Scientific Research

Stone Wall — Jagged stones in stacked wall were sources from a widespread mantle of meltout till created by the lowering onto the landscape of locally sourced stone quarried from nearby ledges and dispersed in the glacier’s basal shear zone. Guilford, CT.

Main Interest

My main research interest is in Earth Surface Processes — a combination of geomorphology, Quaternary stratigraphy, lithology, sedimentology, and archaeology applied to a variety of objectives.

During the first half of my career, my main research involved field work and my main scholarly output took the form of research articles published in peer-reviewed scientific journals such as Science, Geology, the Geological Society of America Bulletin, Quaternary Research, The Review of Archaeology, and Environmental Management. Many others were invited chapters in edited review volumes such as the Geological Society of America’s Decade of North American Geology and the American Quaternary Association’s Late Quaternary Environments of the United States.

lichen on boulder — Lichens on volcanic traprock, Hill Stead Museum, CT.

Though I still publish in journals, for example, Bioscience, American Antiquity, Quaternary International, and the Journal of Taphonomy, my main scholarly output has shifted to stand-alone, single-authored books, the last of which was vetted by three anonymous reviewers and the editorial board at Princeton University Press. For scholarly books, peer review happens in multiple stages with the most important being the post-publication judgment of externally published reviews, book sales, and course adoptions.

I’ve always taken issue with the alliterative adage “publish or perish.” Though true for career builders and tenure wannabes, most well-established science professors publish to share their joy of discovery and to contribute to the growth of knowledge. And with books, the issue is not anonymous peer review prior to acceptance, but post-publication published reviews, purchase, and course adoptions.

Lake Ice — Mosaic of refrozen ice on surface of Walden Pond. On of my interests is climate change phenology.

Shifting Interests

Looking back on 47+ years of scientific research I see three overlapping phases of primary interest.

Geoarchaeology: Beginning in 1973, my early work on Arctic paleolithic archaeology, paleoecology, and paleoclimatology culminated with the 1982 founding of the Alaska Quaternary Center, and my chairing of the Geological Society of America’s Archaeological Geology Division, and my authorship in the 1990 Geological Society of America Decade of North America review volume Archaeological Geology of North America. I continue to help advise graduate students in UConn’s Department of Anthropology, where was jointly appointed from 1990-2019. Geoarchaeology remains one of my key scholarly interests. I am equally interested in historical archaeology (mainly via the stone domain) and pre-historic archaeology (mainly via Quaternary stratigraphy. Below are PDF files of two examples:

2023 – My most recent archaeological paper is a sole-authored, peer-reviewed, mini-monograph for Historical Archaeology titled Taxonomy and Nomenclature for the Stone Domain in New England. ” Link here…”

2014 – An alternative stratigraphic model for geoarchaeology of the Connecticut River floodplain for the journal Quaternary International is “Hydraulic Back-flood model for the archaeological stratigraphy of the Connecticut River Alluvial Lowland, central Connecticut ,USA. Link here….

Glacial Tectonics: In 1976 I began working on the glacioisostatic flexure and crustal tilting of western Washington, and the paleo-seismicity of New England and Puget Sound. After publication this work was put on hold for a decade, resumed with several grants from the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Earthquake Hazards Program in the mid 1990s, and has returned to my desktop for publication. An invited article in 2000 for Quaternary Science Reviews reviewed the field of Glacial Tectonics.

Gray Foam — Sludge-bubble whirlpool at Thoreau’s Cove in Walden Pond. What makes water do this, physically and chemically?

Anthropocene: My mid-career work on the origin and development of New England’s upland stone walls and lowland freshwater wetlands was part of a broader trend in geosciences that treats Homo sapiens as the dominant geologic agency on planet Earth. The wetland work featured the archetype small New England catchment of Susquetonscut Brook in Lebanon, CT. Increasingly, I’m working to make the investigation of New England stone walls a scientific endeavor, and to interest ecologists in examining this, largely overlooked signature phenomenon.

What has not changed over the years is the mantra my students chant to all my courses: “No rock. No ecosystem. No culture.” Indeed, all of human culture is supported by ecosystems, all of which depend on the solid earth –what Henry David Thoreau called the “living rock.”

Three Lists

For a complete list of publications link to my Academic Curriculum Vitae.

For a list of those indexed by Google Scholar, link to Google Scholar.

For an introduction to and full text of twelve selected articles, link to Selected Scientific Papers.