Aaron's FIR (Fieldschool in Review)

Alright, so I said I'd do this a few nights ago, but never got around to it. So here goes.

After all of the stress of loading up gear and then sitting in the parking lot for hours while Jim tried to get organized, we headed down to St. George. We camped on a wildlife preserve owned by BYU called Lytle Ranch. It was a nice little area with plently of trees and shady spots to camp, showers, and flush toilets. The only draw back was that Lytle Ranch was 45-50 minutes from our sites. So, every morning, we had to drive for quite a while to get to where we were going. Nothing like the convenience of Barnson's land.

Our work in Utah focused on the area of Land Hill, just outside of Ivins, Utah. The sites ranged in size and complexity form small storage features to large room blocks. The whole western face of Land Hill was covered in rock art. Molly and Jenny's crew were in charge of large scale excavations of roomblocks and storage features. My crew was more nomadic, tending to do re-record many of Gardner Daly's pre-recorded sites. In addition to re-recording, we dug test pits at many of these sites. Brad's crew was in charge of recording the rock art. That involved taking lots of photographs and placeing large sheets of Mylar over the panels and tracing over them with sharpies.

Jim's main research interests for Utah were to collect a high sherd yeild, understand the scale and quantitiy of sites on Land Hill, and to use this data to compare the data gathered in the AZ highlands.

I'll speak from personal experience, but our artifact yeild was significant. I got fairly good at choosing tet pit spots afte ther first few were a bust. Turns out, if you dig near or in midden, you get a lot more stuff than if you were to dig in or around a structure. The majority of our artifacts were ceramics. We had plenty of Dogozhi (sp?), Washington Black on White, Redware, corrugated and redwares.

The AZ part of fieldschool proved to be much more interesting (everything's better in AZ right?). We climbed up to an elevation of 6,500 feet. Which made temperatures much more tolerable. We camped at a BLM station in the middle of nowhere. The closest city was St.George, an hour away on a primitive road.

The sites were spectacular and relatively untouched. Brad and I worked on site A:10:24. This site had originally been recorded in 1988, and then later surface collected. As we got on site we were amazed at the high artifact densitiy. Immediately we found complete proj. points, shell beads, unworked olivella shells, lug handles, and painted sherds the size of the palm of your hand. The site was a sea of pin flags. The research strategy for AZ was slightly different. Jim was hesitant to excavate structures and preferred to do test pits and complete collection areas. Even with 10 people working on A:10:24, we still had too much to do. Jim wanted us to point plot all diagnostic and exotic artifacts on the surface (which really slowed us down). Field specimens collected from this site totalted in the 700s (and that was only two weeks of excavation). We also found a single piece of worked turquoise, a strangely worked and shaped scapula (mayan eccentric-esque), and the fragment of a human mandible, molars and pre-molars intact. Jim's strategy for dealing with the human remains was to simply stop digging and rebury it. The Hopi and Paiute agreed to that strategy, so we didn't have to notify anyone, inluding Joel's friends Rick and Rena... (if you don't get that one, I'll explain it)

After working on that site for two weeks my crew was put on survey. We didn't find much. Mostly lithic and ceramic scatters. Other survey crews found several large architectural sites with upright slabs, circular features, and high arifact densities.

All in all, it was a good field school. Jim was flustrered and stress at many times, especially after 9 flat tires, a run-in with a cow and one of our Yukons, and local crazies. It was obvious this was his first year. Joel had it down to a science, but Jim was way more flexible and open to suggestions. It was refereshing though to work with somone who felt that they could walk away from your site with the confidence that you were doing things the right way. That trust was refreshing and empowering. I feel like I could actually run an excavation now.

There is much more, including a visit to UNLVs excavation (sadly, Karen Harry isn't as colorful as Dave Madsen)(no funny stories), and the little funny stories about hitting the cow and other things.

Welcome home Virgins

Let's get the report! Dish, DISH!!!!

Fremont Symposium

Cady and I were talking the other day, and it occurred to me that we should have a one-shot Fremont Symposium at BYU. I'm picturing like less than 30 people.

One day would be papers from each participant on whatever Fremont topic they wanted.

The next day or 2 could be set aside for open discussion of topics. You could submit a topic and a bibliography and people could come in and talk about it openly. Wouldn't it be cool to be able to have a 30 minute round-table discussion on whatever you wanted? Why don't we find Fremont whole vessels? Where are all the burials? What the H is a central structure? The list goes on...

People to attend in addition to the FoF:

Joel
Rich
Lane
Jim A.
Margaret Lyneis
Phil Geib
Shane Baker
Byron Loosle
Charmaine Thompson
Matheney?
Glenna
Kenny Winch
Alan Reed
SHPO/State Archaeologist People
Renee Barlow
Duncan Metcalf
Steve Simms
Dave Madsen
Andrew Ugan
Jason Bright
Interested U of U students
Karen Harry
The new Fremont Indian State Park archaeologist
Any other interested Great Basin Archaeological All-stars (Mel Aikens, the Fowlers, Gardener Dalley, McFadden)
Other Government people
Marti Allen?
The SUU Lady (name escapes me)
Etc...

Special Guest Star: V. Garth Norman

I know Ray tried to do this once with Anasazi pottery and nobody showed up, so we'd have to be a little careful. I'd also like to leave subsistence out of things as much as possible. We don't need to bring up all the old arguments, the point of this would be to press ahead.

ASU = BYU South?

The following is an excerpt of an angry email from Dr. Mary Rothschild, a long-term professor of history and former chair of Womens' Studies. She is part of a vocal cadre of faculty who are extremely opposed to the policies of ASU's President, Michael Crow.

"And I know I shouldn't say this, but many of us hate that we are becoming BYU South. The Fulton fundraising does not come without strings. You should see the flyer that is in the box outside the fence where the new enormous LDS Institute is being built. It is an article from the Church News that has quotes from the president saying that ASU is particularly glad to have Mormons because they raise the retention rates and are such good students, etc. Honestly, and we are put on public notice in the Wall Street Journal for not hiring a professor of religious studies because the local church objects. It takes me back to my first graduation here when Homer Durham returned to be the public speaker and he began with a prayer and I walked out. I think there should be a WALL between religious groups and public universities. Campus ministries are fine, but they exist for students and should be nothing more than extracurricular activities."

I guess I know now why I got into ASU huh!?

Note: Homer Durham is my great-uncle.

Doug McFadden Update

This morning I was perusing the Arizona State Museum list of permit holders, and noticed that McFadden had started his own contract company out of Kanab.

http://www.statemuseum.arizona.edu/profsvcs/permits/permittees.shtml

Note also that Sean's company out of Layton, UT is also on this list.