Archaeologist to speak at YSU event

Staff report

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Noted archaeologist James Adovasio, dean of the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics at Mercyhurst College in Erie, Pa., will speak as part of the Youngstown State University Anthropology Colloquium on Thursday.

Adovasio will speak at 7 p.m. in the Ohio Room of Kilcawley Center.

Adovasio, who also is director of the Mercyhurst Archaeological Institute, will talk about “The Invisible Sex.”

Adovasio earned a doctorate from the University of Utah in 1970 and a Doctor of Science degree from Washington and Jefferson University in 1983.

Before arriving at Mercyhurst in 1990, he was chairman of the anthropology department at the University of Pittsburgh.

One of Adovasio’s best-known works is the Meadowcroft Rockshelter site in Pennsylvania and his involvement in the debate on the colonization of the American continents.

The Meadowcroft work, which began in June 1973, has funding by the National Science Foundation and the National Geographic Society, among others.

Another of Adovasio’s main interests is the role of women, children and elderly people in prehistory and their relative absence from discussions of archaeological materials and theory.

He has worked to reverse the gender bias in archaeology and to demonstrate that the stereotypical way that ice-age life is typically portrayed — with groups of men running around with spears, killing big animals — are incorrect.