 |
Dr. Donald K. Grayson |
This year’s Nevada Medal—awarded by the Desert Research Institute—will go to University of Washington scientist Dr. Donald K. Grayson, who is widely recognized as one of the world’s foremost archaeologists and paleoecologists, DRI President Dr. Stephen G. Wells announced.
Paleoecology is the branch of science dealing with the interaction between ancient life forms, including humans, and their environments.
Grayson’s primary areas of research concern human interaction with the landscape and using archaeological data to answer biological questions. His work has focused on the impacts prehistoric hunter-gatherer groups had on their natural landscapes and the effects such change then had on the people themselves.
“Dr. Grayson has conducted landmark research in wide-ranging but related areas,” Wells says. “He has made fundamental as well as innovative scientific and historical contributions in many disciplines, strongly influencing those who work in them.”
Grayson will formally receive the award at Nevada Medal Dinners at the Reno Hilton on March 8, and at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas on March 10. He will present the Nevada Medal Lectures at DRI in Reno on March 9 and at DRI in Las Vegas on March 10. DRI has presented the Nevada Medal since 1988. It includes a $20,000 honorarium and minted silver medal provided by the shareholders of SBC.
Grayson is best known for his innovative research showing that climate change—and not “overkill” by early human hunters—led to the demise of large mammals like the wooly mammoth in North America some 10,000 years ago.
His study of the Donner Party that was stranded in the Sierra Nevada winter of 1846 on an ill-fated journey to California confirmed that biological predictors of mortality could accurately determine who would live and who would die. Adult females in the party, he discovered, had the greatest chance of survival and men the least. The study also shed new light on the importance of family ties in human societies.
Earlier in his career, Grayson did considerable work in the Great Basin as summarized in his popular 1993 book “The Desert’s Past: The Natural Prehistory of the Great Basin,” published by the Smithsonian Institution Press.
Grayson has also been deeply involved in answering one of archaeology’s most enduring questions: How did modern humans succeed over the Neanderthals in Europe?
His pursuit of knowledge in this area took him to southwestern France where he and local archaeologists are studying a Stone Age site once occupied by Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon people as far back as 65,000 years ago.
Conventional wisdom for years has been that modern humans out-competed Neanderthals, prompting their extinction.
Grayson and his French colleagues, however, have spent years developing data sets of bones chronicling the successes of modern human and Neanderthal hunters. They have used a range of innovative methods to test models of human adaptive change through the transition period from Neanderthal to modern.
These new analyses are not only changing how science views the French Stone Age, or Paleolithic Period, but also how researchers should conduct archaeological analyses in general.
Grayson joined the anthropology department at the University of Washington 30 years ago. He is a professor of anthropology and adjunct professor of the university’s Quaternary Sciences Center. Spanning about the last 2 million years of Earth’s history, the Quaternary Period (pronounced KWA-tur-nary) has been marked by dramatic and frequent changes in global climate.
He was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2002. Fellows are chosen for “their efforts toward advancing science or fostering applications that are deemed scientifically or socially distinguished.”
Grayson has been widely honored by his profession and has more than 120 publications to his name, including eight books, 44 book chapters and 53 journal articles. He was honored with a “Best Book of the Year” award from the American Library Association for his 1983 publication “The Establishment of Human Antiquity.”
“While Prof. Grayson’s distinguished scientific accomplishments are well-documented, little has been recorded about one of his most important contributions to science, which is the great number of successful graduate students he has supported over the years,” Wells says.
“A large proportion of these students have gone on to highly successful scientific careers of their own. The range and depth of one’s own productive research is one measure of a great scholar, one for which Dr. Grayson receives high marks. But he has also excelled in a greater and longer-lasting measure—the productivity of his students.”
–Ron Kalb
 |
 |
 |
 |
