AASP Primary Records Program


Pete Mehringer

photo*

WSU webpage 		Owen Davis

Peter Joseph Mehringer, Jr.

Peter Mehringer graduated from the University of Arizona in 1968 under the direction of Paul Martin, for whom he had worked as a laboratory technician for several years. His dissertation was on the palynology of spring deposits (desiccated spring mounds) in the Las Vegas Valley. While at the UofAz Mehringer attended the first International Pollen Congress (Tucson, Arizona, April 23-27, 1962 ).

While at the UofAz he and fellow graduate student C. Vance Haynes studied the Lehner paleoindian site (Mehringer and Haynes, 1965.), and after searching the upper San Pedro River drainage for similar locals, discovered the Murray Springs paleoindian site (Mehringer, Martin and Haynes, 1967).

Also, while at the UofAz, Mehringer developed the "Arizona technique" for processing packrat middens by soaking and then screening them. Previously, Phil Wells had only inspected the surface of the midden. He also embedded, stained, and thin-sectioned the pine needles (Mehringer and Ferguson, 1969) in the midden - the first and only study of that level of anatomical sophistication. Two years later, Van Devender and King (1971) published the first pollen analysis of packrat middens.

In 1969, he joined the faculty of the University of Utah and the invitation of Jesse D. Jennings. While there, Mehringer cored Curelom Cirque in the Raft River Mountains of Northwestern Utah (Mehringer, Nash and Fuller, 1971). Mehringer named the site from a passage from the Book of Mormon.

In 1971, he joined the faculty of the Archeology Department at Washington State University, following the departure of Vaughn M. Bryant for Texas A&M University. He remained there until his retirement in 2004. He was replaced by John G. Jones (Ph.D. 1991, Texas A&M).

Mehringer is best known for his archeological palynology in the Great Basin, and his application of palynology to the study of Mazama Ash at Lost Pass Trail Creek Bog (Mehringer et al., 1984). His later archeological contributions include the excavation of the Wenatchee Clovis cache (Mehringer and Foit, 1990).

Pete Mehringer's WSU palynology graduates included

    Michael Bartholomew (M.A. 1982)
    Abigail Beck (M.A. 1996)
    Eric Blinman (M.A. 1978)
    James Carter (M.A. 1995)
    Owen Davis (M.S. 1975)
    Michelle Ensey (M.A. 1997)
    Martha Hemphill (M.A. 1983)
    Dave Kolva (M.A. 1975)
    Ken Peterson (M.A. 1975, Ph.D. 1981)
    Kate Aasen Rylander (M.A., 1984)
    Craig Smith (M.A., 1983)
    Pete Wiggand (Ph.D. 1985)
WSU palynology students who completed degrees elsewhere
    Barbara Leyden
    Peter Vanderwater
    Wally Woolfenden

REFERENCES

Aasen, D.K. 1984.
Pollen, macrofossil, and charcoal analyses of Basketmaker coprolites from Turkey Pen Ruin, Cedar Mesa, Utah. M.A. thesis, 73 p.

Bartholomew, M.J. 1982.
Pollen and sediment analyses of Clear Lake, Whitman County, Washington: The last 600 years. M.A. thesis, 81 p.

Beck, A.P. 1996.
4400 years of vegetation change at Twin Lakes, Wallowa Mountains, Northeastern Oregon. M.A. thesis, 51 p.

Blinman, E. 1978.
Pollen analysis of Glacier Peak and Mazama volcanic ashes. M.A. thesis, 49 p.

Carter, J.A. 1995.
Vegetation and climate change of the last 1,500 years from Blue Lake, Pine Forest Range, Nevada, using a climatic viewpoint to examine the northwestern Great Basin's fit with Numic expansion models. M.A. thesis, 61 p.

Davis, O.K. 1975.
Pollen analysis of Wildcat Lake, Whitman County, Washington: the introduction of grazing. M.A. thesis, 43 p.

Ensey, M.M. 1997.
The late Holocene environment of the Jemez Mountains, New Mexico. M.A. thesis, 61 p.

Hemphill, D.A. 1983.
Fire, vegetation, and people--charcoal and pollen analyses of Sheep Mountain Bog, Montana. M.A. thesis, 70 p.

Kolva, D.A. 1975.
Exploratory palynology of a scabland lake, Whitman county, Washington. M.A. thesis, 39 p.

Martin, P.S., and Mehringer, P.J., Jr. 1965.
Pleistocene pollen analysis and biogeography of the Southwest. In Wright, H. E., Jr., and Frey, D. G. (eds.), The Quaternary of the United States. Yale University Press, New Haven, 433-451.

Mehringer, P.J., Jr. 1965.
Late Pleistocene vegetation in the Mohave Desert of Southern Nevada. Journal of the Arizona Academy of Science 3:172-188.

________ 1967.
Pollen analysis of the Tule Springs Site area, Nevada. In Wormington, H. M., and Ellis, D. (eds.), Pleistocene studies in southern Nevada. Nevada State Museum Anthrop Papers 13, 129-200.

________ 1968.
Pollen analysis of the Tule Springs site, Nevada. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Arizona 159p.

________ 1977.
Great Basin late Quaternary environments and chronology. In Fowler, D.D. (ed.), Models and Great Basin Prehistory: A Symposium. Desert Research Institute Publications in the Social Sciences 12, 113-167.

________ 1985.
Late-Quaternary pollen records from the interior Pacific Northwest and northern Great Basin of the United States. Pages 167-189 in V.M. Bryant, Jr. and R.G. Holloway, editors. Pollen records of late Quaternary North American sediments. American Association of Stratigraphic Palynologists Foundation, Dallas, Texas, USA.

________ 1986.
Prehistoric Environments. In Handbook of North American Indians, Vol. 11, Great Basin, edited by Warren L. d' Azevedo, et al., pp. 31-50. Smithsonian Institution.

________ 1988.
Weapons of Ancient Americans. National Geographic, vol. 174, No. 4, October, 1988.

________ 1990.
Comparisons of Late Holocene Environments from Woodrat Middens and Pollen: Diamond Craters, Oregon. In Packrat Middens: The Last 40,000 Years of Biotic Change, edited by J. L. Betancourt, T. R. Van Devender, and P. S. Martin, pp. 294-325. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.

________ 1996.
Columbia River Basin Ecosystems: Late Quaternary Environments. Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project (ICBEMP) Report, 91 pages. available online at www.icbemp.gov/science/scirpte.html Viewed 7/04.

Mehringer, P.J., Jr., S.F. Arno, and K.L. Peterson. 1977.
Postglacial History of Lost Trail Pass Bog, Bitterroot Mountains, Montana. Arctic and Alpine Research 9(4):345-368.

Mehringer, P.J., Jr., and Cannon, W.J. 1994.
Volcaniclastic Dunes of the Fort Rock Valley, Oregon: Stratigraphy, Chronology, and Archaeology. In Archaeological Researches in the Northern Great Basin: Fort Rock Archaeology Since Cressman, edited by C. Melvin Aikens and Dennis L. Jenkins. University of Oregon Anthropological Papers 50.

Mehringer, P.J.,Jr. and Ferguson C.W. 1969. Pluvial Occurrence of Bristlecone Pine (Pinus aristata) in a Mohave Desert Mountain Range. Journal of the Arizona Academy of Science 5(4):284-292.

Mehringer, P.J., Jr. and Foit, F.F. 1990.
Volcanic Ash Dating of the Clovis Cache at East Wenatchee, Washington. National Geographic Research 6:495-503.

Mehringer, P.J., Jr., and Haynes, C.V., Jr. 1965.
The pollen evidence for the environment of early man and extinct mammals at the Lehner mammoth site, southeastern Arizona. American Antiquity 31:17-23.

Mehringer, P.J., Jr., Martin, P.S. and Haynes, C.V., Jr. 1967.
Murray Springs, a mid-postglacial pollen record from southern Arizona. American Journal of Science 265: 786-797.

Mehringer, P.J., Jr., Nash, W.P. and Fuller, R.H. 1971.
A Holocene volcanic ash from northwestern Utah. Proceedings of the Utah Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters, 48(1):46-51.

Mehringer, P.J., Jr., Sheppard, J.C. and Foit, F.F., Jr. 1984.
The age of Glacier Peak Tephra in West-central Montana. Quaternary Research 21:36-41.

Mehringer, P. J., Jr. and Wigand, P.E. 1990.
Comparison of late Holocene environments from woodrat middens and pollen: Diamond Craters, Oregon. In Packrat Middens: The Last 40,000 Years of Biotic Change, edited by J. L. Betancourt, T. R. Van Devender, and P. S. Martin, pp. 294-325. The University of Arizona Press, Tucson.

Petersen, K.L. 1975.
Exploratory palynology of a subalpine meadow, La Plata Mountains, southwestern Colorado. M.A. thesis, 39 p.

Petersen, K.L. 1981.
10,000 years of climatic change reconstructed from fossil pollen, La Plata Mountains, southwestern Colorado. Ph.D. dissertation, 191 p.

Smith, C.S. 1983.
A 4300 year history of vegetation, climate, and fire from Blue Lake, Nez Perce County, Idaho. M.A. thesis, 86 p.

Van Devender, T.R. and King, J.E. 1971.
Late Pleistocene vegetational records in western Arizona. Journal Arizona Academy of Science 6: 240-244.

Verosub, K.L., Mehringer, P.J., Jr., and Waterstraat, P. 1986.
Holocene secular variation in western North America: paleomagnetic record from Fish Lake, Harney County, Oregon. J. Geophys Res. 91:3609-3623.

Wigand, P.E. 1985.
Diamond Pond, Harney County, Oregon: man and marsh in the eastern Oregon desert. Ph.D. dissertation, 264 p.

Wigand, P.E. and Mehringer, P.J., Jr. 1985.
Chapter 9. Pollen and seed analyses. pp. 108-124 in Thomas, D.H. (Ed.) The archaeology of Hidden Cave, Nevada. Amer. Mus. Natural History Anthropol. Papers 61.

His father was 1932 Olympics gold medal wrestler
www.kuhistory.com/proto/story.asp?id=28

WSU web page
libarts.wsu.edu/anthro/Faculty/mehringer.htm

Peter J. Mehringer, Jr. [Professor] is the 1979 winner of the Society for American Archaeology’s Roald Fryxell Award for Interdisciplinary Research and holds an adjunct appointment in WSU’s Geology Department. An archaeologist with a primary specialty in reconstructing past environments, Dr. Mehringer holds degrees in zoology, biology, and geoscience (Ph.D., University of Arizona, 1968). Since arriving at WSU in 1971, he has conducted archaeological or paleoenvironmental research in the Northern Rockies, the Columbia Plateau, the Northwest Coast, the Great Basin, Egypt, the Sudan, and Mesoamerica.

He teaches graduate courses in palynology (ANTH 576) and Prehistory of the Desert West (ANTH 546). He also has directed our archaeology summer field school and teaches in WSU’s World Civilizations program. He served as a Fulbright-sponsored professor of history at Northwest University, Xian, China in 1994 and as a Meyer Distinguished Professor at WSU from 1995-1997.

* photo from WSU web page