Mercyhurst institute director to speak to archaeology club

NEW CASTLE, Pa. -- Dr. J.M. Adovasio, director of the Mercyhurst Archaeological Institute of Mercyhurst College, Erie, Pa., and formerly of Youngstown, will be the guest speaker for the King Beaver Archaeology Club's monthly meeting at 6:30 p.m. Sunday.
The group will meet at the Lawrence County Historical Society's Medure History Building, 408 N. Jefferson St..
Robert A. Presnar, executive director of the Lawrence County Historical Society, said Adovasio received worldwide acclaim in the 1970s for his excavation of the Meadowcroft Rockshelter, an archaeological site southwest of Pittsburgh that has been widely recognized as the earliest well-dated archaeological site in North America, Presnar said.
During his tenure as a professor and chairman of the anthropology department of the University of Pittsburgh from 1973 to 1990, Adovasio founded the university's Cultural Resource Management Program, an archaeological contract program that now employs about 200 people working in 27 states and five foreign countries.