Making History Accessible at the Smoky Mountain Relic Room

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Published: LIFELONG HISTORY ENTHUSIAST, CHASE PIPES

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Published: Tutankhamen’s Tomb in Egypt Yields New Artifact

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66-Pound Meteorite Discovered in Germany

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Published: Sharing Discoveries through Central States Archaeology Journal

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Civil War Reenactments as Living History

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The Atlas of Historical County Boundaries in Tennessee

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Published: The Smoky Mountain Relic Room Hits the Road

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The Best Time of the Year to Visit the Smoky Mountain Relic Room

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Published: A Prehistoric Tourist Destination in Florida

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Geoarchaeology - An Integration of Disciplines

Chase Pipes, co-owner of Smoky Mountain Relic Room, has extensive experience with searching for and excavating historical artifacts. Grounded in history, paleontology, archaeology, and geology, Chase Pipes has participated in restoring artifacts, historical re-enactments, and teaching the above disciplines to others. In the last few decades, though, geology and archaeology have converged to create a new field known as geoarchaeology.

Geoarchaeology has come to assist researchers with understanding the history of humans from a different approach. More specifically, the field is interested in discovering the human impact on an environment. Researchers in this area not only focus on impact, but they also derive human history by looking at human activities in an area and placing them in some type of context.

More recently, the central methods by which researchers gather information is GIS (Geographic Information Systems) and DEMs (Digital Elevation Models). These tools allow researchers to collect three-dimensional pictures of artifacts, land area, and other features to be pictured from a greater perspective. These technologies also allow researchers to better understand and interpret interconnected sites, spatial relationships, structure, and land formation processes.

The Intersections Between Paleontology, Archaeology, and History

Round Silver Watch
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Chase Pipes, artifact and fossil collector, is also the co-owner of Smoky Mountain Relic Room based in Sevierville, Tennessee. Through this venture, Chase Pipes hopes to make history, paleontology, and archaeology more accessible to the public.

The three disciplines no longer belong to the same esoteric group of scholars nor are their importance less relevant in a day and age when technology seems to be moving humanity into an unknown future. Paleontology, archeology, and history are intertwined disciplines that have explained (and in some cases exposed) the human narrative since the beginning of time.

The three are very different disciplines, but when they work in unison, they highlight the beauty of academia. Paleontology focuses primarily on animal fossils-mostly dinosaurs-and also researches the evolution of animal species. Archaeology focuses on human artifacts and fossils. However, the information in these records of ancient animals and human life is chronicled through history because history is the narrative that explains all of these discoveries.

Two major finds illustrate the importance and intersection of all three disciplines. The first relates to a find that happened almost 30 years ago in California. Archaeologists found evidence of humans that existed more than 130,000 years, but a paleontologist was called to the scene because the Department of Transportation policy mandates this expertise at a find this big. The information did not resurface until years ago, but it highlights the existence of humans in the Americas. With additional evidence, archaeologist and paleontologists could support the argument that human existence stretched farther than ever imagined. More importantly, it rewrites the prehistoric narrative.

Probably the most significant find that illustrates the importance of the intersection among the three disciplines is the KT Boundary. Researchers in the last few years have studied the cataclysmic asteroid that destroyed the Earth, poisoning and killing everything, separating the Cretaceous Period from the Tertiary Period, and resulting in the KT Boundary. Studying this area will bring researchers closer to many answers, but more importantly, if the answers are found, they will shed light on human genesis and evolution.