2011 ® GSA Medals & Awards Presented at the 123rd Annual Meeting of the Geological Society of America S 9 October 2011 Minneapolis, Minnesota 2011 MEDALS & AWARDS RIP RAPP of evidence to bear upon the problem. The to various stratigraphic sections throughout resulting report, published in 2004, describes the state in order to instruct them in the ARCHAEOLOGICAL evidence that the bones and artifacts were proper documentation of soils and sediments GEOLOGY AWARD together in a secondary deposit, leaving the within but also apart from the complexities antiquity of the artifacts unresolved. At the introduced by human occupation. In 2009 Presented to same time, the Burnham project provided an Don went a step further by publishing Don G. Wyckoff important record of Oklahoma’s Ice-Age past, several student papers in Geoarchaeology and it is a benchmark as the first concentrated of the Cross Timbers, Memoir 13 of the effort to break the so-called “Clovis barrier” Oklahoma Anthropological Society. His lithic in Oklahoma. In 2007, Don led another technology course required two semesters, the interdisciplinary team in investigations at first to learn the vast literature dedicated to central Oklahoma’s Powell Farm site, another the topics of geology, fracture mechanics, and mid-Wisconsinan pond deposit with complex human tool using behavior, and the second late Pleistocene and Holocene deposits to learn how to apply that knowledge to a overlying it. nodule of rock. One of the epiphanies to come out of Don’s passion for prehistory has taken Don’s experiences at Burnham and other him down many roads, and in each case he late-Quaternary fossil sites was the need to arrived with an eye on the fundamentals of better understand the modern distribution of archaeological geology, scholarship, and terrestrial gastropods. The resulting Southern mentoring. We believe his efforts reflect Plains Gastropod Survey conducted by Don the spirit and the standards of the award he represents a quantified baseline survey of is receiving, and that both the Geological Don G. Wyckoff terrestrial gastropod assemblages along a 700 Society of America and past award recipients Oklahoma Museum of Natural History km transect spanning three physiographic should be proud to recognize him in this provinces and four biotic districts. During way. It is therefore with great pleasure that 1995 and 1996, more than 35,000 shells I introduce Don G. Wyckoff as the 29th assignable to 26 taxa of terrestrial gastropods recipient of the Rip Rapp Award. Citation by Jesse A.M. Ballenger were sampled by Don and his colleagues. The and Stance Hurst results of this study revealed an east-to-west shift in the composition of land snail taxa, and Response by Don G. Wyckoff The 2011 recipient of the Rip Rapp it provides an important reference for studying Having former students and colleagues Award in archaeological geology is Don Quaternary fossil assemblages. From 1997 to nominate me for this award is deeply G. Wyckoff. Don completed his Ph.D. in 2005 this research team collected land snails appreciated. To actually receive this award Quaternary Studies at Washington State from Oklahoma to the Canadian border, from is even more gratifying, yet very humbling University in 1980 under the direction of the Ozarks to the Southern Plains, and south given the list of previous recipients. I Peter Mehringer. His distinguished career into central Texas. A book compiling all these certainly don’t consider myself in their spans 50 years of research concentrated on findings is currently underway. league. So in accepting this award, I express the Southern Plains and Osage Prairie, where One of Don’s most significant my thanks to the geoarchaeological decision he has discovered, collected, and interpreted contributions to Plains archaeology began makers and especially to three colleagues critically important pieces of the late in 1962 when he led excavations at the who, since 1985, have played key roles in Quaternary environmental and archaeological deeply stratified Packard site in northeastern our combined efforts to understand what was records, and where his emphasis on Oklahoma. The site included an assemblage going on in Oklahoma since mid-Wisconsinan geoarchaeology will guide the interests of lanceolate-shaped projectile points (now times. Brian Carter, at Oklahoma State of future archaeologists and Quaternary known as the Packard Complex) beneath University, has been a constant source of scientists alike. Dalton tools. With the advent of AMS dating, knowledge and questions as we opened up One of Don’s most significant Don went back to the Packard site collections stratified deposits tucked away in slopes in contributions to the late Quaternary prehistory and was able to show that Plains-oriented the central and northwestern parts of the of the Southern Plains unfolded at the groups were visiting eastern Oklahoma by Rolling Red Plains. Likewise, archaeologist- Burnham site in 1986, where stone tool debris approximately 9,800 B.P., immediately before rancher Pete Thurmond consistently proved was found in stratigraphic association with or during the widespread expansion of Dalton to be an astute observer and synthesizer as a 33,000-year-old Bison alleni skull. The populations in the region. we recorded profiles and collected cores from resulting multi-year, inter-disciplinary project However, if we were to measure Pleistocene and Holocene dunes and alluvial led by Don aimed to reconcile the association Don’s contributions based on how he deposits in the Washita River watershed of extinct faunas and artifacts 20,000 years allocated his time and resources, his greatest of western Oklahoma. Finally, Jim Theler, before the appearance of Clovis, no small accomplishment would have to be his University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse, has task in light of the complex stratigraphic recruitment and training of students. As an enlightened all of us with his knowledge of situation at the site. Relying on information instructor, Don stressed the development of gastropods and its application to paleosols from geomorphology, geochronology, pollens, skills acquired first-hand in the field. In his and sediments dating back to over 150,000 snail ecology, and mammalian faunas, Don graduate-level courses in geoarchaeology, he years ago. and his team were able to bring multiple lines dedicated his weekends to escorting students THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA 2011 MEDALS & AWARDS My interests in geology, pedology, for certain kinds of chipped stone tools, a strong emphasis on tephra, other eolian, and past environments were initiated and his insights spurred me to continually seek and alluvial processes in soil formation and sustained by Robert E. Bell, Peter Mehringer, better information on the bedrock sources of landscape development. I am indebted to these and Henry Smith. Dr. Bell gave me a chance such materials. Such research is ongoing as scholars and teachers. I thank my Oklahoma to run archaeological salvage projects in now I am analyzing 8000 to 9000 year old University anthropology colleagues for Oklahoma, and the first two sites dug revealed artifacts from a southern Oklahoma site where allowing me to develop and teach courses multiple occupations buried in diverse quartzite formed and exotic chert clasts were in past environments and human society, terrace settings. In addition to forcing me deposited in middle Cretaceous beach sands. geoarchaeology, and lithic technology. The to become concerned with alluviation and Frank Leonhardy supported my application to students proved worthy and demanding, and taphonomic issues, the recovered artifacts the Ph.D. program in Quaternary Studies at it was a pleasure to try to keep up with their were primarily of chipped stone. Given Washington State University, and there Pete expectations. To have my efforts recognized Dr. Bell’s early study (1941 M.A. thesis, Mehringer introduced me to palynology and in the kind words and thoughts expressed by University of Chicago) of the prehistoric raised my awareness of “secrets of the past” Stance and Jesse is most touching. I thank you use of particular kinds of knappable stone while Henry Smith taught pedology with all for this very special recognition. THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA 2011 MEDALS & AWARDS GILBERT H. CADY to remodel their dioramas. Twenty-five years From that moment on, I was fascinated by later, one of Bill’s students still remembers his black rocks. Later travelling through the AWARD “magnetic appeal” while explaining these new Appalachians, I saw red rocks for the first Presented to ideas to his graduate class. time, equally fascinating. These two, the red William A. Dimichele Moving to the Smithsonian in 1985, Bill and the black, have dominated my research continued work on Coal Forest dynamics. for the past 35 years. Drawing on his exceptionally broad readings As John Donne once, famously, wrote in theoretical biology, he explored how “No man is an island, entire of itself; every species distribution in time and space could man is a piece of the continent.” We rarely be explained in terms of reproductive biology, hear the latter part of that quotation, which, biomass costs, and resource partitioning. in its entirety, encapsulates modern science. However, he also became keenly aware of the My “island”, shared with my collaborators, “inherent strangeness of coal plants” (as one is part of the greater “continent” of science, of his colleagues put it) and how the present so much of which we accept, with due is not always a reliable key to the past. In caution, so that we can progress in our own response, Bill explored coal mines and natural small fight against ignorance. I can take full exposures across the United States (from credit for little—my whole career has been Texas to Illinois and the Appalachians) to learn collaborative, learning from others, sharing what geology could contribute to paleoecology and evaluating ideas, all of us asking, to at a time when few paleobotanists were the best of our abilities, “what’s this all engaged in field studies.