I figure I better hurry and post just in case Holly decides to do something brash and actually post--wouldn't want to be branded as she has been.
That said, all I'm gonna say about you sceptics and your anti-historic attitude is...well...ok, I got nothin', but it's still cool. Pass your rust to me, I'll gladly take it. But don't get me wrong, I'll take a pretty lithic scatter over a pile of cans any day of the week.
Now, to the Symposium...
First of all, even now, days later, I can feel my tailbone. The drive was LONG. I tried keeping the 'hey, we're bonding' perspective and that made it slightly more tolerable. 1776 was really enjoyable even though it came in such large blocks.
The first session was definitely the highlight for me, despite its comparative lack of historic discussion, but when it came down to it, I enjoyed the Pueblo talk a lot more than I did any of the Euro-American junk. Traitor to my own cause.
Christine Ward's discussion of lithic procurement. Definitely interesting stuff--a great way to start the conference. Aaron has already discussed it, so I won't.
Donna Glowacki's was a little soft around the edges, but I enjoyed the basic concepts. She discussed The Social Landscape of Depopulation in the northern San Juan. I resonate with the idea of going beyond what's strictly represented on the ground and really trying to bring in our inherent understanding of humans, but getting too post-processualist can rub me the wrong way. In this case, some good points were made and I'll ignore the rest. Notably she suggested that movements in the region, particularly between the east and west, were caused by social differentiation in addition to drought. The east became more ritualistic than the west and that affected the equilibrium. Lot's of food for thought building from this.
Does anyone know of any positive demonstration of the southwest "ball courts"? I mean, yes, they're big flat community areas with seating around, and yes, they're very similar to what we see in Mesoamerica, but do we have associated gaming artifacts? Just curious. I wonder if we tend to just follow along with traditional terminology and let previous biases (such as the standard south to north movement) cloud our ability to read the ground. Ball courts were mentioned, mostly in passing, in a couple of the presentations.
Wendy Ashmore was the discussant, as Aaron mentioned. Her broad discussion of landscape theory was certainly more useful than anything any of the other discussants shared. Her nine factors to be considered were: (1) use of ethnography, (2) consideration of the spatial scale, (3) physical visibility, (4) time, (5) decision making and strategy use, (6) social relations and interaction, (7) movement/pilgrimages, (8) power, and (9) citation circles/networks. I appreciated her inclusion of no. 9—that we need to acknowledge the work being done on the other side of the Atlantic and the Euros need to do the same.
Well, I’m long-winded. The point is that the conference had a lot of good points. I got to see a few token rusty things, particularly in Carol Griffith’s trash talk. Interesting history bites about waste disposal. Did you know there’s a landfill in Fresno that’s eligible for the Register under A, B, C, & D?! The fire talks were interesting, but I think more could have been done. My particular interest in the fire venue is maybe better saved for a separate post…I’ll probably do that one of these days.
In the meantime, it’s oddly nice to be back to the bubble. *sick*
3 comments:
Glowacki is usually pretty grounded. I'll have to try and get ahold of that paper.
Some of the Hohokam researchers down here are skeptical of whether the ballcourts were actually used to play some sort of game. They are actually not very similar to the ones in Meso, at least in terms of morphology. Only a few stone balls have ever been found, but most believe that the game was probably played with an imported rubber-like ball that would not preserve. No dry caves down here... Many do have elaborate "markers" set into the ground at the center and ends of the oval-shaped structures. For me, that's pretty good evidence for some sort of game, but it could have been a dance platform or something.
At some level, it doesn't matter whether a game was associated with the ballcourts. The most important thing is that the ballcourts were integrative structures, and that once they went away, the people that once used them became much more internally focused.
Thanks Chris, glad I'm not completely out there with my scepticism and that there's at least little basis for the argument.
Well, I seem to remember reading somewhere that a rubber ball (or what was left of the ball was found). I believe it might have been in Plog's intro reader to the SW. I'll try and find the reference. He may have gotten it from some other study, so I'll chime back in. Either way, I too feel they were definitely used for social gatherings. The Hohokam courts are similar to those at Casas Grandes, but what that means is left to interpretation.
Post a Comment