Hello!

I just returned from a week and a half in Parowan valley, sorry for the lack of posting... By now I think I have been to most of the canyons along the hurricane cliffs. Some canyons are completely lacking any materials suitable for clay, however there are good quality clays coming from the canyons near Parowan and Paragonah. Im taking into consideration both options; either the ceramics were produced from a single self tempering material, or the combination of separate temper and clay materials. I did locate a volcanic ash that is altered to the point of being a clay, it also contains biotite mica , feldspar and quartz. Currently im favoring the other option of separate clay and temper materials, although it has been difficult to locate appropriate tempering materials.

New available publications

Just so everybody will have easy access, two new publications have been added to the sidebar. David's rabbit coat project and Chris's condensed thesis. If anybody has others, send them my way. It looks like I have a place to host them for the time being. Don't ask, don't tell.

FOF discovered?

Today at OPA, Molly was reading the blog and Joel came up behind her...

"what is that?" "Friends of the Fremont?" "what is this?"

Molly quickly closed the windo and we told him it was merely a forum for idea exchange.
He shrugged it off but still seemed interested.

This goes back to Chris' question of, "should we involve the mucky-mucks"

I still say no for now. I know that Rich checks the blog every now and then, but for the most part we are fairly insular.

Thesis Feedback

First of all, I'd like to thank everyone who has given me feedback on my thesis and the truncated versions I have circulated. If anyone else would like a pdf of my condensed (35 page) thesis, please email me (watkins.chris@gmail.com). Maybe I should send it to Mike for online posting...

I decided to email a couple of people who I thought would be interested in my thesis (Alan Reed of Alpine Archaeology and Margaret Lyneis, formerly of UNLV) to let them know that it had been posted online. I have gotten some good initial feedback with promises of more.

I was a little anxious about shopping my thesis around, and I thought that I would share that I had a good experience. I think we should take advantage of the online nature of our theses and alert people who we think may be interested. It seems to be working for me thus far.

Um...sorry Holly:

Preemptive Haiku
Holly, you are just half-baked
Contribute or leave!

Holy Crap! I jest
But it's just for your own good.
We want you with us.

And I still love you,
Despite your Old World fetish.
It's just so easy.

Now come be our cook,
And all will be forgiven.
Peer pressure is right.

New Links

Some of you may have noticed that I added a "publications" section on the sidebar linking to the theses written by Dave, Mike, and myself. Does anyone alse have any publivcations they'd like to link to? And I guess I should have asked Dave and Mike if they wanted their theses linked to. Let me know if not and I'll take them down.

Here's My Take on the Year

Beef, chicken, pork – Gross!
Vegetarian at last
Oh I’m Lovin’ it!

__________________________

Expensive houses
Traffic that goes for miles
A Vegas nightmare

__________________________

Survey of Nellis
Baskets, alcoves, seeds, oh my
But no aliens

*Disclaimer: for those that are unaware, Area 51 is right in the middle of Nellis Air Force base.

__________________________

Crazy Kansas Man
Thought Bones was a great target
Kicked out on his a**!

Here is to another year

Sorry I didnt get these out yesterday, but here they are, and long live FOF:

Tropic, Moab, Price
Escalante is so nice
and Green River too
_____

Living on the road
eating from old AP2
Life with OPA...
_____

Drink sweet, sweet, Fresca
Nectar of the desert gods,
can you have too much?
_____

Friends of the Fremont.
Defenders of the lost ones.
They will rise again.
_____

Silicon and dust
Techno-Archaeology,
Future meets the past.
_____

Flakes and Stone Tools;
Manos and Metates too.
Love the stones and bones.

Odes to Field Schools

As I sit here guilty,
Thinking on the tents to check
And equipment needs:

First Escalante-
Not like later and Club Sean,
Stories now depress.

First Santa Clara-
Research design looks groovy,
Will we have a cook?

Field trip to first camp-
These kids will be spoiled rotten
Flush toilets, showers!

Now and then

They did what! No way
I’m offended, oh my heck
Daily Universe

Molly Mormon who?
Contacting book store, uh oh
Shouts of anger

Jewel and peasant quest?!
What about Capital Reef?
After level four

Unshaven, unkempt
No problem at library
Unspoken delight

Lapdances….5 bucks!
Vegas filth, wretched hive
Bad as Mos Eisley

Provo Nostalgia

High profile campus.

Pillar of academics!

I miss Rich and Lane...

In-N-Out Burger

I can eat the Jumbo Jack

J-Dawgs they are not

Zelda on bootleg

"Rosemary, heaven restores..."

Cut it! Here comes Joel!!

Oh crap, what the H?

(Yada-yada-yada) State!

Finger for Holly

Polar Bear Mudbath

We hitched a ride with a Swede

They heat-treated wha?!

Celebration Haikus

Tribute to the Blog:

A brilliant blog
Established in great wisdom
Idea exchange

ASU, OU
UNLV, BYU
Interscholastic!

Tribute to the Fremont

Long lost farming friends
Defamed, slandered...Foragers?
Peripheral pals.

Five Finger Ridge site
Important Contribution
Ignored by Utah

A constant culture
Or variable Sevier?
I vote for constant

Tribute (or lament) to the MPC

Plum blossoms outside
Cool breeze, light April showers
Stuffy in this place


Will we get AC?
Only April, sweltering
Can't wait for July

April 6th -- One year of FOF

I just noticed that Thursday will mark the 1 year anniversary of Friends of the Fremont. Any ideas on how to celebrate? Perhaps we should all submit a haiku in commemoration...

Haiku Lament

What was I thinking?
Spread much too thin, now too late
Long days, longer nights

Hi,

Hi Chris, Folsom8k, and others…
First of all thanks for letting me join the Blog, it seems to be a good group of people that are passionate about archaeology. As was requested here’s little about myself; as of now I am looking for work in archeology, having applied to various CRM firms and BLM offices. I want to gain more practical experience in archaeology. I am also applying to grad school, with the goal of entering in the fall of 2007.
All the work I have been doing recently in archeology has been of my own interest. I have been working on sourcing materials such as obsidian and clays. In October I spent two weeks collecting samples from obsidian locations, which were submitted for xrf analysis. However my main interest has been sourcing the clay materials for SVG ceramics. I have spent three weeks hiking around Parowan valley analyzing the geology and collecting samples. I have done this work so far, keeping in mind all the issues presented in the paper by,
Dean E. Arnold, Hector Neff, Ronald L. Bishop.
“Compositional Analysis and “Sources” of pottery: An Ethnoarcheological Approach” 1991
This topic has interested me, mainly because I love ceramics, archeology and the Great Basin, and working with these ceramics is a combination of all three. I was first introduced to Fremont archaeology in the Eagle Valley field school hosted by Uc Davis. Since then I have been working with Clint, and developing various project ideas.

Abbreviated Thesis

I've managed to cut the main point of my thesis down to about 35 pages in preparation for publication. This is probably much more readable than the full text. I have a pdf of the draft if anyone would care to look at it. I would appreciate comments before submitting it for publication.

Cady has a copy of the pdf the Provo folks could get, otherwise email me (watkins.chris@gmail .com) for a copy.

Watkins thesis on-line

https://etd.lib.byu.edu/ETD/Student/Files/cnw5/1193/etd1193.pdf

FYI...

Fremont Foragers?

In response to Jenny:

I think I did a pretty good job of starting to deconstruct the concept of Fremont foragers in my thesis. Essentially, the only "evidence" for a Fremont foraging strategy is found in the west desert and Great Salt Lake Marshes, unless you count Madsen's cattail extravaganza at Backhoe (and I for one don't, I'd bet the farm that there were mats on those pithouse floors).

In my thesis, I argue that in places where Fremont territory abuts foragers, there is a fuzzy border. Conversely, to the south where they are butting up against other farmers, there is a clear social boundary. We see this in the pottery. It all depends on what you want to call Fremont. I call the foragers cozying up to the Fremont farmers butt-kissers who are trying to get their hands on corn. They're either marginalized former Fremont, or people coming in from other foraging groups who are trying to cash in on corn and a higher prestige lifeway.

I have yet to see any believable evidence for a true Fremont forager from an area that is not a borderland. The whole argument is based on cattail at Backhoe and evidence from areas without a clear social boundary. It has no legs to stand on.

Chirping Crickets...

Hopefully now that the comps are over, we will see a flurry of activity.

Here's an update from the BYU neck of the woods...

(and not just my neck! HA!...lame...stupid...sorry)

Anyway, all of the first year grads are now breathing a sigh of relief since the comps are done. Now, we can only hope to pass.

The fieldschool is quickly approaching. It has been interesting to see the difference in expectations from Jim Allison. Many of the "vital" things that were field school necessities in the past (according to Joel) are being done away with. Elimination of the "Brother Love Revival Tents" and the Van Pelt Trailer have been discussed. Also, we have had several students drop out and now only have 16 (Jenny, correct me if I'm off numerically)

Jim has drafted the research design, and if I (or Jenny) have time, I'd like to post the key elements of it on FoF. It would be great to see some of your input.

The Fulton Research thing is coming up, in which we all kiss Ira's millionare derriere and get a free lunch. Chris, I thought about a repisal submission for our "Obsdidian" poster, but decided against it. Instead, I will be doing a poster on "Spottsen Cove". I think that mispelling all of my posters could become a signature trademark.

Also, we should be thinking about the GBAC and some of us (ex. arch session participants) should be thinking about sending me some abstracts. I will be drafting a proposal, my own abstract, and sending out a few e-mails, so be on the lookout. I also need to talk to JEC soon.

I know there is more, but I'll let the rest of you tack it on in the comments or other posts.

GIS Class

I know this really only applies to those still at BYU, but I thought I'd let you know that the GIS class (Geog 503) has expanded to 14 seats...looks like we will be able to weasel our way into it after all!

NSF and Curation Crisis

NSF reviewers can bite me. As some of you may know I applied for an NSF dissertation improvement grant a little while ago. I received notification from the project director (John Yellen) that I would not be receiving funds. Yellen was way cool and offered to discuss any of the reviews I wanted to go over. Seems like a helpful guy. One of the reviews was “Very Good”, the other two reviews were “Fair”. By the NSF rules if you have even one “fair” you’re out. The two reviewers who gave me fair had some good points. Basically they both said that I need to discuss my specific hypotheses more and my methodology. Which is fine. I had kept me proposal kinda general because I wasn’t sure exactly what they wanted. Both “fair” reviewers said they would like to see my project funded, I just have to make those changes. Fortunately, you can re-apply when ever you want with the dissertation grant. So I’ll be fixing the problems and sending it back in….hopefully in a month or two. They were fast at reviewing it, only a month. So for any of you who will be applying for an NSG Dissertation Improvement Grant, there is a lesson for you. When I rewrite and get accepted (which I will!) if any of you are interested in getting a copy so you can see the format and what they are looking for just let me know. Or if you have questions about the process....because “Fastlane” was freaking confusing at first.

As some of you may know, on the side I’m interested in the “Curation Crisis” (the YAR will live one day!). Lately, I’ve been curious as to the percentage of MA’s or PhD’s that are completed using new archaeological data vs. those based on curated collections. I’ve been sending out a survey to archaeology faculty all over the country to help get this info. I’m hoping to write up a little article on it. My main bone to pick right now is that professors don’t really push collections at the MA level. I mean many suggest it, but I think departments should make a concerted effort to have their MA’s use unanalyzed collections. This would really help with getting this information off of the dusty useless shelves and into the literature. Yeah for Cady. So if you overhear any of the faculty at your school saying “Did you get this damned survey from some kid named Yoder at UNLV?!”, politely suggest that completion of the survey shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes and the gods of archaeology will bless them with cosmic karma. May all the weather on your excavations be 65 degrees with sunny skies.

Kana-a Wha?!?!...

When I came to ASU, I never thought that in a room of archaeologists, I would have the most experience with Tusayan Whitewares. Today as I was analyzing a Colonial Hohokam assemblage, I pulled a whiteware out of the bag. Nobody in the lab could ID it, so I went over to the type collection and called it Kana-a Black-on-white.

Who knew how far the 30 minute lesson Jim gave us in the SW seminar would go?

Thesis Done...

My thesis is finally complete. If anyone would like a copy before it is posted on-line, let me know and I'll email you a pdf. It's only 2.8 MB.

30th GBAC in Vegas!

As I'm sure you all know the 30th GBAC is in Vegas this year. I figure you're all already aware but they issued a call for papers. The website is http://www.gbac.whsites.net/32.html so check it out! While its still early I thought I'd post the idea of the group getting together one night of the conference and do some catching up. I'm offering my house as the place. We could have a barbecue or pizza or something. Dave only lives a few blocks away from me and we're both close to the strip (abt. 15 mins) so it would be a good location for everyone. Let me know what you think.

Defining the Fremont on Wikipedia

Some of you may be familiar with the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.

I looked up the Fremont today and noticed that there was very little devoted to them. In fact, the Fremont page is nothing more than a "stub". Wikipedia allows various people to expand stubs with more information, making the entry better.

It would be cool to throw together a basic overview of the Fremont and submit it to Wikipedia.

This would accomplish two goals:

1. People could be more informed about the Fremont
2. We could spin it to fit our theories.

Then, when O'Connel, Ugan, or Hey-sus stumble across the Wikipedia page, they will be shocked.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fremont_people

Annual UPAC Presentations

Today was the annual UPAC meeting up at State History. Presentations all morning and then they did the business stuff after we all cut out to head back down to Provo. All told there were four presentations from BYU, including Jim Allison, Rachel Pollock and Mark Bodily, Brad, and I. Topics varied, I'd say Brad's North Creek junk is top list, but I'm still having nightmares from J-in-the-cliff...shudder...

Anyway, one presentation, which I unfortunately didn't really take notes on, was done by a UofU Doctoral student. I'd say it was the most interesting to me, so I wanted to throw out a bit of what I remember for you all.

It dealt with a mass burial in Moab. Six individuals, all male and all between 13-25 years old. Dentition and bone condition suggest that they were all in good health when they died. Three showed similar healed cranial injuries including a segment of bone/incised trauma above the right eye and several blunt trauma episodes to parietal and occipital lobes. Etc, etc, interesting stuff about the bones, but the really intriguing bit is the way the bodies were laid out in the mass grave. Unfortunately I have sucky MS Paint and that's it for graphic edits so I can't crop and rotate this correctly, but it gives you the basic idea:




Each burial was placed face down, with layered bodies having heads placed over the thoracic trunk and down. So they're actually at an angle, which I can't do in Paint, such that the six piled up a bit and then sloped back off.

Has anyone seen anything like this? It's really a bizarre bit of activity.

She didn't say anything about grave goods. She did note that the two common skull shapes for Utah burials (one more spherical/robust typically associated with Fremont/Anasazi culture and one more elongated not consistently identified to any specific culture) were represented in the grave, a good indication that cranial morphology shouldn't be standing alone in our cultural affiliation calls.

Anyway, interesting bit. Wish I had her graphic or better technology on my lappy...but anybody got any thoughts?

Image J - Free visual analysis software

Some of us have been messing around with Image J, a piece of freeware that will analyze digital photographs. Cady, Scott, and myself are trying to get a paper together where we will try to see if we can tell if Boulder Jasper has been heat treated by analyzing the level of light refraction and color of samples before and after heat treating.

There are many, many plug-ins and many, many possible applications of this technology. Everybody check it out. Best of all, it's free...

Hutchings Museum and Renee Barlow

Last night, several of us (Molly, Holly, Cady, Jenny, and I) went to the USAS meeting at the Hutchings museum in Lehi, Utah.

Renee Barlow was the guest and talked about....you'll never guess....Range Creek. During her lecture she said several things that seemed like "red flags". One of the red flags was her use of the term "Pithouse Village". After being asked what her definition of a pithouse village was, she suggested that a pithouse village in Range Creek could have as few as 3 pithouses and as many as 15.

Has she read Five Finger, or Clear Creek? Is she aware of Parowan Valley?

To her credit, Barlow did say somethings that sounded like a small shift in research bias, but I'll let Cady talk about those.

Also, The Hutchings museum has an amazing collection of chipped stone artifacts, perishables, and all sorts of eccentrics (figurines, incised stones, and other oddities) that we rarely get to see.

The collection was so amazing that our very own Old-Worlder,Holly A. Raymond, expressed her admiration for the material culture of the Fremont. Holly, I'll let you elaborate.

Something about doing a thesis on the Fremont instead....

I'm sure I left a few things out, everyone else who was there should throw in your summaries or impressions.

AP2 in trouble?

AP2, our archaeological chariot, is currently in the shop for an assessment to determine if she can continue for ten thousand more miles.

Thoughts and prayers are welcome.

If she does not survive, might I suggest a memorial order. Perhaps, "The Order of the Yukon".

This order would honor those who have shown excellence in the field, research, off-driving skills or whatever else.

Just a way to remember the vehicle most of us has eaten in, slept in, and traveled in for the majority of our burgeoning careers.

A Moving Chronological Southwestern Map

I've been thinking lately about the different fluctuations in the population of Southwestern traditions. Lekson has his opinions on major migrations of people through time (See Chaco Meridian). Most agree that at one point or another there were also migrations from the Western Anasazi area to the East (Rio Grande Valley). I feel that mobility was very common, but studies on interaction between groups are limited to discussions about trade or design similarities. There must have been more people moving around that area than we think. These people had to have been used to tramping around for weeks, covering many miles of terrain. It also seems logical that there may have been a ton of interaction between different contemporaneous groups.

For me, it is hard to visualize what groups (or areas of the SW) were in "full-swing" at particular times. It seems that the groups who were contemporaneous, especially while sustaining large populations, most likely had contact with groups in similar situations. For example, there was an increase in population at Chaco Canyon during its Pueblo II phase and peaking out with the completed construction of Pueblo Bonito during the Classic Bonito phase. Hohokam Snaketown, during its Sedentary period/phase also reached its greatest size around the same time. These plateaus in population size (if you attribute largest population size to maximum number of structures or largest building phases of structures) both occurred roughly between 920-1150. If we succumb to the discussions of population stress and the like, it would seem likely that groups would be venturing out to find more arable land to farm and less stressed food sources (game, wild plants, etc.). In the process, there would be interaction between and among groups.

So, here is my idea. Like I said earlier, I have a hard time visualizing which groups were at their population peak at which times. I've been thinking of building a moving map of the Southwest in Adobe AfterEffects or Flash that shows how these major centers of activity grew and shrank over time. By doing so, we get a better idea of how and when these groups might have interacted or when divisions and migrations may have occurred due to ecological stress. It seems ominous to collect all of the information on this, but would prove useful, maybe only on a teaching level, showing how these groups emerged, blossomed, and later abandoned their homes. Let me know what you guys think.

OPA, FOF, GB all stars? On a stamp?

Not to detract from Jenny's recent post about lithic scatters (I will comment soon), but I found a really cool website that allows you to make USPS approved stamps using your own photos.

I think this would be a great way to get some fun images circulating through the nation. Imagine- a "tribute to trowels". Imagine--a FoF stamp or an "OPA-Nouveau" stamp designed Mr. Ure! Finally, imagine a "Great Basin All Stars" series. Once every few months we could get a new one.

The possibilities are endless. A little more expensive, but endless.

Here is the link:

Photostamps.com

On the Ground

I’ve got a question for the general audience relating somewhat to fire issues, more to obsidian dating:

I work a lot out in southern Tooele County on the Vernon parcel of the Forest (ok, as if most of you haven’t heard me compulsively raving about the joys of Vernon…). Long story short, we see tons of little non-descript lithic scatters, mostly Fremont in my book, but quite a few have Archaic points. Most sites have at least a few little bits of obsidian, though I’d say the points are more often chert. There are typically no associated features and very few ceramics, but a lot of these suckers are huge (most of the sites are strung out along the creek beds and can be as long as a mile or more).

Now here’s the issue. For years, my boss has put off making an eligibility statement on any of them because she and Dykmann have gone back and forth about the whole potential to contribute scientific information. There is a distant possibility that they may have buried deposits, but not even enough evidence to justify a test pit (though we’ve put a few in over the years and generally don’t see anything besides lithics in the first 10 cm—to complicate it more, most of the area has been cultivated or chained, or both!). Dykmann’s primary argument, though, is that we can’t call them Unknown Aboriginal and Not Eligible simply because, in his book, we could technically do obsidian hydration on every site. I guess he wants them all Eligible. Problem is, we’ve got documentation of burns over almost the entire Vernon unit, and no doubt, of course, that there have been fires prehistorically as well.

So what do you think? I’m not hugely familiar with obsidian dating, but I know fire can reset the clock. If we don’t have buried deposits (particularly because things have been so disturbed historically) deep enough that the obsidian has been protected, could we ever really trust hydration dates? And is it even remotely worth dating little scatters that don’t even have diagnostic points? Obviously, part of the issue has been solved with Dykmann’s retirement, although maybe Seddon will have a problem, too, but I’m looking to finish up these forms and write an article or two on the prehistory of Rush Valley one of these days and it’d help to have a solid grounding on eligibility. It’s a neat little microcosmic world out there, with some cool patterns, so the report really deserves to be published.

Any thoughts are appreciated. Apologies to any anti-CRM among us who take horror at the thought of being reduced to discussing National Register status. =)

Wow, more secret messages

For those of you who did not notice, the word "hell" in Holly's post "An Open Letter" is a link. Scroll down and check it out. What were you trying to say, Holly?

Haikus for the Forgotten

For Mike and Scott:

Anthro research lab
"You can't use that in the film!"
Re-do, re-do, damn.

For Cady:

Parowan turquoise
Sourcing? Isn't that Joel's thing?
Academic thief

Mr. Yoder's Thesis: On-Line!

I forgot to previously mention that my thesis is now on-line at BYU. It feels good to have it done. Here's the link:
http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/ETD/image/etd1052.pdf

Now what you do is go to this link and then scroll down to page number 9. Increase magnification to about 300% and look on the left hand side of the image. The excavators of North Creek, forever immortalized.

An Open Letter

Dear Everyone,

I've made haikus for all!

A Haiku for Chris:

Ho-ho-ho- wha? who?
Ho-ho-what the h? who cares?
More like, ho-ho-krap

A Haiku for Jenny:

Are you kidding me?
Rusty nails and can scatters
You get paid for this?

Oh, another haiku for Jenny!

Hole-in-top, matchstick?
Insignificant cowboys
Boring, boring, dumb

A Haiku for Aaron and the Fremont:

Fremont foragers
Don't loose your rabbit stick now!
Smelly pithouses

A Haiku for the Nabataeans:

Written language, kings,
Monumental structures....hmm..
Sounds like it's a state!

A Haiku for State-level societies:

Important cultures
Romans, Greeks, and Egyptians
No snail suckers here!

A Haiku for North American Archaeologists:

Burial digging
Don't let NAGPRA keep you down!
Night excavations

Now you can all pack your bags and go to Hell-

Love,
Holly

A request for Resurrection:

So, I was sitting around trying to avoid writing my Western Shoshone paper for Great Basin and, as has become a somewhat ritualistic habit in the past month, wandered over to FOF for a bit of light reading. I couldn’t get past the Dashboard all day, however, with two results: 1) You were all spared a number of lame and/or dry comments on such things as I generally know nothing about…you may now stop celebrating, thank you, and read 2) I did a search for FOF to try a back way in and ended up accessing the first three or so lines of the last 82 some odd posts on a Blogger search page that was actually working.

I’ll grant that it was a stunted view of what’s gone on over the life of the blog, but I’m slightly disturbed at the loss of a lovely tradition that seemed to be burgeoning.

Where is the haiku?
I think it was a nice touch.
And Holly was alive.
Sniff.

Knorosov: The Decipherment of the Mayan Script

This week at BYU International Cinema, they had a film on Yuri Knorosov, the Soviet linguist who made significant contribuitons to deciphering Mayan glyphs. It was very interesting, including interviews with Michael Coe, excerpts from Diego de Landa's writings, and several great photographs of Mayan ruins.

Towards the end of the film, Knorosov started talking about the origins of the Maya. he suggested that they migrated from the north down into Mesoamerica. Knorosov theorized that the Mayan homeland was somewhere in the American SW.

Knorosov suggested that Mesa Verde may have been of particular importance in the Mayan cave emergence. In other words, K. believed that Mesa Verde may have been the site of the seven caves/seven rivers where the Maya believed they emerged. Knorosov provided no real evidence, he just quoted from the Popul Vul and other Mayan writings.

A lack of evidence aside, this is an interesting idea. Especially since the idea of a southwestern Aztlan has been mentioned by Mike.

So I guess the question is this: Is the Southwest the epicenter of Great Basin and Mesoamerican cultures?

AJ Sighting

I have it on a high authority (Lane Richens), that our beloved AJ has been found doing contract work for John Baxter's CRM firm, Bighorn Archaeology. It is also on the records that he is still living in Moronihah and is still working for the Forest Service. Long live the Filfoul! We need to find a way to get him on FOF with us!

Another new feature?

Over the years we've talked a little about doing some kind of "Great Basin Archaeological All-Stars" trading cards. Maybe we could do a trial run here on FOF. We could come up with legitimate profiles for all of our favorite friends, with a brief biography, research interests, and selected bibliography. That way, if we ever talk about "Joel", we could link his name to his profile. This would be particularly helpful for the uninitiated.

On a sidenote, I'm thinking about organizing a lunchtime forum here at ASU to talk about blogging and its potential uses. That might mean a bunch of people looking at this site. We'll see if I decide to do it.

Thanks and Request

Thanks Yoder for your input. That clarified a lot. I have a request for another clarification:

Chris, what I know of the Sinagua tradition is that they are some kind of melding pot of the Snazi, Mogollon and Hohokam, is this true?

Teach us.

Basketmakers = Early Fremont?

(Had to make my own post so I could use the colors as emphasis!)

What essentially defines the Basketmakers is time, space, and some material culture. The material culture part generally includes pithouses (though some above ground structures were also used), atlatl use, use and probably reliance on corn, storage features (including rock shelters, dry caves, slablined cists, and bellshaped pits) no ceramics, and all this taking place around a couple hundred years BC to 400 or 500 AD. Does that sound familiar to anyone? What keeps the early Fremont from being Basketmaker? Location. Early Fremont really look a lot like Basketmaker groups. Rich thinks that early Fremonters ARE Basketmakers who in micro migrations expanded up into the Northern Colorado Plateau and Great Basin where they passed on some traits to the indigenious rabbit chasers before being culturally swallowed up. The Steinaker Gap report lays out Rich’s basic argument:

“There is another option seldom considered: small-scale migration of farmers. In this scenario, Basketmaker II nuclear or extended family groups, experienced in maize agriculture, would have spread northward from the more populous regions of northern Arizona, seeking the best arable land (Talbot 1995b). Such groups would have been minority populations in a sea of hunter-gatherers. Enculturation in these settings very likely was reciprocal, with the immigrant farmers sharing knowledge of agriculture and associated technologies, knowledge that ultimately led to widespread adaptive shifts, but with the people themselves inevitable being swallowed up in the local, larger gene pool.”

He goes on to discuss this more, but that’s the main idea. Although I’ve never talked to Janetski about this specifically, generally I don’t think he buys it. He feels that Basketmaker traits diffused slowly into the Fremont region, not through migration, whether large or micro. Although he does think that early Fremont are very similar to Basketmakers. He says:

“these data suggest that indigenous peoples in the central Utah region adopted and adapted new ideas from surrounding areas, both north and south, and gradually, rather than dramatically, shifted to a Formative strategy.”

And….

“These data also suggest that a Basketmaker II-like strategy was present well to the north of the traditional Anasazi area and preceded the better known Formative (Fremont) adaptation in this region”

Good reading on this includes
Talbot, Richard K., and Lane D. Richens
1996 Steinaker Gap: An Early Fremont Farmstead. Museum of Peoples and Cultures Occasional Papers No. 2. Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah.

2004 Fremont Farming and Mobility on the Northern Colorado Plateau: The Steinaker Lake Project. Museum of Peoples and Cultures Occasional Papers No. 10. Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah.

Janetski, Joel C.
1993 The Archaic to Formative Transition North of the Anasazi: A Basketmaker Perspective. In ????(not sure, I’ll find out tonight)

So what’s it all mean? I think that obviously PreFremont or Early Fremont (200 B.C.- 500 A.D.) folks were heavily influenced by Southwesterners. I don’t think that early Fremont and Basketmaker were the same people in the sense of a distinct cultural group, like Americans or Frenchies. Instead they were small groups who shared similar cultural traits, just like Americans and Frenchies live in above ground houses, have a industrialized society, ect. Basketmakers and Early Fremont shared much in subsistence, architecture, and other things, but I don't think archaeologically they should be counted as the same group. In part because early Fremont seems to have been a little later and because they obviously followed different paths in the end. But right now the number of early Fremont sites is very low, so as the database increases this may clear things up considerably. That’s my general view of it all. I think they were very similar, but should be seen and discussed as different groups. Read Rich’s and Janetski’s reports and articles, cause they make their arguments much more clear than I do.

Theories!...Theories everywhere!...

Just so all y'all outside the bubble know, Clark is looking to put together a theory/history of archaeology book for 501/510. He's looking for contributors to write the chapters, so here's your free chance to publish, folks!

If it actually happens, it'll be a good opportunity to really attack a theory or two in-depth and to leave a tidge of a legacy for future generations--spare them reading Hawaiki, I hope. I imagine he'll be up for a goodly number of us putting in on this, so I guess stay-tuned, but be thinking about what theories you specifically want to see in it. He's also planning on a section for statehood, origins of agriculture, etc. Basically it'll be a big study guide for the competency.

Northern Periphery on the Mind

I was reading through Carol Riley's "Becoming Aztlan" (2005) and found an interesting tidbit on the inclusion of the Fremont into the Anasazi Basketmaker tradition. It goes like this...

"The Basketmaker phase of Anasazi extended over much of the San Juan Basin, westward to the lower Virgin River of Southern Nevada, although there is not much evidence for Basketmaker occupation in some areas, for example the north rim of the Grand Canyon. If the enigmatic pithouse-dwelling Fremont tradition can be included, much of Utah and parts of Colorado belonged in the Basketmaker-Pueblo world."

If one of the main characteristics of the Basketmakers is pithouse use (and non-ceramic, of course) then couldn't the earlier Fremont be considered part of this group? What draws the line for exclusion? Is it the fact that they didn't evolve into what is considered a Pueblo tradition but continued using pithouse stuctures? Or is their material culture actually totally distinct/different? Can't we all just get along?

Click here!

Hello all: I just finished our anthro. graduate student association website. It's no OPA site, but I was pretty happy with how it turned out, considering I had no idea how to construct a website beforehand. Tell me what you think.

www.ou.edu/agsa

Michael Coe Shallit Lecture

The lecture this year, "Dawn of the Maya Civilization", in my opinion, was one of the better Shallit lectures so far. Dr. Coe really made the lecture understandable for everyone in the audience (and for hacks like me it helps to keep it simple and interesting). He used some really cool 3D models of Mayan temples as well as some great satellite imagery. I guess thats the benefit of working at Yale and being one of the premiere Mayan scholars. One point that he made at the beginning of his lecture concerning theory was very interesting to me. He basically said that he doesnt subscribe to all of the theories that are floating around out there and that they all come and go. He said that he considers himself a cultural historian instead. I found this quite refreshing since I have a hard time with all the theories involved with archaeology in the first place. I am the first to admint my limited knowledge here, but in my mind, let the culture speak for itself. What is the point of having theories that you cannot test and prove right or wrong? I understand that we all have our theories, and on a small scale it makes sense, but these large overriding ideas that are imposed in a one-size fits all doesnt make sense to me. Anyway, I thought Dr. Coe's statement about being a Cultural Historian was interesting and a quiet slap in the face to some of the theorists. I will get off my soap box now...

Sinagua Dissertation

When I began working as an RA for Dave Abbott this semester, I little dreamed that the job might turn into such a cool dissertation. Dave has written me into his latest NSF grant where we will be analyzing and redressing the Sinagua ceramic typology and the Sinagua phenomenon in general. If it goes through, I'll be essentially redefining the Sinagua phenomenon for my dissertation.

In the meantime, I'm working on Patayan - Hohokam interactions. Pretty soon, we'll have every boundary covered.

Again with the Symposium

I figure I better hurry and post just in case Holly decides to do something brash and actually post--wouldn't want to be branded as she has been.

That said, all I'm gonna say about you sceptics and your anti-historic attitude is...well...ok, I got nothin', but it's still cool. Pass your rust to me, I'll gladly take it. But don't get me wrong, I'll take a pretty lithic scatter over a pile of cans any day of the week.

Now, to the Symposium...

First of all, even now, days later, I can feel my tailbone. The drive was LONG. I tried keeping the 'hey, we're bonding' perspective and that made it slightly more tolerable. 1776 was really enjoyable even though it came in such large blocks.

The first session was definitely the highlight for me, despite its comparative lack of historic discussion, but when it came down to it, I enjoyed the Pueblo talk a lot more than I did any of the Euro-American junk. Traitor to my own cause.

Christine Ward's discussion of lithic procurement. Definitely interesting stuff--a great way to start the conference. Aaron has already discussed it, so I won't.

Donna Glowacki's was a little soft around the edges, but I enjoyed the basic concepts. She discussed The Social Landscape of Depopulation in the northern San Juan. I resonate with the idea of going beyond what's strictly represented on the ground and really trying to bring in our inherent understanding of humans, but getting too post-processualist can rub me the wrong way. In this case, some good points were made and I'll ignore the rest. Notably she suggested that movements in the region, particularly between the east and west, were caused by social differentiation in addition to drought. The east became more ritualistic than the west and that affected the equilibrium. Lot's of food for thought building from this.

Does anyone know of any positive demonstration of the southwest "ball courts"? I mean, yes, they're big flat community areas with seating around, and yes, they're very similar to what we see in Mesoamerica, but do we have associated gaming artifacts? Just curious. I wonder if we tend to just follow along with traditional terminology and let previous biases (such as the standard south to north movement) cloud our ability to read the ground. Ball courts were mentioned, mostly in passing, in a couple of the presentations.

Wendy Ashmore was the discussant, as Aaron mentioned. Her broad discussion of landscape theory was certainly more useful than anything any of the other discussants shared. Her nine factors to be considered were: (1) use of ethnography, (2) consideration of the spatial scale, (3) physical visibility, (4) time, (5) decision making and strategy use, (6) social relations and interaction, (7) movement/pilgrimages, (8) power, and (9) citation circles/networks. I appreciated her inclusion of no. 9—that we need to acknowledge the work being done on the other side of the Atlantic and the Euros need to do the same.

Well, I’m long-winded. The point is that the conference had a lot of good points. I got to see a few token rusty things, particularly in Carol Griffith’s trash talk. Interesting history bites about waste disposal. Did you know there’s a landfill in Fresno that’s eligible for the Register under A, B, C, & D?! The fire talks were interesting, but I think more could have been done. My particular interest in the fire venue is maybe better saved for a separate post…I’ll probably do that one of these days.

In the meantime, it’s oddly nice to be back to the bubble. *sick*

Mike's SW Symposium Likes-Dislikes

Likes:
1. There were tons of opportunities to network with potential employers. I think I have a job in Chihuahua, Mexico for the summer and was offered work at two other locations.
2. Stephen Lekson's "History of Archaeological History in the Southwest." He made a comment that some Mexicans are claiming they should have automatic residency in the US because their ancestors were originally from the American Southwest. This is the concept of "Aztlan" as the motherland. The Aztecs claimed that their ancestors originally lived in Aztlan, a land to the north of Central Mexico. I liked his twist on this concept and he gave props out to Riley who recently wrote a good book called "Becoming Aztlan", if anyone is interested.
3. There were a number of papers that talked about prehistoric and historic trails. This was facinating to me just because these are still around. I guess nothing really grows in the desert to disturb them. The "Camino Real" paper was particularly interseting. The guy talked about a road that stretched from Tenochtitlan all the way to Santa Fe, NM. Parts of this road still exist.
4. Carnitas - these were mentioned in Aaron's comment. They are God's gift to mankind. Small cuts of tender, delicious pork - nuf said.

Dislikes:
1. Although I tend to lean towards post-processual theory and ideas, the subject matter on landscapes was a little too ephemeral. There were a lot of comments based on bad interpretations of data. I'm getting more and more skeptical of archaeologist's interpretations, especially those who resort to narratives. Give me a break people.
2. It was refreshing to see a film at the symposium. It was on structural burning (already mentioned by Aaron). Unfortunately it was shown at lunch time and nobody came. I was dissappointed that the presenters the next day did not use the film in their presentations. I know they are only alloted 15 minutes, but 2 minutes of film would have made a big difference. Also, the presenter from U. of AZ who did the experiment built (in my opinion) a poor representation of a room block house. Not only did she not include plaster on the walls, but the roof, which is where people would typically enter, could not even be walked on. During one of her burnings, the roof collapsed when she didn't expect it to. Well, all I could think was "if you are going to build a shotty roof that can't even be walked on, then what did you expect?" Experimental archaeology can tell us a lot when it somewhat accurately represents prehistoric conditions.
3. Historic archaeology still makes me sleep. Just ask some of my fellow students here at OU. They were about to buy me a neck brace because my head was bobbing pretty violently during some of the historic paper presentations.

Overall, it was a good experience. Good to see the BYUers. Take care all.

Quotable Quotes from Gardner Dalley

Just thought I’d pop on and share some of Mr. Dalley’s site descriptions. We obviously have a lot to learn about writing from these old-timers:

Site 118: Quite level and very few “veggies”
Site 55: This is just a really cute, compact little site…roomblocks…may have a couple of little PI hookie-dos on it.
Site 56: There is just a dandy artifact scatter to the east…aspect is pick your own.
Site 57: Site is on a major order architecturally, although it’s a pure bear to sort out exactly…some fool punched right into the guts of the thing with a backhoe…screwed the alignments.
Site 58: Site type = “donut pueblo”
Site 22: …also the sucker is a good PI and they lay in a strange matter oft-times.
Site 66: “feels” substantial and is probably [structural]…have to be fairly husky to support the big midden.
Site 77: Don’t have a clue what it is.
Site 88: Maybe 20 m diam…ugly as sin.
Site 96: One spiral and a couple of other jobbers.
Site 4: It’s a hard sucker to get a good photo of and it defeats my limited sketching abilities…looks like some SOB tried to get his share for the mantle.
Site 9: There appears to be a minor ledge under the figurines, but it does not appear to be my kind of place.
Site 3: I can’t see everything that’s on the face and I have no interest whatsoever in trying to get closer.


I remember reading a few more, but couldn't find them today when I went through the forms again. Good times. Different times. Poor little undergrads'll love standing around the valley with us come field school trying to locate these things--you should see the site sketches!

Review of the Southwest Symposium

The Southwest Symposium was a great experience and it was refreshing to hear about something besides the gastric. Granted, the main theme of the symposium was on perceptions of landscape, but there were many well done papers.

The 13 hour drive from Provo to Las Cruces was fairly uneventful but filled with decent conversation and pretty good tunes. Jim has some good music in his collection, from world music to Barenaked Ladies. We also learned all about the American Revolution from the book 1776. Jim has it on CD.

For me, the conference began when I met up with our very own Mike Searcy and his OU group. Mike graciously introduced me to Pat Gillman and Paul Minnis. They were both really nice people and were supportive of my research interests. It was strange to be treated as if I actually had something significant to say (even though I'm only 25). A new sensation.

The first paper I listened to was by Christine Ward from Geomarine, Inc. Her paper was on the idea that the location of toolstone sources are just as important as the toolstone itself. Also, she suggested that the act of procurement was as important as actual procurement. In otherwords, the actual location of toolstone sources and the act of procurement are both charged with important memory and tradition. Ward also claimed that convienience (proximity to source), redistribution(of materials), and social ties had little to do with the presence of lithic materials at great houses in Chaco.

She noted a lack of patterning between the presence of certain toolstones and the distance of sources. She observed that exotic toolstones were used and discarded in the same way as local toolstones.

The balance of papers on Friday were devoted to landscape archaeology. Specifically rooted in how a landscape approach to Chaco Canyon could provide new and interesting research questions. Many of the papers were too "touchy-feely" for my liking, but the main theme seemed to be an attempt to understand the purpose/origins of Chaco.

At the end of the Friday morning session, the discussant, Wendy Ashmore mentioned eight different factors that should be considered in all elements of archaeology. I only got five, so maybe Mike or Holly got the rest.

Here they are: Use of ethnography
Consideration of time
Consideration of movement/migration
Scale
Power(social relations)

Friday afternoon had two good papers. One was about the sun daggers at Chaco Canyon. Due to vandalism and shifting sands, the sun daggers do not appear in the same place during the solstices. Some people from Ohio State scanned all of the area with laser scanners, entered the scanned data into a computer and created similations based on photographs from the 60s and 70s. They were able to figure out where the stones need to be in order for them to generate the original solstice daggers. Pretty amazing that they scanned the whole cliff face and surrounding terrain to get an accurate reading.

The second paper was by Bill Walker (NMSU) who suggested in the past that the mutiliated skeletons found among anasazi pueblos can be attributed to witch killing. Apparently when he made those claims, he caught a lot of flak from the Man Corn camp. His paper at the SWS was in part a reaction to criticism and in part an explanation why so many dog skeletons are found with mutilated remains. Walker suggested that the dogs were included with the witch bodies to keep the witches from re-emerging from their graves.

Saturday was filled with all sorts of talk about experimental archaeology, specifically testing hypotheses of why many anasazi structures are burnt. A bunch of people from U of AZ built a roomblock and set it on fire in a few different ways to see if they could note burn patterns, roof-fall, and other things.

I enjoyed their presentation/film but i still have some critiques. Some of their methods were questionable and it seemed that they were trying to hide their lack of data behind a cool idea. Their testing methods were sketchy and left a lot of room for error. Bottom line, a great idea that needs some more work. Or, if anything, the students needed to present their data in a clearer manner. One student suggested that the fires were a way to curb insect infestation, but it was a rather weak argument. Without the data/conclusions they are just setting fires.

Finally, I should note that we ate at a great little Mexican place where the carnitas, soup, tacos, and such, were excellent. It was way better than Los Hermanos...and that's saying a lot. Because LH is one of the best in the nation! Just kidding.

Anyway, that's my review of the SWS. I've left some things out so that Mike can throw in his two cents. Maybe Holly will too...

We need a good archaeological TV program

Chris has thrown this idea around with Cady and I for some time. It is true that there are really no good TV programs about archaeology except for the occasional National Geographic, NOVA, or other documentary. Recently, the History Channel has begun a series about archaeology. I was turned off to the show just after I saw the advertsing...

Digging for the Truth

Although I see this as an attempt to put our field in mainstream media, using Hollywood gimmics (Indiana Jones-esque font and style) is so overused and steriotypical.

I propose we look to doing a show that exposes Joe Schmoe to archaeology as it is - scientific, historical, and expanding. In addition, each episode would not only expose the viewer to a new part of the world, but would involve an experiment, so-to-speak, each episode. For example, recently, an archaeologist produced his own yucca rope to see if it was strong enough to rapel down a cliff face into a grannery. This would take the science from the lab to be tested in the field. We could use experimental archaeology as the eye-catching, never before been done, aspect of the show. I know it may seem as though this brings a "reality TV" edge to the idea, but that is what people are used to watching and have grown to like.

Tell me what you think. Ideas, ideas, ideas.

FoF, a serious institution?

Recently, it has been suggested that FoF is not a serious scholarly forum, and that serious research oriented topics have only started appearing in the past 2 or 3 months.

I exhort all FoF's to read the list below, and note that as early as May 2005 (one month after the birth of the blog), scholarly discussions were commonplace. I turn your attention to the following posts/subjects:

May 2005:
Thesis Outline (Chris)
Coprography
The Northern Periphery

June 2005:
Definitions of the Fremont

July 2005:
Homosexual Marriage

August 2005:
Various academic conferences
Yoder's Thesis
The Hohokam
Paul Minnis and the Fremont

September 2005:
Fremont Subsistence
The RMAC

October 2005:
The importance of Technoarchaeology
What makes a Fremont?
Fremont Mortuary Practices
Aaron's Tech Blog(sorry, I'm biased)
Historic maps of Hohokam sites
Pre-Clovis stuff with Adovasio
The importance of blogs in academia
The Three Corners

November 2005:
Fremont Production
Optimal Foraging
The Semester in Review feature (still waiting to see a few...)
The SW symposium
Projectile points in the GB
Presence of the GB in American Antiquity

December 2005:
Fremont site occupation/mounds
Various SIRs

January 2006
Paleoclimates in the EGB
Moqui Marbles and Hopi ideology
Multi-disciplinary approaches
The SW symposium

Since May, we have had at least one serious or thought-provoking post per month. That's pretty good if you ask me. Of course there are jokes, there are fun posts, and there are non-research oriented discussions, but for the most part we have done some pretty good stuff so far.

I think the above list tesitfies to the legitimacy of this blog. It has spawned at least two splinter blogs (Chris' Thesis blog, and my tech blog), and provided an excellent forum to bounce ideas around. Just making a point.

Cherry Poppin' Daddy

Well, you knew it would happen eventually. I'm directing my first excavation tomorrow. It's a small one, 2 days and 360' of trench, but I'll be directing it nonetheless.

This has been a really cool job for me, and I guess this project sort of represents the culmination of the last 6 months of work here. I did everything except sign the contract. I did the lit search, wrote the test plan, will direct the test Thursday and Friday, and will do the analysis and write up the report next week.

Who would have thought that we'd be entrusted with our own backhoes and crews. Eat that BYU Anthro Department, eat that...

Southwest Symposium

It looks like a few of the Friends of the Fremont will be attended the 10 Biennial Southwest Symposium this weekend. I'm particularly looking forward to the experimental work done on the burning of structures in the Southwest. Maybe we can have an update for the blog when we get back. Take care all.

Historic Arch Sucks but Multidisciplinary stuff is SEXY!

I just got back from being in the field for a week doing a survey in which we found nothing but historic junk (blahhh). There's this ranch out in the middle of the Nevada desert that the BLM just bought but are going to let UNLV manage because there's a bunch of historic buildings out there. So some PI's from UNLV (Biology, Archaeology, Geology, and Landscape Architecture) are planning on turning it into a multidisciplinary field camp/station/research facility. So I had to take a couple of undergrads out and survey the place. The survey was boring (cans, glass, wood, etc) but the multidisciplinary part was pretty cool. All the other ology's had one or two folks out there doing baseline surveys for their disciplines and at nights we were supposed to be figuring out how we could integrate all the disciplines. Talking and interacting with these other guys was really productive and I think if this thing is able to get the grant money it needs there could be some really cool research coming out of here. We discussed and learned a lot of things but just one wierd example is.....did you guys know that hematite comes in a lot of forms? One night one of the geologists comes back in and plops down a bunch of rock samples and is looking over them and I was asking him what he had. So he starts naming them and tells me one of them is hematite. This rock was black, sparkly, and solid. Nothing about it said hematite. So I was like, ummm, that's not what we call hematite. So he goes on to explain that hematite comes in different forms depending on how it was created. Then he picks up a nail and scratches the rock and I'll be damned if the scratches didn't turn bright red! Anyway, the whole week we were mixing data and info and it was pretty cool. And as always, multidisciplinary is SEXY! I'm thinking some cool stuff may come out of this venture if it gets the funding.

Eastern Great Basin Paleoclimate

I've just started "Collapse", Jared Diamond's latest ingenious synthesis of archaeological data that sort of disses archaeology. In it, Diamond identifies 5 factors contributing to cultural collapses: environmental change, anthropogenic damage to the environment, a decline in support from friendly neighbors, hostile neighbors, and cultural responses to the above (link).

As I was reading, it occurred to me that with the Fremont, we are clearly dealing with a collapse. It further occurred to me that I know almost nothing about the Eastern Great Basin paleo-environment. Is this because there actually is nothing known, or if I'm just ignorant of it. I know that Madsen has done a bunch of pollen work, but I guess I always figured that it was early and not late. Anybody know about this?

If there has been little work done on this, maybe we should start thinking about it. Can we assume things about the Fremont area pale-climate from the extensive work on the Colorado Plateau? How does the collapse of the Fremont relate to other Southwestern collapses? Can we catch up the tree-ring record in the Eastern GB to address some of these issues? Is Range Creek the Answer?

This is just a research direction I hadn't really considered before. In examining intra- and extra-Fremont relations, I have been inadvertently examining a large part of the Fremont collapse, but the environmental factors should also be considered.

Moqui Marbles

My mom works at the Provo School district and a lot of discounted books are sent directly to the district by publishers with the hopes that Provo will buy their books for school libraries. Most of these books are rejected and then sold to Provo School District employees for 1 to 10 dollars.

The other day, my Mom brought home a book called "Fossil Legends of the First Americans" by Adrienne Mayor. Mayor is a folklorist who deals mainly with Native American stories and how they deal with fossils. Kind of a limited niche. You may recognize Mayor's name-she was quoted in the December issue of National Geographic.

I was reading her book two nights ago and found the following passage. Those of you who did your field school in Escalante will appreciate this, especially those who were there for Carl Shurtz and his paint bucket full of Moqui Marbles.

"...moqui marbles are unique rock spheres found at the base of Navajo Sandstone Formations in Arizona and Utah, encasing pink sand from the Creataceous inland sea. These were long thought by scientists to be mere iron concretions, but recent studeies have revealed their true origin: mollusks trapped in a great flood of sand about 130 million years agao. As the mollusks decomposed, their internal juices were drawn out, leaving hollow centers, and as water filtered through the outer shell over the ages, fine sand filled the centers and iron deposits formed around the outer shell, along with phosphorus and lime from the mollusks' shells.

The Hopi word moqui means "dearly departed ones," and according to legend, Hopi ancesotors descend from heaven in the evening, brining the marbles to play games. At dawn, the ancestors retrn to heaven, leaving the marbles behind to reassure their relatives that they are happy. Hopi people gather the moqui marbles and keep them in their homes to welcome the spirits of the departed relatives" (Mayor 2005:156-157).

Interesting eh? Mayor does not cite any paleontologists (or any other source for that matter) so the veracity of her explantation of moqui "mollusks" is debatable. Regardless, the explanation of the Hopi curation of moqui marbles is intriguing.

New baby!

Hello all FoFs
We have a new member of the Friends of the Fremont. Max Mabry Searcy. That's right, Amie and I had a healthy baby boy on Dec. 29th. He's doing great and you can read about all the details at www.searcypages.com . There are pictures as well (you may have to scroll down a bit to find the post about Max's birth). Well, may your year's begin well and may heaven's windows open up wide at the beginnning of this new semester. I know I could use all the help I can get. Take care.

Scott's SIR:

Finished the Capitol Reef Occasional Paper

Finished the OPA Website

Aaron's SIR...finally

Getting this up took longer than I thought it would. I took three classes and taught one, worked at OPA, and tried to keep my Bishop's interview lists full. It was a busy semester.

Keep in mind that the majority of you have had the exact same (or similar) semester during your first year of graduate school, so some of it may be boring. I've liked the outline form that everyone has used so I will continue with that.

501

Honestly, one of the most difficult classes I've ever had. Clark expects a lot and doesn't mess around. Witnessed in this class, were two particularly nasty attacks on one of the newbies. This kid has no background in archaeology and apparently, no real background in research methods. Clark ended our last class period accusing him of having "done diddily". Hope the kid survives.

Anyway, 501 was structured differently than previous years. Our studies were not centered solely on the comp. exam test questions. Rather, we focused on larger issues that could be applied to the test questions. We read two Hodder books, Archaeological Theory Today and Reading the Past. We also read a few more.

Here they are in no real order. We read a monograph by Patrick Kirch on state development in Hawaii. It wasn't the best. Kirch focused mainly on lexical data and did not provide much hard data (artifacts, etc). His main focus was trying to pinpoint the location of a general ancestral polynesian homeland. In my opinion, he relied too heavily on glottochronology. Not my favorite.

We also read a book on biblical archaeology. It was essentially a critique on post-modern approaches. Again, not my favorite. The author, William Dever, spends more time attacking opponents than actually discussing critiques on PoMos. Unfortunately, I'm not really sure why we read the book, it seemed more like an excercise in how to rip your opponents apart. After finishing the Dever book, we watched an anti-mormon film deconstructing the BoM. We got into a lot of discussion on the marginalization of christian/mormon archaeologists, and how our perspective in just one more to add to the many voices of post-processualism.

We read another book on the state development on in China...meh.

My favorite book was Myths of the Archaic State by Norman Yoffee (2005). Yoffee criticizes the neo-evolutionary model of band, tribe, cheifdom, and state. He argues that each culture developed individually and that they should be approached individually as well. Yoffee also criticizes perceptions of traditional leadership roles, suggesting that early states were not as stratified previously assumed. Yoffee feels confident that the agency of various individuals (from all classes) influenced the formation of early states. Therefore, concerns with everyday life served as the catalysts from early state development. Yoffee struggles with the problem of lanugage. He criticizes neo-evolutionary models but still uses their language. It is difficult to understand when he is talking about his version of the state and chiefdoms and when he is talking about the neo-evolutionary version.

Ultimately, I think Myths serves as a great introduction to some new ideas concerning the development of early states. To be honest, I was not aware that there were other perspecitves beyond the neo-evolutionary model. It was beaten into my head in 215 by Joel, and has remained until I read this book.

502

Bottom line, it was statistics.

I think I learned the material better with Jim than I did with Ian. Jim left a lot more to the imagination, and we found ourselves struggling to figure out exactly what he expected of us. Towards the end of the class, he gave us Cowgill's list of 8 things you should remember about statistics.
I chose some of my favorites:

1. Statistical analysis is not a way to arrive at certainty; it is a powerful aid in discerning what your data suggest, and how strongly they suggest it. This is often done better by an estimation approach than by hypothesis testing.

2. Look at your data dirst, through simple tables and pictures. Often this tells you everything important. If not, it will tell you what is sensible or not sensible to do next. Do not rush to apply advanced techniquest while overlooking the messages of simple methods.

4. It's not the sampling fraction that matters; it's the size of the sampel. For example, a well-chosen sample size of 100 that is one percent of a large population can tell you a lot, but a sample of 10 that is 20 percnt of a small population tells you less.

6. Proportions, percents, and ratios represent something relative to something else. Proportions are fractions, with a numerator and a denominator. When you read, always ask yourself whether you understand what denominator is implied. Often you will find that the denominator is unclear or inappropriate.

8. If you are worried about data quality, reducing data to "present/absent" only makes the problem worse unless you are sure that absence in the sample unambiguously implies abscence in the relevant population. But a category that is scarce but present in the population will be totally absent in many random samples from that population, and the chance that it is absent in any one sample is strongly dependent on the size of that sample. Together with sampling vagaries, this makes "presence/abscence" a very unstable statistic. if you want to be conservative, us something like "way below average," "about verage," and "way above average."

For the rest of the 8, see page 35 of

Kintigh, Keith

2005 Writing Archaeology: Analyses and Archaeological Argumentation. The SAA Archaeological Record.

I don't have the volume number (it's upstairs), but it is from September 2005 (SAA members- you should have it)

512

Laws...ARPA, NAGPRA...Agencies...BLM, EPA....Ethics...zzzzzz

Anthropology 207

This is the class I taught. It was a rewarding experience, and I've learned a lot about how a class should and should not be taught.

We began with cordage, processing dogbane, yucca, raffia, and whatever else students brought in. The cordage unit was alright, but I was dissapointed in some of the students inability to go and forage for their own materials. I told them were plants were, and would have been happy to take them to the sources. Instead, I had students ask their mothers to send them yucca from New Mexico, and come to my house and raid my personal yucca plant. There are five good yucca plants in the parking lot across from the Tanner building!

Ceramics were next. I really learned a lot from a book called Ceramic Technology by Owen S. Rye. There were class periods when I was only hours ahead of the students. I was at a loss as to what we were going to make for this unit, but with the help of Jim Allison, we processed some of his clay samples from the Animas La Plata region into tiles. We then fired the tiles to see if the clays turned similar colors.

Lithics proved to be the most challenging to teach. This is mainly due to the fact that teaching one or two people to flintknap is much easier than teaching seven at a time. Dr. Clark and I split the class of 14 into two groups of seven with mixed results.

I saw a lot of great projects. Here are some of them:

Lengths of cordage made of many different plant types

a pump drill

a small basket made in the style of California indians. Acorns were leeched and processed into flour mush which was eaten from this basket.

a small limestone stela carved with mayan glyphs

an atlatl and dart

a processed elk-hide pouch

a set of Oldowan tools

a pair of woven yucca sandals

Those are some of the projects I was most impressed with. I was happy with the quality and effort expended.

That's about it for the SIR. If you have any questions, let me know. I'm sure I left things out, and it may not be exactly what you all had in mind, but here it is.

Quote of the Day

I qoute Beck and Jones 1997

"Since their first discovery there has been much speculation concerning the function of these items. Wardle (1913), in the first published reference to crescents, suggested that they may have been used as surgical instruments. Clewlow (1968) notes that "unless we imagine a vast pre-Columbian medical center on the shores of the Black Rock Desert post-Lahonton lakes, it is difficult to accept crescents as surgical instruments."

You guys might not appreciate it, but it made me laugh out loud. Maybe its the sleep deprivation. Merry Christmas.

Craig's Semester in Review

Craig forgot how to get onto FoF, so he sent me his Semester in Review via email.

Hey guys,

My semester pretty much consisted of 4 key activities.

1. Watching wrestling. It's been kind of a bummer since Batista got the belt, but what are you gonna do?

2. X-Box. My roomate and I finally went in on an X-Box together, I'll kick your trash at Halo anywhere, anytime, anyplace.

3. MXC. Can't get enough Spike TV.

4. Making concrete. Enough said.

Smell you later,

Craig

SIR delayed

You may have noticed that my SIR is incomplete and listed as a draft. I will finish it tomorrow. When I was writing it, I had to respond to a call from a girl in my ward who had "tried" to commit suicide by cutting her wrists. Her home teachers weren't around, neither was the bishop. So the 1st counselor and I went over to see what the deal was. It was an interesting night. I'll finish it up soon.

Joel's review of my term paper

"Thanks for sending me the paper. I found it very well written with only a few typos, etc. It is nice that you found support for our interpretations of the site occupation. A concern I have is how you are treating functionally different structures. What I recall (without checking) is that the storage structures had very different fill content than the pit houses. It almost seemed that people avoided dumping in the granaries. There could be several reasons for that but I wondered how storage vs pit houses plotted."

It is nice? WTH? I realize that the chronometric data from FFR did indicate that most of the site was probably occupied at the same time, but, by Joel's own admission, these data were pretty problematic for a number of reasons. I have generated an independent corroboration of his results, and he tells me that "it is nice"?

I realize that the paper isn't some sort of mind blowing research, but to me, the mound phenomenon is the most important research topic in Fremont archaeology. These aggregates represent a total change in trajectory for the Fremont. If not everyone is convinced that the occupations were large (and according to Jim Allison, they aren't), then we have a real problem.

This is my biggest critique of BYU's graduate program. The grad students are treated as idiots who aren't capable of contributing. As long as they're treated as such, they really won't contribute anything other than maybe a crappy thesis. Some (looking at Yoder here) are able to rise above the oppression, but I thought my ideas weren't good for a long time. Turns out they were good, and I was just being dismissed because of my position.

For those of you still suffering, let me tell you that there's a whole other world out there. There's a place where prominent researchers treat you like a junior peer, and not like some member of their scout troop. There's a place where you are encouraged to publish your work, a place where you can learn and be respected.

Don't let the man get you down.

El Che Vive!

Anyway, I'd like to get some feedback on the paper sometime. Maybe Joel is right, but I don't think he is...

Mike's Semester in OU Review

Hello all: It seems we have all survived our most recent semester. I never thought people here at OU were serious when they said 6 credit hours was a full load, but I'm a believer now. 35 hours of work a week also adds to the load, but I digress.

I took Cultural Theory (which is a required course for all graduate students - classic 4 field approach) and Political Dynamics of Small-Scale Societies. The first was taught by a recent Berkley graduate (just hired on here at OU). Let me tell you, she fit the mold, but was very conducive to other modes of thought. The Political Dynamics class was a great immersion into theory behind the development of complex societies and a good spring-board into my dissertation. My final paper will eventually turn into my dissertation proposal which deals with Mesoamerican symbolism on pottery produced in the Southwest and how it served as tool for rising elites ("aggrandizers," if you will) to create political legitimacy. The theory behind foreign symbolism for legitimacy is a little weak and undeveloped, but hopefully I will be able to address this issue.

Cultural Theory:
This is a classic anthropological theory graduate class, like the two required at BYU, but combined. It was extremely informative. Just to give props out to faculty at BYU, we're on par when it comes to other institutions. And don’t worry, archaeology students here hate cultural theory just as much as any other archaeologist (except for my twisted self). We basically covered the development of anthropological theory from the late 1800s until about the end of the 1970s. It was a good overview, although it was a bit weak on the post-modernist side. We delved into a couple of ethnographies and trudged through British social anthropological history as well. Glad it's over. Below is the reference to my favorite reading for the semester. In this lecture, Weber really hits the nail on the head when it comes to being a good professor of anthropology (or science).

Weber, Max
1946 Science as a Vocation. In Max Weber: Essays in sociology, translated and edited by H. H. Gerth and C. Mills Wright. Oxford University Press.

Political Dynamics in Small-Scale Societies:
This was an awesome class taught by a visiting professor who just graduated from UCLA. His dissertation was on the obsidian (or “obsdidian”) workshops adjacent to the Temple of the Moon at Teotihuacan. He reminded me of Ian Robertson. He even knew Ian! Good guy who could relate to what we are doing as grad students. Anyway, this guy really knows his political development theory. We read a couple of Clark articles (appropriately) and a few others that were really great (which I've listed below).

DeMarrais, Elizabeth, Luis Jaime Castillo, and Timothy Earle
1996 Ideology, Materialization, and Power Strategies. Current Anthropology 37:1:15-31.

Bayman, James M.
2002 Hohokam Craft Economies and the Materialization of Power. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 9:1:69-95.

Wilk, Richard
2004 Miss Universe, the Olmec and the Valley of Oaxaca. Journal of Social Archaeology 4:1:81-98.
(This article is a great effort by a soco to explore the transmission of information and style across cultural boundaries. He used modern-day fashion and beauty pageants as an analogy for Olmec style appearing in the Valley of Oaxaca. Extremely entertaining.)

Other activities:
I've just been working on keeping food on my family's table by working part-time for the department as a GA at the Museum of Natural History. I also have a part-time job leasing apartments (great way to get paid to study). In addition, I have a few publications in the works. One is the New World Archaeological Foundation publication of my thesis, and another is one I'm trying to get out into a peer-reviewed journal (a condensed version of thesis research). Also, I’ve submitted a paper for the SAAs, co-written with one of Chris’s classmates at ASU, but it is still pending acceptance. I also have a film in the works, just trying to find funding to do it. Looking to do a Kekchi-English dictionary with a friend at SUNY Albany and the list goes on. If we all only had double the time and double the funding.

Am I a whore?

I guess it's time for me to come clean. I've been secretly working on a Book of Mormon archaeology project. That's right, me, the biggest critic of non-John Clark apologists, is working on a BOM archaeology project.

Essentially, what I've done is read through the BOM and flag any and all references to cultural things. I have every mention of political structure, material culture, subsistence, etc marked in a copy of the Book of Mormon. I'd like to publish a concordance with some limited ethnographic commentary. I am currently looking for a publisher, and if anyone bites, I'll turn my list into a book.

As Juan has constantly pointed out, people don't actually know what the BOM says about this stuff. This would let the BOM stand on its own with both critics and apologists, and I think it would be an invaluable reference tool.

I would appreciate some feedback when you're through being stunned. Juan doesn't know about this, and I'd appreciate it if neither he nor Joel find out about it yet. Thanks.

Watkins Semester in Review - Fall 2005

Finals sucked, and on to the good stuff...

I took three classes this semester, Academic Inquiry (essentially method and theory), Intrasite Research Strategies, and Hohokam Archaeology. Ill also report on my work in Hohokam contract archaeology.

Academic Inquiry
This course was a real disappointment. It was co-taught by Michelle Hegmon and a SoCo guy. Michelle lived up to her work and all my expectations, but the course itself really blew. The newly formed "School of Human Evolution and Social Change" (formerly the Department of Anthropology) is attempting to be more integrative, and the class had first year archaeology, SoCo, physical anthropology, and museum anthropology students in it. What's that? There are people out there with MA's in Museum Anthropology? That's right, you poor suckers might as well use those Museum certificates from Marti to wipe your butts with, casue it isn't going to amount to jack squat.

I really have nothing to recommend from this course. We read some Trigger ("Sociocultural Evolution"), not his best stuff, rehashed Giddens (got it better from Juan Clark), and read a few interesting things on primate social behavior, if you're into that sort of thing. Turns out some animals differentially pass on behavior non-biologically. On some level, I realize that this is probably important, but I just can't bring myself to care.

Whiten, A., V. Horner, and S. Marshall-Pescini
2003 Cultural Panthropology. Evolutionary Anthropology 12(2):92-105.

Whiten, A., J. Goodall, W.C. McGrew, T. Nishida, V. Reynolds, Y. Sugiyama, C.E.G. Tutin, R.W. Wrangham, and C. Boesch
1999 Cultures in Chimpanzees. Nature 399:682-685.

Ultimately, I walked away from this class with the realization that Anthropology is extremely diverse, and that we have much less in common with each other than everybody thinks. Most physical anthropologists don't even understand culture, let alone investigate it. SoCo's never shut up about being ethnocentric (one girl almost broke down into tears in disbelief when we talked about functionalism in archaeology). And museum people are just a bunch of artifact babysitters. Depressing really. Really, really, depressing.

Intrasite Research Strategies
What can I say about this course? It was easily the most difficult, most rewarding, all-around best class that I have ever been a part of. Keith Kintigh is a statistical genius, far surpassing his reputation. In this course, we studied a variety of quantitative spatial techniques aimed at the analysis of a single site. The critical article, which I recommend to everyone, is a summary piece by Keith.

Kintigh, Keith
1990 Intrasite Spatial Analysis: A Commentary on Major Methods. In Mathematics and Information Science in Archaeology: A Flexible Framework, edited by Albertus Voorrips. Studies in Modern Archaeology 3: 165-200. HOLOS-Verlag, Bonn.

It's pretty hard to get, but I have pdf copies I can email to the interested. Even if you're not quantitative, Keith makes this stuff understandable. I wrote a term paper trying to figure out whether there was a large simultaneous, or small repeated occupation of FFR by examining trash deposits instead of chronometric data. Looks like was a large occupation of FFR (suck it Sammons-Lohse!). Some of you have the paper, if others are interested I can email it along.

Hohokam Archaeology
The Hohokam are way cooler than I ever thought. There were several readings of interest but I'm not sure what to recommend. I have them all as pdfs if people would like them. So many really important research questions remain unanswered. Did people live on the platform mounds? If so, were they managerial elites or lineage heads? What drove the Pre-Classic - Classic transition? Burial changes from Cremation to Inhumation, public architecture from Ball Courts to Platform Mounds, and many others. How were the irrigation systems managed? How were households organized? Hohokam archaeology is surprisingly wide open, not as open as the Fremont granted, but there's a lot of work to do. Pueblo Shemblo!

Work
I've been working at the ASU equivalent of OPA, except here I'm either the project director or assistant project director depending on the size of the project. I've never seen so many whole pots in all my life! Phoenix is developing at an amazing rate, and state and federal law require every burial be dug by an archaeologist. Considering the Salt River Basin Hohokam lived in permanent Villages with defined cemeteries, there is a bottomless pit of archaeology waiting to be done.

Pretty much a good year overall. I'm looking forward to hearing from everyone else and buying Holly some Hashemite for Christmas. She could spread it on her bathtub hoagie this Christmas...

A Tribute...

What's for lunch raghead?

Revel in this "oil-free" spread!

Sand in my sandwich...

Mr. Yoder's Semester in Review

Ok, all papers and projects are out of the way and only one final left. Time for......drumrole.........THE SEMESTER IN REVIEW!

I took three classes this semester. Environmental Archaeology, Historic Preservation, and Ethnoarchaeology.

Environmental Arch: Sadly this was a class which included senior undergraduates so it was taught at a pretty basic level. Much of the reading came from two books that I don’t particularly recommend. Although I did read an article that I really liked which I’ve already posted about, but in case you missed it:
Reinhard, Karl J.1992 Parasitology as an Interpretive Tool in Archaeology American Antiquity 57(2):231-245.
(This is a really informative article that also is a well spring of ideas. Plus it’s easy to read. Bonus!)

Historic Preservation: Basically a CRM class. We read all the laws, regulations, etc. Essentially Jim’s A's class at BYU. Didn’t gain any fascinating new insights. Besides the fact that there is a big curation problem and we need the YAR (Yoder Archaeological Repository) now more than ever. This has prompted me to begin an article. Basically I want to know how many theses and dissertations are written using brand new material and how many are being written using collections. I think I’ll send out a questionair to a bunch of universities and ask about how many of their students in the last five years completed a thesis or dissertation using new research and how many using archaeological collections already dug up. I think universities should encourage grad students to focus more on the collections so that we can get this huge backlog of stuff reported on. Yeah for Cady doing PVAP!

Ethnoarchaeology: This was a good class in that it opened my eyes to the potential of ethnoarchaeology for really getting at issues that can be difficult to see in the archaeological record. Unfortunatley, ethnoarch is mostly useful if you are working with recent cultures. Although by using the general comparative approach it can be used in deep time as well. A couple of good articles about ethnoarch in general are:

Gould, Richard A., and Patty J. Watson
1982 A Dialogue on the Meaning and Use of Analogy in Ethnoarchaeological Reasoning. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 1:355-381.

Wobst, H. Martin
1978 The Archaeo-Ethnology of Hunter-Gatherers, or the Tyranny of the Ethnographic Record in Archaeology. American Antiquity 43:303-309.
(Wobst takes his argument to far in my view, but it is a good warning)

Wylie, Alison.
1985 The Reaction Against Analogy. Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory 8:63-111.
(Although this Wylie article SUCKS to read, it is the seminal paper on the use of analogy. Be warned…very boring, long, and theory laden. But she makes good points, if you can find them)

As to ethnoarchaeology in actual use, these are some well done articles:

Frink, Lisa
1996 Social Identity and the Yup’ik Eskimo Village Tunnel System in Precolonial and Colonial Western Coastal Alaska. In Integrating the Diversity of 21st Century Anthropology: The Life and Intellectual Legacies of Susan Kent. Edited by W. Ashmore, M. Dobres, S. Nelson, and A. Rosen. Archaeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association, University of California Press, Berkely.

Weedman, Kathryn
2005 Gender and Stone-Tools: An Ethnographic Study of the Konso and Gamo Hideworkers of Southern Ethiopia. In Gender and Hide Production, Lisa Frink and Kathryn Weedman eds., pp.175-196. AltaMira Press, Walnut Creek.

Frink, Lisa, Brian W. Hoffman, and Robert D. Shaw
2003 A Comparative Ethnoarchaeological Study of Ulu Knife use in Western Alaska. Current Anthropology 44(1):116-121.

The instructor for this class, Lisa Frink, kind of ambushed me in that although this was an ethnoarchaeology class, it was equally about gender. Almost all of our readings had something to do with gender. Which although it bugged me at first, did raise some good questions in my mind. One of which is…Are there any articles focusing on gender, or discussing gender for that matter, for the Fremont? I couldn’t think of any. Yet in other areas people are looking for and finding gender with as much information as we have. I may one day look for gender among the Fremont, but right now I’ve got to finish some other projects I have going.
In this class I wrote a paper on the Mojave Sink area of the Mojave Desert in California. I’ve sent it off to the two Big Boys in the field to see if they think its article worthy. It’s content in sum: Trying to determine cultural affiliation of sites in some areas can be very difficult if not impossible because of similarities of material culture, fluid cultural boundaries, and limited ethnographic information. This is true in the late prehistory of the Mojave Sink and is even more so for the Paleo and Archaic time periods. I say we need to look for more cultural diversity in the early time periods and outline a couple of ways we could do so.

So there you have it, the Semester in review for Mr. Yoder. It was busy, but good. For any interested my thesis will hopefully be up on the BYU website soon, as I’ve turned it in and should graduate this semester….at last. My rabbitskin article is also out and in print in the wonderful publication the Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology. I have yet to see it, but I’ve been told by those who have it looks good. Yeah. And Jason Bright says that my CRM article is supposed to be out in the next issue of Utah Archaeology, but who knows when that will be. So if you are desperate to know how much money you are likely to make in the world of CRM, or are interested in a number of other CRM related issues, just let me know and I’ll email you a copy.

Keep’en it real in Lost Wages (which by the way gets old REAL fast so don’t say this to people who live in Las Vegas, because I’ve only been here for 6 months and am already sick of people saying, “So, you live in Lost Wages...hahaha”, or “I went on vacation to Lost Wages last year…hahahaha” Yes, you are so funny.

Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas and the whatnot (Seewhat I did with the colors there...ahhhh...very creative)

Checking in

Things have been a little quiet here at FoF the last week or so. I figure that this is due to finals, which is why I haven't been posting.

I guess I just wanted to say good luck on finals, and I'm looking forward to everyones semester in review, and that Veronica Mars is probably the best show on TV right now, and that the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan can suck it.