Antevs, Ernst (1888–1974)

Ernst Antevs was a Swedish American geologist who specialized in glacial geology and did pioneering work in geomorphology.

Antevs was born Ernst Valdemar Eriksson in Vartofta-Åsaka, Southern Sweden, and adopted the name Antevs after finishing school in 1909. In 1917, he received his PhD at Stockholm University with a thesis on shell banks in southwestern Sweden. As a paleobotanist, Antevs joined expeditions within Scandinavia as well as to Bjørnøya in 1916 and Spitsbergen in 1918. In 1920, he came to North America on an expedition with his professor, Gerard De Geer, inventor of the clay-varve dating method. He returned to America and obtained U.S. citizenship in 1939. Supported by Swedish and American foundations and societies, he worked at the University of Arizona, where he was appointed to a research assistantship in 1957. Antevs's work there earned him an honorary doctorate of science in 1965. The Antevs Library at the University of Arizona is named after him.

Antevs studied glacial geology in New England and Canada, applying the clay-varve method to trace the recession of the Laurentide ice sheet. Although partly revised, parts of the work still hold true in detail. As a specialist in glacial geology, he was entrusted with the compilation of maps of Pleistocene glaciers and ice sheets, which he presented in 1928 at the symposium The Centenary of the Glacial Theory in New York.

Antevs was fascinated by the possibility of identifying climate variations by means of tree rings. In 1922, his lifelong work on North American archaeology and climate variations began with studies of pluvial lakes and arroyos in the Western United States, particularly in the Great Basin. One of his main interests was human-environment interaction. Together with his glacial-geological [Page 82]work, this made Antevs a pioneer in geomorphology. He proposed a subdivision of the Holocene into Medithermal (0–4500 BP [before present]), Altithermal (4500–7000 BP), and Anathermal (7000–10500 BP). The scheme was criticized and partly revised, but the term Altithermal has remained in use. Antevs's pollen-analytical work (pollen analysis is the reconstruction of former vegetation and climate by means of pollen grains and spores in sediment layers) in the Great Basin led him into discussions resulting in the creation of the science of palynology (the science of pollen and spores).

Antevs's later works focus on climate change and dating problems and on the relationship between radiocarbon and other dating. They are published mainly in American Antiquity and Journal of Geology.