Robert M Thorson
Biographic Data
| ID | 4054059 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Robert M Thorson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Robert M |
| FAMILY NAME | Thorson |
| SIGNATURE | THORSON R M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Alaska Fairbanks |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0935-9365 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 7 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 14 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1977 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Conserving the Historic Stone Walls of New England
Policies for conserving and interpreting historic sites in New England are well established. This is not the case for the region’s most salient historic feature: the extensive and nearly ubiquitous latticework of drystone walls dating mainly from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. For these iconic structures, there is only a hodgepodge of extant laws, ordinances, zoning regulations, and management guides for public properties at the local, …
Taxonomy and Nomenclature for the Stone Domain in New England
Walden's Shore: Henry David Thoreau and Nineteenth-Century Science
Walden’s Shore explores Thoreau’s understanding of the “living rock” on which life’s complexity depends—not as metaphor but as physical science. Robert Thorson’s subject is Thoreau the rock and mineral collector, interpreter of landscapes, and field scientist, whose compass and measuring stick were as important to him as his plant press.
Walden's Shore
Hydraulic back-flood model for the archaeological stratigraphy of the Connecticut River Alluvial Lowland, central Connecticut, USA
Geological and Cultural Context of the Nogahabara I Site
Interpretation of the Nogahabara I assemblage as a Late Pleistocene abandoned toolkit rests primarily on the premise of a single brief occupation at the site. The limited contextual data presented do not discount a palimpsest of noncontemporaneous assemblages in secondary contexts associated with a lag deposit. Spatial patterning, lithic assemblage patterning, artifact surface alteration, and disparate radiocarbon dates at the site, as well as ge…
Stratigraphy of the Colorado Creek Mammoth Locality, Alaska
The Colorado Creek mammoth locality in west-central Alaska contains the remains of two mammoths that were scavenged by carnivores. Sedimentologic interpretations of the reworked eolian deposits surrounding the bones, supplemented by 10 radiocarbon dates, indicate that the lower and upper mammoths died and were buried within separate, but superimposed, thaw gullies about 23,000 and 16,000 yr ago, respectively. From our results, we propose a polycy…
The Bolton spring site, Connecticut; Early holocene human occupation and environmental changes in southern New England
The recent discovery and excavation of the Bolton Spring Site, located in the glaciated uplands of eastern Connecticut, presents an enigma to archaeologists and geologists interested in dating and interpreting prehistoric human habitation sites. A single discrete charcoal‐bearing occupation level at the site was characterized by artifacts of the Middle Archaic Period (8000‐6000 B.P.) and contained an abundance of small‐mammal remains typical of t…
River Ice as a Taphonomic Agent: An Alternative Hypothesis for Bone “Artifacts”
The annual freezeup and violent breakup of temperate and high-latitude rivers produces unique geomorphic features that can be recognized in ancient sediments. The forces and materials involved in the breakup process could modify entrained bones in ways similar to those attributed to human activity. An intuitive taphonomic model is developed to explain how river ice may affect bones, and to predict the modifications expected. Partial testing of th…
Taphonomic Analysis and Interpretation in North American Pleistocene Archaeology: Introduction
Interstadial Proboscidean from South-Central Alaska: Implications for Biogeography, Geology, and Archeology
In 1980 a large proboscidean femur, probably Mammuthus sp., was found in situ in a bluff exposure at the mouth of the Tyone River in the northwestern part of the Copper River Basin, Alaska. The regional setting, stratigraphy, radiocarbon chronology, flora, and implications of the fossil locality, which represents the first documented occurrence of Pleistocene terrestrial mammalian fauna in southern Alaska, are described. Radiocarbon dates and str…
Ice-Sheet Glaciation of the Puget Lowland, Washington, during the Vashon Stade (Late Pleistocene)
During the Vashon Stade of the Fraser Glaciation, about 15,000–13,000 yr B.P., a lobe of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet occupied the Puget lowland of western Washington. At its maximum extent about 14,000 yr ago, the ice sheet extended across the Puget lowland between the Cascade Range and Olympic Mountains and terminated about 80 km south of Seattle. Meltwater streams drained southwest to the Pacific Ocean and built broad outwash trains south of the …
A Reported Early-Man Site Adjacent to Southern Alaska's Continental Shelf: A Geologic Solution to an Archeologic Enigma
An extensive ancient archeologic site containing lithic artifacts and associated with mammoth remains was reported at Chinitna Bay, southern Alaska in 1943. The presence of such a site adjacent to the continental shelf at the base of the rugged Aleutian Range suggested that humans may have inhabited the inner shelf environment during the late Pleistocene at times of lowered sea level. Because of the site's potential significance, an interdiscipli…
Geology of the Dry Creek Site; a Stratified Early Man Site in Interior Alaska
The Dry Creek archeologic site contains a stratified record of late Pleistocene human occupation in central Alaska. Four archeologic components occur within a sequence of multiple loess and sand layers which together form a 2-m cap above weathered glacial outwash. The two oldest components appear to be of late Pleistocene age and occur with the bones of extinct game animals. Geologic mapping, stratigraphic correlations, radiocarbon dating, and se…
Geological and Cultural Context of the Nogahabara I Site
Interpretation of the Nogahabara I assemblage as a Late Pleistocene abandoned toolkit rests primarily on the premise of a single brief occupation at the site. The limited contextual data presented do not discount a palimpsest of noncontemporaneous assemblages in secondary contexts associated with a lag deposit. Spatial patterning, lithic assemblage patterning, artifact surface alteration, and disparate radiocarbon dates at the site, as well as ge…
The Bolton spring site, Connecticut; Early holocene human occupation and environmental changes in southern New England
The recent discovery and excavation of the Bolton Spring Site, located in the glaciated uplands of eastern Connecticut, presents an enigma to archaeologists and geologists interested in dating and interpreting prehistoric human habitation sites. A single discrete charcoal‐bearing occupation level at the site was characterized by artifacts of the Middle Archaic Period (8000‐6000 B.P.) and contained an abundance of small‐mammal remains typical of t…
Geology of the Dry Creek Site; a Stratified Early Man Site in Interior Alaska
The Dry Creek archeologic site contains a stratified record of late Pleistocene human occupation in central Alaska. Four archeologic components occur within a sequence of multiple loess and sand layers which together form a 2-m cap above weathered glacial outwash. The two oldest components appear to be of late Pleistocene age and occur with the bones of extinct game animals. Geologic mapping, stratigraphic correlations, radiocarbon dating, and se…
Ice-Sheet Glaciation of the Puget Lowland, Washington, during the Vashon Stade (Late Pleistocene)
During the Vashon Stade of the Fraser Glaciation, about 15,000–13,000 yr B.P., a lobe of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet occupied the Puget lowland of western Washington. At its maximum extent about 14,000 yr ago, the ice sheet extended across the Puget lowland between the Cascade Range and Olympic Mountains and terminated about 80 km south of Seattle. Meltwater streams drained southwest to the Pacific Ocean and built broad outwash trains south of the …
A Reported Early-Man Site Adjacent to Southern Alaska's Continental Shelf: A Geologic Solution to an Archeologic Enigma
An extensive ancient archeologic site containing lithic artifacts and associated with mammoth remains was reported at Chinitna Bay, southern Alaska in 1943. The presence of such a site adjacent to the continental shelf at the base of the rugged Aleutian Range suggested that humans may have inhabited the inner shelf environment during the late Pleistocene at times of lowered sea level. Because of the site's potential significance, an interdiscipli…
Interstadial Proboscidean from South-Central Alaska: Implications for Biogeography, Geology, and Archeology
In 1980 a large proboscidean femur, probably Mammuthus sp., was found in situ in a bluff exposure at the mouth of the Tyone River in the northwestern part of the Copper River Basin, Alaska. The regional setting, stratigraphy, radiocarbon chronology, flora, and implications of the fossil locality, which represents the first documented occurrence of Pleistocene terrestrial mammalian fauna in southern Alaska, are described. Radiocarbon dates and str…
River Ice as a Taphonomic Agent: An Alternative Hypothesis for Bone “Artifacts”
The annual freezeup and violent breakup of temperate and high-latitude rivers produces unique geomorphic features that can be recognized in ancient sediments. The forces and materials involved in the breakup process could modify entrained bones in ways similar to those attributed to human activity. An intuitive taphonomic model is developed to explain how river ice may affect bones, and to predict the modifications expected. Partial testing of th…
Taphonomic Analysis and Interpretation in North American Pleistocene Archaeology: Introduction
The Bolton spring site, Connecticut; Early holocene human occupation and environmental changes in southern New England
The recent discovery and excavation of the Bolton Spring Site, located in the glaciated uplands of eastern Connecticut, presents an enigma to archaeologists and geologists interested in dating and interpreting prehistoric human habitation sites. A single discrete charcoal‐bearing occupation level at the site was characterized by artifacts of the Middle Archaic Period (8000‐6000 B.P.) and contained an abundance of small‐mammal remains typical of t…
Stratigraphy of the Colorado Creek Mammoth Locality, Alaska
The Colorado Creek mammoth locality in west-central Alaska contains the remains of two mammoths that were scavenged by carnivores. Sedimentologic interpretations of the reworked eolian deposits surrounding the bones, supplemented by 10 radiocarbon dates, indicate that the lower and upper mammoths died and were buried within separate, but superimposed, thaw gullies about 23,000 and 16,000 yr ago, respectively. From our results, we propose a polycy…
Geological and Cultural Context of the Nogahabara I Site
Interpretation of the Nogahabara I assemblage as a Late Pleistocene abandoned toolkit rests primarily on the premise of a single brief occupation at the site. The limited contextual data presented do not discount a palimpsest of noncontemporaneous assemblages in secondary contexts associated with a lag deposit. Spatial patterning, lithic assemblage patterning, artifact surface alteration, and disparate radiocarbon dates at the site, as well as ge…
Walden's Shore: Henry David Thoreau and Nineteenth-Century Science
Walden’s Shore explores Thoreau’s understanding of the “living rock” on which life’s complexity depends—not as metaphor but as physical science. Robert Thorson’s subject is Thoreau the rock and mineral collector, interpreter of landscapes, and field scientist, whose compass and measuring stick were as important to him as his plant press.
Walden's Shore
Hydraulic back-flood model for the archaeological stratigraphy of the Connecticut River Alluvial Lowland, central Connecticut, USA
Taxonomy and Nomenclature for the Stone Domain in New England
Conserving the Historic Stone Walls of New England
Policies for conserving and interpreting historic sites in New England are well established. This is not the case for the region’s most salient historic feature: the extensive and nearly ubiquitous latticework of drystone walls dating mainly from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. For these iconic structures, there is only a hodgepodge of extant laws, ordinances, zoning regulations, and management guides for public properties at the local, …
Archaeology (9 works) · Geology (9 works) · Geography (8 works) · Geology and Paleoclimatology Research (8 works) · Paleontology (8 works) · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies (6 works) · Pleistocene (6 works) · Radiocarbon dating (6 works) · Oceanography (5 works) · Geology (4 works)