Speakers & Issues Series to Feature Native American Archaeology Expert
The second installment of the Speakers and Issues series at Midwestern State University will feature an expert on Native American archaeology. Dr. David Kilby of Eastern New Mexico University will speak at 7 p.m., Thursday, Nov. 14, at the Wichita Falls Museum of Art at MSU.
Kilby will speak about "Ice Age Archaeology of the Southern Plains." When the Americas were discovered in 1492, it was also discovered that several million people already were living here. How, when, and where these Native Americans came from to colonize the New World is an important chapter in the larger story of how modern humans spread across the earth. Kilby's presentation will describe how archaeologists work to piece this story together, beginning with the initial Southern Plains discoveries that first established a Pleistocene human presence in North America, and continuing through current perspectives on where these people may have originated and how early they may have arrived. These studies provide a glimpse into the nature of the early people's Ice Age world, how these prehistoric hunter-gatherers adapted to its challenges, and how they succeeded in colonizing a truly undiscovered continent.
Kilby is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Applied Archaeology at ENMU in Portales, N.M. He completed his doctoral dissertation on the enigmatic stone tool caches left by the Ice Age Clovis people, and maintains an ongoing research focus on Paleoindian archaeology and stone tool technology. In pursuing these interests he has had the opportunity to work at some of the classic western Paleoindian sites, including Blackwater Draw, Folsom, Murray Springs, Mockingbird Gap, the Rio Rancho Folsom site, and others. Kilby's current research includes continued investigation of Clovis caches, as well as ongoing investigations of archaeology, geomorphology, and paleoenvironments at the Blackwater Draw site where he has just completed a third field season with the ENMU Archaeological Field School.
The Speakers and Issues Series began in 2001 with the idea of bringing informed and creative speakers to the academic and municipal communities. Since then, more than 20 speakers have come to MSU from all corners of the country. The inaugural speaker for the series was Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko in 2002. Other past speakers include MSU alumnus and physician Dr. Mark Puder; forensic pathologist Dr. Marcela Fierro; arborist William Bryant Logan; biologist E.O. Wilson; Native American poet Jim Barnes; Texas poet Walt McDonald; MSU professors Everett Kindig, Charles Olson, Michael Collins, and James Hoggard; musicians Eurah White and Jimmie Dale Gilmore; and Wichita Falls physician Dr. Eid Mustafa.
The series is supported by Elizabeth Bourland Hawley, the Libra Foundation, MSU's Prothro-Yeager College of Humanities and Social Sciences, the Wichita Falls Times Record News, KCCU-FM NPR Radio, and KFDX-TV3.
Admission is free; donations are welcome. For more information, contact Dr. Claudia Montoya at (940) 397-4259 or visit www.msutexas.edu/sis.