Buy, Sell, Trade!!!

Thought everyone would like to know that one of the best investments right now are looted artifacts!!! So get your shovels.....

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1693792,00.html

By the way, I've failed to publicly congratulate Aaron on his marriage to his new beautiful bride. Amie and I couldn't be happier, and we're excited to meet her.

Lay-tar

Mr. Freeman

Just a quickie. I've been cleaning out my email inbox, and found an email that Craig Freeman sent. I ran into him a few months ago. This email contains his contact information. If anyone is interested in getting into contact with him, let me know and I'll forward it. Otherwise, I'll delete it.

To the Imminent and Eminent Thesisers...

Is anyone among the BYU crew planning on attending one of the ETD Library classes that Joel forwarded to us this week? I'll be out of town the whole week, but would love to still get this information! I'll pay the note-taker in evil holiday goodies, if that's any motivation... =)

Thanks!

As an apology to those for whom this has no application, I present the latest findings at Hierakonpolis, courtesy of the Forest Service's own Tom Flanigan. Don't nobody say that ye weren't warned!

Hope everyone enjoyed their turkey!

A Lesson from Virgin Ceramicists

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.

Book of Mormon Stories

Hey all,

I was reading in the Daily Herald and came across this article.

To me, it feels a little like vindication for all those times I've had to tell people that Lehi and Co. could not have populated all of the Americas, and that there were other people that arrived much earlier.

Of course, we can expect a significant backlash from the Antis, but I think it's a great change.

Extra! Extra! Read All About It!!

Well hello, everybody!

Did dinosaurs ever live on earth with man?

How did ancient artists know what dinosaurs looked like?

When and where was the last dinosaur sighting?

The answers to these questions and more can be found in the following website:

http://www.discoverynews.us/

Oh, man. For those of you who have been in the office lately, you have had the pleasure of viewing some literature that I brought in from GJ that talks about this stuff. I just wanted to provide the website for those of you who have not had the opportunity to look at the articles in person. It's kinda along the same lines as a post that Aaron posted awhile back.


Enjoy.

Three Corners Conference Roll Call

The Three Corners Conference is coming up next weekend:

http://www.nvarch.org/3corners/3Corners2.pdf

Joel, Cady, and I are on the program with a paper on Fremont Exchange. Yoder and I are going, is anyone else planning on attending?

Utah Geology -- a GIS Fest

Scott and I stumbled onto the following website with a bunch of free GIS and pdf maps of the geology of Utah.

http://geology.utah.gov/maps/gis/index.htm

Check it out all of you GIS-ers.

Southwest Symposium - 20th Anniversary

Hello all,
Just thought you may be interested in the upcoming SW Symposium held at ASU in January. All the infomation can be found at this link...
http://www.public.asu.edu/~ndwilso1/
It should be a good conference. They will be discussing foraging, mobility and migration, social power and interaction, the protohistoric, and the history of Southwest archaeology, understanding human movement, landscape change, and the connections among groups at local and pan-Southwestern scales. Check it out and I hope to see you all there. Lay-tar.
Mike

Heat-Treated Purple Obsidian!

Enjoy:

http://www.macuahuitl.com/pb/wp_98514d3c/wp_98514d3c.html

http://aztecswords.com/

A Fond Farewell to Cady Waldrom (Reinhold) Jardine

Officially, I think that Cady and fam left this morning, but she came into the museum yesterday to say goodbye. You will be missed Cady. The student office won't be the same without you. No longer will we be able to talk turquoise and exotics, nor will we be hounded for details and photos of marriages, dates, and babies:) In all seriousness, it was great having you around to bounce ideas off, to offer advice, and to share sources.

I (and I'm sure the rest of us) wish you and your family the best as you start a new life in D.C.

I'll have to add your name to those for whom we pour out a little Fresca when we're in the field.

New BYU Anthropology Website

Dear FOF,

Just as an FYI, the new BYU Anthropology website is now live and running. It still has some minor fixes but for the most part is ready to go. Take a look here and let me know if you find any problems. Thanks!

Scott

Sand Hollow II - Take 2

Well, I'd have to agree with everything Dave mentioned. I had a blast with old friends and met some fun new people. Sand Hollow was everything Aaron said it would be...hocking sand. But, at the same time, Scott and I finally got to test the Panasonic Toughbook for digital mapping in the field and it worked great! Thanks to Scott and his persistence on the acquisition of the computer, we will likely be presenting a "product review" at the SAAs in Vancouver. Stay tuned.

As for the flooding, just look at the pics. The apartment with the most water was where two of the male crew members were staying. Some of the girls and I were able to salvage all the site maps, field notes, Topcon, and laser levels in the boss's apartment due to our quick feet and "bags-in-the-cracks-of-the-door" quick thinking. Not to mention, we saved a lot of Dave's dissertation material from the floor of his room (Just make sure to put us in your acknowledgments, Dave).

And in reference to the Andrew Johnston Collection, I was blown away. Dave and I were able to photograph sandals for his dissertation project and I photographed and did a cursory analysis of the Casas Grandes pottery. The pictures say it all. I really was waiting for Vincent Price to come out of the corner and talk in his creepy, old man voice.

SandHollow II

Well, my time at SandHollow has come to a close; although Rich and Lane are still working down there and will be until the end of August. For those of you who have not been to Sand Hollow, it can generally be summed up as HOT, sandy, and ephemeral. Most of the time we were digging wickiups and hearths, although we did excavate a pithouse or two as well. One of these had a lot of adobe wall and roof fall, no ceramics, and a piece of corn came out of the bottom. So all signs point to Basketmaker, which would be really interesting. That was definitely the highlight of the season. Mike Searcy and family were also there for a good chunk of the summer, which was great. It was good to be back in the field with a Friend of the Fremont.

The day I was leaving St. George got flooded by a thunderstorm. Two of the apartments we were renting got a couple of feet of water in them. Mike will have to post some pictures; it was crazy. He and I also got to check out the Andrew Johnston private collection in Kanab. I'll have to post on that another time; it was a sweet/creepy experience. Now I'm down at North Creek for Dr. J's last year there. We took out the back fill (a monumental task) and have started excavating. Already we have found two new pits and two hearths on the Early Archaic use surface and some tools down at 3.30 meters below ground surface. That hole is DEEP. It's not field school though, so we are all being careful.

Mt Meadows Massacre Article

This will appear in the September Ensign. Looks to be a definitive statement...

Type, Series, and Ware in Fremont Ceramic Classification

I already sent this to several of you. If I missed anyone that's interested, let me know. Comment away!

ABSTRACT

For nearly thirty years, Fremont ceramic analysts have primarily relied on a single seminal work – Prehistoric Ceramics of the Fremont, by Rex E. Madsen (1977). Although the value of R. Madsen’s study cannot be overstated, the intervening years of research have yielded a wealth of relevant data and refined analytical techniques. In addition, certain key observations from previous analyses were omitted from the R. Madsen typology. I review the past and current conceptions of the Fremont ceramic typology as well as the literature pertaining to variability within pottery types, specifically temper. Based on this existing research and my own observations, I propose a reclassification of Fremont pottery within the Type – Series – Ware hierarchy proposed by Colton and Hargrave (1937). Fremont pottery is surmised under a single ware, with series defined by temper and types by surface treatment. Building on the work of Lyneis (1994; Geib and Lyneis 1996), and in reference to recent developments in Hohokam ceramic studies (Abbott 2000), I further suggest ways to identify temper variability and to apply quantifiable differences to studies of pottery provenience.

Mormons Murder Goshute Indians...

This should be a heckuva USAS Meeting...

A Craig Freeman sighting

This just in-

Lane ran into Craig Freeman in Vivian Park (Provo Canyon). Craig was on Rollerblades. Lane said that Craig is still doing construction/concrete stuff, but that he is thinking about getting back into archaeology.

So, who knows? Maybe everyone's favorite metalhead and epigrapher will return to the fold.

Aaron's SIR

This semester was pretty uneventful. It comprised of me going down to Sand Hollow in January, and then spending the rest of the time in the bone room analyzing the chipped stone from PVAP. After plodding through only one box (there are 14 total), I have now analyzed 900+ tools from Summit (42IN40). Most of them are utilized flakes.

So, my previous method of "just get through all the boxes" has been foiled. No way am I gonna be able to do 13 more boxes with similar artifact counts and ever graduate. Enter sampling strategies.

For now, I am working on revising drafts of my proposal and figuring out how to sample the assemblage. I've been reading a lot of stuff on Homol'ovi (the Hopi Mesas area) and despite the obvious differences between the Hopi and the Fremont, I have gained some perspectives into how to sample a massive collection, and also gotten some ideas about studying spatial distributions of chipped stone.

This past week I was near Bliss, Idaho with Lane doing Idaho Power stuff for Mr. Baker. We documented several sites along the Snake River. Cool stuff up there. We found several points, some late prehistoric ceramics, sandstone shaft smoothers, and a few rock shelters. Apparently the week before I went up, they found a burial. Shane was all over it. Not much left, just some vertebrae and teeth.

We did find a really cool site near the banks of Salmon Falls that, according to his journal, was visited by John C. Fremont. He and his cronies traded with the Shoshone for dried Salmon and spent some time near the falls. The site was very large with lots of groundstone, shell, chipped stone, rock art, and circular features with upright slabs. There was also a historic component, stacked stone walls and a ditch. It was pretty picked over by visitors to the site (read: looters) and little has been done to preserve it. After finding several looter pits, Lane shook his head and uttered, "Bastards." He then lamented Idaho's neglect for this historically significant site. Hopefully, with some strong suggestions to put it on the register, it will get there. We could have easily spent three days recording that site due to the massive amount of stuff there.

I wish there was more to report, but I didn't take any cool classes, and I've been doing a lot of analysis so there isn't much else to say.

Yoder and Stats

I seem to remember a tent-mate who found a very effective use for archaeological stats.

Yoder, I still need to send this one to Ian Robertson. I think he'd get a kick out of it.