Using Archaeology to Reconstruct Trade Patterns Presentation with Dr. Jay Reti

This lecture will address methods that archaeologists use to assess how groups of people interacted and traded with one another in the past. Dr. Reti will discuss how artifacts, rocks, and bones tell a complex story of where people are from, where they have traveled, and who they have interacted with. Discussions will range from local Sonoma County obsidian sources, to methods of stone tool manufacture, and reconstructing diets of people in the past. These concepts will be broadly applied to Sonoma County examples.

Dr. Jay S. Reti is an archaeologist at UC Santa Cruz and Santa Rosa Junior College. His research reconstructs how technology evolved and how technological systems were taught and inherited over time. Dr. Reti’s PhD research focused on two million-year-old stone tools found in Kenya and Tanzania, and he is a project researcher for Locality Research and Preservation.