“I expect to continue our excellence in research and our robust schedule of projects around New York State,” said Miroff, who specializes in Native American pottery analysis. “We hope to expand our contracts in the state and to do more battlefield research as well.”

Bahgat Sammakia, vice president for research, noted that the PAF is a significant part of Binghamton’s portfolio of sponsored research. In fact, PAF research expenditures during the past decade topped $23.6 million.

“We’re so pleased to have someone with a deep understanding of the center’s work as well as our campus’ traditions and policies step into this role,” he said. “I look forward to a collaborative relationship with Laurie.”

Miroff, who holds a bachelor’s degree in anthropology from the University of Connecticut, earned two master’s degrees (one in anthropology and another in teaching) from Binghamton before completing her doctorate at Binghamton in 2002. She will oversee the PAF’s 25-member staff.

Elizabeth Chilton, dean of the Harpur College of Arts and Sciences and an archaeologist herself, led a national search for a director of the center.

“The Public Archaeology Facility is a shining example of the value that Binghamton University brings to the State of New York and the people who live here,” Chilton said. “They conduct important historical and archaeology surveys and document archaeological sites in advance of construction. They also serve an important educational and community outreach mission, and I am looking forward to working with Dr. Miroff to find ways to attract and train students at Binghamton for these types of careers.”

Miroff co-developed the Community Archaeology Program, which began in 1996 and is about to start its 24th season. Hundreds of children, teens and adults have participated in the program, which teaches the public about archaeology through hands-on summer fieldwork.

Miroff succeeds Nina Versaggi, who served as director of the center for more than 30 years.

“I’ve worked with Nina since the beginning of my career,” Miroff said. “To be stepping into that role, it’s incredibly meaningful to me. Everything she has done has made a significant contribution to New York State archaeology.”

“Misliya is an exciting discovery,” says Rolf Quam, a Binghamton University anthropologist and a coauthor of the study. “It provides the clearest evidence yet that our ancestors first migrated out of Africa much earlier than we previously believed. It also means that modern humans were potentially meeting and interacting during a longer period of time with other archaic human groups, providing more opportunity for cultural and biological exchanges.”

Quam is part of a large team, led by Israel Hershkovitz of Tel Aviv University, that reported its findings Thursday in the journal Science.

The fossil, an upper jawbone with several teeth, was found at one of several prehistoric cave sites on Mount Carmel. Several dating techniques applied to archaeological materials and the fossil itself suggest the jawbone is between 175,000 and 200,000 years old, pushing back the modern human migration out of Africa by at least 50,000 years.

Researchers analyzed the fossil remains relying on microCT scans and 3D virtual models and compared it with other hominin fossils from Africa, Europe and Asia.

“While all of the anatomical details in the Misliya fossil are fully consistent with modern humans, some features are also found in Neandertals and other human groups,” Quam says. “One of the challenges in this study was identifying features in Misliya that are found only in modern humans. These are the features that provide the clearest signal of what species the Misliya fossil represents.”

The archaeological evidence reveals that the inhabitants of Misliya Cave were capable hunters of large game species, controlled the production of fire and were associated with an Early Middle Paleolithic stone tool kit, similar to that found with the earliest modern humans in Africa.

While older fossils of modern humans have been found in Africa, the timing and routes of modern human migration out of Africa are key issues for understanding the evolution of our own species, the researchers say. The Middle East represents a major corridor for hominin migrations during the Pleistocene and was occupied at different times by both modern humans and Neandertals.

This discovery opens the door to demographic replacement or genetic admixture with local populations earlier than previously thought, Quam says. Indeed, the evidence from Misliya is consistent with recent suggestions based on ancient DNA for an earlier migration, prior to 220,000 years ago, of modern humans out of Africa. Several recent archaeological and fossil discoveries in Asia are also pushing back the first appearance of modern humans in the region and, by implication, the migration out of Africa.

An analysis of artifacts found on what was previously called Easter Island revealed that these objects were likely general purpose tools and not spear points, says Carl Lipo, professor of anthropology at Binghamton and lead author on the study, published this month in the journal Antiquity.

People have long believed that the island civilization ran out of resources and, as a result, engaged in massive in-fighting, which led to its collapse. Thousands of obsidian, triangular objects found on the surface, known as mata’a, seemed to support this theory. Because of their large numbers and because they’re made of sharp glass, many believed the mata’a were weapons of war.

Lipo and his team analyzed the shape variability of a photo set of 400-plus mata’a collected from the island using a technique known as morphometrics, which allowed them to characterize the shapes in a quantitative manner. Based on the wide variability in shape and their difference from other traditional weapons, the team determined that the mata’a were not used in warfare after all.

“We found that when you look at the shape of these things, they just don’t look like weapons at all,” Lipo says. “When you can compare them to European weapons or weapons found anywhere around the world when there are actually objects used for warfare, they’re very systematic in their shape. They have to do their job really well. Not doing well is risking death.”

He says the mata’a wouldn’t be lethal. “You can always use something as a spear,” Lipo says. “Anything that you have can be a weapon. But under the conditions of warfare, weapons are going to have performance characteristics. And they’re going to be very carefully fashioned for that purpose because it matters.”

Lipo’s study suggests that the ancient civilization never experienced the oft-theorized warfare. Instead, the belief that the mata’a were weapons used in the collapse of the civilization is likely a late-European interpretation of the record.

“What people traditionally think about the island is being this island of catastrophe and collapse just isn’t true in a pre-historic sense,” Lipo says. “Populations were successful and lived sustainably on the island up until European contact.”

Lipo and his team believe that the mata’a are found all over the landscape because they were cultivation tools used in ritual tasks like tattooing or domestic activities such as plant processing.

“We’ve been trying to focus on individual bits of evidence that support the collapse narrative to demonstrate that really there’s no support whatsoever for that story,” he says. “Sort of a pillar of the broader study is the fact that this is an amazing society that really was successful. It just doesn’t look like success to us because we see fields that are rock, we think catastrophe, and in fact it’s actually productivity.”

Four days of digging beneath the corn stubble yielded project director Michael Jacobson and his Binghamton University colleagues just a few modest items, including a charcoal smudge and the possible remains of a wooden post. But if test results show that those artifacts date from the late 18th century, that could be enough to convince National Register staff that the location of the Battle of Chemung should be preserved for further study.

Jacobson, PAF’s battlefield research coordinator, launched the dig in Chemung, N.Y., at the request of local residents who care about historic preservation. Once home to the Village of New Chemung, the site is a few miles east of the better-known Newtown Battlefield. Historians often treat the Newtown and Chemung encounters as one event, although they occurred two weeks apart.

“There was a local push to highlight the fact that Chemung was a separate battle from Newtown, and also to help preserve the landscape,” Jacobson says.

PAF received a $37,357 grant in 2009 from the National Park Service’s American Battlefield Protection Program to conduct historical research on the Chemung battlefield and do some initial mapping. In 2012, the program awarded PAF a further $56,194 to perform an archaeological field survey.

The Battle of Chemung was part of the Sullivan-Clinton Expedition, a 1779 campaign of the Continental Army against British loyalists and the pro-British Iroquois. Gen. John Sullivan’s troops were camped at Tioga Point, near the present-day Athens, Pa., when scouts brought word of the settlement at New Chemung.

The village served as a base for various raiders, including, loyalists, Delaware and other Native Americans allied with the British. “It was also a traveling stop for loyalist refugees from New York City and Philadelphia who were making their way to Canada,” Jacobson says.

The Continentals stormed New Chemung on Aug. 13, only to find that all the occupants had fled. Heading west in pursuit, a detachment of soldiers encountered a group of Delaware warriors waiting in ambush about a mile away. The Continentals fought off the Delaware and then returned to New Chemung, where they burned the village to the ground.

To locate New Chemung in the landscape, the Binghamton archaeologists used a geographic information system (GIS) to lay an image of the Sullivan expedition’s official map over a present-day topographical map. They also used written accounts from the time of the battle, taken from Continental soldiers, loyalists and the Delaware, to pinpoint landmarks.

Finally, the archaeologists, guided by specialists from Ithaca College, walked the field with a magnetometer, a sensing device mounted on a cart. That exercise produced a printout that resembles a moonscape. The many dark splotches set against the gray background indicate disturbances in the soil that might — or might not — point to artifacts buried below.

At each of several spots that seemed most promising, the archaeologists dug a rectangular trench about 30 centimeters deep. In November, one of those test trenches produced the charcoal smudge, and another the traces of what perhaps was a post.

Now, the group awaits test results, hoping that the results will persuade the National Register that the site is significant enough to preserve, Jacobson says. “We’ll get the data, tie it with the historical documents and try to put together the best package we can.”

But the residents were suspicious.

“People would sometimes sit out there with their arms crossed just watching our every move, watching the screens to see what people were picking up and laughing that we were picking up rocks and pottery,” says Savery, a doctoral student at Binghamton.

She laughs at the memory but is quick to point out that this reaction is understandable given that outsiders have been stealing from the country for centuries, from the days of Christopher Columbus to the present, when most of the tourist industry, by far Jamaica’s largest, is largely owned by foreign entities that take most of the profits out of the country.

“That’s where that suspicion comes from,” Savery says. “And you have to take that very seriously.”

To help people understand her motives, Savery invites school children and opens the site to anyone who wants to learn basic archaeology techniques. She hopes that what community members unearth will spark a larger conversation about heritage and help them demand responsible social and economic development through eco-friendly, community-based tourism.

“Archaeologically speaking, Bluefields is like an open frontier because so little work has been done there,” Savery says. “And as development is sort of looming in the background, it’s important to document all we can, but also to assist the community in the negotiations as to what kind of development, what will be developed and how it will develop.”

Partnering with Missouri State University, the University of the West Indies, Northern Caribbean University, several community groups and a host of researchers and developers, Savery deepened her involvement with the community and started surveying estate houses of landowners interested in attracting tourism. One possible outcome is a heritage trail that links historic landscapes with contemporary communities.

“The community is very much involved in not only the process of archaeology, but the development and the design,” she says. “They are a driving force and inspiration in the Bluefields Archaeology Project.”

Savery’s work has earned her a Fulbright scholarship, which will allow her to intern with the Bluefields People’s Community Association and Jamaica National Heritage Trust so she can understand the complex relationship between archaeology and tourism in Jamaica.

“If we can help the community develop natural and cultural resources in such a way that has really wide-spread benefit, they don’t have to sell out to these larger, all-inclusive hotels,” Savery says. “We’re trying to make tourism work for heritage, rather than the other way around.”

Quam is part of an international team of researchers, led by Israel Hershovitz of Tel Aviv University, that has examined the dental discovery and recently published joint findings in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.

Excavated at Qesem cave, a pre-historic site near Rosh Haain in central Israel that was uncovered in 2000, the teeth are similar in size and shape to those of modern man, Homo sapiens, which have been found at other sites in Israel, such as Oafzeh and Skhul — but they’re a lot older than any previously discovered remains.

“The Qesem teeth come from a time period between 200,000-400,000 years ago when human remains from the Middle East are very scarce,” Quam says. “We have numerous remains of Neandertals and Homo sapiens from more recent times, that is around 60,000-150,000 years ago, but fossils from earlier time periods are rare. So these teeth are providing us with some new information about who the earlier occupants of this region were as well as their potential evolutionary relationships with the later fossils from this same region.”

The teeth also present new evidence as to where modern man might have originated. Anthropologists believe that modern humans and Neandertals shared a common ancestor who lived in Africa more than 700,000 years ago. Some of the descendants of this common ancestor migrated to Europe and developed into Neandertals. Another group stayed in Africa and evolved into Homo sapiens, later migrating out of the continent. If the remains from Qesem can be linked directly to the Homo sapiens species, it could mean that modern man either originated in what is now Israel or may have migrated from Africa far earlier than is now thought.

Quam says the verdict is still out as to what species is represented by these eight teeth, which poses a challenge for any kind of positive identification.

“While a few of the teeth come from the same individual, most of them are isolated specimens,” Quam says. “We know for sure that we’re dealing with six individuals of differing ages. Two of the teeth are actually deciduous or ‘milk’ teeth, which means that these individuals were young children. But the problem is that all the teeth are separate so it’s been really hard to determine which species we’re dealing with.”

Quam says that rather than rely on individual features, anthropologists use a combination of characteristics to get an accurate reading on species type. For instance, Neandertals have relatively large incisors and distinctive molars and premolars, whereas Homo sapiens’ teeth are smaller with incisors that are straighter along the “lip” side of the face. Sometimes the differences are subtle, but it’s these small changes that make having a number of teeth from the same individual that much more important.

Even though Quam and his colleagues don’t know for sure which species the teeth belong to, these dental “records” still tell them a lot about the past.

“Teeth are evolutionarily very conservative structures,” Quam says. “And so any differences in their features can provide us with all sorts of interesting information about an individual. It can tell us what they ate, what their growth and development patterns looked like as well as what their general health was like during their lifetime. They can also tell us about the evolutionary relationships between species, all of which adds to our knowledge of who we are and where we came from.”

Excavation continues at the Qesem site under the direction of Avi Gopher and Ran Barkai of Tel Aviv University. The archaeological material already recovered includes abundant stone tools and animal remains, all of which are providing researchers with a picture of daily life and hunting practices of the site’s former inhabitants.

“This is a very exciting time for archeological discovery,” Quam says. “Our hope is that the continuing excavation at the site will result in the discover of more complex remains which would help us pinpoint exactly which species we are dealing with.”

Quam continues to be in touch with the on-site archeologists and hopes to collaborate in the project if more complete human remains are recovered.