David J. Meltzer

File:Thunderbird Archeological District.jpg

Meltzer first encountered archaeology at the age of 15, when he participated in the excavation of the Thunderbird Site, an important Paleo-Indian Clovis site near Front Royal, Virginia. Meltzer would later enroll at the University of Maryland, where he would graduate in 1977 with a BA in Anthropology. He then moved to University of Washington to complete an MA in Anthropology/Archaeology. Following a one-year stint as a Predoctoral Fellow in the Department of Anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution, he returned to the University of Washington. Working under the supervision of archaeologist Robert Dunnell, Meltzer received his PhD in 1984.

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In 1984, Meltzer accepted a position in the Department of Anthropology at Southern Methodist University. At SMU, he would come to work alongside leading archaeologists and cultural anthropologists, including Fred Wendorf, Lewis Binford, David Freidel, Caroline Brettell, and Carolyn Sargent.

A year after joining the faculty, Meltzer launched the Texas Clovis Fluted Point Survey.{{Cite web |title=College of Liberal Arts {{!}} The University of Texas at Austin |url=https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/ |access-date=2024-04-02 |website=liberalarts.utexas.edu |language=en}} In 1996, he was made inaugural Executive Director of the Quest Archaeological Program at SMU, an initiative endowed by Joseph and Maude Cramer to advance research on the first peoples of the Americas.{{Cite web |title=SMU anthropology chair elected to NAS |url=https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/696108 |access-date=2024-04-02 |website=EurekAlert! |language=en}}{{Cite web |last=rdunlap@smu.edu |first=Rachael Dunlap, Contributing Writer |title=Quest funds student research |url=https://smudailycampus.com/115549/news/quest-funds-student-research/ |access-date=2024-04-02 |website=The Daily Campus}} Under Meltzer's leadership, Quest would help fund studies across the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains.{{Cite web |title=Quest Program – David J. Meltzer |url=https://people.smu.edu/dmeltzer/?page_id=152 |access-date=2024-04-02 |website=people.smu.edu}}

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Between 1997 and 2000, Meltzer used new archaeological techniques to re-excavate and analyze the famous Paleo-Indian site at Folsom.{{Cite web |last=Sapiens |date=2017-08-29 |title=Why the Famous Folsom Point Isn't a Smoking Gun |url=https://www.sapiens.org/archaeology/folsom-site-archaeology-science/ |access-date=2024-04-02 |website=SAPIENS |language=en-US}} He and his team studied excavated bison teeth from the site's bison-kill to determine that the hunt had happened in the fall. They further confirmed that Folsom witnessed at least 32 such kills.{{Cite journal |last1=Meltzer |first1=David J. |last2=Todd |first2=Lawrence C. |last3=Holliday |first3=Vance T. |date=January 2002 |title=The Folsom (Paleoindian) Type Site: Past Investigations, Current Studies |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-antiquity/article/abs/div-classtitlethe-folsom-paleoindian-type-site-past-investigations-current-studiesdiv/4E0FC6F1DCD1722BF29CA1F97CDA47FD |journal=American Antiquity |language=en |volume=67 |issue=1 |pages=5–36 |doi=10.2307/2694875 |jstor=2694875 |issn=0002-7316|url-access=subscription }}

One of the project's other objectives was to find the location of the hunt's associated campsite. In this, Meltzer and his team were unsuccessful. By sourcing the stone for "Folsom points" to Texas and Colorado, however, they were able to show that the Folsom site was part of a much larger area across which people of the Folsom tradition moved. Meltzer would document his findings in a 2006 book, Folsom.

Meltzer's research has made him one of the world's leading experts on the colonization of the Americas and mammalian extinctions of the Late Pleistocene.{{Cite news |last=Wilford |first=John Noble |date=November 9, 1999 |title=New Answers to an Old Question: Who Got Here First? |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1999/11/09/science/new-answers-to-an-old-question-who-got-here-first.html?searchResultPosition=8 |work=The New York Times}} In his work, he has demonstrated the role of climactic and environmental changes in the disappearance of North American megafauna (against the "overkill" thesis),{{Cite web |last1=Magazine |first1=Smithsonian |last2=Mann |first2=Charles C. |title=The Clovis Point and the Discovery of America's First Culture |url=https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-clovis-point-and-the-discovery-of-americas-first-culture-3825828/ |access-date=2024-04-02 |website=Smithsonian Magazine |language=en}}{{Cite journal |last=Meltzer |first=David J. |date=2015-10-21 |title=Pleistocene Overkill and North American Mammalian Extinctions |url=https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev-anthro-102214-013854 |journal=Annual Review of Anthropology |language=en |volume=44 |issue=1 |pages=33–53 |doi=10.1146/annurev-anthro-102214-013854 |issn=0084-6570|url-access=subscription }} challenged the controversial theory that the Clovis culture was destroyed by a comet,{{Cite web |title=Archaeology: "Undiscovery of Year" to Meltzer for refuting comet theory – Research |url=https://blog.smu.edu/research/2011/01/04/archaeology-undiscovery-of-year-to-meltzer-for-refuting-comet-theory/ |access-date=2024-04-02 |website=blog.smu.edu |language=en-US}}{{Cite web |last=McMullan |first=Dawn |date=2011-09-21 |title=Dallas' Big Thinkers |url=https://www.dmagazine.com/publications/d-magazine/2011/october/dallas-big-thinkers/ |access-date=2024-04-02 |website=D Magazine |language=en-US}} and made the case that the domestication of dogs occurred in ancient Siberia.{{Cite news |last=Gorman |first=James |date=January 25, 2021 |title=In Ice Age Siberia, a Meeting of Carnivores May Have Given Us Dogs |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/25/science/dogs-Siberia-wolves.html?searchResultPosition=2 |work=The New York Times}}

In recent decades, archaeology has been revolutionized by breakthroughs in DNA sequencing. In 2010, evolutionary biologist Eske Willerslev became the first scientist to successfully reconstruct an entire ancient human genome.{{Cite news |last=Zimmer |first=Carl |date=May 16, 2016 |title=Eske Willerslev Is Rewriting History With DNA |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/17/science/eske-willerslev-ancient-dna-scientist.html?searchResultPosition=7 |work=The New York Times}} Meltzer and Willerslev would become close collaborators,{{Cite web |last=PhD |first=Anjali A. Sarkar |date=2021-06-18 |title=Ancient Human Genomes Reveal Peopling of the Americas |url=https://www.genengnews.com/news/ancient-human-genomes-reveal-peopling-of-the-americas/ |access-date=2024-04-02 |website=GEN - Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News |language=en-US}} leading to a joint 2021 paper in Nature describing the peopling of the Americas based on the most up-to-date ancient genomic evidence.{{Cite journal |last1=Willerslev |first1=Eske |last2=Meltzer |first2=David J. |date=June 2021 |title=Peopling of the Americas as inferred from ancient genomics |url=https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03499-y |journal=Nature |language=en |volume=594 |issue=7863 |pages=356–364 |doi=10.1038/s41586-021-03499-y |pmid=34135521 |bibcode=2021Natur.594..356W |issn=1476-4687|url-access=subscription }}

• Folsom: New archaeological investigations of a classic Paleoindian bison kill (2006)
• The Great Paleolithic War: How Science Forged an Understanding of America's Ice Age Past (2015)
• The Mountaineer site: a Folsom winter camp in the Rockies (2021, with B.N. Andrews and M. Stiger)
• First peoples in a new world: Populating Ice Age America (2021)

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Category:University System of Maryland alumni

Category:University of Washington alumni

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Category:American archaeologists

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Category:Living people

Category:Fellows of St John's College, Cambridge