Smithsonian Anthropologist to Speak at UK

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Nov. 10, 2009) − A Smithsonian Institution anthropologist will offer his views about how the Americas were populated and how the inhabitants developed tools when he speaks at 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 12, in the Seay Auditorium of the University of Kentucky's Agricultural Science Building North.

Dennis Stanford, who heads the Smithsonian's Division of Archaeology and is director of the institution's Paleoindian/Paleoecology Program, will present "Seeking the First Americans." 

He will compare the characteristics of the Clovis point technology of North America and its similarities with culture of Paleolithic Europe that was dominant some 21,000 to 17,000 years ago in what is now France and Spain.

Information about parking is available in the Kentucky section of the American Institute of Professional Geologists' Web site at www.professionalgeologist.org.

Stanford's lecture is sponsored by Morehead State University's Department of Earth and Space Sciences; the Kentucky Geological Survey; the UK Department of Anthropology; the UK Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences; the Kentucky Archaeological Survey; and the UK Program for Archaeological Research.