Maine Perspective Front Page
Animal Bones Offer Clues About Prehistoric People
Heather McInnis has always been interested in history and "what makes us who we are." Today, she studies animal bones for those clues to our prehistoric past.
McInnis, a long-time resident of Blue Hill, first took anthropology courses at Fort Lewis College in Colorado. She completed her bachelor's degree in anthropology at UMaine in 1995.
She applied to graduate school at UMaine and several schools in the Southwest. However, she stayed in Maine when she was offered an opportunity of a lifetime - conducting research at a little-known archaeological site in Peru under the direction of Dan Sandweiss, assistant professor of anthropology and Quaternary studies.
"Dan was looking for a student to go to South America. I have always been interested in animal bones and prehistoric archaeology, and that fit into what he needed. We had mutual interests," says McInnis.
McInnis' first field experience was in 1994 as an undergraduate working on four Pueblo ruins covering a broad range of time periods. Two years later, she was headed to an excavation site in Peru for six weeks.
"What struck me most is that Peru is very culture-oriented. You see it everywhere. But at the same time, there is not the money to investigate and preserve the past found in sites like this," she says of her research trip.
"In contrast, we saw guards armed with machine guns at the office of the National Geographic Society, where we had to get maps of the country. We had to hire a guard to prevent looting of our site.
"But the hardest thing in Peru was no one in the area I worked in knew what a calling card was. I felt a long way away," says McInnis, the mother of two children who are now ages eight and 12.
McInnis' thesis research focuses on animal remains found in Quebrada Jaguay, an archaeological site on the south coast of Peru. The site contains the oldest known evidence of significant use of ocean resources in South America.
McInnis found that almost all of the animal remains at the site were maritime-based. Remains of crab and specific types of fish were unearthed. Also found were stone tool debris.
"We found fish earstones that can be measured to tell how large the fish were," says McInnis. "We were able to pinpoint a range of the size of the fish, most of which were smaller. We also found net cordage in the site, indicating that people were probably using net technology and focusing on this fish at a particular time of year.
"My data indicates seasonal use of the site by people. The people were not just gathering what was in front of them, but they adapted to living in a maritime environment."
The site, dating to 11,500 radiocarbon years BP (13,000 calender years BP), is particularly significant because of its age. "It changes our perspective on what was happening in the New World in that time period," says McInnis. "The standard explanation of early population movement associates population movement with hunting of big game animals. Evidence from Quebrada Jaguay indicates that migration into this region may have been associated in some way with the coast."
Quebrada Jaguay was first reported by Frederick Engel, a French archaeologist who traveled to Peru in the 1970s and surveyed the country's coastline. At that time, radiocarbon dating was done on remains taken from a test pit.
Sandweiss was the first to undertake extensive excavation on the site two decades later. It quickly became evident that Quebrada Jaguay was a landmark site for archaeological research on the Peruvian coast. It will be used as a base from which to look at other sites for comparison, notes McInnis.
Some of the findings on early South American maritime adaptations found at Quebrada Jaguay were reported this fall in Science and subsequently made global headlines. In addition to being a co-author on the journal article, McInnis has presented her research at regional and national conferences, including the meeting of the Society for American Archaeology in Seattle.
"Theses are the kind of findings that make me want to keep going in archaeology,"says McInnis, who studied the animal bones using the world's leading Peruvian comparative collection housed at the zooarchaeology laboratory at the Florida Museum of Natural History.
"Quebrada Jaguay is a great site and in Peru, findings like this can still happen. It is exciting to be involved in cutting-edge research. It's what every archaeologist hopes for at least one time in his or her career," she says.
McInnis has applied to four schools where she could pursue a Ph.D. in archaeology. Ideally, she says, she would like to have a teaching position at a research institution in order to continue in archaeology.
"As a result of my years at UMaine, I am perfectly prepared to go into a Ph.D. in hard science," says McInnis. "When I returned from Colorado, I never expected to find a program like this at the University of Maine. The education and the science background I've gotten here are excellent. Now the door is open for me to go in any direction."