Focus on Research
Penn State Intercom......February 20 , 2003

SEEDS OF WISDOM

Ancient wood, seeds and mastodon
dung lead to MacArthur Award

By A'ndrea Elyse Messer
Public Information

Perhaps the waterproof containers of ancient Mastodon dung sitting under the lab benches and the 8,000-year-old elderberry seeds under the microscope in her laboratory in Carpenter building are the best indication of the range and scope of Lee Ann Newsom's research. Or maybe it is her fascination with wood, its origins, uses, age and species that define her as a scientist. All are indicative of the fascinating and innovative career of one of the fewer than 100 paleoethnobotanists plying their trade worldwide.

Two thirds paleoethnobotanist and one third paleobotanist, Newsom arrived on campus as an associate professor of anthropology a year ago and was recently named a MacArthur Fellow, the first Penn State faculty member chosen for this honor. The MacArthur Fellowship awards $250,000 over a five-year period. Fellows can do anything they want with the money as it comes directly to them, not to their institution or employer.

Newsom's career path was set when, as an undergraduate, she volunteered to work at the Florida Museum of Natural History and ended up with a job handling collections. Another act of volunteerism found her helping at an archaeological site that was actually submerged in a river bottom.

"Archaeologists are always complaining about poor preservation of organic artifacts such as seeds, bones and wood in the tropics," said Newsom. "At that site we found volumes of wood and wood chips that were debitage from making dugout canoes or other objects. We wanted to know what species of wood was used."

Unfortunately, most foresters and wood anatomists are used to looking at live trees and freshly cut products. They are not familiar with water-soaked, degraded old wood. Newsom took botany and forestry courses like wood anatomy, worked hands-on with the degraded wood and became an expert on ancient wood identification and analysis. She looked at the uses of wood, forest resources and the food plants in the diets of the inhabitants of that first site and many others since.

Along with the wood, the excavation also uncovered a variety of plant foods including seed and rind specimens of cucurbita -- squash or gourds related to our winter and summer squash and pumpkins. Examination of these cucurbita remains, along with specimens later recovered from additional wetsites in Florida including seeds dating to as old as 10,500 B.C., showed that morphological changes had taken place, suggesting that the plants were cultivated. This research helped to establish that the genus cucurbita was indigenous to the region and lent support to the theory that eastern north America was an independent center of plant domestication.

Archaeologists now believe that a complex of plants including gourds and squashes, goosefoot and sunflower were widely used and domesticated in eastern North America long before the introduction of maize and beans from the southwest.

The key to good preservation in wetsites is waterlogged, oxygen-poor conditions. That means enough water and sediments to completely entomb the remains so that they reside in an environment within a lake or pond that is essentially anaerobic -- lacking oxygen. Once the material is in the oxygen-poor zone where most bacteria and animals cannot survive, it remains relatively intact, even for millennia.

From her work in Florida, Newsom moved throughout the Carib-bean and has worked on waterlogged and carbonized plant remains from sites in Puerto Rico, the Turks and Caicos, Grenada, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Cuba, the Bahamas and other islands. She currently is principal investigator on projects in Puerto Rico and the Turks and Caicos, but works with other researchers on other locations as well.

"In 1985, a project to build a subdivision in Florida decided to remove a pond," said Newsom. "When they began to dig, they realized they were disturbing human burials."

What they had was an Archaic Period cemetery with about 150 burials placed directly in the pond bottom. By analyzing the plant remains around the human remains and also in the body cavities, Newsom was able to determine what food items were consumed shortly before death and that most of the individuals had been interred in the late summer/early fall.

"They were buried under a teepee-like framework of wood, so that also by looking at when the wood was harvested we could see that it was late summer or early autumn," said Newsom. "The wood and burials were placed deeper than about 30 centimeters below the surface in the oxygen-poor environment of the pond bottom, which resulted in exceptional preservation."

Because the group was probably nomadic, cemeteries that were used in the winter months and in the early spring and summer probably existed in another portion of the territory these inhabitants habitually used. The 8,000-year-old remains were wrapped in finely woven blankets for burial.

"When Europeans first came in contact with the Native Americans in this area, they did not have woven cloth of any kind," Newsom said. "Somewhere along the way, this skill was evidently lost."

Newsom is investigating the contents of the stomach of a 35-year-old woman who died of extensive bone cancer. The 8,000-year-old elderberry seeds came from her as well as a large variety of other seeds that may have been used for medicinal purposes. The array of seeds found together in her stomach confirmed that she died in late summer or early fall.

While ancient human interaction with the environment is a focus of Newsom's work, she also is interested in other paleoecological studies, hence the boxes of Mastodon dung in her lab, and samples of off-shore sediments that are part of global warming and sea level research. By looking at the organic remains in the dung or from the ocean core samples, she can determine what the environment was like between 40,000 and 5,000 years ago and what this now-extinct elephant relative ate. Surprisingly, this ancient scat is odorless, even when reconstituted. The mastodon dung is featured in a soon-to-be released film documentary, "Ice Age Oasis," by the BBC as part of the series "Wild New World."

Investigation of plant remains in archaeological sites can help archaeologists understand how people lived and correct misconceptions that arise from looking only at architecture or animal bones. By adding information on plants found at a site, a better, fuller picture of the life ways of the inhabitants may be possible.

"We've found that the Calusa in Florida, who are generally considered fishermen not gardeners, did actually grow varieties of gourds, papayas and chili peppers," said Newsom. "They were not reliant on these plants, but they did grow them."

Research in the Caribbean focuses on the migration of human groups out of the Amazon River basin into the Caribbean. Newsom and colleagues are studying human settlement of the islands emphasizing biogeographical principles. Analyses of plant remains have identified the earliest maize and manioc -- a starchy root vegetable that is a staple in the diet -- in the archipelago.

In Puerto Rico, investigations have found seeds from a narcotic plant that does not currently grow on the island. The seeds were found only in chiefly centers, the nexuses of stratified societies in the region.

"We don't know how the seeds got there, but we know they do not grow there now," said Newsom. "One possibility is that the plant was imported and grown for local use."

As to what she will do with the prize, Newsom said she hasn't really had time to think about it, but it will give her the flexibility to run someone down to the islands when necessary. She will probably use it to enhance the projects for which she is principal investigator.

A'ndrea Elyse Messer can be reached at aem1@psu.edu.

Iron supplements help anemic children
— even those suffering from colds

By Barbara Hale
Public Information

In a recent study, giving iron supplements to anemic children when they have a cold or other upper respiratory tract infection (URTI) significantly improved their iron status without increasing stomach upset or other side effects, according to a Penn State nutritionist.

Namanjeet Ahluwalia, associate professor of nutrition and principle investigator on the research team, said, "Because of conflicting results from previous studies, physicians preferred to be cautious and generally withhold iron until a child was infection-free -- which could delay the benefits of treatment if a child is iron deficient.

"Our study shows no increase in gastro-intestinal or other side effects from supplementation. In fact, children who received the iron supplement experienced nine to 10 fewer sick days than those who did not. Those who did not receive supplementation were sick more often and for longer periods of time."

She added, "Iron deficiency affects about 10 percent of U.S. infants and toddlers and is a leading health risk factor in high mortality, developing and developed countries. Our study shows there is no longer any reason to give correcting iron deficiency a back seat in children who have upper respiratory tract infections if iron deficiency is indicated."

The study was authored by Angela de Silva, a doctoral candidate at the University of Colombo whom Ahluwalia is co-advising; Sunethra Atukorala, professor of biochemistry at the University of Colombo; and Irangani Weerasinghe, a physician at the Lady Ridgeway Children's Hospital in Colombo and Ahluwalia. Nearly 500 children were recruited for the study from among the patients at the Outpatient Department of the Lady Ridgeway Children's Hospital in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Among the study participants with infections, 127 children were given supplements and 52 given a placebo or pills that did not contain iron. One hundred and thirty-four children without infection were given iron and 50 given the placebo. All children who were still anemic at the end of the eight-week study period received supplements. The supplement was a tablet containing 60 mg of iron, the recommended daily dose. Of the children with infections, those who received iron had 29 percent fewer upper respiratory episodes than those who received a placebo and had infectious episodes that were 40 percent less severe than those of the children who received placebos. Children who did not have iron deficiency but received iron anyway didn't have an increase in colds or stomach upset vs. those given placebo.

The team concluded: "The higher mean number of illness-free days in the children who received iron than in those who received placebo suggests that iron supplementation is likely to improve the quality of life of these children and ensure better school attendance."

Barbara Hale can be reached at bah@psu.edu.

RESEARCH NEWS IN BRIEF

Spanish language
becomes core skill

For college students nationwide, Spanish is no longer just another foreign language class, but is increasingly a key basic course such as English composition, math, science or humanities, said a Penn State educator.

The burgeoning enrollments of Spanish in American colleges and universities are a reflection of demographic realities, said John M. Lipski, professor and chair of the Spanish department.

"Spanish has become our de facto second language -- and in some regions, the first language," Lipski said. "This is a unique phenomenon in the 200-year history of the United States, which has always been an aggressively and often xenophobically monolingual nation."

Most college students take Spanish for quite pragmatic reasons, using it to help anchor their curriculums in business and international studies. American students appreciate the fact that, apart from the domestic importance of Spanish, it has more than 400 million native speakers worldwide.

"This makes Spanish one of the top languages of international trade and communication, ranking from fourth place to second depending on the criteria," Lipski said.

Teens prefer talking
to Mom about drugs

When it comes to talks about serious subjects such as taking drugs, U.S. teens apparently believe that mother knows best, a Penn State expert said.

"Seventy percent of the adolescents in my study stated that they were more comfortable discussing important topics with their mothers," noted Michelle A. Miller-Day, assistant professor of communication arts and sciences.

"This contrasted with 12 percent of the respondents who favored talking with their fathers, 7.4 percent who preferred their grandparents, 7.4 percent who went to siblings, and 3 percent who preferred talking with other extended family members. Neither race nor gender had any significant impact on the overall tendency of teen-agers to confide in their mothers."

Her study also noted that young people are much more impressed by the continuing lifestyle examples set by their parents and "normalizing" drug talks by integrating them into normal family routines than by the one sit-down "drug talk" advocated by the contemporary media.

PENN STATE'S RESEARCH HERITAGE

In 1960, Penn State established the nation's first interdisciplinary curriculum in solid state technology and in 1962 created the interdisciplinary Materials Research Laboratory -- the first such unit in the United States to be organized without federal block grant support. The lab won international recognition in the fields of material synthesis, electroceramics, diamond films and chemically bonded ceramics.

Back