Archaeologist Extraordinaire

Photograph courtesy of Eric Heffter
A conversation with Eric Heffter, a doctoral student in the School of Anthropology, by Tyler Stenzel, Student Science Journalist
Traveling abroad is a wonderful experience, particularly when you have the funding to do so. Eric Heffter was given the opportunity to study archaeological sites in Europe, thanks in part to funding from the new Lewis and Clark Fellowship in Paleoanthropology. Heffter is one of the first University of Arizona students to receive $25,000 from the fellowship, which honors the work of scientists Lewis R. Binford and F. Clark Howell in the field of human evolution. The fellowship also pays for tuition and is available for three years. The fellowship will help Heffter research his dissertation, which examines the social and technical skills required to craft the world’s most ancient stone artifacts. He has also excavated Upper Paleolithic sites in Europe, helped dig a farmstead in Iceland and unearthed an old iron-mining town in the Adirondack Mountains of New York.
What brought you to the University of Arizona?
I majored in anthropology at the University of Connecticut. I came to Arizona because it has one of the best anthropology programs in the country, with a large number of professors engaged in cutting-edge research. My academic adviser, Dr. Steven Kuhn, and I share similar research interests.
What inspired you to become a paleoanthropologist?
I can't remember a particular event that made me wake up one day and say, “Eureka! I want to be an archaeologist who works on the Upper Paleolithic of Europe.” I think what helped was having anthropology professors at the University of Connecticut who were so enthusiastic about archaeology. That kind of enthusiasm rubs off.
What led you to your interest in the Upper Paleolithic?
I’ve always been interested in human origins. After excavating Paleolithic sites in Europe, I knew that I wanted to work in the Old World. What makes this region and time period (around 40,000 years ago) interesting for me is that there are still many unanswered questions about modern human migration and the settlement of Europe, especially in regard to potential migration routes and what caused great variability in archaeological assemblages throughout the continent.
Scholars dispute the earliest evidence of humans in the New World. Does your work in Europe lend any support to the hypothesis that the first Americans came from Europe?
The time period I work in is too old to link to any European migration to America. The basic premise is that Europeans could have crossed to North America by using boats and staying in view of ice sheets that stretched from Europe to North America. These people would have survived by exploiting the rich marine ecosystem. I’m not an expert on this hypothesis, but I find it extremely unlikely based on current evidence. The similarities between stone tools found in Europe and America could simply be by chance rather than indicating that they were made by European migrants to North America. Sites where these tools are located in North America are quite controversial because of a lack of solid dates and issues in establishing which layer of sediment these artifacts actually came from. As someone said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I think the amount of evidence currently available requires that this idea be treated as speculation rather than as a well-supported theory, as it is sometimes portrayed in the popular press.
How do you find Paleolithic sites?
Although there are ways to narrow down where an archaeological site could be, studying the geology of an area or even surveying for potential sites is usually quite expensive and time consuming, so many sites are “discovered” for us. Most Paleolithic sites are found by accident, usually when someone is digging a foundation or putting in a road or railway. A lot of times a site is buried under layers of sediment, so unless artifacts are eroding onto the surface from a hill or someone digs into the sediment, sites are difficult to find. It’s also difficult to find archaeological materials in caves because usually the cultural materials I’m interested in are buried under younger cultural materials.
How did you become interested in historical archaeology?
After college, I worked for three years as a contract archaeologist in New England. Typically the sites I excavated contained historical artifacts as well as artifacts produced by Native Americans before contact with Europeans. I wanted to find out more about historical archaeology, so I went to a field school in Iceland. I was also part of a team that helped excavate a historical iron-mining town named Hammondville in the Adirondacks. Historical archaeology is amazing, as the preservation of artifacts is usually incredible and the researchers have historical records that allow them to understand and interpret the past in ways the artifacts by themselves cannot. In the end, though, I found out that historical archaeology was not for me.
Describe the most exciting discovery you've made.
I think the most exciting discovery I ever made was at Hammondville. A friend and I were digging a test pit near an old foundation to see if the area had artifacts and warranted further excavation, and we found a gold wedding band. What was really cool was that the head researcher, Sarah Sportman, used historical documents like this to locate who owned the house at the time.
Are there long periods when you don't discover anything?
There are many days when you don’t find anything, and at times it can be frustrating. At least for me, being out in nature and working and talking with other archaeologists (who are usually very relaxed and cool people to hang out with) make those days worthwhile. Plus it seems that whenever you least expect it, you suddenly find something that makes all the waiting worth it.
What are you writing about in your dissertation?
I’ll use experimental data to research a group of stone artifacts often termed the Oldowan industry. These are stone tools manufactured by our ancestors between 2.6 and 1.7 million years ago in Africa and other parts of the Old World. Archaeologists and paleoanthropologists consider these artifacts to be relatively simple to make and note that they seem to change little in form over time. I’m trying to see if these artifacts could be made by simply removing flakes, which would require no social transmission of knowledge to others. But results could show that these tools require some kind of passing of knowledge between groups in order to learn the manufacturing process, which might explain why the tool forms seem so consistent. This has important implications for understanding the intelligence and social behavior of our ancestors.
How did it feel to be the one of the first Lewis and Clark Fellowship awardees?
It felt great. Competition for grants, fellowships and other sources of funding in archaeology is quite intense, so I was grateful to be able to support my graduate studies through this fellowship.
What do you hope to achieve as an archaeologist?
Aside from scientific discoveries and publications, I hope to increase public awareness of archaeology. People have an interest in knowing where they came from and learning how their ancestors lived and coped with problems we deal with even today, such as population pressure, food security issues, temperature changes and droughts. More important, the public is also very interested in having archaeological sites preserved for future generations. I think that further exposing the public to archaeology will help in our efforts to preserve sites and show how important it is learn about the past in order to understand and perhaps solve contemporary problems facing all of humanity.