In this episode the team welcomes a roundtable panel to discuss the 2022 scientific paper The Hopewell airburst event 1699-1567 years ago (252-383 CE). This controversial paper has since been refuted by our panel members. In this interview the panel will present all of the information surrounding the 2022 paper and present their evidence for refuting the claim that the Hopewell culture was greatly affected or even destroyed by a cosmic event.

Our panel consists of lead author Dr. Kevin Nolan. Dr. Nolan is the Director and Senior Archaeologist in the Applied Anthropology Laboratories (AAL), an institute within the College of Sciences and Humanities at Ball State University. His research specializations include: Prehistoric Archaeology, CRM, GIS, Ohio River Valley, Paleoenvironments, Soil geochemistry, and Geophysics.

Next, we welcome Dr. Tony Krus. Dr. Krus is an Assistant Professor at the University of South Dakota in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology. His current research focuses on chronological modeling, human-environmental relationships, and archaeological fieldwork of late-Holocene communities, primarily in the Eastern Woodlands and the Plains.

We also welcome, Dr. Tim McCoy: Dr. McCoy is a Curator of Meteorites at the Smithsonian Institution. His work primarily focuses on using meteorites to understand the differentiation of asteroids in the early Solar System and he has worked on 6 robotic spacecraft missions. Relative to this project, he has studied artifacts made from iron meteorites, including Hopewell beads from Havana, IL.

Finally, we round out the panel with Dr. Laura Murphy is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas, where she teaches many archaeology courses, including the popular "Archaeological Myths, Frauds, and Controversies" course. She is a geoarchaeologist specializing in paleoenvironmental reconstruction using soils. Dr. Murphy holds her Bachelor's degree from The Ohio State University, and her MA and PhD from the University of Kansas. She is also a former National Park Ranger who worked at Hopewell Culture National Historical Park in Chillicothe, Ohio.

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The Hopewell airburst event, 1699-1567 years ago 

Refuting the sensational claim of a Hopewell-ending cosmic airburst