The Peabody Advisory Committee has selected archaeologist David Thulman as recipient of the Linda S. Cordell Memorial Research Award for 2016. This award supports research at the Robert S. Peabody Museum of Archaeology using the collections of the museum. The endowment was named in honor of Dr. Linda S. Cordell, a distinguished archaeologist, specializing in the American Southwest. Linda was Senior Scholar at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, recipient of the A.V. Kidder Medal for eminence in American Archaeology, and a valued member of the Peabody Advisory Committee.

Dave is an Assistant Professorial Lecturer at George Washington University where he teaches courses on human rights and ethics, cultural property, the archaeology of North America, and the peopling of the Americas.  He received the Linda S. Cordell Memorial Research Award to support his ongoing documentation of Paleoindian and Early Archaic period artifacts. Dave has already collected over 5000 early stone tool images, mainly from the Southeast, and new data from the Peabody’s collections would be used in several shape analyses, particularly looking at shape differences and assessing the degree of regional variation. He notes that current shape analyses of Paleoindian tools has been done on small datasets and that his “intent is to analyze hundreds of Paleoindian and Early Archaic artifacts to produce robust statistical inferences about temporal and spatial group relationships.” Dave received his PhD in 2006 from Florida State University in Tallahassee and serves as president of the non-profit Archaeological Research Cooperative, Inc. (ARCOOP).

For more on the Linda S. Cordell Memorial Research Award see our blog: http://bit.ly/22pgzV5