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.
2 comments:
Wow Dave very busy indeed!! How about that barbecue now ... we promise we won't poison you, hahah! Anyways, I would love to help out in August down at North Creek if you need an extra hand or two, I have weekends off so let me know.
In response to Mrs. Cady: I don't want to bash Juan, but basically he said my questions were to general and so he didn't ever respond with data. The Rindos article is seen as a broad theory that can be applied everywhere, basically its says that humans and plants co-evolved and that's how agriculture was developed. It's pretty interesting, I really liked it. In the ceramics class I looked at the Steve Perkins site. It was dug by UNLV back in the 70's. Only a preliminary report was ever produced, and although it was never published, it has been used in a couple of different regional analyses. Which is acutally bad, because it has a lot of bad information in it. I'm trying to get funding right now to spend a year or two doing some re-analysis and then writing up a monograph on the place. It's a cool site and deserves a good site report. Glad to hear you might be at North Creek, it should be a good time.
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