Aaron's SIR

This semester was pretty uneventful. It comprised of me going down to Sand Hollow in January, and then spending the rest of the time in the bone room analyzing the chipped stone from PVAP. After plodding through only one box (there are 14 total), I have now analyzed 900+ tools from Summit (42IN40). Most of them are utilized flakes.

So, my previous method of "just get through all the boxes" has been foiled. No way am I gonna be able to do 13 more boxes with similar artifact counts and ever graduate. Enter sampling strategies.

For now, I am working on revising drafts of my proposal and figuring out how to sample the assemblage. I've been reading a lot of stuff on Homol'ovi (the Hopi Mesas area) and despite the obvious differences between the Hopi and the Fremont, I have gained some perspectives into how to sample a massive collection, and also gotten some ideas about studying spatial distributions of chipped stone.

This past week I was near Bliss, Idaho with Lane doing Idaho Power stuff for Mr. Baker. We documented several sites along the Snake River. Cool stuff up there. We found several points, some late prehistoric ceramics, sandstone shaft smoothers, and a few rock shelters. Apparently the week before I went up, they found a burial. Shane was all over it. Not much left, just some vertebrae and teeth.

We did find a really cool site near the banks of Salmon Falls that, according to his journal, was visited by John C. Fremont. He and his cronies traded with the Shoshone for dried Salmon and spent some time near the falls. The site was very large with lots of groundstone, shell, chipped stone, rock art, and circular features with upright slabs. There was also a historic component, stacked stone walls and a ditch. It was pretty picked over by visitors to the site (read: looters) and little has been done to preserve it. After finding several looter pits, Lane shook his head and uttered, "Bastards." He then lamented Idaho's neglect for this historically significant site. Hopefully, with some strong suggestions to put it on the register, it will get there. We could have easily spent three days recording that site due to the massive amount of stuff there.

I wish there was more to report, but I didn't take any cool classes, and I've been doing a lot of analysis so there isn't much else to say.

Yoder and Stats

I seem to remember a tent-mate who found a very effective use for archaeological stats.

Yoder, I still need to send this one to Ian Robertson. I think he'd get a kick out of it.

Yoder's SIR_Spring 2007

This semester was relatively light at the beginning but quickly took a downward spiral. As far as classes go, I only had two, one of which was a directed readings course.

I took Anthropological Statistics from Karen Harry. Why? Because I’m such a stats retard that I don’t remember anything if I’m not constantly using it. Even though it was pretty basic stats I was worried at first, but Ian’s teachings were still rattling around in the back of my head, and surprisingly, I was able to remember a lot of it once I started thinking stats again.

My directed readings course was focused on stuff for both my dissertation and for my comps. I’ve been doing a lot of reading about technological style, iconological style, isochrestic style, and the whatnot. I’m particularly a fan of the technological and isochrestic style camp and this theoretical orientation will be the basis for much of my dissertation research. And can I throw a plug in here for James Sackett. The guy knows how to write. He has a nice clean, clear, writing style that keeps you interested. Whenever I’m writing for an academic audience (article or presentation) I always feel compelled to dress it up in fancy terms. I hate doing this but feel like that as a grad student I have to do this to be taken more seriously. This is crap and I don’t want to do it anymore. I, and everyone else in archaeology, should write in clean clear language like only a few do really well.

At the end of the semester I decided to take the job with Uncle OPA and then had to cram everything to get out of Vegas and up to Utah in time. I started the job two weeks before the end of the semester which meant that I had to have others cover the Anthro 101 classes I was teaching, turn in assignments early, etc. It got very hairy near the end, but was worth it.

Now I’m keeping it real in Sand Hollow. Speaking of which, I am able to write this today because we got SANDBLASTED and had to pack up and come home early this morning. We got to the site around 6:20am, and were able to work for a couple of hours but conditions quickly turned into a full scale sand storm. So it was home for FSing and writing up notes. Grit in the teeth, good times. I am still waiting for Aaron to come down (come on dude, just for a week) and can’t wait for Mike to start. I’m also supposed to be studying for my comps at night, but so far that has failed to happen. Where does the time go?

Mike's SIR - Spring '07

This past semester was a little busier than the last. I don't know if my mental state will remain stable, but we'll see. Now that it is over, I can breathe a little easier. Overall, it was a good one.

Linguistic Theory - This is a required course for all graduate students at OU. It was really good to read some classic stuff by Boas, Sapir, and Kroeber. I really enjoyed Keith Basso's book on the Western Apache. His writing style is very colloquial and frank. I think we should all write a little more like that, but then journals wouldn't publish our stuff. My project for this class was working on the Q'eqchi'- English dictionary that my friend (at SUNY Albany) and I had started about a year ago. We are using a software program by SIL that is for field linguists and is a tool used to build lexicons. The advantage of this is that we can output the lexicon to many different formats - web, text (WORD, etc.), and as a stand-alone dictionary with searchable functions. This is going to take longer than we expected, but it needs to be done.

Symbolic Anthropology - I took this as a special readings course with a Berkley-ite who allowed me to take a mock-comprehensive exam question instead of write a paper at the end. It was good practice and got me ready for at least one portion of the exam, which I will be taking next Spring. Also, I was able to read some of the classic symbolic literature from the 60s and 70s like Firth, Cohen, Turner, Levi-Strauss, Ortner, and Douglas. It was a really good baptism by fire. I may bleed archaeology, but I occasionally pee cultural anthropology and enjoy it. What can I say? They don't call me Soco for nothing.

Work - I've been a TA for a few semesters now and will be taking on my own intro to anth. class this coming fall. It should be fun; I really enjoy teaching. Also, I work for the property management company where I live and have been able to get cheap rent. I work for them 2 days out of the week and do on-call emergency maintenance at night and on weekends. In addition, there have been a lot of freelance opportunities this past semester which included English to Spanish translations, 2 websites, and 2 logo design projects. I should have passed on all of them due to time constraints.

Film - In all the hoopla of school and work, the illegal immigration film rolls on. We just interviewed our first illegal immigrant last night (although we still concealed his identity). None have been willing to appear on camera until now. A new law also just passed here in Oklahoma making it a felony to transport an illegal. I guess I won't be taking any of the Spanish Branch members anywhere, or maybe I will. The law also prevents illegals from obtaining state ID, health benefits, and jobs (employers are required to do social security number checks on all new employees). It is a hot topic everywhere, but we have been able to document the debate right here in OK.

Summer - So the rumors are true. I will be working for Uncle OPA this summer. I'm really excited to be working with all the folks at Sand Hollow. Amie and the kids will also be coming along after a fourth summer in a row of having to leave them for an extended period of time. It also looks like I may even make money for the first summer in a long time. And now that OPA has some cool techno tools, Scott and I can finally do a write-up on the Tablet PCs and handheld computers.

Lay-tar-----------------------------------

Friends of OPA Unite!

Now that Dave and probably Mike have joined the rest of the crew with Uncle OPA, I wonder if the time is ripe to talk to the bosses about organizing a "Friends of OPA" alumni group to support Rich and co. It could start, and possibly stay, small, existing primarily as an email list. It would be easy to put together on google groups.

Basically, we could send out an "OPA Update" to the listserv two or three times a year to let people know how OPA was doing, and have the list ready for people to send in their letters of support to the Dean and Crandall the next time the ship starts sinking. This would also serve as the basis for future group activities, such as the occasional get-together to excavate Wolf Village, or a forum to get the money together for endowed fellowships in support of graduate students studying Fremont subsistence, architecture, and ceramics (Joel, Rich, and Lane's primary research interests).

I can think of the following people other than the FOF:

Sarah Baer
Jake Sauer
Megan Schaub
Jamie Bartlett
Aubrey Baasgaard
Shane Baker
Mery Ann Clements
Jan Wickel
Wade and Jessica Arden
The Big Horn Archaeology dudes
Kenny Winch
Charmaine Thompson
Byron Loosle
The Dude from Baseline Data
Jim Wilde
Debbie Newman
Emily Wise
and many more!

What does everyone think? Maybe some of you guys in St. George can talk to Rich about it, and I'll email Joel. We can start putting together an email list and ask people if they want to be on the google group, and then see what we can do to support Uncle OPA!

Watkins SIR Spring 2007

Not really an eventful term, but my highlights were:

Classes -- Beyond Chiefdoms with Ben Nelson and Kate Spielmann. In this class, we reviewed the chiefdom literature and pretty much decided that the classically defined chiefdom only ever existed in Polynesia, but that there are societies that are neither states nor tribes that the chiefdom label could be applied to, for lack of a better term. Also, we decided that chiefdoms do not necessarily preceed states, and in fact, there are no historical or archaeological cases where a chiefdom turned into a state. I wrote a paper for this class in which I compared mortuary assemblages from the Southwest (including the Fremont, Hohokam, PIV, and Casas Grandes) to a Southeastern Chiefdom. Surprisingly, the Fremont assemblage was a lot like the chiefdom, and the pure Southwestern groups were very similar. Go figure!? I only used one metric to compare them though, the diversity index, which is a count of the number of artifact classes in a burial, which supposedly is related to the number of roles a person held in life.

Dissertation -- I continue to collect and analyze sherds from the Southern Sinagua area, putting together a temper typology for the region. As part of my analysis, I'm developing a new method to analyze ceramic thin sections by digitally photographing the slides and using computer software to quantify the amount of each temper particle present. The team includes people from Geology, Archaeology, Electrical Engineering, and Photography. If it works, and I'm pretty sure it will, we will reduce the cost of thin section analysis by 1/10th. Exciting times!

Work -- I'm currently finishing up a chapter describing Hohokam mortuary ritual on Canal System 7 based on a dataset of nearly 1,000 burials excavated over the last year or two. I've identified several roles, including household ritual specialists, group ritual specialists, hunt/war leaders, and ceramic entrepreneurs. We'll see if any of it holds up.

This summer -- I'll be working on my dissertation 2 days a week, and doing excavations here in the Phoenix Basin the rest of the week. Good times, my friends, good times.

Herod's Tomb Found?

Could this be? Somebody get Holly on the horn to assess this. And let's get those SIRs in. I'll try to have mine up today.

And by the way, Mr. Yoder joins OPA

You like that....by the way...OPA. I'm good.

So those positions that Scott posted about a one-year contract with OPA.....yours truely will be filling one of those positions. Hurrah! I'll be helping run the Sand Hollow excavation during the summer and analysis and write up in the fall and winter. I'm looking forward to working with the bosses again and can't wait to get into the dirt (or sand in this case). I start on Monday. Pretty quick, but I'm way excited. Aaron might even be around.

Now if I could just sell my house. Not to worry, I hear the market is great! http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18289082/

SAA's and graduate students

Is anyone going to the SAA's this year? My professors keep asking me this. This is understandable. But when I answer no, one or two of them kinda look at me odd like "really, why not? What are you doing instead?"

I know they just want to be nice and are interested in my academic welfare, BUT, I feel like saying "I have a wife, three kids with one on the way*, and make a whopping $12,000 a year" Are you serious?!@#% No I'm not going to the freakin SAA's. You want to know what I 'm doing instead, I'm buying diapers; and then I'll probably drop by the welfare office and pick up my foodstamps. After that I'll spend another 12-15 hour day at my office working on assigments, publications, and research. THAT'S what I'm doing instead of going to the SAA's!


*Sally is now 4 or 5 months pregnant with our last one. Please O Pleeease let it be a little girl or I will be facing a discontent wife who reminds me that the sex of the child is entirely dependent on the male (i.e. Mr. Yoder).

I want to kill myself

By: Phyllis Gunderson

Archaeologist Mathilda Howard believes in solid scientific fact, not mythical advanced civilizations or stones that shine. But when an old Tibetan monk shares his experience of the "lights that do not die," Matt knows she had to learn more. From a sacred mountain in China to a lost civilization in Brazil, Matt finds that she is digging up more than simple artifacts. Her questions lead her to a new religion, but it may cost her all that she values in life: her career, her prestige, and even her family. As evidence of the shining stones mounts, she finds herself faced with decisions she never thought she'd have to make. How much is Matt willing to sacrifice for the lost stones of the Jaradites?

Continuing BYU's Parowan Synthesis...

Just wanted to send a Congrats and Well Done to Molly for her thesis proposal defense on Monday. She'll have to supply the details, but the worked bone gaming pieces of PVAP are looking like they'll tell us some interesting things when compared to the ethnographic evidence. Molly stood up to our favorite trio of committee members (the 3 J's) very confidently and made some interesting points about our favorite neighborhood Fremont.

Kudos!

anti-evolution museum

Hey all, it's been a little quiet around here so I decided to post a link to a story about an anti-evolution museum that some Christian Fundies are building in Kentucky.

http://www.kentucky.com/158/story/26286.html

If the link doesn't work, just google "anti-evolution museum, kentucky" It should show up.

Due to all of our religious backgrounds, I think this story is worth a read. It's not Fremont related, but the main content of the story could hit home with archaeologists/other scientists with religious convictions.

I think that we should be quick to point out pseudo-science like this museum. I know that I have dealt with many a Mormon Fundie who has told me that dinosaur bones were put on the earth by Satan to deceive men, that C-14 is a flawed method, and that the age of Earth is in the 4-5000s.

A nod to Mr. Ure

I figured that you all should know that Mr. Ure has been accepted to our auspicious graduate studies program at BYU. I think this news is worth its own post due to the fact that Scott's "Joining the Fray" post is down at the bottom of the page.

Congrats Scott, if only you knew what you were getting into...just kidding.

I guess someone considers the Fremont part of the SW

Props out to our very own Chris Watkins whose thesis abstract showed up in Pottery Southwest.

http://www.unm.edu/~psw/PDFs/current.pdf

Excavation Blog

I got this email forwarded to me today. Maybe we should set up a blog for Sand Hollow...

Prof. Michael Smith and his research team are blogging from their excavation project at Calixtlahuaca, Mexico!

Calixtlahuaca was a large urban center of the Matlatzinco culture, closely related to the Aztecs (A.D. 1100-1520).

n Hear about their latest discoveries,
n Learn about the history of the site, and
n Experience the day-to-day life at an archaeological dig as it is happening!

The blog contains the team’s informal reports and is geared toward the general public, with pictures, links and illustrations. The project began this month and will go through July 2007. Check back regularly and follow their progress!

Links:
Calixtlahuaca Blog
Professor Michael Smith’s Homepage
Calixtlahuaca Archaeological Project Website
School of Human Evolution & Social Change

Announcing the USAS/UPAC Convention 2007

June 8-10th at UVSC. Registration starts Thursday afternoon.

This year's theme will be The Archaeology of Utah Valley: The Late Prehistoric Period and Contributions to Archaeology by USAS members.

Dr. J will be our keynote speaker at a catered dinner Saturday night. Charmaine will likely introduce him and then, to his surprise, we'll hopefully have some sort of presentation afterward in honor of his contributions to USAS as well as to archaeology in Utah Valley and in the Late Prehistoric.

Any ideas or personal experiences you can share are much appreciated. We'd love to have you guys come do presentations--Friday and Saturday--or lead workshops. Obviously this is a small venue and most of the audience is comprised of amateurs over 60, but Utah Valley is central enough that we expect a fairly good UPAC attendance this year. Any subject is welcome, though obviously the closer to the theme the better. Aaron--Spotten Cave would be particularly applicable and we may have several field trips that will pass by and be able to point it out beforehand. Hint...

I know everyone's spread out, especially that time of year, but new blood and new ideas could really breathe life into this. And hey, free presentation opportunity. Registration forms won't be out until the end of March, but the fee is only like $10 and you get a groovy t-shirt. =)

Let me know if you guys want to participate. If for no other reason, for those of you still at BYU, you know Dr J loves to see us participate in this stuff. Thanks!

Woods and Yoder (2004)

Hey all,

dropping a quickie while I have some time away for St. Geo. This past week, the 2004 issue of Utah Archaeology finally made it to press. It is now available and features an article by Mr. Yoder(CRM stuff), and one by me(Spotten Cave, what else?)...then there are a few others. I can't remember what they are about.

Anyway, Mr. Bright grudingly admitted that I should get a free copy, so if he follows through, those of you in the office may get to see it. Those of you out of the office can let me know if you want to take a look.

Unfortunatley, the formatting is less than stellar. Many of the figures are fuzzy, and a little too small to really show what they are supposed to show, but whatever. It's out and the Great Basin Seminar paper no longer hangs over my head.

Note to self: never submit anything to Utah Archaeology again.

Congrats Cady and Jeff!!

Had a call from one Jeff Jardine. Baby Jardine was born today at approximately 8:00 PM, after an extended labor. Mother and child are doing fine. Baby weighing in at 7 lbs 2 oz and 19 inches(?).

Can't wait to meet little Joel Clark Jardine, a future friend of the Fremont.

Good Luck Cady

Cady is likely winding down her thesis defense at this moment. Full respect, and let's get the report ASAP.

New Blogger

Today, I was prompted to abandon my blogger account for my google account when I tried to get into the blog. It looks like everyone will also have to make this change.

Joining the Fray and Do You want to Work at OPA?

I just thought I would let everyone know that I am applying to the Masters program here at BYU and plan to start classes this coming fall. I will probably take some intro classes this summer to get up to speed. I am really looking forward to becoming legit and able to really know what I am talking about though that remains to be seen...

On a side note, I have been asked by Rich Talbot, Director of OPA to make everyone on FOF aware that OPA plans is offering two full-time 1 year positions as operating archaeologists. This is a big deal and an amazing opportunity for anyone wanting some major responsibilities and time working with two of the best field archaeologists in the state of Utah. Those interested need to contact Debbie Silversmith at 801.422.0024 or apply online at yjobs.byu.edu.

Practice Archaeology

Anybody tuned in much to the developing theory and such on Practice in archaeology? I'm looking for a good general summary definition, and maybe recommendations on texts or articles that spell things out pretty basically.

It's been pretty quiet on here--this as much a hell semester for everyone else as it's looking for me? Or are there other Sand Hollow II's taking people away from civilization as we know it in 'good ol' Provo?

For those who are interested...

Hey guys, this was brought to my attention by one of my professors. World Archaeology is doing an issue on Experimental Archaeology.

Vol. 40 No. 1: Experimental Archaeology Editor: Alan Outram
Most archaeologists have some understanding of what is meant by'experimental archaeology', but it is not always clear what the term means.Most would agree that experimental archaeology involves 'actualistic'investigation of archaeological questions employing authentic materials and'primitive technologies', rather than being purely lab-based. Suchexperiments might address processes of artefact manufacture and use,taphonomy or (re)construction, however, actualistic experiments are alsoemployed to develop or valid laboratory techniques.

This call is for papers that employ experimental archaeology as a seriousresearch method. Papers that illustrate how experimental archaeology isintegrated into wider archaeological investigations are particularlywelcome.

(http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/cfp/rwarcfp.asp)

Lay-tar.

Way to go, Nabataeans!!

Hello New Worlders! Now for some news from the Old World:

Yes folks, Petra was named as a candidate for one the new seven wonders of the world. Read about it here. Petra is one of 21 sites from around the world competing for the title as one of the world's 7 wonders. Aww yeah!

Stay tuned on 07/07/07 for results!!

Molly SIR (Thanks for the motivation, Chris)

Geographic Information Systems

Though this was technically a Grad level class it was combined with the general intro to GIS undergrad class, so it was incredibly easy (I'm talking about major assignments consisteing of one 2-3 page paper). But, it was very useful, especially since I don't learn well from just exploring computer programs on my own. Basically, we just completed the ESRI on-line lessons to learn how to push the buttons while we did one extensive project broken into a dozen little pieces to learn the applications. Finally, for the Grad students, we came up with an idea of how to use GIS in conjunction with our thesis. Originally, I wanted to show the distribution of gamming pieces over the Paragonah site, but it would have taken way too long to prep all the data, so I ended up showing the distribution of gamming pieces over the Fremont area.

Readings/Thesis
I took one credit of readings simply so I could get my student loan, but it was extreemly helpful towards my thesis. I read the abundant (sarcasm) liturature on Fremont worked bone, mostly consisting of site summaries. There were a few other more helpful pieces including, of course, the Clear Creek Report. I ended up getitng into areas outside of the Fremont as well. The worked bone section of "The Durango South Project" (APUA No.34) was interesting because John Gooding attenpted to analyze worked bone (esp. awls) using functional characteristics rather than simply morphological attributes. I also actually started on the PVAP worked bone analysis, which has been challenging, but very useful, since I have to identify the element (faunal analysis is a major weekness of mine) as well as any modification/wear.

Field School Lab Class
I was the sole TA (though I had much needed help from Aaron, Brad, and Jenny) for the Field School Lab class. This was most useful for comedic relief in my otherwise busy life. I think my favorite story about the students was the follwoing: One student (Let's call him, M) made a comment about how few scales we had and another (let's call him, D) replied, "Oh, you don't really need to use one. What you do is at the beginning of the day you weight one sherd and then use that one to help you estimate on the rest that you do." The best part is that this converstion was held right infront of Dr. Allsion! Through the grapevine I also heard that D found out that M (who was working with sherds from the same site as D) finished analysis and had found 100% greyware with sand temper, so D decided his must all be greyware with sand temper as well...he finnished his analysis really quickly after that.

GB Paper
Finally, I finished by Great Basin Seminar paper (on Fremont Architecture in the Utah Valley...basically reporting the uncommon structrures as Jay's Place) at least to get a grade. I'm sure it'll need a few more drafts before publication, but it's nice to be at a good resting point.

Watkins SIR (Fall 2006)

I get the impression that people are not posting these because they don't have time to write a big long entry. In that spirit, I am posting an abbreviated SIR as an example.

-=Courses=-
Only one course this year:

Comparative Southwestern Ceramics - In this course, we learned to type ceramics from across the southwest, and compared them to one another. Interesting note - most people agreed that Fremont painted pottery is in the Red Mesa style, so much so that some of the Crow Canyon folks wondered whether some of the displaced Mesa Verdeans landed in the Fremont area around AD 900. Check this website for some really cool lab manuals and type descriptions, including one for the Fremont by yours truly.

-=Research=-
Finishing:
1. A paper on the Fremont Ceramic typology
2. A paper on structure contemporeneity at Five Finger Ridge

Dissertation:
Analyzed a bunch of sherds for my D.
Am working on an automated method to digitally analyze petrographic thin sections.

-=Next Term=-
Taking Chiefdoms from Spielmann (the incoming Shallit lecturer) and Ben Nelson
More D research
More Fremont papers

News Flash: Dateline - Rupert Idaho.

Extra, Extra! Read all about it!

Mel Gibson's Apocalyto is full of embellishments, inaccuracies, and racist undertones. The archaeological advisor on the film, one Richard Hansen, responds in this interview with Archaeology Magazine.

Maya "expert", former BYU student, and current UC Riversider Zach Hruby gives his two bits in this National Geographic Newsletter article.

ASU graduate students ask BYU alumni Chris Watkins why the H Hansen let Mel get away with his theatrics. A puzzled Watkins knows not what to say...

Jenny's SIR

Ah semester in review time once again...what could be more enjoyable than reflecting on the anguish and pain all over again, re-opening wounds and salting them with anticipation of next semester's responsibilities? Here goes:

I spent the better part of the first couple of months working with the Forest Service and finishing out the season's fieldwork. In addition, I finally managed to pull together my Farmer/Forager research about an hour before presenting it at the GBAC. That was the highlight of the semester, since it was my first 'real' presentation, though I still feel like I got jipped out of a really good 'Simms makes a scene' moment. According to Dr J, everybody's favorite Little Elf Man has decided--after 20 years, mind you--to accept that his theory needs work and he needn't be offended by those who attempt to move it in a more reasonable direction. Thank heaven!

Early in October, Charmaine and I took Matt Seddon out to Vernon to talk about eligibility and chaining on surface sites. We couldn't resist showing off our homesteads and, being the fellow rust-appreciator that he is, Matt was interested in my thesis and offered to join my thesis committee. Sufficeth to say, I'm thrilled. His insider track on the Level III project, etc is really going to help. Matt's a great guy--it's nice to know that someone with a personality is up there reading our reports.

I only had one class this semester--History 566: Sources and Problems in Utah History. It was interesting to see the difference in the historian approach--as we chose our books from the selected bibliography, I noticed that the three history students most often chose those that were focused on a specific individual's experience. In contrast, I tended toward those that were broader and emphasized the history of many in a specific place. Granted, I also tended to choose the shortest book on the list. The class wasn't fun, per se, but I don't regret taking it since it places all my little rusty homestead bits in better context.

Fairly uneventful, and I'm still trying to find time to knock out a preliminary report for 42WS1931 from last season, but that's what the break is for, right?

Busted!

This morning, I was driving into Phoenix to conduct a brief (< 1 acre) survey of a small parcel we are working on. On my way, I passed by the site of a huge (more than 1,000 burial) Hohokam Village we had excavated the previous year. As I was stopped at a traffic light, I noticed two guys out in the middle of the site fooling around with shovels. The site had been hit by professional looters while we were still in the field, and I immediately called our PI for further instructions.

He called the Phoenix PD, who responded with 4 cars and a helicopter unit. The bosses raced over to the site to survey the damage. Turns out, these were just two members of the Phoenix Symphony (Bassoon and 1st Violin) who were poking around in the backdirt. They had run into a former employee of our company on the site a few weeks back who had told them that it would probably be ok.

While I didn't hook a big fish, and while these dudes are probably not going to be getting into any trouble, I still count this as the first looter bust of my career.

Yoder's Semester in Review

Ah yes, that time of year again….for the semester in review! Guys, I am so freaking ready to be done with school. I need a real job! I need a real income! Sorry. Ok, this semester I only took two classes, one was an ethics and grant writing class and the other was a hunter-gatherer class.

The ethics and grant writing was ok. We discussed a lot of ethical situations, and how you might deal with them. This was actually more interesting than I first thought it would be. We then discussed how to write competitive grants. I found a few useful things from this part of the course, but most of it I had already heard. Though admittedly I have more grant experience than most of the other grad students here. A smart, yet short and interesting resource we used in the grant portion was entitled “Writing from the Winner’s Circle: A Guide to Preparing Competitive Grant Proposals” by David Stanley. This is a good little resource and can be found at http://epscor.unl.edu/rfps/winnerscircle.shtml

The hunter-gatherers class was good. It could have been better, but the class schedule got screwed this semester so that we ended up not meeting that often. This meant we weren’t able to get into a lot of the topics that we wanted to. Overall it was good though. We discussed the characteristics of hunter-gatherers in prehistory and how they interacted with their neighbors. Don’t have any really good articles to give you as you have probably read them already. As I said, we just didn’t have enough time to really get into the interesting topics we would have liked.

On my own research notes. I’m just about to submit an article to the Journal of Archaeological Science on using soft X-rays in perishable research. I hope this one gets in, it would be a good publication. I’m planning on spending the break finishing up a curation article I hope to have submitted by the beginning of next year, and of course, the ever present grant writing for dissertation money. I’ll also be running a week long survey out in the Nevada desert for one of my professors (I need the cash!). Oh, and I might work on the experimental granaries paper for publication somewhere. Though I’m not quite sure if that one is worth it, we’ll see. I’ll also be going up to Utah to visit my in-laws. On the way I’m going to stop by some old fellas who have sandals in their private collections and see if I can convince them to donate them to my dissertation (I think I’m going to dissect one or two). Working with the good ole boys and destroying artifacts, what the h have I come to! Hope you all are enjoying the break. Take some time off and relax.

Virgin Anasazi Ceramic Conference

Kelley Hays-Gilpin gave a guest lecture in my Ceramics of the Southwest class yesterday and mentioned a Conference on Virgin Anasazi ceramics that she, Jim A., and Margaret Lyneis are planning. What the H? I gotta hear about this from the outside?

Anyone know anything about this? I already emailed Jim about it.

PS: Sounds like the MPC just got a really important collection of ceramic vessels from Holbrook. Anyone know about this?

Figurine Analysis

The other day, Aaron and I were talking about the figurines recovered from North Creek.


We were talking about how they are sometimes scored on the back, and were wondering what they might have been attached to. We are currently trying to set up a Scanning Electron Microscope analysis of the dorsal side of these artifacts to see whether any organic fibers or other residue indicating how or what these things might have been attached to. We are trying to get a student in the BYU microscopy lab on-board to help with the analysis and technical stuff.

Any thoughts?

Archaeometry Rules!

Tribute to Dr J

We just had our first USAS Convention planning meeting for next June's USAS/UPAC Meetings. They're typically held the third weekend in June and will likely be there again in 2007. It's a little early, but since this is the last time the Utah County chapter will host the meeting before Dr J retires, Charmaine and I are talking about putting together a session related to Dr J's contributions to archaeology in Utah Valley and to students/amateurs. Assuming we're able to pull it off without the big J himself pulling a veto, would any of you being interested or willing to give a 10 or 15 minute presentation in tribute?

Like I said, Charmaine and I will likely spearhead it and I know there are USAS folks who'll want to talk about things they've done with him, but I'd really like to see the student perspective. He'll be moved off to Washington fishing all day every day soon enough and I know his secret cream filling soft side would really love to hear what we'll take from him after when he's gone. I mean, it'll never be the same as his relationship to Jennings, I suppose...none of us has ever loaned him a shirt that I know of...but it's something.

What do you think? Also if you have any thoughts on presentations that would be interesting or valuable at a USAS convention, especially with regards to projects you've done that used USAS volunteers, let me know--we're still very much in the brainstorming stages and I'm trying to work up a preliminary idea of possible sessions and conference themes.

Fremont Underwater Archaeology

Recently I came across an underwater archaeological investigation of Montezuma's Well, a Southern Sinagua site in Central Arizona. These investigations are not uncommon in Meso either.

It makes me want to dive down to the bottom of the Filmore hotspring and see if there might be any artifacts down there. The thing is deep (ca. 20 feet) and seems to be pretty geologically stable. What if there was a cache of Clovis points down there? Any thoughts...

The Ballad of Peter and Molly

Our good friend Molly recently contacted me asking whether I thought she might be able to sell her story to HaleStorm entertainment. Would you watch a film about Peter and Molly?

Uncle Gardner

While sitting around the Thanksgiving dinner table, stuffed full of delicious trukey, rolls, and peanut butter pie, I was made privy to an amazing piece of information...I'm (through a few marriages) related to Gardner Dalley! Aparently my sister-in-law is his niece. She had mentioned to me perviously that her uncle "had done some archaeology" and was now retired and into antiquing (esp. collecting depression glass), but I had never really thought to ask her his name (or she told me his name three or four years ago when I had no clue who Gardner was). So, that's my intersting bit of news from this holiday that I just had to share with you all. (Also, rumor has it, he'll be in town for a family reunion in the spring and they might introduce me). I hope you all enjoyed your various festivities, especially the food!

Dang it AJ, and other thoughts

First off, AJ, it was good to see you again. This was the first field work I've done with you since a quick back-fill near Circleville. I hope the Big Horn Mucky-Mucks let you come back and dig with us in the next few weeks.

Second, as I've been wandering wind-swept lithic scatters near Clear Creek Canyon, I wondered what type of theory/ies will it take to replace the Madsen and Simms model? Can it be replaced? Madsen and Simms have certainly made their model difficult to test, but many out there don't subscribe to it.

Can those who have different perspectives on the Fremont ever overcome academic marginalization? I've talked a little about this with Chris, and he seems to be of the opinion that publications and reasearch based on different perspectives should continue at a slow and steady pace eventually providing a foundation for a different model (correct me if I'm wrong Chris). I think Mr. Watkins has the right idea. No good will come from a combatitive approach to the M/S model without a solid foundation to rely on.

What do the rest of you think? Will we ever see a revolution?

A GBAC Retrospective

Here's my take on the GBAC, I'll discuss a few of the papers presented, share a funny story about Steve Simms and his optimal foraging rage, and end on an inspirational note.

Now that I have been to several conferences, I find myself more and more hesitant to take notes. I still have mounds of notes from the GBAC two years ago, the SAAs in SLC, and the Southwest Seminar. For the most part, these notes have profited me nothing. So, my discussion of a few select papers will be sparse. If any of you want to jump in and add to this, please do.

Rich Talbot's paper on finding sites was very well done. He discussed the need for archaeologists to be more tech savvy and employ the use of large earth-movers to facilitate finding sites. He also suggested that archaeologists look for sites in areas of soft sand, like dunes, floodplains and alluvial fans. Use of earth movers in these areas would be especially helpful due to the large amount of deposition.

The session that Rich participated in was full of papers that promoted the use of large earth moving machines.
------------------------
Another great paper was Joel's paper on the Fremont. This paper was very reminiscent of his "100 Years of Utah Archaeology" but it was based solely on the Fremont. Joel discussed the beginnings of Great Basin Archaeology and its heavy ties to the southwest.

Then he proceeded to pimp Madsen and Simms and all that they had done for the Fremont.

Joel then provided a timeline discussing important dates in Fremont theory

1900-1930 Boasian
1970 Processual
1982 HBE
1998 Madsen and Simms
2000,2002 Janetski and Talbot

I feared that this would be yet another political paper designed to keep everyone happy, but Joel surprised me by throwing in a little barb about the genetic evidence from Steinaker Gap which illustrates that the Fremont are closer genetically to the SW than anyother group.
--------------------------
Clint Cole was a heavy hitter at this conference with a few papers and a poster.
Clint spoke on INAA and Snake Valley Corrugated ceramics. He compared three sites, Parowan, Baker Village, and surveyed sites near Pinoche, NV. Clint discovered that there are some mineral outliers found in Baker Village ceramics. He also determined that the variability in SVC is shared with all three sites, and that 1/3 of the ceramics from Baker Village match those found in Parowan. (chris, fogive the summary, it was a little over my head)
---------------------------
A student from UNR (Linsie Lafayette) did a study on use wear of Great Basin Stemmed points. Lafayette had someone make two sets of various GB stemmed points and she hafted half to spears and the other half to knife handles. She looked at impact marks on the projectiles (after spearing a dead deer) and butcher marks on the knives. Lafayette determined that some of the GB stemmed points may not have been points at all due to their inability to penetrate or stay hafted.
---------------------------
William Adrefsky spoke about using lithics to understand land use patterns. He used ethnographic data to figure out the average daily travel time of a Paiute. Then he used debitage data to deterimine that if a toolstone source was farther that 30-40 kilometers that a tool would be retouched more than a tool made out of stone that was closer. His theory being that the more rare a toolstone is, the more it is consvered and recycled. Andrefsky also discussed the problem of retouch in lithic analysis and pimped his retouch index paper that will be showing up in Am. Antiquity next month.
---------------------------

Now, for the HBE stories. The first involves O'Connell, Andrew Ugan, and a skeptical woman. Ugan had a poster on prestige and ranked hunting on display. A woman (who looked like a professor or high up mucky-muck) was arguing with Ugan and his flowing mane of hair. O'Connell was quick to jump in and Ugan, his hair, and O'Connell did all they could to convince the woman that their theory was correct.

The other story involves Steve Simms. After Kim Carpenter of Far Western gave a paper on return rates and subsistence strategies, Simms got in her face (which was cute cause he was shorter than her) and began to blast her interpretation. She countered by saying she was confused and did not understand how Simms could invest everything in ranked strategies. Simms tried to blow her off and started to walk away two times, she asked him to come back and talk about why he was angry and explain his model better. He did, only to walk away for good the third time with a dimmisive wave of the hand. Such is the Elven rage of Steve Simms (that should be his power if we ever do GB trading cards..."ELVEN RAGE")

-------------------------
Finally, an inspirational note. This GBAC saw an entire session devoted to essays in honor of Don Fowler. Joel's paper was part of this session. During the session, I sensed a camaraderie between Fowler, his colleages, and students that I do not always sense around Joel. I thought this was interesting. I wonder if it's just due to the fact that Fowler was everybody's drinking buddy...

In the final paper of the session, Dave Thomas (founder of Wendy's) brought up an excellent point. DT shared an experience about Fowler that I really liked. In the past, Fowler has written several glowing letters of rec for Dave Thomas. Once, as Dave was thanking Fowler for helping him so often, Fowler told him that it was his pleasure, and that "Archaeology is a team sport."

Out of all the papers, that concept, however optimistic, was one of the most important shared at the conference. We're all on the same team.

Fremont Annotated Bibliography

I have officially started our open source project on Google Docs, and by open source I mean open source. If you didn't get an invitation, it's because I don't have your email. Catch me (waktins dot chris at gmail dot com) or anyone else who has access to get involved. Let's publicize this bad boy and see if we can't get something cool going.

Happy editing!

Haiku for Waldo Wilcox

Mouthpiece of wisdom
Philosopher and poet
How you enlighten


Add your Haiku about W.W.

More About Archaeology and Less of Waldo

I know we all saw the National geographic article about Range Creek, but my mom just mailed me a copy of an article from the March issue of Smithsonian Magazine which is also about Range Creek. I think we'd all enjoy this one a bit more than teh National Geographic's spotlight on Waldo. Though the Smithsonian article is not without unique quips from Waldo (such as "I think these Indians were so damn poor that when they died they went to the happy hunting ground and there was no need to take what little they had") it is actually a realatively good article about the Fremont for a lay magazine.
For those of you still at OPA, I'm posting a copy on the board.

A FOF Project

The other day it occurred to me that people don't know anything about the Fremont and that we may be able to help. What say you about getting together an annotated bibliography of the Fremont? We could do an alphabetic and a topical version, as well an abridged one with the critical references.

The problem would be making it so all of us could edit it, and then where to host it. I was thinking we could maybe create a new blog and make the references the post, and then we could all work on the annotations in the comments section. I was also wondering if OPA might host the finished bib. Any thoughts?

Brad is Famous

To all those who have received their SAA Archaeological Record, look at the article about CRM being taught in universities. Brad is all crouched into the pits at North Creek. Props are given to Dr. J and Yoder for the photo. My question is "why does the article mention nothing about BYU, but features a photo of our very own Brad Newbold?" Lay-tar.

A Warm Welcome to AJ

I want to extend a welcome to AJ, an OPA alumni and original founder of the famous "filfoul". This Man from Moroni and Senior OPA employee needs little introduction for those who have had the opportunity to work with him. He has been on several clandestine mission for OPA as a team leader of the secretive and elusive Shadow Company (many of you will now have to be shot after reading this post). We look forward to having his insight here on Friends of the Fremont and hope he will bring to bear some of this expertise in our discussion. Without further ado, everyone welcome the one and only AJ. . . filfoul!

GBAC in Vegas

So the GBAC is quickly approaching, and I need to get a head count of who is going to be crashing at my place. Sally also wants some kinda of idea of when people will be getting here and when you will be going home. As I've said before, anyone who wants to is invited, just bring your own pillows and towels. And ear plugs....my kids are up every morning around 6:30, 7:00 at the latest. Enjoy!

Well done ASASES!

To all involved with the ASAS conference, thank you. I think it was a great success and that all papers presented have potential to be published. I was a little scared at the start of the session when there were only three people there (sorry Mike), but we made it through.

Thanks to all those who contributed to the session, I hope it pads the CV nicely.

Special mention to Mike Searcy for driving 16 hours to Tucson and Mr. Yoder for starting his day off at 3:30 am and ending it (hopefully alive) in Vegas much later that evening. Also, props to Beau Schreiver for enduring his first Clarktastic Crucifixion.

It was good to see you guys.

OPA Reunion Project

I was thinking over the weekend that fieldwork with Uncle OPA was actually pretty fun, even when it sucked. What do people think of getting together every couple of years or something for an OPA Reunion project? Everybody could show up in Provo for a few days or maybe a week to volunteer on a dig or maybe analyze some artifacts or whatever Uncle OPA needs at the time. We could even lower the cost of some more research type projects this way. It seems to me that we could get a pretty good test of Wolf Village done in a week with enough OPA alumni in the house. Of course, Uncle OPA would have to come up with some dough for the analysis or whatever, but it could be cool.

Test post

Testing...

Email Alert

I have figured out a way to send email updates to people whenever a new post or comment has been added to FoF. Leave your name in the comments section of this post if you would like to get an update.

Continued Salvation of OPA?

In the latest wave of good fortune for OPA, we currently have six student employees. If you count Molly who is an off and on OPA employee, then that makes seven. That's pretty good, since it got pretty dire for a while with cut wages and when Holly and I were the only hold outs.

In addition to this, we now have a new AP2

It's kind of a beige color, almost a "Gold Mist Metallic" (see "colors" on the web page)

It's nice to have a new vehicle, but the ground clearance will be an issue. I think we should get it tricked out with a lift and big tires. It needs to lose some of that "fresh from the factory" look.

El Norta Creeko

Ahhhh yes, waking up knowing that in less than an hour you will be completely covered, nay, saturated, in cow feces. Could you be anywhere else than North Creek Shelter? So I just got back from there last weekend, as did Brad, Holly, Molly, Mike, and Mark; all BYUers. A good time was had by all. We dug a lot, yet still did not hit sterile. At 3 meters below ground surface it eludes us. But from the very bottom we did pull the base of a point (looks like a Pinto), so that was great. What was not so great was that the feature that looked oh so much like a pithouse in profile turned out not to be….probably. Which does not bode well for my dissertation. Instead it looks like it was a heavily used use surface. It was chock full of pits. Which was cool and still salvageable, but all the fill above and probably on parts of the surface and in some of the pits was heavily rodent burrowed so that data coming out of there will be suspect. Not good. I am currently completely ignoring this problem and not thinking about what to do, but eventually (probably this weekend) I will have to evaluate things and decide if I can still do my dissertation on the Early Holocene on the Northern Colorado Plateau using data primarily from North Creek. I wouldn’t be extremely bummed if not for the amount of time and energy I have all ready expended in doing background research and writing grants. I don't have the official photos from the dig yet but will try to post one or two when I get them.

UNLV has me teaching two Cultural Anthropology 101 classes this semester. I have the afternoon and evening classes which means that they are smaller, only around 30 or 40 kids a piece. I didn’t know I was going to be teaching them until two weeks ago, and I was in the field so I couldn’t do any preparation. So this week I have been struggling to get things together. So far so good, no one has dropped anyway. A couple of other things going on but I’ll save them for another post; I’ve got to get back to work. It was good to see all the BYU folks again. Aaron, Chris, Cady, Scott, Mike….we were wishing you could have been there, it would have been a good time to have everyone together. Frescas all around!

Skeletons in the display case

Hey all,

I got back from the UK last night. It was a fun trip and I spent some time in museums looking at various Roman and Celtic displays.

One thing that impressed me about the various displays was the presence of human remains. There were Roman skeletons and Celtic skeletons on display. It was refreshing to see the various displays and to read about the data gathered due to unfettered access to human remains.

This led me to wonder why there aren't any widespread repatriation movements by Italians or Celtic descendants. In other words, why did we get hit with repatriation issues that have not affected archaeologists in other countries?

I suppose that depth of time is an issue. In some cases, Italians and Brits are more temporally removed from the displayed human remains than Native Americans; but what about Kennewick Man?

So, ultimately, what brought on the revolution that got the NAGPRA ball rolling? Unhealed wounds from colonial attrocities? Native American religious beliefs? Or a combination of the two coupled with a desire to stick it to the white man?

Anyway, I'm sure there is not a definitive answer to any of these questions, and I know that NAGPRA is here to stay, but seeing those skeletons on display made me feel like I was missing out on a piece of archaeology that became unreachable with the implementation of NAGPRA.

The Experimental Offspring Unite!

The Archaeological Sciences of the Americas 2006 Conference is coming up in September and I thought I would just paste a copy of the powerhouse of BYU "wonderkind" that will be presenting...REPRESENT!


ORGANIZED SESSION: A CORE CONCERN: THE ROLE OF EXPERIMENTAL ARCHAEOLOGY IN TECHNOLOGY STUDIES
ORGANIZERS: A. R. Woods and M. Searcy
1:30 – 2:00 Moving from Guessing to Educated Guessing: Testing the Ethnographic Record with Experimental Archaeology – M. Searcy
2:00 – 2:30 Quantifying Observable Change in the Visual Appearance of Heat Treated Chert – C. Watkins, C. B. Jardine, and S. Ure
2:30 – 3:00 Two Examples of Experimental Archaeology: Methodology, Findings, and Comparisons – D. Yoder
3:00 – 3:30 Constructing a Curriculum: Teaching Ancient Technology and Replication - A. Woods
3:30 – 4:00 Use-Wear or Not Use-Wear: An Experiment to Investigate the Notches in Ribs Recovered From Durango Basketmaker II Contexts – B. Scheiver
4:00 – 4:30 Discussion – J. Clark

P.S. - It looks like we have 30 minutes a piece now. We better start writing!!!

Gibson may be a drunk, but has a good idea

I just wanted to respond to Aaron's post as well as comments to his post on Apocolypto, since I have a heightened interest in this field.

OK. First, I guarantee that Apocolypto will not be any where close to accurate. We still don't know what accurate is in the Mayan region. Population size, the existence of a proto-Mayan language, and the "collapse" are all areas that are still heavily debated. I am convenced there is no final definition of Mayan culture nor that it will be depicted in the movie. But, this film is building on a known genre, that of "historical drama." In this case, it would be more appropriate to call it "PRE-historical drama," an entirely uncharted style that could aid archaeologists in the ever-dreaded search for funding.

This is where I think we can really make headway in getting the general public involved in archaeology and where Mel Gibson is creating a new type of film that gets us all thinking a little harder about the big picture when it comes to prehistoric cultural groups (i.e., how they all interacted, what it may have looked like, what the language may have sounded like, etc.)

Now, in reference to Gibson's actions, I think he has a problem, and like all Hollywood types, will do the rehab shuffle and be on his way. They are smart to postpone the release of the film. This is likely to our benefit. Unfortunately, the Mayan region already gets lots of funding. What is needed are more films about lesser-known cultures or a television program that highlights these cultures. As the public gets interested in these areas, they will be more likely to support research through volunteered help or funding.

The big question is "how do we make this appeal to the mass public." That is the main challenge, but I am pretty sure it is not simply through public lectures and other traditional community events, although they are very important to continue. Listen to this segment that was on NPR where Leon Lederman confronts a similar issue dealing with public interest in the general field of science. He says that TV is a "medium that would be magical for our society" if it focused on educating the public, but as we all know, this is currently not the case.

Until we can solve that problem, we will be left with the difficulty of scrounging for money from the usual suspects. I vote for the popularizing of archaeology for our benefit and job security. This may sound selfish, but at the same time we will continue in our scientific pursuits of filling in the blanks of prehistory and preserving the past.

Note to female GBAC'ers

I know that most of you have friends like unto Mr. Yoder to crash with for GBAC, but by way of update, I just found out that I'm gonna have to stay at the Golden Nugget cuz' I've got two days of agency business meetings before the conference even starts.

Charmaine and I will be grabbing a room for all 5 nights, so if any of you girl-types are looking to go in on a room instead of commuting, let me know. I have the student rate reserved though we're looking into the possibility of getting a government rate that would probably be lower. Either way it's certainly not the least expensive venue they might have chosen! Alas!

Let me know if you want to join us. Stifles evening socializing with OPA-ites to some extent, I suppose, but it guarantees more time watching big names get plastered and makes a's of themselves in the elevator! So, hey. (ummm...lame use of Wikipedia to learn how to make links...nothing so noteable as the Toilet of Croc-Hunting. Sorry.)

Word on the street

Now that Rich and co. have scored a big excavation project by the Provo Airport (Hinckley Mounds, here we come!), Uncle OPA is back on top.

It's a good thing, because I heard that during the lean times he had been sleeping out under the old wheelbarrows between Allen Hall and the Elms.

Anyone else heard anything about our good pal?

Archaeology and Movies (useless summer post #3)

With all of the recent news of Mel Gibson and his run-in with the police, it has been suggetsed that his Lamanite thriller Apocolypto will be postponed yet again. Originally, Apocolypto was scheduled to be released sometime this month, but, due to heavy rains in Mexico, it will be released in December. Although, with recent DUI charges, rehab, and anti-semitist remarks, who knows if it will be pushed back even farther?

I was/am still excited to see what Gibson does with the subject matter. I can't remember any good feature films set in Mesoamerica (unless you consider "Ancient America Speaks"). Sadly, I fear that I will be greatly dissapointed. In general, films depicting archaeology have been lacking in accuracy and details.

The Indiana Jones, Tomb Raider, and tragically, Alien vs Predator (shout out to Craig) films all had some sort of "archaeological" theme but fell flat when it came to accuracy.

Now, one could argue that archaeology is in itself, boring. Who wants to film someone filling out site forms or digging a test pit? But there have been some exciting discoveries and events in the archaeological world. The question is, which is better? Making a film about modern archaeologists in adventurous positions or making films ala Apocolypto set in the past, loosely based on the archaeological record?

I would argue that the latter holds more appeal, but the problem is that with so many conflicting theories, one group of theorists will always be upset. Imagine, what if someone did a film on (work with me on this) the Fremont? Who would the writers interview to get the skinny? I can picture a film in which culture takes the sideline, many of the concepts of HBE are thrown in our faces(apologies to Dave), and certain interpretations anger the Natives.

Conversly, a film about a modern archaeologist will almost always take an Indiana Jones/Tomb Raider/Bones slant due to the lack of excitement surrounding excavations and field work.

So, in short, is there a future for archaeological subjects in the cinema? I doubt that anyone will ever get the subject completely right, but what do you all think?

I know that on television, many shows have had some success. Programs appearing on the History Channel and Discovery Channel are, despite melodrama and little inaccuracies, archaeologically friendly. Although, when you get guys like the Josh Bernstein of Digging for the Truth at the helm, I shudder. Ultimately, I think that Chris has the right idea for his tv show, and hey, if Steve Irwin, Crocodile Hunter got a movie, why couldn't Mr. Watkins and his cast and crew of the as yet unnamed archaeology tv show?

Keep Mr. Richens in mind

Just found out a few minutes ago that one of Lane's heart valves (aorta) collapsed this morning. It wasn't considered a heart attack but he has been hospitalized. They put a stent in his heart to clean things up. It sounds like things will be ok, but a few prayers never hurt anything. Apparently he will have a stent in his heart for life and be on medication for a year.

As if it hadn't already been rammed down our throats...or, "Damned Hippies digging up my body"

Just got the August issue of National Geographic.

There's an article about Range Creek in there. The link takes you to an excerpt, but I would suggest taking a look at the full article. There are many cool photographs.

The article itself is a fluff piece full of Waldo Wilcox's ramblings and Metcalf's and Barlow's damage control after Waldo rambles.

At one point, Wilcox gives NG his version of the occupation of Range Creek, (Paraphrase)...

Well, I think that a long time ago little people lived around here, they weren't more than two feet tall, then, the Fremont came in here and killed them off.

As for the "Damned Hippies" reference, that's Waldo's opinion of archaeologists digging up graves.

Check it out.

Jerry's Memories

FYI: I posted Mike's classic "Chris vs. the Big J" on Google Video.

Check it out here.

Mayan Ice Cream (Useless Summer Post #2)

Hi all, saw this and thought you might be interested to enjoy desert like Pacal(or whatever his full name was). Or at least taste how a bunch of euro-americans think mayan chocolate tastes.

Sugar wasn't added to chocolate until it got over to europe right?

If anything, the interactive website is pretty cool.

The Holy Trinity of Fresca (useless summer post)

We all know that Fresca flows through the veins of all true OPA fieldworkers, but the question is, which Fresca is best?

As many of you may or may not know, Fresca is now available in three flavors.

Sparkling Citrus (original)
Sparkling Peach Citrus
Sparkling Black Cherry Citrus

I will admit, when these new flavors came out in 2005, I was skeptical. Since then however, I have become quite the fan of peach fresca. It truly is paradise on the tounge. My personal ranking of the Frescas is as follows:

Peach
Original
Black Cherry

Have any of you tried them? I know Holly and I share the same sentiments, but I ask you fellow Fresca lovers, which of the three is your favorite?


DRINK PEACH FRESCA AND LIVE

Jenny's FIR

Hi all!

I'm glad to leave overall summarizing to Aaron's debriefing, but I've now had enough time away from field school to actually sit down and reflect and thought I'd throw it on here for another perspective.

Amen to the refreshing attitude toward decision-making down there! I couldn't believe how often we heard Jim say "It's your dig, what do YOU think?)! And, in the end, I have to give up my private tirades against Arizona...it was a paradise compared to St George, although both camps were comfortable.

My personal highlight was our last three days after several weeks of survey and site recording. My crew spent 3 days on a site we named Hilltop Condos for the number of habitation structures clustered tightly around a small plaza on the point of a hill. Great site! We drove over it with Jim when we went to show him a feature we'd found during survey and it's absolutely gorgeous. The rubble we first recognized in the road turned out to be one of the round structures on site. We eventually identified 3, possibly 4 or 5 total round structures. One is set way apart from the others with very few artifacts. Best guess is it's our kiva, but we didn't have time to test it. Not sure what Hilltop dates to, but ceramics ran the full gamut from PI-ish (I think) to a single poly-chrome piece. We dropped a 1x1 into the plaza where the midden is darkest. Hit our best bet at sterile only 30 cm down, paling in comparison to Aaron and Brad's site, but boy was it artifact rich.

Well, anyway, it's a great site. I think Dave may be the only person on here who saw it, but we were still finding features at that point, so it may not have looked like much. And there's no real comparison to Molly's Imperial 400 or Brad and Aaron's Poverty Ridge East.

The students did really well, I was very impressed. It was an interesting group. Eclectic, to say the least. Jim's kids were an interesting addition. Molly and I shared a tent with Elizabeth and Christopher spent a couple days out on survey with my crew. And, despite my insistence that historics can be fun, it was really great to spend some quality time with real artifacts and such. I really wish I'd known my stuff better--horribly inadequate--but there is still so much to learn about the Anasazi. Our biggest problem, as ever, will be finding good dates for these sites, but hopefully next year they'll get corn.

Well, I'm glad to be back and enjoying a much needed change of company, though I'd stay with the venue down there anyday. It's going to be interesting to see what develops in lab, though I don't envy the students for the amount of washing and labeling they'll have to do on top of their analyses. Molly, Brad, Aaron and I will be co-authoring a paper with Jim for GBAC, mostly summarizing and presenting preliminary data. We'll see how that turns out.

On an aside, if anyone knows people looking for volunteer experience--poor jobless undergrads and such--send them my way. We've got the Uinta National Forest PIT Project out at Vernon 2nd week of August and are pretty short-handed. We'll be focusing on homestead recording, but we've also got some wicked big lithic scatters to chase out. Not the most exciting work, but gorgeous scenery. Vernon's the center of the universe, after all. There are a couple postings about it on the bulletins at the MPC.

Happy field work, everybody! Savor the summer, woe the winter, eh?

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.

Searcy SIR - Spring 2006

After a year at OU, I feel a little closer to the end. Overall, I've been enjoying myself and the work here. Classes went well this semester. I took two, one was a directed readings of Southwest archaeology under Paul Minnis and the other was my core class for biological anthropological theory.

Southwest Readings
Paul drilled me good with this one, requiring me to read about 2 books a week at the beginning of the semester, then he tapered off at the end. The last part of my semester was dedicated to writing a paper that would be part of my dissertation prospectus and likely part of a future NSF dissertation improvement grant. Best books of the semester - "Exploring the Hohokam" (edited volume) and "Ceramics and Ideology" (Patricia Crown). Least impressive book of the semester - "Becoming Aztlan" (Carol Riley) - this last one came out last year and talks of how southwestern cultures were where Aztec ancestors originated. He kind of jumped around from weak evidence to weaker evidence.

Theories of Biological Anthropology
This is the required course for all grad students here at OU. The instructor is really great and knows a lot about the history of physical anthropology. I really enjoyed getting a better grasp on evolutionary issues and attempting to understand the taxonomy of early man. I still don't know if I believe that the Neanderthals were a different species from homo sapiens because I know a number of people with distinct crested brows. This may prove the theory that early homo sapiens moved north into Europe and were hooking up with the Neanderthals of that area. Great book from this class/fun read - "Race is a Four-Letter Word" (Brace) - this book looks at how the concept of race is a socially constructed phenomenon.

Other activities
The Spring semester also brought a close to the rewriting of my thesis for publication. Dr. Clark is in the process of editing it as we speak, pouring buckets of blood over the pages, so that it can be published. Clark originally offered to publish it in the NWAF Papers series, but said that if it is good enough, he will take it to some university presses (Texas, Oklahoma, Utah, etc.) to try and get it picked up. We'll see what happens.

Also, I was able to put together a paper for the SAAs in Puerto Rico in April, co-writing it with a friend from ASU (Jamie Holthyusen). It highlighted my ethnographic research of metates in guatemala and applied those findings to a collection of metates excavated from La Quemada, Mexico. I haven't heard a report of how the session went, but hopefully someone may have decided to listen to the session rather than lounge on the beach. I know what I would have been doing.

Otherwise, I have been working a lot on a full-length documentary dealing with illegal immigration, a real hot topic right now. We have a lot of footage of the recent rallies here in OKC and in Dallas. We also have had a number of interviews with state representatives and will be filming in Mexico and at the border after my dig at Casas Grandes in July. I also just started work on a Q'eqchi'-English dictionary with a student from SUNY Albany and that seems to be rolling along. The semesters never end. Take care all.

Watkins SIR Spring 2006

Two classes for me this term, both of which are only tangentially related to Archaeology.

Agent-based Modeling in the Social Sciences

What is agent-based modeling you may ask? At the end of an entire semester, you'd think that I'd be able to answer that question. Tragically, I'm not sure that I'm going to be able to do that.

It may be best to begin with an example. Have you ever wondered how they do those epidemic disease predictions? You know on the news when they say, "If the Bird Flu broke out in Hong Kong, 10,000 people would be infected in the first 6 hours, Tokyo and Beijing would be hit within the first 12 hours, yada yada yada..." Well, these predictions are made with agent-based modeling. They basically program a bunch of little people, aka agents, and let them walk around a city. They program stuff like infection rates and the proximity of infection and then watch what happens. They run it like 1,000 times and then interpret the results.

We were supposedly trying to apply this technique to problems in the social sciences. Good luck. This is simply the newest fad in archaeology. Most of the models are based on so-called prisoner's dilemma exchanges, where agents are assumed to be selfish. I could get into a lot of reasons why ABM is problematic, but it just makes me remember the horror of last semester.

Archaeometry

This class was really cool. I worked with turquoise, a geological sample from Kingman, AZ and a bead Joel and Cady loaned me from the Parowan Valley. We learned a materials science approach to analysis, where you characterize the texture (surface characteristics), structure (phases), and composition (elemental makeup) of a substance. Identifying texture is done primarily with scanning electron microscopes. There are a variety of techniques available to determine elemental composition (INAA, PIXE, Electron Microprobe, ICP-MS, etc). These sort of data are most often used in provenance studies. What is a phase you ask? This is kind of a tough question. I think it's best explained with an example. If you sent a piece of chert through a compositional analysis, the results would be mostly silicon with traces of whatever else is in the material (i.e., Ti, Fe, Ca, whatever). Running the same sample through a structural analysis would identify it as chert. Essentially, instead is identifying elements, compositional analysis identifies minerals and various molecules.

Anyway, these folks believe that to do an analysis right, you need to address texture, structure, and composition. There are a lot of advantages to this approach, and if you have the $$ and the means, I would highly recommend it.

Other News

Knowing what Mike and Dave are currently going through, I feel a little guilty mentioning this, but it is going to come out in the end. My dissertation has just been funded by the NSF, through no effort on my part. At the beginning of the semester, I was attached to an NSF proposal submitted by my advisor, Dave Abbott, and some other ASU faculty. A few weeks ago, we learned it had been funded, and I'm going to be paid for 2 years to work on the project. We'll be investigating the Southern Sinagua (the so-called Verde Confederacy consisting of the pueblo sites along the Verde River, like Tuzigoot, Montezuma's Castle, etc), and my part of it is going to be creating a ceramic typology, chronology, and a mechanism for sourcing the pottery. I think that it's going to be kind of a big deal, we're essentially taking a culture from 0-60 in a few short years. Anyway, I'm pretty excited about it, while at the same time, I ackowledge that I have fallen into this without really doing anything much to particularly earn it.

Hope to see some other SIRs soon. I feel bad that mine was late too.

NSF Avoidance and Burial Excavation

I am currently in the middle of re-writing my NSF dissertation improvement grant. Not fun. It's taking me for freaking ever and I just can't seem to get it done. So to avoid having to stare at it some more I'll do a quick recount of my excavation of a burial two weeks ago.

Some kids found a burial out at a teen party spot, under some rocks in a little overhang on a rock outcrop. The sheriff didn't know if it was historic/prehistoric, native american/or whitee. So he called a forensic anthropologist here at UNLV. Since all the archaeology professors were out on business, the forensic anthropologist took me and a couple of her students along. Long story short, I got to excavate the burial. It still had some flesh on different parts of the bones (although it was leather hard or even brittle in some places). Anyway, it was an interesting morning and nice to get out of the office. So that's my story...sadly it was short and now I have to go back to the NSF. For those of you out at Jim Allison's fieldschoo, I think I'll be coming to visit June 14 or 15 or somewhere around then. Are there any tents with only one guy in them, or should I bring my own tent?

Possible Thesis Topic

On the way back to Provo, I had a Yoder-esque epiphany (remember the M.A.N. in the Van moment Dave?)

I'd like to do something of a border study between the Parowan Valley (Fremont) and the St. George Basin (Virgin Anasazi). In other words, looking at differences and similarities between the Fremont and the Anasazi.

It is obvious we have a ecological and cultural border, it would be interesting to chart many of the cultural differences and similarities.

I could do this in several ways:

First, toolstone preferences. North of the St. George Basin (in the Parowan Valley) we see a preference for obsidian and PBN points (made of obsidian). In the St.GB we see the PBN point style but they are all made of chert. This difference is also evident in debitage from various sites.

Second, ceramic design styles and distribution. Are pots coming from north of the St. GB or east of the St. GB?

I think that it would be intersting to see how the borders really affect cultural styles/diagnostics/etc. In many ethnographies we see that border differences are much stronger, but in some we see that border cultures are muddled and blurry (Hodder 1982).

Anyway, it's all very preliminary and sketchy, but I'd like to look at the possibilities that a topic like this could bring. I'd appreciate any criticism (with the realization that it's all very general and was devised today) . I probably won't get to many of your comments for a little while (internet access is difficult right now).

Greetings from the Middle of Nowhere

Hey everyone,

I'm up for the weekend from the 2006 fieldschool.

Things down there are good, but incredibly hot.

The project is divided into four areas situated near Land Hill, just outside of Ivins, Utah. Here's a brief summary of the activities going on down there.

Molly's crew is doing a full scale excavation of a large PII or PIII site (I think it's a small community site). They are just getting started with excavation after two weeks of surface collection and mapping.

Jenny's crew is doing something similar to Molly's. They are currently chasing a wall. I don't know much more than that.

Brad's crew is recording or re-recording all of the rock art on Land Hill. In the process of recording the rock art, they have discovered two rock shelters among the boulders.

My crew is currently re-recording all of Gardner Dalley and Doug McFadden's recorded sites. We have tested one PIII site and several rock art sites. We have been doing something interesting with rock art recording. We have taken large sheets of mylar, placed them on the rock art panels and then traced over the rock art with sharpie markers. In this way, we have been able to get full scale representations of the rock art. When we get back, we hope to scan them. It really beats using a tape measure and feature sketch form.

Brad's crew has yet to use this method, but I am pretty impressed. On Tuesday, my crew will test a PIII site with a lot of redware polychrome sherds and white on black sherds. There is also a moderate amount of obsidian debitage.

I really don't know much more about the other crews or their activities since my crew is much more mobile and more survey/testing oriented.

Travel Discount

Well summer is here, at least in Vegas anyway! It is already heating up in the city from hell. We refuse to turn our air conditioner on any earlier than we have to .. last night our house registered 88 degrees inside but we will not give in! Electricity is too expensive so we're going to hold out even if it means we no longer wear clothes inside.

On a lighter note, while most of you will be doing thesis/doctorate work, I thought I'd let you all in on a chance to save some money if you will be traveling with your families. My husband became a travel agent a month ago and we now receive discount travel. We are going to San Diego in July and will get into Sea World, San Diego Zoo, and the Wild Animal Park all at 50% off as well as 30%-50% off our hotel. If you are traveling at all this summer, email me before you make your reservations and I'll can let you know how to save some money; with gas prices escalating quickly, every little bit counts.

Sorry this isn't "archaeology" related but so many of us are married and have little ones that discounts on travel come in very handy and I thought I'd share.

Mr. Yoder's Semester In Review 2006a

Schools not over for another week, but I'm sick of working on my papers.
Three classes again this semester. Need to get out of school man. Chris and Mike, do you realize how much we are going to be in debt by the time we're finished. I try not to think about it. Anyway......here we go.

Origins of Agriculture: In this class we talked about….the origins of agriculture. We spent a large amount of time talking about the near east. Understandable, since this was where agriculture started, but disappointing in some ways. Although we did discuss the New World, it took a back seat (like the VERY back of the bus type seat) to the near east. We also didn’t talk much about the spread of agriculture to non-agriculturalists, hunter gather/farmer relations, or the impacts and direct effects of agriculture, which is what I find most interesting. We did discuss this stuff, but only lightly. On the positive side we read lots of classic articles by the likes of Braidwood, Bar-Yosef, Binford, Flannery, Smith, and the like. One of the most interesting was by Rindos. Check out Rindos 1980 for an interesting symbiotic view of things. Who freaking needs culture, we have evolution! (Just kidding, it really is a good article)

Rindos, David
1980 Symbiosis, Instability, and the Origins and Spread of Agriculture: A New Model. Current Anthropology 21:751-772.

Some of the main questions at the beginning of the class were why, how, when, and under what conditions was agriculture adopted. The conclusion…..who freaking knows. It’s not quite that bad, but a lot of very intelligent people disagree on most of these issues. Why was agriculture adopted? I think the current trend is to say for a lot of reasons and be kinda wishy washee. True, lots of things came into play, but grow a pair and state what you think THE prime mover was.

Ceramic Analysis: Basically a review of ceramics, including physical analysis and theory. I was disappointed in this class because it was taught with senior level undergrads and so was, well, pretty basic. I did get the chance to do some analysis on a ceramic collection from a Virgin Anasazi site which has gotten me interested in the Virgin Anasazi in general. Pretty cool group. They’ve kinda been forgotten by the Southwesterners, just like the Fremont. They’re kinda like brothers the Fremont and Virgin Anasazi are….bastard brothers….bastard brothers with the same southwestern mom but different fathers. Yeah. There’s an article title in there somewhere, “The Fremont and Virgin Anasazi: Bastard Sons of the Southwest”

Curation Issues: In this class we discussed how important curation and public anthropology are. Reinforced the necessity of the YAR, as well as provided me with the chance to do some research for an article I’ve been wanting to write. I sent out surveys to professors all over the U.S. asking about their students and how many were doing theses or dissertations on curated materials vs. new materials. I’m hoping to write this up this summer. Sent it out to around 100 professors, got responses from roughly 60. How many had bad things to say, only 2. Who were they? One was an academic god of agriculture, the other was our very own Juan. I was soooo not surprised.

On top of classes I did some survey work for one of my professors for some money on the side. I then had to write up the report for the BLM. I was also writing the archaeology chapter for that multidisciplinary project out at Walking Box Ranch. Every other weekend I was in the field helping run the field school. We excavated parts of a rockshelter over in the Mojave Desert, in Cali. I wrote a ton of grants, including the big nasty NSF. But much of that has paid off, as I scored some money for North Creek. I also spent some time doing some more sandal analysis as well as getting the Antelope Cave collection X-rayed. I got some really cool images and will hopefully be finishing that article this summer. All in all I was way to busy and figured about half way through the semester I had bit off more than I could chew. By then I was screwed and just had to stop sleeping to pull it all off.

But now summer is here! I’m going to be spending the first couple of weeks finishing up the sandal article, rewriting my NSF, and writing the curation article. Then I’m going to go visit Jim Allison’s and Karen Harry’s field schools, both up on the Shivwits, and dig me some Virgin Anasazi sites! August is digging at North Creek with Dr. J, where we hope to excavate the entire Early Holocene pithouse. Can’t wait to be in the field.