Dennis Jenkins Wins 2009 Chiles Award
Photo by Andrew Curry-History Channel
The High Desert Museum recently named Oregon Museum of Natural and Cultural History archaeologist Dr. Dennis Jenkins the winner of the twenty-sixth Earle A. Chiles Award, recognizing his more than two decades of research into the deep human history and ecology of eastern Oregon and the Great Basin.
In central Oregon, Jenkins has found evidence that humans lived at Paisley Caves over 14,000 years ago, challenging theories of how and when people first came to North America. His latest research, with an interdisciplinary and international team of scientists, was published this year in Science and attracted worldwide attention.
Jenkins, who teaches at the UO’s Bend and Eugene campuses, spends nearly every summer directing the museum’s northern Great Basin archaeological field school, where hundreds of students have learned field methods in archaeology. For many years, Dennis has also worked closely with local ranchers, townspeople, and Native American tribal members from central and eastern Oregon. He travels throughout the state sharing his results in public lectures sponsored by the Oregon Chautauqua series and the University of Oregon.
An Oregon cave has yielded the oldest artifact ever found in the Americas. Tom Stafford
In Paisley, he and his students discovered camel bones butchered and burned by humans. Atop the bones they found 14,000-year-old coprolites (dessicated feces) that contain human DNA, what Jenkins calls “the perfect human signature.” The discovery challenges the prevailing belief that humans first settled North America 13,000 years ago, walking across a land bridge from Asia. Jenkins’ findings suggest that people were here at least 1,000 years earlier and that they may have followed the Pacific Coast into the Americas, migrating into the interior along major rivers such as the Columbia. Jenkins, who recently received a two-year grant from the National Science Foundation to continue his Paisley Caves research, believes the caves will reveal more important clues to the secrets of North America's ancient heritage.
For more about the Jenkins and his findings, read the November 5 Nature News article.