Tuesday, January 10, 2006
Historic Arch Sucks but Multidisciplinary stuff is SEXY!
I just got back from being in the field for a week doing a survey in which we found nothing but historic junk (blahhh). There's this ranch out in the middle of the Nevada desert that the BLM just bought but are going to let UNLV manage because there's a bunch of historic buildings out there. So some PI's from UNLV (Biology, Archaeology, Geology, and Landscape Architecture) are planning on turning it into a multidisciplinary field camp/station/research facility. So I had to take a couple of undergrads out and survey the place. The survey was boring (cans, glass, wood, etc) but the multidisciplinary part was pretty cool. All the other ology's had one or two folks out there doing baseline surveys for their disciplines and at nights we were supposed to be figuring out how we could integrate all the disciplines. Talking and interacting with these other guys was really productive and I think if this thing is able to get the grant money it needs there could be some really cool research coming out of here. We discussed and learned a lot of things but just one wierd example is.....did you guys know that hematite comes in a lot of forms? One night one of the geologists comes back in and plops down a bunch of rock samples and is looking over them and I was asking him what he had. So he starts naming them and tells me one of them is hematite. This rock was black, sparkly, and solid. Nothing about it said hematite. So I was like, ummm, that's not what we call hematite. So he goes on to explain that hematite comes in different forms depending on how it was created. Then he picks up a nail and scratches the rock and I'll be damned if the scratches didn't turn bright red! Anyway, the whole week we were mixing data and info and it was pretty cool. And as always, multidisciplinary is SEXY! I'm thinking some cool stuff may come out of this venture if it gets the funding.
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6 comments:
It's like a team of super-friends!
Ouch Cady! Dave, this is really great. It just makes sense to combine the skills of these other studies to further enhance our understanding of human nature. The hematite experience is the perfect example. Cool stuff!
so do you think there is any "real" archaeology out there? or just cans and wooden teeth?
Where the Ranch is located just a LOT of cans and as of yet no wooden teeth. The geography of the area is such that you have foothills and mountains to the west, a resource poor area in the middle (where the ranch is located), and the river 15-20 miles to the east. I'm guessing there was a general seasonal round going on and that the ranch area was mostly used as a travel corridor.
If this project eventually gets the money that the PI's are going after, we would like to set up a massive survey of all the major areas in the entire Valley. After that stage we would do excavation at selected sites to define the subsistence, mobility, trade, etc. for the area. All of this would be integrated with different view from the other disciplines. For example the biology guys have their eyes on some packrat middens they want to study and the geology guys want to study the alluvial fan developements and the geological processes in the valley. All of which would lead to a massive environmental reconstruction, among other things.
If I was one of the Wonder Twins, I would want to be the "FORM OF..." guy, cause the other one always had to be something water related. That's pretty limiting. Yeah, definitely limiting.
Yeah, if you are in the middle of the desert, you would be limited by the lack of water.
I think Batman or Superman would be the best choice...lousy DC Comics...(of course, the team of Super Friends changed many times to include the Flash and Green Lantern).
For those of you totally lost on the conversation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Friends
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But uh...back to the serious issue...It is great that disciplines can work together to acheive similar goals.
This multi-disciplinary approach leads me to ponder the valor of processual/post-processual approaches. Is this "multi" a nod in the direction of post-processualism's "multiple voices/perspecitives?" Or, is it a return to a more processual approach by depending more on other sciences?
I think it's probably a combination of the two, what do the rest of you think?
Combo....with a rootbeer
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