Topic: Human Impacts on the Chesapeake: Smithsonian Environmental Research Center Studies of the Rhode River Ecosystem

Thursday, January 31 2019 | 7 PM | Admission: $10 (Free for First Mate members and above.)

Scope of Presentation

Dr. Gibb’s presentation will cover the follow topics:

  • Citizen Science Archaeology program at SERC
  • Environmental archaeology studies on 2650 acre Rhode River campus
  • Meat provisioning on 1650s-1680s plantations
  • 18th and 19th century house lot erosion and sedimentation
  • Ramifications of coal as a fuel in Anne Arundel County in the late 19th and early 20th centuries
  • Long term stresses on the ecosystem
  • Environmental impacts of contemporary households

About the Presenter

Jim Gibb (Binghamton University, PhD 1994) directs the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center’s Environmental Archaeology Laboratory (SEAL), housed in the historic Sellman House at the main entrance to the campus. He has researched and published on numerous topics in archaeology, from a Paleoindian site in Southern Maryland, to patterns of wealth among 17th-century planters, to production strategies among late 19th-century cheese manufacturers. With a team of citizen scientists engaged at all levels of research, from archival research to data collection to analysis and reporting, Jim investigates the ecosystem stresses created by socially differentiated households in the Rhode River watershed, analyzing biological materials and artifacts from tightly dated archaeological deposits from the mid-17th through 20th centuries.

For details on the entire series, visit: https://amaritime.org/winter-lecture-series/