Mission

The Center for the Study of the First Americans explores the questions surrounding the peopling of the Americas. The Center pursues research, education, and public outreach.

Research: The Center develops new knowledge regarding PaleoAmerican origins, human dispersal, settlement, and cultural and biological development that occurred during the late Pleistocene.

Education: The Center trains students who will go on to continue First Americans research. 

Outreach: The Center disseminates the results of academic research into the first Americans to the general public through our publications.

The Center began as the Center for the Study of Early Man at the University of Maine (Orono) in 1981.  Dr. Robson Bonnichsen, an associate professor of anthropology and Quaternary studies created the Center and served as its first Director.  The establishment of the Center was made possible through a generous donation by the Bingham Trust.  In 1990, the name of the Center was changed to the Center for the Study of the First Americans.  In 1991, Dr. Bonnichsen moved the Center from Maine to Oregon State University in Corvallis.

The Center relocated to its permanent home at Texas A&M University in the summer of 2002 to be in a more active academic setting with new education, research, and outreach opportunities.  Dr. Bonnichsen served as the Center Director until his death in December 2004.  Dr. Michael Waters, who served as Associate Director from 2002-2004, became the Director in January 2005. Dr. Ted Goebel became associate director of the center in September 2006.

Dr. Bonnichsen not only had the vision to establish the Center, but took it to the heights of many accomplishments.  Dr. Bonnichsen convened several conferences that set influential directions in the field, including the 1989 First World Summit Conference at the University of Maine and the 1999 international peopling of the Americas conference called “Clovis and Beyond” in Santa Fe.  Dr. Bonnichsen founded the Center’s quarterly news magazine, the Mammoth Trumpet, and the Center's annual journal, Current Research in the Pleistocene.  Dr. Bonnichsen also published 14 Center books.  Also during this time, he was pursuing his own pioneering research and standing up for science in the Kennewick Man case.  Professor Bonnichsen was known nationally and internationally for his interdisciplinary research projects, for overview syntheses of the field, and as a spokesperson for First American studies.

The Center offices are located in an office suite in the Anthropology Building.  Within this complex are located the offices of the Director, Associate Director, and Office Manger, a library, conference room, student offices, reprint room, and an archive room.

The Center has three laboratories. One laboratory is equipped with four microscopes: two microscopes that are used to conduct use-wear analysis, a petrographic microscope for the analysis of thin-sections, and a light microscope for the analysis of other specimens.  A second laboratory houses the Center cast and artifact collection, and an extensive archive of excavation records and photographs.  Much table space is available for layout of artifact collections and analysis.  The third laboratory is the main laboratory for the Center.  Material from Center-sponsored excavations are processed and analyzed in this lab which has ample layout and analysis space.

Center Director

Dr. Michael Waters is the Director of the Center and Executive Director of the North Star Archaeological Research Program.  He is known for his expertise in First American studies and geoarchaeology.  Waters has worked on more than fifty archaeological field projects in the United States, Mexico, Russia, Jamaica, and Yemen.  His current research projects include the Buttermilk Creek Site, Texas; Gault Clovis site, Texas; Topper site, South Carolina; Gila River Indian Reservation, Arizona; Hueyatlaco site, Mexico; and Mud Lake Mammoth site, Wisconsin.  He has authored or co-authored numerous journal articles and book chapters and is the author of Principles of Geoarchaeology: A North American Perspective.  Waters received the 2003 Kirk Bryan Award and the 2004 Rip Rapp Archaeological Geology Award given by the Geological Society of America.  ( Vita )

Phone:   979-845-4046
Office:   210 Anthropology Building
Email:   mwaters@tamu.edu
Mailing address:

Center for the Study of the First Americans
Department of Anthropology
Texas A&M University
4352 TAMU
College Station, TX 77843-4352

Center Associate Director

Dr. Ted Goebel is the Associate Director of the Center. He is known for his expertise in First American studies and lithic analysis. Goebel has worked on many early sites in Russia and the United States. He is currently excavating at Bonneville Estates Rockshelter, Nevada, and he has begun new research programs investigating the Pleistocene human colonization of the Bering Land Bridge area, Alaska and northeast Russia.   ( Vita )

Phone:   979-845-4046
Office:   210 Anthropology Building
Email:   goebel@tamu.edu
Mailing address:

Center for the Study of the First Americans
Department of Anthropology
Texas A&M University
4352 TAMU
College Station, TX 77843-4352

Center Research Associates

Kelly Graf earned her PhD from the University of Nevada, Reno, in 2008. Her dissertation focused on the Upper Paleolithic settlement of the Siberian mammoth-steppe 30,000-10,000 years ago. She has conducted First Americans research in Siberia, Alaska, and Nevada, focusing on lithic technology as well as geoarchaeology. In 2007 Kelly edited the book Paleoindian or Paleoarchaic? Great Basin Human Ecology at the Pleistocene-Holocene Transition (with D.N. Schmitt, University of Utah Press), and currently she directs Center excavations at the Owl Ridge Site in Alaska.   ( Vita )

Phone:   979-845-0137
Office:   210 Anthropology Building
Email:   kgraf@neo.tamu.edu
Mailing address:

Center for the Study of the First Americans
Department of Anthropology
Texas A&M University
4352 TAMU
College Station, TX 77843-4352

Charlotte Pevny earned her PhD from Texas A&M University in 2009. Her dissertation focused on Clovis lithic technology and tool use at the Gault site in central Texas. Charlotte's research concentrates on Paleoindian quarries and debitage. She is particularly interested in experimental archaeology and understanding how taphonomic processes affect usewear studies. She is currently editing a volume (with Mike Waters and David Carlson) that will report the results of a decade of research on the Clovis lithic assemblage from Excavation Area 8 at the Gault site.   ( Vita )

Phone:   979-845-4046
Office:   210 Anthropology Building
Email:   ced1282@neo.tamu.edu
Mailing address:

Center for the Study of the First Americans
Department of Anthropology
Texas A&M University
4352 TAMU
College Station, TX 77843-4352

Jim Wiederhold earned his MA from Texas A&M University in 2004. His thesis explored the functions of end scrapers from the Gault Clovis site, through high-power microscopic use-wear analysis. Jim manages the Center's microscope laboratory, where he has conducted edge-modification studies of materials from Clovis and Pre-Clovis sites like Topper, Saltville, Pedra Furada, Gault, and Buttermilk Creek. He couples his analysis of use-wear with experimental studies including hide working and butchery of large animal carcasses.  

Phone:   979-845-4046
Office:   210 Anthropology Building
Mailing address:

Center for the Study of the First Americans
Department of Anthropology
Texas A&M University
4352 TAMU
College Station, TX 77843-4352

Center Office Manager

Ms. Laurie Lind, a Texas native, is the office manager for the Center for the Study of the First Americans.  Her background in office and personnel management includes experience in the academic, federal government, and private sectors.

Phone:   979-845-4046
Office:   210 Anthropology Building
Email:   csfa@tamu.edu
Mailing address:

Center for the Study of the First Americans
Department of Anthropology
Texas A&M University
4352 TAMU
College Station, TX 77843-4352

Editor of the Mammoth Trumpet

(Go to the MT Library)

Jim and Char Chandler, who together are C&C Wordsmiths, are free-lance desktop publishers and typesetters who have been preparing Mammoth Trumpet for press since August 1990. They have done the pre-press work for every issue of Current Research in the Pleistocene since 1992 and occasionally for other Center publications over the years. Jim has also been the editor of Mammoth Trumpet since December 1990.

Email: wordsmiths@touchnc.net

Editor of Current Research in the Pleistocene

(Go to the CRP Library)

Dr. Ted Goebel has served as the editor of Current Research in the Pleistocene since 2003.

Email: goebel@tamu.edu

CSFA Advisory Board Members

CSFA Advisory Board Emeritus Members

The Center is located on the second floor of the Anthropology Building.  (Map)

Main Phone:   979-845-4046
Office:   210 Anthropology Building
Email:   csfa@tamu.edu
Mailing address:

Center for the Study of the First Americans
Department of Anthropology
Texas A&M University
4352 TAMU
College Station, TX 77843-4352