Watkins Semester in Review - Fall 2005

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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