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David

@archaeomather.bsky.social

5.5K followers 1.5K following 5K posts

Minnesota environmental archaeologist, writer & terrible gardener - always researching the archaeology of bear ceremonialism, obsessed with museums, historical designations & monuments

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David @archaeomather.bsky.social · Jul 29

Motel at sunset - should be the Sunset Motel but I think it’s the Viking instead- in Montevideo, Minnesota, right after the storm. There is lightning across the eastern sky, and this to the west.

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Reposted by David

Rachel Deering @racheldeering.bsky.social · 9h

🖼️ Edith Holden

Illustration
Fruit
elderberry Tree
Sambueus nigra
and Beech
(Fagus sylvatica)

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Reposted by David

Hannah O’Regan @palaeohan.bsky.social · 19h

I know I’m not team bovid, but it would take a heart of stone not to admire this 10,600 year old Aurochs from Vig in Denmark. #archaeology 🏺

Photo of a huge cattle skeleton - it’s easily 6ft at the shoulder and is stained dark brown after being buried in sediment. It’s standing on a low black shiny plinth and has large forward-curving horncores.

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David @archaeomather.bsky.social · 13h

Wendell R. Anderson, 33rd Governor of Minnesota (1971-1976), portrait by Richard F. Lack in the Minnesota State Capitol.

“WENDELL RICHARD ANDERSON, was born in St. Paul on February 1, 1933 and graduated from the University of Minnesota Law School in 1960. Prior to receiving his law degree, he was an Army infantry officer and played on the U.S. Amateur Hockey Team (1955, 1957) and the U.S. Olympic Hockey Team (1956).
In 1958, while still in law school, Anderson, a Democratic-Farmer-
Labor Party member, was elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives. He was re-elected in 1960 and then went on to two terms in the Minnesota Senate, in 1962 and 1966. Anderson was selected as an outstanding Minnesota legislator by the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University. He served as chairman of the 1968 Humphrey for President campaign in Minnesota.
Anderson was elected governor of Minnesota in 1970, focusing his campaign on the need to reduce the burden of high property taxes and to provide local communities-primarily schools-with major non-property revenues from the state. The resulting fiscal reform laws, passed in 1971, came to be known as the "Minnesota Miracle."
Governor Anderson chaired the Democratic Governor's Conference (1974-1975) and was a member of the Democratic National Committee during the same period. He was re-elected governor in 1974, but resigned in December 1976 to accept appointment to the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Walter F. Mondale after his election as vice-president. Anderson lost this Senate seat to Independent-Republican Rudy Boschwitz in the 1978 general election, due in part to backlash against the circumstances of his original appointment.
Following his Senate service, Anderson remained active in the DFL Party and served for a number of years on the University of Minnesota board of regents.
He died in 2016 in St. Paul.”

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David @archaeomather.bsky.social · 14h

Harold P. LeVander, 32nd Governor of Minnesota (1967-1971), portrait by Barbara Brewer Peet in the Minnesota State Capitol.

“HAROLD P. LEVANDER
32nd GOVERNOR 1967-1971
IN 1966, a little-known Republican Party activist named Harold LeVander organized his first campaign for elected office, aiming immediately for the governor's chair. His victory over Karl Rolvaag, a DFLer whose campaign had suffered from party infighting in the primary season, made him the thirty-second governor of Minnesota.
Karl Harold Phillip LeVander was born in Nebraska, went to high school in Watertown, Minnesota, and graduated with honors from Gustavus Adolphus College in 1932. He went on to get his law degree from the University of Minnesota and began a thirty-year career at the South St. Paul law firm, Stassen & Ryan. LeVander served as an assistant county attorney for Dakota County (1935-1939) and also taught speech and coached debate at Macalester College until 1940. He was president of South St. Paul's Chamber of Commerce from 1952 to 1954 and president of the South St. Paul United Federal Savings and Loan Association from 1953 until his inauguration.
LeVander rode into office with the highest vote total ever received by a Republican up to that point. Early in his term, the state legislature levied Minnesota's first sales tax, overriding two gubernatorial vetoes.
This led many Minnesotans to refer unfairly to the tax assessed on many purchases as "LeVander pennies." As governor, he created the Metropolitan Council, the Pollution Control Agency, and the country's first Human Rights Department. Also under his leadership, Minnesota became the first state to ratify the twenty-sixth amendment, which extended the right to vote to U.S. citizens eighteen and older.
Less than a month before the primary election of 1970, LeVander surprised everyone by announcing that he would not seek re-election.
Instead, he chose to return to his law firm, now called LeVander, Gillen & Miller. He later became director of The St. Paul Companies (1973-1981), the Billy Graham Evangelical Association (1974-1981), and the St. Paul Chamber o…

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Reposted by David

Robbie @londonmikmaq.bsky.social · 2d

"Indians pour liquid gold into the mouth of a Spanish conquistador," detail from Theodor de Bry, c.1594.

Image of a group of men holding down a spanish conquistador while pouring a liquid into his mouth

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Reposted by David

James Green @archeaids.bsky.social · 1d

It is Indigenous Peoples Day. May Indigenous rights keep expanding around the world. #IndigenousPeoplesDay

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David @archaeomather.bsky.social · 3d

The Monster That Challenged the World is a radioactive giant snail(?) that sort of looks like a caterpillar, and there’s a bunch of them laying eggs in California.

Movie monster with big round eyes and pinchers by its weird mouth.

Movie poster for “The Monster That Challenged the World” (1957) with the monster with laser eyes (?) grabbing a woman and a soldier swimming underwater with a knife in his teeth.

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Reposted by David

Ben Miller @extinctmonsters.bsky.social · 4d

The Peale mastodon at the National Portrait Gallery in 2021.

It’s the 1st mounted fossil skeleton displayed in the US (1805), and 2nd worldwide. Its original viewers didn’t know about evolution. Even extinction was a new concept. More fossils interpreted as history and art, please! #FossilFriday

Mastodon skeleton with long tusks on a gravel bed between two white columns in an art gallery. Seen from the front.

Same from driver side rear view. Red curtain entrance to exhibit is visible from
This angle

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Reposted by David

Marcus Brandel @lostbones.bsky.social · 4d

🦥 #FossilFriday P68.40.1 - the rarest Minnesota fossil I’ve ever held in my hand: an ungual phalanx of #Megalonyxjeffersoni (Giant #GroundSloth). Discovered in a pile of excavated peat, this individual toe claw remains the singular specimen of this animal found in the state.
#Pleistocene #Fossil