This weekend I attended the Virgin ceramics conference with Dr Allison at the Museum of Northern Arizona. It was pretty interesting to see archaeological decision-making that was actually productive (as opposed to arguments that persist through decades in article form). The ultimate goal of the conference was to produce a ceramics field manual for the Virgin area (or North and West of the Colorado River, as Margaret Lyneis prefers) that could also work as a guide back in the lab.
The general format of the conference was as follows:
A panel sat at the front of the room and a ware (lower case "w") was brought up as the topic (gray wares, white wares, red wares). Then the panel and audience discussed the various Wares (capital "W") and defined them as far as their paste and temper were concerned. Then, topics were brought up such as whether or not a certain brown ware was a just misfired gray ware, etc. and decisions were actually made! They were crossing out Wares and Types left and right! The most impressive part of the conference (at least to cynics like me) was when the panel and audience could not reach a consensus (usually because the data was sparse), they assigned four or five people to a subgroup who will be reporting back with more data and a recommended conclusion in less than a year.
As I sat and watched all of this, I couldn't help but think about how this needs to be done with projectile point typologies (I know you are all laughing right now thinking, "Yeah, right," but so was I when I heard about this conference, and surprisingly it is possible to get these professionals to agree on things when the end goal is mutually desired). The two additional problems that would exist with a proj point conference that didn't with this conference is that (1) the projectile points cover a much larger geographical area-and, therefore, would include many more professionals; and (2) that years ago Colton set up the MNA to be an arbitrator for such discussions and no equivalent institution exists to regulate or house such a conference.
I just wanted to let you all know about the conference this weekend and also see what you all thought about it.
2 comments:
What? Collaboration?! That's a pretty refreshing concept in ye olde world of archaeology. I'm kinda proud that such cooperation and forward thinking started in our neighborhood. Granted, it's not surprising it was the southern end of the neighborhood!
I'd still be skeptical about a proj. point equivalent--for just the reasons you brought up, Molly--but it'd be awesome if it could happen! Maybe we wait to see what happens with the task forces for ceramics before the rising generation starts calling for a stone revolution...
By the by, and somewhat randomly, for those of you Provoans who won't make it to the Southwest Symposium in January, I'm getting married on the 19th and there'll be a collective invitation to you all to come have free food...not sure what, mind you, but there will always be cake! =)
Thanks for posting about the conference, Molly--I wondered how it went!
I wanted to attend this meeting, but was tied up that weekend doing dissertation fieldwork. Thanks for the update Molly.
I am skeptical of a proj. point meeting because those typologies are based almost exclusively on point morphology. Ceramics, on the other hand, can be quantitatively evaluated petrographically and geochemically. There is no such arbiter with points. Still, a very interesting idea.
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