Please join IAS in congratulating Carolynne Merill, winner of the BLM 2017 Heritage Heroes award!
Carolynne has been a volunteer with BLM Idaho's archaeology program for the past 15 years and has dedicated her efforts to recording petroglyphs and pictographs on public lands throughout southern Idaho and other western states. She has a Master's Degree in Anthropology and is a trained photographer. In addition to managing a team of dedicated volunteers, in 2000, Carolynne took the lead in developing new techniques for recording and dating prehistoric rock art. Using digital photography and Photo Shop, she enhanced selected pigments in rock art that are typically obscured by patina or too light for the naked eye to see. She was able to acquire samples of pigment that could be radiocarbon dated. Prior to this, archaeologists relied on dates acquired from associated archaeological material to assign a relative date to nearby rock art. Carolynne and her team have donated hundreds of hours of volunteer labor and many sites have been documented for the BLM in the Boise, Twin Falls, and Idaho Districts.