Jonathan C. Lothrop received his graduate training in anthropology at Binghamton University.  While there, he collaborated on Paleoindian site excavations in New York for his dissertation, receiving his Ph.D. in 1988. From 1988 to 2007, he worked in cultural resource management, directing survey, testing, and data recovery excavations on Native American archaeological sites from the Ohio Valley to New England. In 2008, Dr. Lothrop joined the New York State Museum as Curator of Archaeology to oversee the Indigenous archaeology collectionsand engage in public outreach and education activities. Since joining the Museum, Jon has built on earlyPaleoindian research by former state archaeologists Bill Ritchie and Bob Funk, recording site and artifact finds as part of the New York Paleoindian Database Project. During this time, he’s also been fortunate to collaborate withprofessional archaeologists and earth scientists at the NYSM and other institutions, and with avocationalarchaeologists across the state to help shed new light on the lifeways of the late Pleistocene peoples of New Yorkand the broader Northeast. 

The earliest indigenous peoples of the glaciated Northeast migrated into the region shortly after 13,000 years ago, while this landscape remained in the grip of the last Ice Age. Today, their ancient campsites are marked by small scatters of fluted points and other flaked stone artifacts. This scant material record of these first peoples – known to archaeologists as Paleoindians – testifies to an amazing story of ingenuity and perseverance in the face of daunting challenges as they migrated into the eastern Great Lakes and New England-Maritimes. How and when did that peopling process happen? How did these people survive on this late glacial landscape? And how did they interact with each other across these subarctic regions? In this presentation, we'll review current evidence from recent and ongoing archaeological research that helps to answer some of these questions. Finally, with the end of the Ice Age roughly 11,600 years ago, we'll examine tentative indicators for how associated climate and landscape changes may have affected these early peoples.

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