Summary: The Pedersen site is an island site in southwestern Minnesota with one of our state’s richest and longest records of human occupation extending back in time 10,000 years or more. The site was studied in the 1950s and 1970s, and now almost 50 years later a joint partnership between the Science Museum of Minnesota and the University of Minnesota has brought together an interdisciplinary team of researchers and collections professionals to re-examine this important site. This talk will explore what we’ve learned about the site, its geological and environmental setting, as well as what we still hope to discover.

Biography: PhD, 2005, University of California, Berkeley. My research uses a combination of geophysical approaches (e.g., rock magnetism, paleomagnetism, gravity), material characterization techniques (e.g., scanning and transmission electron microscopy, scanning force microscopy, X-ray diffraction), and field geology methods to critically examine a broad range of scientific problems. These tools enable my group to collaborate with specialists from a variety of disciplines, including the geosciences, anthropology, soil science, planetary geology, material sciences, physics, chemistry, and biology. Our research aims to understand the fine details of processes that operate on global, tectonic, outcrop, and nanometer scales.