Contact: Robbie Ward
STARKVILLE, Miss.--A Mississippi State graduate student is being honored for her work with an electron microscope in research associated with Southeastern Native American tribes.
Jennifer L. Seltzer of Starkville, a graduate student in applied anthropology, recently received the Southeastern Microscopy Society's Ruska Award for Student Research. Microscopy includes any technique for producing visible images of structures or details too small to otherwise be seen by the human eye, using a microscope or other magnification tool.
Organized in 1964 at Emory University, the society is a scientific organization for professional microscopists working in the life, medical and physical sciencies. The Ruska award is a memorial to the husband-and-wife team who were key figures in the design of early electron microscopes.
Seltzer presented the findings of her study and answered questions from others attending the organization's annual meeting in Gatlinburg, Tenn.
In completing her investigation, the former Clarksville, Tenn., resident utilized Mississippi State's electron microscope to examine wood charcoal found at the Lyon's Bluff site in Oktibbeha County. She was able to confirm that the recovered material was from the Osage orange tree, which previously has been associated with Southwestern tribes but was not known to exist in the East Mississippi area at the time.
Sometimes used to make hunting bows, the species also is known as hedge, hedge apple or bodark. A cousin of the mulberry tree, it is native to areas of Southern Oklahoma and Northern Texas around the Arkansas and Red River valleys.
According to botanists, the tree's wood is so strong and dense that it neither rots nor succumbs to insects for decades. Before the invention of barbed wire for fencing in the late 1800s, many thousands of miles of "hedge" were planted closely together in lines throughout the United States.
Seltzer said positive identification of the specific wood will encourage her and other researchers to focus future anthropological investigations on its use in the region.
"It will allow us to examine the role of this tree in hunting practices and social
structures of Southeastern Native American cultures," said Seltzer, who received a 2002 bachelor's degree from MSU in interdisciplinary studies, with emphasis in biological science and biochemistry.
She said archaeological investigations show Native Americans occupied Lyon's Bluff between 1000 and 1650. MSU anthropologists, sociologists and archeologists have been drawn to the site since it was uncovered in the 1930s, she added.
Seltzer began examining the charcoal during a course in scanning electron microscopy at the land-grant institution's Electron Microscope Center, a teaching and research facility equipped for conventional transmission and scanning electron microscopy and confocal laser scanning microscopy.
After completing her master's degree, Seltzer plans to continue her education at the doctoral level.
"I love doing research and teaching at the university level," she said. "I plan to stay in academics."