Idaho State University anthropology master’s student Pink awarded one of two national grants from the Geological Society of America to present research

Idaho State University anthropology master’s student Jeremias Pink was one of two students nationally who received a Richard Hay Student paper/poster award in the Archaeological Geology Division from the Geological Society of America.

Pink delivered his paper/poster presentation and was honored at the GSA's annual national meeting that was held on Nov. 1.

He received $400 in support to travel to the meeting to deliver his paper/poster "Hardness and Fractured Surface Roughness as Predictors of Obsidian Source Selection in Southern Idaho." Pink completed the study while in the ISU course "Physical Methods in Archaeology" in fall 2009.

Pink, a native of Pocatello, earned his undergraduate degree in anthropology from ISU and began his master's program this semester.

In his study, Pink compared the material properties of Southern Idaho obsidian sources to see if there were physical differences between high-use and low-use obsidians that may have contributed to the preferential selection of particular sources throughout prehistory. He observed that while there were only minor differences in the mean hardness and fractured surface roughness of the obsidian sources, high-use obsidians had a much narrower range of variability in terms of both properties.

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