Aaron's SIR...finally

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

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

501

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

502

Bottom line, it was statistics.

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

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

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

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

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

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

For the rest of the 8, see page 35 of

Kintigh, Keith

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

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

512

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

Anthropology 207

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

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

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

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

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

Lengths of cordage made of many different plant types

a pump drill

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

a small limestone stela carved with mayan glyphs

an atlatl and dart

a processed elk-hide pouch

a set of Oldowan tools

a pair of woven yucca sandals

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

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