Patricia Lambert, associate professor and anthropology program director, spoke about her work in California, Colorado and Utah as part of the Museum of Anthropology’s Saturdays at the Museum. Lambert began her work in the late 1980s and has worked in the Santa Barbara channel area primarily. The lecture Lambert gave was titled “The Archaeology of War.”The lecture, which took place in Old Main, dealt with using resources found at archaeological sites that give evidences of war. Some of the resources, Lambert said, that were useful were war weaponry, pictographs and skeletal remains. “War weaponry can be useful evidence, but there’s some problems with that. Most societies use the same weaponry to hunt that they use to fight battles with. It may also have symbolic meaning,” Lambert said. “You want to see the different kinds of evidence in support of it to argue that this is war weaponry. So weaponry can be useful, they just have some issues in terms of interpretation.”Lambert also looks at bioarchaeological evidence, such as healed and lethal fractures on skulls found at the sites, as well as projectile wounds on other parts of the skeletons.”You can notice that this looks like a depression in the skull. This means that this person was hit was a club of some sort and that the wound healed. However, if you look at this skull you can see that there is just a hole. This was a fatal blow,” Lambert said.
USU prof: Archaeology gives evidence of war
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