Captured in Sediment: The Peopling of Maine

This is a laboratory course which is one of three courses required to be taken together. The three courses make up a "monster course" with the overall title "The Story of Humans in Maine Told Through Sediment". In this course students will learn and use techniques to develop chronologies for human occupation of watersheds. From sediment cores of Maine lakes, we will develop an age/depth model based on radiocarbon dating of organic matter throughout the core (sticks, bugs, seeds, etc). Together, we will slice sediment cores into individual centimeter-by-centimeter cross sections and analyze these for charcoal as a proxy for fire events as well as identifying and quantifying human biochemical markers (coprostanol, stigmastanol, cholesterol, sitosterol), the ratios of which can indicate the absence or presence of humans throughout time. In a region where acidic soils rapidly degrade physical evidence of cultural sites, our recent use of this technique has helped to fill in gaps in the archaeological record. This course is relevant for students interested in biochemistry, Wabanaki history, ecology and anthropology. In the lab, students will perform extractions, inject samples on a gas chromatography mass spectrometer, and interpret the data to quantify amounts of human biochemical markers. Students will be evaluated on participation in laboratory exercises, and through write-ups of their results.