Dan Marshall Healan: Flintnapper At Work
On any given day, you might catch Tulane Professor Dan Healan flintnapping and that's a good thing.
As an archeologist, it's important to understand how ancient civilizations made their tools so Healan teaches a course in analyzing stone artifacts. The course requires students to actually make stone tools. No electricity allowed. It's all by hand - just like they did in the old days.
He admits that some students "get their hands bloody" in the process. "It's not easy to strike a flake off a rock," he explains. "You have to know what you're doing. You learn that if you do it properly you can predict the path that flake will take." Healan says the ancients used a rudimentary form of fracture mechanics to properly shape their tools.
You won't find Healan excavating Egyptian ruins or writings. Instead, he researches prehistoric societies that left no writings or written records behind. "I'm much more interested in the ordinary daily life of city dwellers," he says. By relying on anthropological methods, Healan has made significant strides researching residential structures dating back to 900AD in the city of Tula in central Mexico. He discovered a site containing 25,000 pieces of obsidian, a sharp volcanic glass that came from a source as far as 150 miles away. Healan still wonders "These people were using a hell of a lot of obsidian," he says. "How was it these day-to-day people were able to get these materials?" Hence his research continues.
With a strong Latin American studies program, Tulane's anthropology department offers strong support for Healan's research in Tula. "We are one of the premiere institutions for the study of Latin America," Healan explains. "We have specialists in linguistics, cultural anthropology, physical anthropology and archeology." He also cites developing programs in Africa and China as examples of the breadth of the Tulane program. And, Healan says Tulane is particularly unusual because freshman can take upper level anthropology courses without any prerequisites.
Next year, Healan will celebrate his 30th anniversary as a Tulane faculty member. You get the feeling the university is a perfect fit for him. He lives only blocks from campus. Every day, he bikes home, picks chili peppers from his garden and roasts them for lunch, like many people do in Tula. Healan acknowledges that his love of research of Tula might be surpassed only by his love of the area's food. "A colleague of mine once told me the only reason I'm a specialist in what I do is so that I'd have an excuse to come to Mexico and eat."
