Nevada Medal goes to researcher of Great Basin, Donner Party

Associated Press Writer

RENO - An archaeologist whose targets have ranged from Neanderthal hunters in France to the ill-fated Donner Party in the Sierra Nevada is the winner of a top research award typically reserved for more narrowly defined sciences.

Donald Grayson, an anthropology professor at the University of Washington for 30 years, is the first archaeologist to win the Desert Research Institute's Nevada Medal in the 18-year-history of the silver medallion and its $20,000 prize.

"Most people stick to one topic or one area. I'm just curious about lots of things. I let my career chase around after questions that interest me," Grayson said Wednesday in a telephone interview from Seattle.

Past winners have been botanists, chemists, physicists, scientific experts in air quality, water clarity and the evolution of desert landforms.

They include the late Dwight Billings, a former Nevadan and Duke University professor many regard the father of plant physiological ecology, and the University of Iowa's James A. Van Allen, a pioneer in the use of unmanned space probes who discovered the "Van Allen Radiation Belt" surrounding the Earth.

DRI President Stephen Wells said in announcing the 2005 award that Grayson is an international leader in the study of human interaction with the landscape and the use of archaeological data to unravel biological mysteries.

The author of eight books, Grayson's early works chronicled the natural history of the Great Basin. He's best known for research suggesting climate change - not pre-settlement hunters - drove the extinction of wooly mammoths and other large mammals in North America 10,000 years ago.

"He's really a pioneer in the world of archaeology bringing those sciences together that go beyond the evolution of a single culture," Wells said.

"He represents more the interface of the Earth's surface with climate change and animals - bringing together humanity and the evolution of humanity," he said.

Grayson's study of the Donner Party confirmed typical mortality rates could accurately predict how many men versus how many women would perish while stranded in the Sierra that winter of 1846.

Since 1995, he's concentrated on a Stone Age site in France studying differences between the earlier Neanderthals and modern humans dating to 65,000 years ago.

Grayson received international attention recently for studies on the affects of climate change on caribou and other reindeer species in Europe and North America.

He found the animals went extinct in France about 11,000 years ago in correlation with an increase in the average summer temperature and suspects that "if predictions for global warming are correct" the same thing could happen to the last populations of caribou in the Selkirk Mountains of northeastern Washington and northern Idaho.

"This would suggest pretty directly that as summer temperatures warm up in the north, reindeer will do more and more poorly," Grayson said.

Wells said one of Grayson's most important contributions to science has been his impact on students.

"He has touched so many people. It is pretty profound," he said.

Grayson, who earned his Ph.D. at the University of Oregon in 1973, said he's "proud of two things in my career:"

"My graduate students, who have done very, very well, and the other thing now is the Nevada Medal," he said. "Working with graduate students is just a real thrill to me. It is the most rewarding part of my career."