Circumpolar Job Talk: "Pleistocene Peopling of Siberia and Beringia: Bridging Old and New Worlds" by Kelly Graf

"No doubt early human dispersal to the Americas was a complex process, one involving northern adaptations and circumpolar migrations. Most researchers consider Siberia the homeland of the first Americans with dispersal via the Bering Land Bridge. In this lecture, I review lithic technologies, hunter-gatherer ecologies, and new genetic data in these arctic/northern regions, investigating how humans responded to major climate change during the last glacial maximum (25-20 ka) and late glacial (15-12 ka). Colonization of northern Siberia and Beringia was episodic, with eventual dispersal to the Americas during the late glacial."