15,000 Years of Great Basin Archaeology by Dennis Jenkins

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Dennis L. Jenkins

PhD, Register of Professional Archaeologists

Senior Research Associate II

Director, Northern Great Basin Archaeological Field School

Museum of Natural and Cultural History

University of Oregon

BIO: Dennis Jenkins is a Senior Research Archaeologist for the Museum of Natural and Cultural History at the University of Oregon where he received his PhD in 1991. He has taught and directed the UO’s Northern Great Basin archaeological field school in the Fort Rock, Chewaucan, and Harney basins of Oregon and the Snake River Plain in Idaho since 1989. Jenkins’ research focuses on the first colonization of the Americas. When did people arrive, by what method, and direction? He has also investigated obsidian sourcing and hydration, prehistoric shell bead trade, and prehistoric settlement-subsistence patterns of the Northern Great Basin. He has conducted more than 100 site investigations throughout his career, authored and co-authored 11 books, >80 chapters, articles, reviews, professional reports, and contributions to reports, and given >70 papers at professional meetings. Most recently, he has been involved in the internationally recognized recovery of ancient human DNA from coprolites (dried feces) dating to 14,500 years and established the contemporaneity of Western Stemmed projectile points at the Paisley Caves with Clovis technology, co-authoring 6 articles in the World’s most prestigious scientific journals Science and Nature, made appearances in 11 TV documentaries, and had his work profiled in more than 50 newspaper and magazine articles including Parade magazine and New Yorker.