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Wednesday, July 17, 1996
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
KU professor, students dig PaleoIndians
CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
Jack Hoffman, assistant professor of anthropology, excavated a Paleolindian campsite in Buffalo, Okla., with a team of 36 professors, students and archaeologists.
Jack Hofman finds artifacts at ancient site
By Mallorre Dill
Kansan staff writer.
Jack Hofman has a strong sense of the Paleoindians, hunter-gatherers who lived on the North American plains 9,000 to 12,000 years ago. He sometimes talks about them in present tense.
"The thing that really sparks my interest is how they navigate. They know rivers and key landmarks. How do they use their large area of land?" Hofman said.
Hofman, assistant professor of anthropology, returned June 30 from an archaeological field school in Buffalo, Okla. He and 36 professors, students and archaeologists excavated a PaleoIndian campsite. Researchers at the site found a 10,000-year-old stone spear point. But finding ancient artifacts is only part of the thrill for Hofman.
"A common perception is that what you find is the most important thing about archaeology," Hofman said. "It's really digging in the dirt in the hot sun; it's a means to an end. What's really exciting is how these things come together, the pattern of many artifacts over time. That's exciting."
Hofman can look at a group of artifacts like stone tools, bison jaw bones and campfire remains, and with enough of these artifacts from different locations, he can deduce the wide-ranging pattern of the PaleoIndians. They traveled extensively without the use of horses.
Hofman started working in archaeology when he was in junior high. He
began teaching while in a doctoral program at the University of Tennessee. His students' questions made him reassess his knowledge of archaeology.
"It's like a continual defining of ignorance and minimizing it," he said.
In fact, Hofman came to the University of Kansas in 1991 specifically for the students. He was looking for a place where he could involve students in Paleolindian research while allowing them to earn credit.
That arrangement not only brought Hofman to students, it brought students to Hofman.
"I guess Jack Hofman is pretty much the reason I came to KU," said India Hesse, New Orleans doctoral student, who is interested specifically in PaleoIndians.
Unlike some archaeologists, Hoffman values amateur collections as part of the archaeological record.
"My philosophy is we have to deal
with archaeology as we encounter it," he said.
He also said he believed farmers and ranchers were often assets because of their intimate knowledge of their own land.
One of those ranchers is Leland Waugh, owner of the land in Oklahoma where Hofman and his students found the prehistoric spear point. Hofman compares the creativity and resourcefulness of people such as Waugh to the survival skills of the PaleoIndians.
"They had to be very creative to survive," he said. "A lot of farmers and ranchers don't survive today. Those who do have to be very creative. It's the same with PaleoIndians. They were just people dealing with similar problems."
Hofman left July 6 on a month-long trip to the Paris Basin in France, 30 miles north of Paris, where he is comparing PaleoIndians to the ancient hunter-gatherers of Europe.
KU geologists study how polluted water flows
Team uses sensors to plot path of water through Kansas rock
By Tom Moore Kansan staff writer
The electric hum of a large water pump drones next to a hail-damaged, 30-year-old camper. Dust from a nearby country road blows through the corn field a few feet away.
This spot, six miles northeast of Lawrence, has been a second home for James Butler, Geoffrey Bohling and Carl McElwee of the Kansas Geological Survey for seven years. The KU scientists are dedicated to understanding how contaminated groundwater moves.
In May, the National Science Foundation awarded the team a $50,000 grant to research the use of medical sensors that would create a "CAT-scan" of rocks underground. The picture would help the team better understand how fast polluted fluids move underground.
At the research site, the team has dug about 60 wells 35 feet to 70 feet deep
and will install fiber-optic sensors inside the wells. The scientists want to reach the layers of thin permeable rock just beneath the thick clay of the Kansas River valley. Butler said it was a unique site that is probably one of only six in the world.
"We're interested in getting some idea of how transmissive or permeable the formations are because ground water flows through permeable rocks just as heat or electricity flows through a pot on the stove." Butler said.
The new technique is more effective because up to 18 fiber-optic sensors can be placed in a well. The older techniques required pressure sensors as large as cigars, allowing only one for each well.
Traditional techniques are not able to find some zones of high permeability because they often are very thin. "Our research is directed at finding these thin zones," Butler said.
"These fiber-optic sensors have been around for about six to eight years, primarily for use in medical applications. They are used to test the pressure in your knee, or sometimes they are used before brain surgery. This is the first use of these in groundwater studies," Butler
David Graham, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, said, "this technology makes a lot of sense. I trust it does provide a better picture. Essentially what they're getting is a very good camera."
"Society wants us, as scientists, to be able to say whether or not site 'x' poses a threat to the public. Right now, frankly, it's very difficult to do that with much reliability. If we don't know that these thin zones exist, we may say it's going to take 50 years for that contaminant to go from here to there. But if you've got this thin zone, it may get there in one year," Butler said.
The project's success could greatly improve efforts to clean up contaminated areas, Bohling said.
Butler said that if the method devised by his team is successful, it could greatly improve scientists' ability to assess risk at polluted sites.
said.
"The main point is: If you have a better idea of where the contamination is — where it's likely to go — you can focus your efforts a lot more," he said. "You waste a lot less money cleaning up water that's not contaminated."
Nationally, the problem of groundwa
"Society wants us, as scientists, to be able to say whether or not site'x' poses a threat to the public."
James Butler associate scientist, Kansas Geological Survey
ter pollution led to the creation of Superfund, a 15-year-old, $30 billion federal program for waste cleanup and disposal. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, there are 12 Superfund sites in Kansas.
"The problem with cleanup is the cost," Butler said. "In the United States we are spending one heck of a lot of money. Superfund is set up to address this problem, and it's just addressing a portion of it — the worst portion."
Jim Butter, of the Kansas Geological Survey, tests the speed it takes water to saturate the ground.
Ryan Hasler/KANSAN
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