been training "data stewards" in how to use the software via online WebEx meetings. He held two of these sessions on May 12 and 30. Feedback from these meetings is important for further development and refinement of the software interface.
Dennis F. Lawler, (1,2) Richard H. Evans, (2) Jennifer A. Reetz, (3) Jill E. Sackman, (4) Gail K. Smith (3)
(1) Illinois State Museum Collections Center, 1011 East Ash St, Springfield IL 62703(2) Pacific Marine Mammal Center, 20612 Laguna Canyon Rd, Laguna Beach CA 92651 (3) Department of Clinical Studies, School of Veterinary Medicine, 3900 Spruce St., Philadelphia PA 19104(4) Numerof & Associates, Inc., Four City Place Drive, Suite 430, St. Louis MO 63141
ABSTRACT: We report skeletal features that are consistent with hip dysplasia, as it is described in domestic dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) in a museum specimen of a red fox (Vulpes vulpes). Morphological identifiers included shallow acetabulae, femoral head flattening and subluxation, caudal curvilinear osteophyte, circumferential femoral head osteophyte, osteophytes of the acetabular margin, and femoral neck remodeling. Hip dysplasia has low-to-moderate quantitative heritability in dogs, while the contributing environmental and epigenetic influences are understood only marginally. Genomic, epigenetic, and environmental influences on hip joints of wild canids are not known. Potential population consequences of hip dysplasia, or hip dysplasia-like conditions, in free-living populations of wild animals, remain speculative. Possible concerns for affected individuals include reduced predatory and breeding efficiency, greater tendency to focus on local prey that are caught most easily, and greater risk as targets for predation. Progressive dissemination of hip joint diseases in a population could raise concerns about sustainability, altered size and density of prey populations, and local invasion by other predators. Our observations suggest a need for new research to better understand the biological nature of the disease(s) that these features represent, as well as suggesting new pathways for the studies of musculoskeletal disorders among Canidae.
PDF available at: http://www.museum.state.il.us/pdfs/HipDysplasiaRedFox.pdf
Dr. Terrance Martin submitted the Application for Permit for Archeological Investigations document to the National Park Service's Midwest Archeological Center (Lincoln, NE) seeking permission to conduct a second season of limited archaeological excavations at the Jameson Jenkins lot at the Lincoln Home National Historic Site (May 7).
Dr. Chris Widga and Kayla Kolis (former Illinois College intern) presented research on Midwestern mammoths and mastodons at the 6th International Conference on Mammoths and their Relatives in Siatista, Greece, May 5-12. Widga spoke on results of NSF-funded efforts to tighten the chronology of extinction in Midwestern proboscideans. Kolis presented a new technique for acquiring stable isotope samples. Nearly 200 people from throughout the world participated in the conference. The conference web site is http://www.mammothconference.com/
During May, Dr. Terrance Martin continued writing sections of text for the technical report on the faunal assemblages for two sites in Michigan. Sites 20OT283 and 20OT3, both late prehistoric habitation sites along the lower Grand River in Ottawa County, Michigan, were mitigated by CCRG for the Michigan DOT. By the end of May, Dr. Martin finished computer database entry of faunal data through Feature 1305 (includes more than 11,900 records) for the late prehistoric (late Fisher and Huber phases) Upper Mississippian Hoxie Farm site (11CK4). This site was mitigated by ITARP/ISAS between 2001 and 2003. Under the supervision of Dr. Martin, Autumn Beyer (graduate student at Illinois State University) continued identifying animal remains from the Kuhne site Middle Woodland faunal assemblage (Putnam County, Illinois) for her master's thesis project. Joseph Hearns (Western Michigan University) continued his master's thesis research of the Fort St. Joseph faunal assemblage. Hearns visited the zooarchaeology laboratory during the third full week of May so that Dr. Martin could assist him and verify his identifications of the archaeological animal remains.
Dr. Robert Warren participated in a magnetometer survey of the Morton Village site in Fulton County with Dr. Michael Conner and Dr. Timothy Horsley on April 29.
Dr. Chris Widga traveled to Andrews University, Berrien Springs, Michigan to examine the Prillwitz Mammoth. This mounted skeleton was excavated in the 1960s from southwestern Michigan and is about 80% complete. Widga also gave a seminar to an upper level Biology class.
Dr. Chris Widga submitted seven samples for radiocarbon dating to Aeon labs in Tucson, Arizona. These samples include: a Fulton County bison, American Lion from Arizona, horse, camel, and stag moose from western Iowa, and a bear from the Embarras River, Illinois.
Dr. Terrance Martin attended annual meetings of the Conference on Michigan Archaeology (April 12) and the Michigan Archaeological Society (April 13), both in Lansing, Michigan.
For a project with the Ouachita National Forest in western Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma, Dr. Terrance Martin finished computer database entry for faunal assemblages from twenty-two sites in eastern Oklahoma and six sites in western Arkansas. Dr. Martin returned the faunal collections to Meeks Etchieson (Forest Archeologist, Ouachita National Forest) in Hot Springs, Arkansas, on April 22. During April, Dr. Martin continued writing text for the technical report on the faunal assemblages from Sites 20OT283 and 20OT3, both late prehistoric habitation sites along the lower Grand River in Ottawa County, Michigan, which were mitigated by CCRG for the Michigan DOT. Dr. Martin is analyzing late prehistoric (Fisher and Huber phase) Upper Mississippian animal remains from the Hoxie Farm site (11CK4), mitigated by ITARP/ISAS between 2001 and 2003. Computer database entry has been finished through Feature 1226. Under the supervision of Dr. Martin, Autumn Beyer (graduate student at Illinois State University) continued identifying animal remains from the Kuhne site Middle Woodland faunal assemblage (Putnam County, Illinois) one day per week as part of her master's thesis project. Dr. Martin was a reader (along with Dr. Christopher Fennell, UIUC and Dr. Jane Buikstra, Arizona State University) for Taylor Thornton for her Anthropology Senior Honors Thesis at UIUC on Extra-Moundbuilding Activities in the Floodplain: A Zooarchaeological Perspective from the Mound House Site (11GE7).
Dr. Everett Cashatt submitted the final paper work for the Federal Permit for study of the endangered Hine's Emerald Dragonfly for the 2014-2015 seasons. A mark-recapture study is planned for mid-June of this year in Reynolds County, Missouri. The latter half of April was devoted toward developing a Hine's emerald dragonfly workshop presentation and handouts for biologists that will be working on the Hine's Emerald project in the future.
Bob sill continues researching artists for his PROTEXT exhibition and has confirmed loans from the Carl Hammer Gallery and Zolla Lieberman Gallery.
Drs. Bonnie Styles and Terrance Martin attended 79th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology in Austin, Texas in April. Dr. Martin presented a paper co-authored with Dennis Lawler on pathological deer bones from French Colonial sites (60 attended). He also read a paper authored by Dr. Michael Wiant on the contributions of archaeologist Dr. Stuart Struever (40 attended). Dr. Styles participated in a mentoring session where she reviewed curriculum vita for students interested in museum careers. She also met with Dr. John Yellen, National Science Foundation Program Advisor for Archaeology, on a grant proposal submitted by Dr. Styles and Dr. Sarah Neusius through Indiana University of Pennsylvania to put archaeofaunal data from Archaic Period sites in the Eastern United States into the Digital Archaeological Record and test hypotheses about use of aquatic fauna. Dr. Styles was also an invited guest at the SAA Donor Reception on April 26.
Pat Burg met with Katie Barker, DNR Grants Officer on April 7. Ms. Barker used files and notebooks from the Museum Grants Program archive collection. She was interested in learning about the history of the program. She assisted curator Meredith Mahoney in locating historical information about the O.S. Biggs transitional exhibit and accession records and SIU Professor, Mark Wagner, with descriptive material for the five Henry Worthen field notebooks in the ISM Archive collection. He was interested in the 1866 Rock Art Site, and will make a trip later to view the notebooks and take non-flash digital images.
H. David Bohlen's monitoring of spring bird migration for April produced seventy-five additional migrants out of the 189 species found. Most of the waterfowl passed on north. Dry cool conditions in April generated very few marsh birds and shorebirds, and retarded the arrivals of migrant land birds (songbirds). Total time spent in the field was 276 hours.
In April, Shawn Fields accepted the Cultural Resources Diversity Internship for the second year of the ISM's archaeological investigation of the Jenkins Lot at the Lincoln Home National Historic Site. Ms. Fields is a first-year graduate student in Anthropology at UIUC, has a bachelor's degree from Wayne State University, and was a crew member on the 2011 NFS-REU New Philadelphia Project.
Angela Goebel-Bain continues researching Illinois history topics for the second floor redevelopment.
Drs. Bonnie Styles, Chris Widga, Meredith Mahoney, and Terrance Martin and Beth Shea attended the 2014 Emiquon Science Symposium at Dickson Mounds Museum on March 27. A poster presented by Chris Widga, Meredith Mahoney, Eric Grimm, Alan Harn, Dennis Lawler, Terry Martin, Bonnie Styles, Robert Warren, and Mike Wiant on "The Use of Natural History Collections to Inform Baseline Ecological Conditions: Case Studies from Paleontology, Archaeology, and Historical Zoology" was presented at the meeting. Approximately eighty scientists, students, and other interested individuals attended the symposium and poster session, including Chancellor Susan Koch from the University of Illinois, Springfield.
Pat Burg assisted Chris Widga in trying to locate accession information about the "Lincoln's Elm Tree" that was located on the property of Lincoln's Home. Pat did not find any information (in the Accessions Historical Files or Director Files) about the specimen, as it had not been donated to the Museum previously. However, John McGreggor, Acting Director of the ISM, took samples of the tree and generated data. There are photos in the ISM photo collection depicting this activity and a Living Museum article as well. The specimen is now accessioned in the Anthropology Department.
On March 24, Dr. Bonnie Styles and Dr. Eric Grimm met with Dr. Jerry Weinberg, Associate Provost for Research and Dean of the Graduate School at SIU-E and Dr. Susan Morgan, Associate Dean of Research for the Graduate School to discuss potential collaboration for research and education. Drs. Styles and Grimm gave them a tour of the Research and Collections Center. Dr. Robert Warren provided information on the ISM Brown Bag series to Dr. Susan Morgan and Dr. Jerry Weinberg of Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, and remarks suggest that the Brown Bag series may become a vehicle for promoting research interaction between ISM and SIUE. Dr. Jonathan Reyman provided a brief overview of The Feather Distribution Project. Dr. Terrance Martin shared examples of research projects in the zooarchaeology laboratory and showed examples of anthropological collections in the Anthropology Collections Range. Other curators presented their collections and research.
Pat Burg assisted Research Associate George Godfrey by locating sources for the Potawatomi Emigration Muster Rolls. The Clarke Historical Library at University of Michigan contains an archival collection called, The James A. Clifton Native American Research Collection. Pat contacted the archivist about several primary source materials on George's behalf. Pat located other items at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Illinois State University from the National Archives: Records of the Office of Indian Affairs; Registries of Letters Received: 1824-1880.
On March 21-26, Robert Hasselwander, a Ph.D. student with Dr. Francisca Oboh-Ikuenobe at the Missouri University of Science & Technology in Rolla visited the ISM palynology lab to process samples from cores collected last October from Cypress Pond, in southeastern Missouri. Dr. Eric C. Grimm collected the cores with Hasselwander, and the cores are stored at the RCC. Grimm and Pietra Mueller trained Hasselwander in the laboratory procedures for pollen and loss-on-ignition analyses, and Hasselwander then processed samples from Cypress Pond for his dissertation research. The palynology laboratory at Missouri S&T is focused on much older materials for which the laboratory techniques are quite different. Grimm also assisted Hasselwander with identifications of pollen types occurring in the samples.
Pat Burg assisted the Art Department by researching the WPA Federal Art Project and associated photographs. The photographs depict artists creating their work, and were part of the Federal Depository Program. Pat contacted various staff at the Illinois State Library, including some retired employees because the photographs in the Museum's collection were originally part of the State Library collection.
Angela Goebel-Bain continues her research on Illinois history for the second floor redevelopment and fashion history for the Bevier website exhibit.
On March 10-14, Nathan Reese, a Master's degree student with Dr. Luci Kohn at SIU-Edwardsville visited the RCC to select specimens for his thesis research on morphological variation in modern and archaeological deer. Drs. Meredith Mahoney and Terry Martin assisted Reese in this endeavor.
Zoology curator David Bohlen's bird monitoring in Sangamon County continued in March. Cold weather caused a delay in the spring migration. Waterfowl continued on Lake Springfield, though the wintering geese and ducks mostly left by the end of the month, and loons, grebes, pelicans, and cormorants arrived in numbers. The few warm days produced a couple of species with southern affinities such as Black Vulture and Fish Crow. Passerines that were due to arrive in March must have been driven further south or suffered some mortality, because many were late in returning this spring. There were 129 species found in March in 238 hours and these were posted to IBET (Illinois Birders Exchanging Thoughts). Several documenting photographs were placed on the Museum's Zoology Facebook page.
Drs. Chris Widga, Jeffrey Saunders, and Stacey Lengyel received results from the University of Arizona Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon lab on mammoth and mastodon specimens from the Great Lakes region. The samples were processed under the auspices of the NSF-funded mammoth and mastodon chronology grant. To date, the chronological dataset assembled through this project has yielded >100 direct, AMS dates on midwestern mammoths and mastodons. Greg Hodgins (University of Arizona, AMS laboratory) is a collaborator on this project.
For a project with the Ouachita National Forest in western Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma, Dr. Terrance Martin finished identifications for the faunal assemblages from twenty-two sites in eastern Oklahoma and six sites in western Arkansas. During March, Dr. Martin drafted species composition tables for the report on the faunal assemblages from Sites 20OT283 and 20OT3 and began writing the technical report. Both of these late prehistoric habitation sites are located along the lower Grand River in Ottawa County, Michigan and were mitigated by CCRG for the Michigan DOT. Dr. Martin continued analyses for late prehistoric (Fisher and Huber phase) Upper Mississippian animal remains from the Hoxie Farm site (11CK4), mitigated by ITARP/ISAS between 2001 and 2003. Computer database entry has been finished through Feature 1226. For the Morton Village (11F2) faunal analysis, Dr. Martin selected samples from the large refuse pit (Feature 224) containing predominately large mammal remains to use in a public workshop at the ISM Lockport Gallery on March 23. He encountered two specimens from paddlefish and included these in a special small display case to take to the Emiquon Science 2014 symposium at the ISM at Dickson Mounds on March 27. Under the supervision of Dr. Martin, Autumn Beyer (graduate student at Illinois State University) continued identifying animal remains from the Kuhne site Middle Woodland faunal assemblage (Putnam County, Illinois) one day per week as part of her master's thesis project.
Dr. Robert Warren suspended his research on the digital indexing of oral history recordings with controlled vocabularies because of other obligations.
Geology Curator Dr. Chris Widga, Research Associate Dennis Lawler, and Mark Flotow CT-scanned ISM fossil specimens at a local hospital on February 26. These specimens included a partial mastodon tusk from Chester, Illinois, (excavated in the 1870s by A. H. Worthen) to examine incremental growth structures, as well as Arctic fox and human remains, which were scanned to assess potential skeletal pathologies. Dr. Meredith Mahoney (Zoology) assisted with the selection of suitable Arctic fox specimens.
Pat Burg sent scans of the Illinois State Museum's AMM archival finding aids to the new executive director of the Association of Midwest Museums, Donna Sack. Scans of AMM meeting minutes from March 2007 – March 2008 were also sent. Ms. Sack's files did not contain minutes from those years. Pat Burg searched for information for Chris Widga about the "Lincoln's Elm" cross section. Pat used the quarterly reports, annual reports, The Living Museum Online, and Director Crantz correspondence files. Pat Burg searched for information about the artist Linton Foersterling for Jim Zimmer. National newspaper files were used to locate obituaries of family members. Additional searches were conducted for Mr. Foersterling's biographical information, including the Archives of the School of Art at Washington University at St. Louis. Work continues to locate photographs depicting artists' work during the WPA. The Museum received photos from the Illinois State Library along with WPA prints in 1983, after the original allocation in 1943 from the Chicago Distribution Center. Pat will contact the Illinois State Library to find out if they have a record of the distribution of the photographs.
Zoology curator David Bohlen's bird monitoring in Sangamon County continued in February monitoring winter birds during a cold and snowy month. Some migration occurred among waterfowl, for example Snow Geese (86,000 on Feb 22), Greater White-fronted Geese (1900 on Feb. 28), Northern Pintail (300 on Feb. 28), and Canvasback (480 on Feb. 22). However, almost all passerines showed little movement and low populations. Thirty Snow Buntings were unusual this far south.
Acting on information from Iowa State Graduate student Pete Eyheralde, Drs. Matt G. Hill (Iowa State University) and Chris Widga sampled a mammoth mandible in the ISU zoology collections for radiocarbon dating. This mammoth shows unusual morphological traits. The mandible is compressed front to back, similar to a woolly mammoth, but the teeth seated in the jaw show characteristics of a Jeffersonian mammoth. This blended morphology may indicate the introgression of two morphologically distinct sub-populations of mammoths, as also indicated by new ancient DNA data.
During the week of February 17-21, Dr. Eric Grimm participated in the fieldwork to collect a sediment core from Fish Lake, Utah. This lake, situated at nearly 9000 feet elevation, lies in graben (valley with faults on both sides) basin, which geological evidence suggests is several million years old. Seismic work indicates at least 100 m of sediment; however, the sediment may be much thicker. Gravimetric surveys underway will hopefully indicate the total sediment depth. The new core is 11 m long and extends to the first "reflector" in the seismic survey. This core will be used in a preliminary study. The eventual goal is to initiate a project for the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program, which, however, requires substantial preliminary investigation. Major funding will be required to obtain a core through the entire sedimentary sequence, which will require the services of a commercial drilling company. Fish Lake is of particular interest not only because it has a long sedimentary record, which appears undisturbed in the section penetrated by seismic studies, but also because it may potentially yield a record of mountain glaciation and mid-latitude climate change rivaling the marine-core records of continental glaciation. Although the lake basin was never completely glaciated, a mountain did extend into the northwest portion of the basin during the last two ice ages and probably during previous glaciations. No record of these earlier glaciations remains on the upland landscape, they are very likely recorded in the lake sediments.
About twenty people participated in the coring, including principal investigators and students. In addition to Dr. Grimm, team members include Drs. Mark Abbott (University of Pittsburgh), Lesleigh Anderson (USGS), Christopher Bailey (College of William & Mary), Andrea Brunelle (University of Utah), Joseph Donovan (West Virginia University), Scott Harris (College of Charleston), David Marchetti (Western State Colorado University), Mitch Power (University of Utah), and Joseph Stoner (Oregon State University).Coring Fish Lake Utah. The coring device is Uwetec corer, which can obtain cores from deep water without core rods.
Drs. Jeffrey Saunders and Chris Widga are part of a collaborative team working on ancient Mammuthus DNA preserved in specimens south of the Laurentide ice sheet. The lead researcher is Jacob Enk (Ancient DNA Centre, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario); other collaborators are Dan Fisher (University of Michigan), Grant Zazula (Yukon Paleontologist), and Hendrick Poinar (McMaster University). Enk sampled over two dozen ISM specimens a few years ago. DNA and morphology of these specimens (and other from across the US) suggest that Woolly, Jeffersonian, and Columbian mammoths from the continental United States were a single biological species exhibiting wide but biogeographically meaningful, morphological variability. Saunders and Widga offered expert opinions as to the morphological identifications of specimens from Wrangle Island, Illinois, and Yukon. In particular, they identified a specimen from Yukon dating to about 780,000 years ago as wooly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius), which may be the earliest representative of this species identified from North America.
Dr. Chris Widga initiated a new research project with collaborator Dr. Matthew G. Hill (Iowa State University) to re-analyze the extensive large mammal assemblage from Peccary Cave, Arkansas. Years of excavation by Dr. Leo Carson Davis and Dr. James H. Quinn have yielded a sizeable vertebrate fauna from the cave; however, the large-mammal portion of this collection has been minimally analyzed. Widga and Hill will receive travel funds from the Iowa Academy of Sciences and Iowa State University to visit Fayettville, AR in November 2014 to examine the collection.
Dr. Robert Warren continued his research on the digital indexing of oral history recordings with controlled vocabularies. He plans to co-author a paper on this topic ("Searching for Spoken Words: Digital Indexing of Oral History Recordings with Controlled Vocabularies" by Robert Warren, Douglas Lambert, Jennifer Palmentiero, Lindsey Barnes, and Kimberly Guise) and submit it to The Oral History Review.
Dr. Chris Widga and Kayla Kolis, an intern from Illinois College, received the first round of results from micromilled samples from a mammoth tooth. The tooth is from Jones Spring, MO and is ~35,000 years old. Kolis collected the samples using a custom-built micromill that facilitates sampling of enamel at a very fine scale (~100 um). These data indicate that this mammoth had a diet dominated by C4 (warm season) grasses throughout the year, and that it acquired its water from surface sources such as streams and small rivers.
Bob Sill continues to research and select artists for his upcoming group thematic exhibition PROTEXT ART: When Words Enter Visual Art.
Botany Curator Dr. Hong Qian and his collaborator Dr. Jian Zhang of the University of Alberta generated an updated time-calibrated family-level phylogeny (evolutionary history) for seed plants in the world, which they used to analyze phylogenetic patterns of life forms of seed plant families. A paper resulting from this project has been accepted by the Journal of Systematics and Evolution.
To supplement work funded in January by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Section 6 for surveys of the federally Endangered Hine's Emerald Dragonfly, Dr. Everett Cashatt submitted a permit amendment to cover additional people and a change in site locations for a mark-recapture study on a population in Missouri. Dr. Cashatt continued to post activity on the Hine's emerald Dragonfly website for approximately 50 people.
For a project with the Ouachita National Forest in western Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma, Dr. Terrance Martin finished identifications for the faunal assemblage from site 34MC665 in eastern Oklahoma and began identifications on site 34MC254. During February, Dr. Martin finished database entries for 20OT283 (total of 2,296 faunal specimen records) and finished identifications and database entries for 20OT3 (total of 415 faunal specimen records). These two late prehistoric habitation sites along the lower Grand River in Ottawa County, Michigan, were mitigated by CCRG for the Michigan DOT. Joseph Hearn (Western Michigan University anthropology graduate student) visited the zooarchaeology laboratory from February 3-7 and worked with Dr. Martin identifying and verifying identifications of animal remains from selected features at the Fort St. Joseph site in Niles, Michigan as part of his master's thesis research. Dr. Martin continued analyses of late prehistoric (Fisher and Huber phase) Upper Mississippian animal remains from the Hoxie Farm site (11CK4), mitigated by ITARP/ISAS between 2001 and 2003. Computer database entry has been finished through Feature 1226 at the main occupation area but no further progress was made during February. Editorial errors were discovered for the Fortified Village report volume, including tables for the chapter on the small faunal assemblage. Martin began reentering the analyzed faunal specimens into a new Excel database in order to discover the source of table inconsistencies. Under the supervision of Dr. Martin, Autumn Beyer (graduate student at Illinois State University) continued identifying animal remains from the Kuhne site Middle Woodland faunal assemblage (Putnam County, IL) one day per week as part of her master's thesis project.
Dr. Terrance Martin finished identifications and database entry (232 records) for the faunal assemblage from site 3MN298, a Caddoan site in western Arkansas for a project with the Ouachita National Forest in western Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma and began identifications on site 34MC665 (Caddo) in eastern Oklahoma. During January, Dr. Martin entered 1,002 records on a database for the analyzed faunal assemblage from site 20OT283, a late prehistoric habitation site along the lower Grand River in Ottawa County, Michigan (mitigated by CCRG for the Michigan DOT). Under the direction of Dr. Martin, computer database entry has been finished through Feature 1226 for late prehistoric (Fisher and Huber phase) Upper Mississippian animal remains from the Hoxie Farm site (11CK4), mitigated by ITARP/ISAS between 2001 and 2003. Dr. Martin verified Jessica Haglund's identifications on animal remains from Feature 43 and 46 flotation samples at the Myer-Dickson site. This is Haglund's master's thesis project for Illinois State University. Under the supervision of Dr. Martin, Autumn Beyer (graduate student at Illinois State University) began analysis of the Middle Woodland faunal assemblage from the Kuhne site in Putnam County, Illinois, as part of her master's thesis project. Doug Carr photographed four pathological white-tailed deer bones from Fort Ouiatenon and Fort St. Joseph sites for use in a PowerPoint presentation at the SAA conference in April and for publications planned by Dr. Martin and Dennis Lawler (January 27).
Dr. Chris Widga and collaborator Matt G. Hill (Iowa State University) submitted a proposal to the Iowa Academy of Sciences to fund radiocarbon dating of Iowa stag-moose (Cervalces) remains. This project is a continuation of past research into the geographic and chronological distribution of stag-moose in the state. Among three samples that they submitted for dating in 2012 were both the youngest and oldest direct-dated stag-moose remains in North America (~12,600 and ~30,000 years before present).
In January, U.S. Fish and Wildlife approved a Section 6 grant proposal submitted by Zoology Curator Dr. Tim Cashatt to continue surveys for the Federally Endangered Hine's Emerald Dragonfly. Dr. Cashatt submitted the proposal in July 2013, and work is scheduled to begin in March 2014.
Zoology curator H. David Bohlen's monumental A Study of the Birds of Sangamon County, Illinois, 1970-2010 was published as the first number of the Illinois State Museum's new Research eSeries. The eSeries publications may be accessed and downloaded for free from the Museum's website: http://www.museum.state.il.us/publications/. As described on the web site, Birds of Sangamon County "documents the dramatic changes in the presence and populations of bird species in Sangamon County. H. David Bohlen's two-part compendium explores environmental change, habitat destruction, and degradation by humans as well as outlines methods, conclusions, and recommendations. It also offers a vast compilation of the county's bird species, many of which have been beautifully photographed and aptly featured in part two of the study." In January, Bohlen documented winter birds in Sangamon County. Unusual was the "wreck" like influx of the sea duck White-winged Scoter. They have an east–west migration (wintering on the East Coast and breeding inland on the Canadian Prairies). As they flew west at the latitude of the Great Lakes, the strong fronts from the north (Polar Vortex), pushed some of them further south (to Lake Springfield), and the prolonged winter induced them to stay. Also there have been more (than ever?) northern gulls (Glaucous Gull, Iceland Gull, & Thayer's Gull) on Lake Springfield this winter, probably for the same reason. Bohlen recorded 108 species for January in 190 hours of observation.
Pat Burg assisted Meredith Mahoney in researching accessions for the albino animal exhibit. Research included searching through activity reports, The Living Museum, Museum annual reports and accession record correspondence.
Dr. Jonathan Reyman finished the final draft of Teocentli, .pdf copies were sent to members, and printed copies were sent to members who requested them and to the four institutions which archive Tecocentli.
The Neotoma Paleoecology Database has several working groups to address various database issues. These working groups have funding from the Neotoma NSF grant for workshops. One of these groups is the Neotoma Age Model Working Group (NAMWoG). Fossils are often obtained from a series of samples from a stratigraphic sequence. From this sequence a number of age determinations may be obtained, in particular radiocarbon dates. A statistical age model may then be applied to determine the ages of individual sample depths, sometimes along with an estimate of the error in the age determination. Radiocarbon dates present a particular problem in that the dates must be calibrated to true calendar years. The calibration curve is updated periodically as more data make it increasingly accurate. The most recent updates were made in 2013, 2009, and 2004. Each of these updates renders previous age models potentially obsolete. Thus, a NAMWoG workshop was held to address the issues of the statistics behind age modeling and the data necessary to replicate age models or to redo age models if the calibration curve changes.
Because this workshop was potentially of interest to a broader group of people than just those of NAMWoG, Dr. Grimm solicited funding from additional sources to broaden workshop participation. He successfully obtained additional funding from the Past Global Changes (PAGES) project in Bern, Switzerland, as well as an additional subvention from NSF. This funding supported the participation of 36 scientists from ten countries. The thematic workshop was held January 13-15, 2014 at the 14CHRONO Centre for Climate, the Environment, and Chronology at Queen's University in Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK. Dr. Grimm and Neotoma collaborator Dr. Maarten Blaauw of Queen's jointly organized the workshop. The workshop was held in Belfast because the 14CHRONO Centre is a major center for radiocarbon dating and age-modeling statistics and because many of the important scientists involved with statistical age-model development are European, particularly Dr. Blaauw. Associated with the workshop was a one-day software training session on January 16, in which eight additional people participated from two additional countries. In addition to organizing the workshop and participating in various breakout groups, Dr. Grimm gave a formal presentation.
Dr. Jonathan Reyman submitted an invited book review of Drawing with Great Needles: Ancient Tattoo Traditions of North America, edited by Aaron Deter-Wolf and Carol Diaz-Granados, which was accepted for publication in the Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology on January 11.
Dr. Terrance Martin participated in the 47th Conference on Historical and Underwater Archaeology in Quebec City, Canada (January 9-11). He presented a paper on "Use of Animals at the Laurens North Site, the Location of Fort de Chartres III in the Illinois Country" in a symposium on Historical Archaeology of French America, organized by Dr. Elizabeth Scott. The presentation was attended by 60 archaeologists and historians.
The Jameson Jenkins Lot Archaeological investigation at the Lincoln Home National Historic Site was selected by the Cultural Resources Diversity Internship Program (CRDIP) as a site for one of the internships that is administered jointly with the Student Conservation Association. As a continuation of a limited field investigation last summer, the selected intern will work with ISM field archaeologist Dennis Naglich from June through early August in verifying the location and identification of the west end of the mid-nineteenth-century Jenkins Family house, as well as assist in the analysis of recovered artifacts and preparation of a technical completion report. The project is a collaborative project by the Illinois State Museum and the National Park Service's Lincoln Home National Historic Site. Dr. Terrance Martin prepared the proposal and is the Project Director for the Museum.
At the end of December, Nick Klobuchar reported that there are 61,964 sites in the Illinois Inventory of Archaeological Sites.
Zoology curator H. David Bohlen continued bird monitoring in Sangamon County, documenting increasing numbers of winter waterfowl. The most numerous were Canada Geese, Greater White-fronted Geese, Mallards, Common Goldeneye, Hooded Merganser, Common Merganser, and Ruddy Duck. Northern finches and Red-breasted Nuthatches were absent. Also the Springfield Christmas Bird Count (a nation-wide endeavor to census birds one day a year) tallied 92 species on December 22. Bohlen is the compiler for Springfield
Dr. Tim Cashatt submitted "The 2013 Annual Summary Report for the Hine's Emerald Dragonfly Survey" to the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Region 3 Office on December 19. The report summarized survey reports solicited from the permittees on the permit and also the mark recapture study. An amendment to the present permit was submitted to conduct additional studies in 2014. Dr. Cashatt continued work on the Illinois dragonfly field guide, update the Odonata database, and post activity on the Hine's emerald Dragonfly website for approximately 50 people on the Hine's emerald permit (federal requirements for the Endangered Species Permit).
ISM Research Associate Mona Colburn, former ISM curator Dr. Rick Toomey, and Dr. Chris Widga prepared a manuscript on paleontological remains from Bat Cave within Mammoth Cave National Park, KY. This paleontological deposit consists of 11 separate bat-dominated bonebeds spanning the last 10,000 years and was the subject of ISM field research in the late 1990s.
Dr. Chris Widga prepared a manuscript on the paleozoology of the Itasca Bison site in Minnesota for submission to the Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology. The Itasca Bison site was excavated in the 1960s by C. Thomas Shay. This site, which has one of the best documented bison assemblages from the Midwest, was the subject of Widga's 2006 dissertation. Originally believed to be a bison kill, Widga's re-analyses suggest a complex taphonomic history and that the bison accumulation cannot be attributed to only human hunters.
Dr. Hong Qian and colleagues published a book chapter, entitled "Global significance of plant diversity in China" in the book Plants of China: A Companion to the Flora of China, which is a companion to the Flora of China in 25 volumes. In the book chapter, the authors analyzed species richness data published in the Flora of China at both the national and regional scales according to the latest version of angiosperm phylogenetic system.
Dr. Robert Warren registered an abstract ("Multivariate Ordination of Freshwater Mussel Faunas in the Illinois River Basin, Illinois: Cultural and Environmental Correlates") for a special session on mollusks ("Molluscs as a Record of Human-Environment Relationships: Environmental Reconstructions, Impacts, and Management") at the 12th Conference of the International Council for Archaeozoology (ICAZ) in San Rafael, Argentina (September, 2014).
The Neotoma Paleoecology Database is an international collaborative project involving scientists around the world, funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation Geoinformatics Program. The lead institutions are the Illinois State Museum and Pennsylvania State University. The database is physically housed at the Center for Environmental Informatics at Penn State. The lead Principal Investigators are Dr. Eric Grimm (ISM) and Dr. Russell Graham from Penn State. The database is merging several existing databases, including the North American Pollen Database and the Faunmap database, both originally developed at the Illinois State Museum. In addition to these databases, Neotoma is incorporating a number of other databases from around the world as well as becoming the underlying database infrastructure for several new database projects. The database contains fossil and related "paleo" data for the past 5 million years. The database has the scientific objective of facilitating studies of past ecosystems and climate that can draw from a variety of data types. It has the practical objective of reducing costs and promoting database longevity by providing a common underlying database infrastructure. Critical to the success of the project has been the development of a software interface that will allow "data stewards" from various database projects to upload and manage data remotely via the Internet. Dr. Grimm has been working closely with the information technology (IT) team at Penn State to develop this interface. The Penn State team has developed the software on the database server; whereas Dr. Grimm has been developing the software on the client end, i.e. the software used by the remote data stewards. On December 6, 2014, a major milestone was reached, when Dr. Grimm remotely uploaded the first dataset. Since then additional datasets have been uploaded, testing is continuing on more complicated datasets, and Dr. Grimm has held several WebEx sessions to train data stewards from other projects how to use the software.
Dr. Terrance Martin submitted a proposal to the Cultural Resources Diversity Internship Program to continue investigations with an intern at the Jameson Jenkins lot in the Lincoln Home National Historic Site. This research will be a continued collaboration with Timothy Townsend at the Lincoln Home Site.
Dr. Terrence Martin began identifications on the faunal assemblage from site 34MC655, a late prehistoric Caddoan site in eastern Oklahoma, for a project with the Ouachita National Forest in western Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma. During December, Dr. Martin finished identifications on the vertebrate remains in the faunal assemblage a Site 20OT3, a late prehistoric habitation site along the lower Grand River in Ottawa County, Michigan (mitigated by CCRG for the Michigan DOT) and entered 175 records on a database for 20OT283. Late prehistoric (Fisher and Huber phase) Upper Mississippian animal remains from the Hoxie Farm site (11CK4), mitigated by ITARP/ISAS between 2001 and 2003, are being analyzed by Dr. Martin. In December, computer database entry has been finished through Feature 1226 (a total of 11,433 records). Dr. Martin verified Jessica Haglund's identifications of animal remains from Feature 40 flotation samples from the Myer-Dickson site (Fulton County, Illinois). Haglund has identified the faunal assemblage for part of her master's thesis project at Illinois State University. In late December, Dr. Martin resumed identifications on the eighteenth century Blanchette House site in St. Charles, Missouri, and entered 341 records for the faunal remains from Test Units 1 through 8. Dr. Martin provided a preliminary summary to Dr. Steve Dasovich (Lindenwood University), who will be discussing this site in a symposium at the 47th Conference on Historical and Underwater Archaeology in Quebec City in early January. Dr. Terrance Martin contributed bibliographic sources on Great Lakes fishing for an edited volume that was published in late 2013 (Prowse, Shari, and Suzanne Needs-Howarth. 2012. Introduction. In Aboriginal Fisheries of the Great Lakes, edited by Shari Prowse and Suzanne Needs-Howarth, pp. 3-12. Ontario Archaeology, No. 92).
Zoology curator David Bohlen's bird monitoring in Sangamon County in November documented the late fall migration and arrival of winter residents. A new species, the Roseate Spoonbill, was added to the Sangamon County List making the new total 358 species. Bohlen recorded 134 species during 238 field hours in November. All monthly bird reports were submitted to IBET (a listserv for the Illinois birding community – Illinois Birders Exchanging Thoughts).
Dr. Tim Cashatt continued work on the Illinois dragonfly field guide, update the Odonata database, and post field work activity on the Hine's emerald Dragonfly website for approximately fifty people on the Hine's emerald permit (federal requirements for the Endangered Species Permit).
Dr. Meredith Mahoney continued work on a manuscript as part of a collaborative project with other researchers on relationships Somatochlora dragonflies. The study includes DNA sequences from her research in a combined analysis with genetic data from another research group.
As a part of the federal recovery plan for the endangered Hine's emerald dragonfly, it is necessary to estimate the population size of selected areas where breeding is known to occur whenever possible. In July, Dr. Tim Cashatt and other members of the Hine's emerald dragonfly survey conducted a very successful mark/recapture study on private property in Reynolds County, Missouri. Their analysis of the data was completed in November and resulted in an estimated 1024 adults at one fen. Dr. Cashatt and colleagues intend to publish this in one of the conservation biology journals. Work began on the Annual Summary Report for the Hine's emerald dragonfly due at the end of the year.
Dr. Chris Widga and research associate Mona Colburn prepared a manuscript for publication on paleontological investigations in Mammoth Cave National Park in 2008. This work was a collaborative effort with the University of Kentucky, Program for Archaeological Research (UK-PAR) and illustrates the potential for recovering paleontological remains from massive bat guano deposits. This manuscript will be submitted to the journal Quaternary Research.
Dr. Hong Qian and colleagues published an article, entitled "Latitudinal Gradients in Phylogenetic Relatedness of Angiosperm Trees in North America" in the November issue of Global Ecology and Biogeography that examined the relation of species richness, mean clade age, and phylogenetic relatedness of angiosperm trees in 1175 regional assemblages to latitude and minimum temperature. They found that species richness and mean clade age are negatively correlated with latitude and positively correlated with minimum temperature. Tree species in regional assemblages tend to be more related to each other in higher latitudes with lower temperatures. Dr. Qian is the lead author of the article.
Angela Goebel-Bain is researching fashion history for a Bevier collection website module.
Dr. Terrance Martin identified animal remains and finished a technical report for four locations along the proposed Sandpiper Pipeline route in northern Minnesota that is being investigated by Commonwealth Cultural Resources Group, Inc. The sites include 21PL102 (1,348 specimens) and 21PL96 (53 specimens) in Polk County, and locations BJE-04 (49 specimens) and VPG-04 (2 specimens) in Hubbard County. Dr. Martin analyzed a mid- to late nineteenth-century faunal assemblage of 126 specimens from site 12W721, a farmstead in Warrick County in southern Indiana. This site was mitigated by American Resources Group, Ltd. as part of the requirements for obtaining a coal mine permit. Dr. Martin received from Dr. Steve Dasovich (Lindenwood University) the remaining samples of animal remains from the eighteenth century Blanchette House site in St. Charles, Missouri, and Martin resumed identifying additional lots during November. Dr. Martin finished identifications on the faunal assemblage from site 34MC760, a Caddoan site in eastern Oklahoma, for a project with the Ouachita National Forest in western Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma, and Claire Fuller Martin finished computer database entry of 34MC762, another Caddo site. Dr. Martin finished identifications on the rest of the faunal assemblage for site 20OT283, a late prehistoric habitation site along the lower Grand River in Ottawa County, Michigan (mitigated by CCRG for the Michigan DOT). Dr. Martin continued identifying animal remains from the large refuse pit designated as Feature 224 at the Morton Village site (11F2), a large Mississippian and Oneota habitation site on Nature Conservancy property near Emiquon in Fulton County, Illinois.
Dr. Robert Warren corresponded with Dr. Keith Little (Tennessee Valley Archaeological Research) regarding recent published reports on the Widows Creek site (1JA305) in northeast Alabama (November 21). Dr. Warren is working on a coauthored paper on the freshwater mussel fauna of the Widows Creek site with Dr. Arthur Bogan (North Carolina Museum of Natural Science).
Dr. Robert Warren met with a new ISM volunteer, Monica Broeckling of Springfield, to show her how to transcribe oral-history interview recordings (November 27). Monica taught history and Spanish at Glenwood Middle School for 10 years. She plans to transcribe an interview with Harry Estill that Dr. Warren conducted in 2012.
Dr. Robert Warren continued his research on the digital indexing of oral history recordings with controlled vocabularies. He is working on a co-authored paper on this topic ("Searching for Spoken Words: Digital Indexing of Oral History Recordings with Controlled Vocabularies") with Douglas Lambert, Jennifer Palmentiero, Lindsey Barnes, and Kimberly Guise. It will be submitted to The Oral History Review.
A multiple-authored paper in Science (O. Thalmann et al., Complete Mitochondrial Genomes of Ancient Canids Suggest a European Origin of Domestic Dogs. Science, Vol. 342, 15 November 2013, pp. 871-874) includes ISM Koster Site specimen. The authors, including Dr. Jane Buikstra and Robert Wayne, conclude that the "mitochondrial legacy" of dogs derives from wolves of European origin and the divergence of dogs and wolves occurred more than 15,000 years ago. DNA from bones from one of the 8,500 year-old Koster site dogs in the Museum's collections was included in this study.
On November 2, Jake Enk, (McMaster Ancient DNA Centre, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario) reported two new radiocarbon dates from ISM specimens. A date 17,510 ± 70 radiocarbon years before present on a specimen from Pekin, Illinois has a carbon:nitrogen ratio that may indicate carbon contamination. Another specimen from North LaSalle, Illinois gave a date of 12,495 ± 45 radiocarbon years before present and shows no evidence of contamination. Enk notes that his dissertation project, "The Mitogenome Phylogeography of Mammuthus from Southern North America," is in the final stages of completion and that his ISM samples formed a fascinating portion of the diversity.
On October 29, Chris Widga and Dennis Lawler took 10 specimens showing evidence of pathology to the CT scanning facility at a local hospital (that prefers to remain anonymous). Among these specimens were white-tailed deer from archeological sites showing evidence of trauma and healing, mastodont and horse vertebrae with warped processes, and "normal" deer bones for reference.
Part of the EarthCube initiative is to facilitate linking different databases, including the NSF funded Neotoma Paleoecology Database, of which Dr. Eric Grimm is a lead investigator. On October 28, in conjunction with the Geological Society of American meetings in Denver, Grimm met for a one-day workshop with organizers of the TMI database to discuss such linkages. TMI (Tool for Microscopic Identification: https://tmi.laccore.umn.edu/), based at the University of Minnesota, stores images of a wide variety of microfossils to aid in their identification. Neotoma stores the observed occurrences of these fossils. Linkages would enable simultaneous visualization of data and images.
Dr. Terrance Martin, Dr. Michael Conner, and Dawn Cobb gave presentations at the 59th Annual Midwest Archaeological Conference in Columbus, Ohio, October 24-27 (see Professional Presentations). Dr. Martin also read a paper authored by John Franzen and Eric C. Drake (USDA Forest Service, Hiawatha National Forest) on "The 'Big Hook' site: A Nineteenth Century Maple Sugar Camp in Northern Michigan." Dr. Bonnie Styles coordinated the production for the two Distinguished Career Awards, and Dr. Martin delivered them to the MAC Board for presentation at the Awards Ceremony.
Dr. Mahoney continued DNA lab work on ethnographic samples to determine if DNA can be extracted and sequenced from this material. This study is in collaboration with Dr. Lynn Snyder of the Smithsonian Institution.
On October 21, Dr. Chris Widga and Dennis Lawler travelled to the Dickson Mounds Museum where they met Alan Harn to examine recent bison finds from the central Illinois River valley. The Woodyard bison is likely a young bull from the Late Holocene based on epiphyseal fusion rates and relative size. Somewhat surprisingly, tooth wear indicates a diet dominated by browse, not grasses.
Dr. Chris Widga, Dennis Lawler, and Alan Harn attempted to re-locate "Trudy," a St. Louis zoo elephant who died in 1979 of pulmonary tuberculosis and is buried on the Dickson Mounds property (near the Ford House). Despite an afternoon of searching for Trudy, she remains buried in an unknown location. The map showing the location of the skeleton references a corner of the old Ford House, which was bulldozed sometime in the 1990s. The site has also been invaded by non-native Russian olive, which has greatly impeded ground visibility.
Upon invitation of the organizers, Dr. Eric Grimm was invited to be keynote speaker at the 2013 annual meeting of the American Association of Stratigraphic Palynologists and to organize a symposium around his address. The meeting was held in San Francisco, October 20-23. The symposium was entitled "Quantitative Frontiers in Paleoecology," and Grimm's keynote address was entitled "Quantitative Frontiers in Paleoecology: the Neotoma Paleoecology Database." To accompany the symposium, Dr. Grimm also organized a software training workshop before the meeting with the assistance of Dr. Simon Goring, University of Wisconsin—Madison. The two-day workshop, held October 19-20, was entitled "Palynological Databases: Hands-on Computer Workshop." The first day, led by Dr. Grimm, focused on his Tilia software, which is widely used for managing and graphing fossil-pollen data. The second day, led by Dr. Goring, focused on a statistical package for analyzing fossil-pollen data from the Neotoma Paleoecology Database.
Dr. Jeffrey Saunders with co-authors Gennady Baryshnikov (Zoological Institute, St. Petersburg, Russia) and Kevin Seymour (Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Canada) presented a poster entitled "The Rise and Fall of a Clovis-age Large Mammal Community in Southern Arizona" at the Paleoamerican Odyssey Conference held October 16-19 in Santa Fe, New Mexico, convened by the Center for the Study of the First Americans (CSFA), Department of Anthropology, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas. Their poster proposes a key role of large scansorial (climbing), stalking felids (cats) in large mammal community dynamics during the late Pleistocene.
Dr. Chris Widga was co-author of a poster at the 71st Plains Anthropological Conference in Loveland, Colorado. The lead author was Andrew Boehm, a Ph.D. student at Southern Methodist University whose research focuses on the isotopic ecology of early Holocene bison in the central Plains.
Dr. Hong Qian and colleagues published an article, entitled "Phylogenetic beta diversity ofangiosperms in North America", in the October issue of Global Ecology and Biogeography that quantified the phylogenetic beta diversity and taxonomic beta diversity of the angiosperm flora across North America, and related these metrics to one another and to geographical and environmental distances to uncover the phylogenetic signal underlying species compositional turnover. Dr. Qian is the lead author of the article.
Dr. Robert Warren conducted research on the digital indexing of oral history recordings with controlled vocabularies. He co-authored a paper on this topic with fellow participants in a conference session he organized and chaired at the 47th Annual Meeting of the Oral History Association in Oklahoma City, OK (October 12). The paper ("Searching for Spoken Words: Digital Indexing of Oral History Recordings with Controlled Vocabularies" by Robert Warren, Douglas Lambert, Jennifer Palmentiero, Lindsey Barnes, and Kimberly Guise) will be submitted to The Oral History Review for publication. Other papers were presented by Douglas Lambert, The Randforce Associates, University at Buffalo, NY ("Digital Indexing of Oral History Audio and Video: The Challenges of Developing Timecode-centered Metadata and Designing Multi-Dimensional Interfaces") and Jennifer Palmentiero, Southeastern New York Library Resources Council, Highland, NY. ("Digital Indexing of Oral Histories: Using Standard Thesauri to Facilitate Cross-Collection Searching"). Lindsey Barnes and Kimberly Guise of The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, LA served as commentators.
In order to be valid, the scientific names of species or higher taxa must be published according rules set the relevant code of nomenclature—for animal species, the 1999 International Code of Zoological Nomenclature. In his 1968 Ph,D. dissertation "Revision of the Chrysauginae of North America," Curator of Zoology Dr. Tim Cashatt described one new genus, three new species, and one new subspecies of snout moths. However, according to the Code, description in a dissertation does not constitute valid publication. To rectify this situation, Cashatt and colleagues Alma Solis (National Museum of Natural History) and Brian Scholtens published these new taxa in the journal ZooTaxa. The newly valid names are: Arta brevivalvalis Cashatt, sp. n., Heliades lindae Cashatt, sp. n., Paragalasa Cashatt, gen. n., Paragalasa exospinalis Cashatt, sp. n., and Penthesilea sacculalis baboquivariensis Cashatt, subsp. n.
As part of his NSF funded Proboscidean extinction NSF project, Dr. Chris Widga travelled to the University of Iowa in Iowa City, October 7-9, to continue a census of Iowa mammoths and mastodonts in the University of Iowa Paleontological Repository. In addition to this collections-based research, he presented a lecture to the local chapter of the Archaeological Institute of America on the archaeology and paleoecology of midwestern Proboscidean extinctions. He also spent a day examining recent excavations at a site near Oskaloosa, Iowa. At last count, this site contained a minimum of 3 mammoths, all mature adults, and dates to the terminal Pleistocene. Drs. Widga and Jeffrey Saunders have been involved in the project from its inception in an advisory capacity.
Research Associate Dennis Lawler and Dr. Terrance Martin went to Capitol-Illini Veterinary Hospital on October 7 and 8 to have x-rays taken of four 18th-century pathological archaeological white-tailed deer bones from Fort Ouiatenon and Fort St. Joseph. These pathological bones will be the topic of a zooarchaeology symposium presentation next April at the 2014 annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology in Austin, Texas. Dr. Martin received from Dr. Steve Dasovich (Lindenwood University) the remaining samples of animal remains from the 18th-century Blanchette House site in St. Charles, Missouri, and he resumed identifying additional lots. Dr. Martin finished analyzing the faunal assemblage from site 34MC760, a site in the Ouachita National Forest in eastern Oklahoma that has a Caddo cultural affiliation, and Claire Fuller Martin continued computer database entry of 34MC762, another Caddo site. Dr. Martin finished identifications through catalog #7743 for Site 20OT283, a late prehistoric habitation site along the lower Grand River near Grand Haven, Michigan that was mitigated by CCRG for the Michigan DOT. Dr. Martin finished identifications through catalog #7743 for the Hoxie Farm site (11CK4), mitigated by ITARP/ISAS between 2001 and 2003. Dr. Martin began identifying animal remains from the large refuse pit designated as Feature 224 at the Morton Village site in Fulton County.
Hine's emerald specimens were borrowed from Canada last year to sample as a part of our population genetics study. To comply with our agreement with Canada and U.S. federal regulations, U. S. Fish and Wildlife export forms were completed, the specimens were packed, and they were delivered by Dr. Tim Cashatt to the USFWS Law Enforcement office at Rosemont, Illinois, to be returned to Canada on October 10.
Dr. Terrance Martin, and Dr. Michael Conner participated in the Annual Meeting of the Illinois Archaeological Survey, Inc. in Carbondale on October 4-5.
EarthCube is an initiative of the National Science Foundation Directorate of Geosciences and Division of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure. "Cyberinfrastructure" refers to the computer software infrastructure for discovering, storing, managing, analyzing, and visualizing data. NSF recognizes that the vast quantities of data produced by modern scientific research necessitate such an infrastructure and that it must be funded, but exactly what that infrastructure is and how it is to be governed is not settled; hence EarthCube: http://www.earthcube.org/page/about. Dr. Eric Grimm has been involved with the management of the North American and Global Pollen Databases for the past 20+ years, with the Neotoma Paleoecology Database for the past 6 years, and is involved with EarthCube. On October 1-3, he participated in an EarthCube Geochronology workshop at the University of Wisconsin—Madison. This workshop had 70 participants representing a range of geochronological methods applicable to recent time (e.g. lead-210 dating) to deep geological time (uranium series dating) and representing various user communities that manage or use geochronological dating. Dr. Grimm gave a presentation on how the Neotoma Paleoecology Database manages geochronological data, including both the original data and age models derived from the original data. Following his presentation, several participants representing geochronological methods that have no current database (e.g., cosmogenic radionuclide dating) approached Dr. Grimm about storing their data in Neotoma. Grimm is following up on this development. On the evening of October 28, in conjunction with the Geological Society of America meetings in Denver, Colorado, Dr. Grimm participated in a "GSA Town Hall: Bringing Geochronology into EarthCube" intended to convey the EarthCube geochronology efforts to the broader scientific community.
Dr. Hong Qian published an article, entitled "Environmental determinants of woody plant diversity at a regional scale in China", in the journal PLoS ONE on September 26. In this article, Dr. Qian examined the relationship of woody plant species richness at a regional scale with sixteen environmental variables representing energy availability, water availability, energywater balance, seasonality, and habitat heterogeneity. Dr. Qian found that temperature seasonality is the best predictor of woody species richness. Other important environmental variables include annual precipitation, mean temperature of the coldest month, and potential evapotranspiration. The best model explains 85% of the variation in woody plant species richness at the regional scale examined.
During September, Andy Hanson completed a draft layout for the two volume compendium of The Birds of Sangamon County. It is slated at the first publication in the Museum's new Research e-Series. The report summarizes field observations for Dave Bohlen's 40 year study of birds of Sangamon County. During September, Dr. Bonnie Styles reviewed and edited all of the introductory sections of the report. On September 26, Drs. Bonnie Styles and Eric Grimm met with Dave Bohlen to review and finalize the edited sections.
David Bohlen continued to monitor birds in Sangamon County, concentrating on the fall migration. He recorded 176 species in 258 field hours. Some birds are arriving later than usual, probably due to the dry, warm weather.
Dr. Jonathan Reyman completed the manuscript for his proposed book, The Burials of Pueblo Bonito and Chaco Canyon: the Published vs. the Unpublished Record, and submitted the prospectus to the School of Advanced Research in Santa Fe for consideration for publication.
Dr. Cashatt continued to collaborate with Tracy Evans (graduate student and zoology research associate) on her fire ecology study, and assisting with the identification of arthropods from her insect surveys. In September, two specimens from material collected from Evan's pitfall traps were identified as an uncommon "glowworm beetle" (Phengodidae, Phengodes sp.). This species is new for the ISM insect collection.
Jessica Haglund (Illinois State University) is finishing identifications of the faunal assemblage from the Myer-Dickson site (Fulton County, Illinois) for her master's thesis. Haglund was hired for the summer to supervise archaeological surveys for the National Forest Service in Collville, Washington. During September, Terrance Martin verified Haglund's identifications of animal remains from Features 29 and 30 flotation samples. Dr. Martin resumed identifying samples of animal remains from the 18th-century Blanchette House site in St. Charles, Missouri. ISM Museum McMillan Intern Courtney Cox will be presenting a paper on the site in a symposium on French colonial archaeology at the SHA's Conference of Historic and Underwater Archaeology in early January in Quebec City, Quebec. Dr. Martin finished analyzing a large faunal assemblage from site 34MC762, a site in eastern Oklahoma in the Ouachita National Forest that has a Caddo cultural affiliation, and Claire Fuller Martin began computer database entry. Dr. Martin made preparations to begin analysis of animal remains from 34MC760, another Caddo site. Dr. Martin finished identifications through catalog #5079 for Site 20OT283, a late prehistoric habitation site along the lower Grand River near Grand Haven, Michigan that was mitigated by CCRG for the Michigan DOT. During September, Dr. Martin completed computer database entry of analyzed specimens through Feature 1,198 for the Hoxie Farm site (11CK4), mitigated by ITARP/ISAS between 2001 and 2003.
The taxonomic placement of species in higher taxonomic ranks based on morphological characters is often subjective. Phylogenetics, the use of DNA to determine relationships among organisms, is revolutionizing taxonomy. To which genus the Bulgarian Emerald dragonfly belongs has been controversial. Traditionally, it has been placed in the genus Somatochlora (as S. borisi); however, some entomologists argue that it should be placed in the genus Corduliochlora. To resolve the issue, Dr. Meredith Mahoney and Tim Vogt initiated a collaborative study with several other dragonfly researchers. The goal of the project is to analyze DNA sequences from multiple genes to understand the evolutionary relationships of the Bulgarian Emerald with other species of Emerald dragonflies, including the endangered Hine's Emerald (Somatochlora hineana). Dr. Mahoney and Vogt are contributing gene sequences from their on-going study on relationships of Emerald dragonflies.
Dr. Meredith Mahoney initiated a collaborative project with Dr. Lynn Snyder of the Smithsonian Institution. The goal of the project is to assess whether DNA can be extracted from ethnographic objects, for example leather or sinew components, and determine whether DNA sequencing techniques can be used to identify the species used by native people in these objects. Dr. Mahoney will be doing the DNA lab analyses at the ISM while Dr. Snyder will provide the anthropological and collections context to understand the results.
Dr. Chris Widga received the results of stable isotope analyses of a micro-sampled mammoth tooth plate from Jones Spring, Missouri. This tooth was originally collected by Dr. Jeffrey Saunders during the ISM Missouri spring excavations in the 1970s. For the new isotopic analyses, Dr. Widga with the assistance of Paul Countryman built a micromill, and Kayla Kolis (an intern funded through the NSF project) collected the samples. This first batch of samples represents ~1 year of tooth growth. Although far from definitive, this pilot dataset points to the potential of this technique, and Dr. Widga is pursuing additional research.
Determining the age of the Hopwood Farm Mastodont, excavated by the ISM in the 1980s, has been difficult because it is beyond the maximum age for radiocarbon dating. In June 2013, Drs. Jeffrey Saunders and Chris Widga collected snails from the stratigraphic unit of Hopwood Farm outcrop associated with the mastodont. The snails were dated with electron spin resonance (ESR), a technique that can date materials older than the radiocarbon timescale. These dates, received in September from Brandon Curry, Illinois State Geological Survey, indicate an age of 87,180+/-2840 yrs. BP (Before Present). This age is appreciably younger than the age of 97,000 BP currently given in the Changes exhibit.
Dr. Robert Warren conducted research on the digital indexing of oral history recordings with controlled vocabularies. Dr. Warren will chair a session and present a paper on this topic at the 47th Annual Meeting of the Oral History Association in Oklahoma City (October 2013). Dr. Warren's presentation will focus on the design and development of the Illinois State Museum's Audio-Video Barn website. Other presenters in the session will include Douglas Lambert from the University at Buffalo (SUNY) and Jennifer Palmentiero from the Southeastern NY Library Resources Council. Commentators will include Lindsey Barnes and Kimberly Guise from the National WWII Museum in New Orleans.
The cause of the megafauna extinction at the end of the Pleistocene some 12,000 years ago has been highly controversial. Leading hypotheses include overkill by humans, perhaps recently arrived from Asia or Alaska, and inability to adapt to rapidly changing climate and vegetation. An argument against the overkill hypothesis is that the number of human/megafaunal associations in the archaeological record is small. Dr. Chirs Widga and colleagues Dr. Lisa Nagoka (U. of North Texas), Dr. Steve Wolverton (U. of North Texas), and Dr. Matt E. Hill, Jr. (U. of Iowa) formulated a response to an article that appeared in American Antiquity last spring. The article, entitled "The Associational Critique of Quaternary Overkill and Why it is Largely Irrelevant to the Extinction Debate" by Todd Surovell and Brigid Grund, suggests that the paucity of human/megafauna associations in the North American record is due solely to preservation. They argue that the patterns in the archaeological record (or lack thereof) are not relevant to assessing this association. My collaborators and I will point out that there are productive directions for this research, and that ignoring empirical data is not good science.
As part of his NSF funded research , Dr. Chris Widga undertook collections work at the University of Wisconsin. He examined collections in the UW-Zoological Museum and sampled the Maas Farm Mammoth for radiocarbon analyses. He also examined the Boaz mastodon mount in the UW-Geology Museum. Although originally described as a single animal (potentially associated with a single Clovis point), the Boaz mount is actually a composite of up to three different animals, probably from different sites and excavated at different times.
Dr. Cashatt worked on the amendments for the Federally Endangered Hine's emerald dragonfly for the first Missouri mark/recapture study and participated in two days of field work. These data will be analyzed and published. Dr. Cashatt also reviewed and contributed figures, reports, and information for publication of the "Hine's emerald Dragonfly Wisconsin Guidance Document" for the Bureau of Endangered Resources, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.
Dr. Chris Widga and ISM volunteer Debbie Hamilton worked with CWLP engineers to investigate a bedrock outcrop immediately below Spaulding Dam in Springfield (8/23). Although a sequence of limestone-shale-coal-sandstone is visible in the cut, no fossils were visible. After visiting the spillway, Widga and Hamilton visited Bridgeview Park on the south side of Lake Springfield where invertebrate fossils are present in the rock trucked in for bank stabilization. These rocks contain brachiopods and crinoids, in a situation suggesting a reef community. The rock is likely trucked in from Pittsfield, IL.
Drs. Terry Martin and Chris Widga completed a zooarchaeological analysis for R. Chris Goodwin and Associates of a zooarchaeological assemblage from East Cache Creek at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma. Bison and turtle dominate the assemblage. This archaeological site most probably dates to the very late Holocene. Radiocarbon samples have been submitted to Aeon Laboratories in Tucson, Arizona.
Dr. Terrance Martin produced a technical report on historical animal remains that were encountered during archaeological survey and construction monitoring in Saginaw, Michigan, by Arbre Croce Cultural Resources (Dr. Misty Jackson, Leslie, Michigan). Greg Young (Wayne State University, Detroit) returned to the RCC to continue identifying animal remains from the 19th-century Corktown site in Detroit, Michigan, for his master's thesis project. Dr. Martin is assisting Young by verifying identifications. Jessica Haglund (Illinois State University) is finishing identifications of the faunal assemblage from the Myer-Dickson site (Fulton County, Illinois) for her master's thesis. Haglund was hired for the summer to supervise archaeological surveys for the National Forest Service in Collville, Washington. During August, Dr. Martin verified Haglund's identifications of animal remains from Feature 149 flotation samples. Joseph Hearns (Western Michigan University) is conducting a spatial analysis of the animal remains from the 18th-century French habitation site at Fort St. Joseph site (20BE23), Berrien County, Michigan, with Dr. Martin on his thesis committee. Dr. Martin worked with McMillan Museum Intern Courtney Cox in identifying samples of animal remains from the 18th-century Blanchette House site in St. Charles, Missouri. Cox will be presenting a paper on the site in a symposium on French colonial archaeology at the Society for Historic Archaeology's Conference of Historic and Underwater Archaeology in early January in Quebec City, Quebec. Dr. Martin finished analyzing a large faunal assemblage from site 34MC762, a site in eastern Oklahoma that has a Caddo cultural affiliation. The site is in the Ouachita National Forest in western Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma. During August, Dr. Martin finished identifications through catalog #4188 for Site 20OT283. This site is a late prehistoric habitation site along the lower Grand River near Grand Haven, Michigan that was mitigated by CCRG for the Michigan Department of Transportation.
Dr. Chris Widga and Jason Titcomb of the Sanford Museum and Planetarium (Cherokee, IA), have acquired radiocarbon and stable isotope data from Iowa's first Dire Wolf. The specimen, recovered from a Crawford County (IA) gravel pit in 1959, remained undiagnosed until Titcomb sent Widga a picture of it last spring. Subsequent dating the specimen indicates an age of ~24,000 year ago. Stable isotope analyses were completed in August.
Angela Goebel-Bain hosted Linda Baumgarten and Kim Ivey, textile curators from Colonial Williamsburg, in their study of the Amish quilts in the Decorative Arts collection. It was discovered that one of the quilts is signed and dated in the quilting.
Dr. Terrance Martin continued macerating fish in the remote processing laboratory at the Research and Collections Center to prepare specimens for the Museum's comparative skeletal collection.
Dr. Chris Widga, Matt G. Hill (Iowa State), Marlin Hawley (Wisconsin Historical Society), and Laura Halverson Monahan (University of Wisconsin) submitted a manuscript to the Wisconsin Archaeologist describing recent work on the middle Holocene, Nye Bison assemblage near St. Croix, Wisconsin. This bison assemblage was salvaged by University of Minnesota paleontologist, Sam Eddy, and archaeologist Albert Jenks in the 1930s during marl mining activities. The historic, paleoecological, and archaeological research undertaken during this analysis complements the authors' previous work on the nearby Interstate Park, and the Itasca bison site in central Minnesota.
The current trajectory of global warming will move Earth into a climate system not seen for millions of years. Predicting the response of ecosystems to these new climates is particularly challenging as there is no observational data for similar climates in the recent past. Nevertheless, we can gain some understanding by studying the response of ecosystems to rapidly changing climate at the end of the last ice age (approximately 20,000-12,000 years ago) when climates existed that also have no modern analog. Dr. Eric Grimm co-authored a paper with seven other collaborators that investigated these no-analog ecosystems as models for a no-analog future. The paper explores using recent and paleoecological data to better circumscribe species' environmental tolerances. The paper was initially presented at a conference "Climate Change and Species Interactions: Ways Forward" held in November 2012 at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York. The papers appear in a special issue of Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.
Dr. Eric Grimm co-authored an article in PAGES Newsletter with colleagues from the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands and the University of Colorado describing renewed efforts to assemble data for the Latin American Pollen Database (LAPD), which is a constituent database of the Neotoma Paleoecology Database. Lead author on the article is Suzette Flantua, who visited the ISM-RCC in January 2011 for training in the software used to input data into Neotoma. Flantua is currently a Ph.D. student at the University of Amsterdam, and Grimm is on her advisory committee. Other authors are Henry Hooghiemstra, Amsterdam, Flantua's principal advisor and who has long conducted research in northern South America, and Vera Markgraf, Colorado, who initiated the LAPD. Neotoma is a major database initiative funded by the NSF Geoinformatics Program. Grimm is a lead Principal Investigator on the project. The ISM and Pennsylvania State University are the lead institutions. PAGES (Past Global Changes) is a core project of the International Geosphere Biosphere Programme, and PAGES Newsletter keeps scientists worldwide abreast of new developments in Global Change research.
The Lincoln Home National Historic Site (National Park Service) and the ISM collaborated on a limited archaeological investigation at the Jameson Jenkins lot at the Lincoln Home Site as part of the 2013 National Park Service Cultural Resource Diversity Internship Program (CRDIP). The Jenkins Lot is included in the National Park Service's Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. Following two weeks of fieldwork at the Jenkins lot during late June by the CRDIP Intern Ms. Victoria Bowler, ISM Research Associate Dennis Naglich, and Anthropology Chairperson Dr. Terrance Martin, the intern helped analyze recovered artifacts with Dennis Naglich and animal remains with Dr. Martin in the ISM Research and Collections Center. She also assisted Naglich in the production of a technical report, which is still currently in progress by Naglich. In early August, Ms. Bowler reported on the project in a webinar with CRDIP interns from across the United States, and Dr. Martin wrote the zooarchaeology section of the technical report.
As part of his NSF funded research, Dr. Chris Widga undertook collections work at the Ohio Historical Society and Ohio State University Geology Museum in Columbus, Ohio (8/1-8/2). During this visit, he inventoried collections of Ohio proboscideans, collected a number of samples for radiocarbon dating, and visited two major Ohio River valley mineral licks with significant and historic collections of Quaternary fauna (Big Bone Lick and Blue Licks, both in northern Kentucky).
David Bohlen continued to monitor birds in Sangamon County. August is the end of the breeding season and the beginning of fall migration. He recorded 152 species for August and devoted 229 hours in the field to the monitoring process.
A paper by the Museum's Oral History of Illinois Agriculture Project team of Dr. Robert Warren, Michael Maniscalco, Dr. Erich Schroeder, James S. Oliver, and Sue Huitt, and Douglas Lampbert and Michael Frisch of The Randforce Associates, LLC was published in The Oral History Review. The digital revolution is giving oral historians exciting new ways to record, index, search, and share oral history interviews with larger and more remote audiences. The Illinois State Museum's Oral History of Illinois Agriculture (OHIA) project used an array of digital methods and tools to develop an interactive website, called the Audio-Video Barn, which gives voice to people involved in agriculture and rural life in Illinois. The OHIA approach can serve as a model for anyone looking for engaging new ways to share oral histories with community audiences. First, the Audio-Video Barn joins a growing chorus of websites that go beyond the limitations of printed words in traditional oral history transcripts; it gives visitors access to primary-source audio and video recordings that restore emotion and meaning to the stories being told. Second, the Audio-Video Barn uses digital indexing of audio and video recordings to make them searchable in a database format. Finally, the Audio-Video Barn opens its doors to provide free access to searchable recordings via the Internet, making them widely available to diverse audiences.
Dr. Hong Qian and colleagues from Michigan State University and the Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden in Hong Kong completed a study (released online) of the phylogenetic diversity of Angiosperms in North America. Ecologists have generally agreed that beta diversity is a key component of global patterns of species richness. Incorporating phylogenetic information into the study of beta diversity allows researchers to identify the degree to which the shared evolutionary histories of species explain ecological patterns observed today. Dr. Hong and his colleagues analyzed 71 regional floras in five latitudinal zones and two longitudinal bands. They quantified taxonomic similarity and phylogenetic similarity between floras. Phylogenetic similarity between floras is strongly correlated with taxonomic similarity, is higher in eastern North America than in western North America, and increases strikingly with latitude. Geographical and environmental distances together explained on average about 76% of the variation in phylogenetic beta diversity with environmental distance explaining more variation in phylogenetic similarity in three of the four latitudinal bands. Phylogenetic beta diversity is consistently lower than taxonomic beta diversity, which suggests that the spatial turnover of species in the study system is predominantly the spatial turnover of closely related species and not distantly related species. Thus, the turnover of angiosperm floras in North America is best explained by small divergences along environmental axes for closely related species and a gradual turnover of lineages through space.