Tag Archives | Anthropology

Adopt-a-Monument

By on July 6, 2012 in Community Archaeology, DayOfArch2012, Education

Hello, my name is Cara Jones and work for Archaeology Scotland, as the Adopt-a-Monument Project Officer. Adopt-a-Monument is a five year scheme which supports and facilitates local archaeology groups who wish to conserve and promote their local heritage. The scheme is community led and we work through-out Scotland – from Shetland to Dumfries and Galloway. In addition to our more traditional projects, we are also funded to do outreach projects – taking archaeology to non-traditional heritage audiences.

My Day of Archaeology post is about one of our Adopt-a-Monument outreach projects – The Claypits. In 2011, Adopt-a-Monument was contacted by the Friends of Possil Park to see if we could help with their greenspace improvement initiative for an area of apparent waste land in central Glasgow. Flanked by the Forth Clyde canal, the area has a industrial past, linked to the development of Glasgow in the 18th and 19th century. On first impression, the Claypits does look like an un-inviting, littered and burnt out car dump kind of place – the type of place you avoid and definitely not a space where you would enjoy and appreciate. However, once you start to work there, get to know the local people and start researching the past and present use of the site, Claypits transforms into a valuable greenspace within urbanised landscape. I enjoy many things about this project, but one great aspect is that isn’t just about archaeology – we are working in collaboration with ecologists (it’s a great newt and frog site!), artists, a lovely local councillor, fishermen (Get Hooked on Fishing – a great youth engagement project), canoeists, mountain bikers, the local allotment association, Scottish Canals and the Waterways Trust. I’m sure I’ve missed someone out, but it is a great example of successful partnership working.

Team meeting before the event starts

But I digress! My Day of Archaeology was the ‘Bats, Beasties and Buried Treasure’ event, held at the Claypits on the 30th June 2012. Aimed at local people (and in particular local families) the open day encourages the use and enjoyment of their local greenspace. We ran several activities which included the dig box and ancient crafts, a treasure hunt and storytelling – all linked to the archaeology and local history of the area.

(The Dig box!)

 Situated at ‘Base Camp’, the dig box contained replica finds (cattle bone, shell, beads, burnt pot, bone comb etc) which (after discovery) we encourage each child to think like an archaeologist – ‘what do these finds tell us about this location?’, ‘What would we find if we excavated your front room’ – introducing the concept of material culture within a context they understand. Next to the dig box we also had grinding activities (both a replica saddle quern and rotary quern) where children could grind grain into flour, which they could then take away with them. We also had a ‘make your own Neolithic pot’ areas, where children can make a small pinch pot and try and copy groove ware decorations.

Neolithic pot making!

We also organised a treasure hunt – developed by Kate (our placement from Newcastle University) who buried objects which relate to the past use of the site (some old brick from the iron foundry, an old milk bottle from quarry). While guiding them through the site, Kate encouraged children to find the object and then try and think about why the object was there and how it relates to the past use of the landscape. Our storytelling activity did the same thing – Erin (our crack storyteller) developed stories around the local history of the site and surrounding area. Her stories ranged from the time local football club Partick Thistle beat Celtic 4:1 in 1971, to a story about a young girl who disguised herself as a man to work in the quarry on the site at the time of the building of the canal. Storytelling is for us, a new way of disseminating the archaeological and historical background of the site and something we hope to develop further as Adopt-a-Monument goes on.

Erin and her storytelling hour!

Of the 100 to 130 visitors to the site on the day, 59 children took part in our activities, which, taking into account we didn’t have canoes or newts to attract children is not bad going!

Team Archaeology Scotland!

 

 

 

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A Day in Monrepos

By on July 2, 2012 in Day of Archaeology, DayOfArch2012, Illustration, Prehistory

My name is Sonja Grimm and I’m an Archaeologist in MONREPOS Archaeological Research Centre and Museum for Human Behavioural Evolution (Neuwied, Germany).

This was my Day of Archaeology 2012:

It’s graphs day today! Helped out a Dutch colleague with a map of the
distribution of the Havelte Group (a northern European facies in the
Weichselian Lateglacial) and made some graphs for the material chapter of
my dissertation. Maybe, I’ll start my first trials with QuantumGIS with
some maps later today.

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A Day in Monrepos-Archaeological Archaeological Research Centre and Museum for Human Behavioural Evolution

By on July 2, 2012 in Day of Archaeology, DayOfArch2012, Education, Journalism, Museum Archaeology, Prehistory, Science

I’m an archaeologist in Monrepos – Archaeological Research Centre and Museum for Human Behavioural Evolution. Our Centre is located in Neuwied in Germany -between Frankfurt and Cologne. As mentioned above we are interested in everything related with the Ice Age. We consist in a group of scientists, volunteers, students and technical employeers.

Our building is an old castle that is still in the renovation period. Thats the reason why our Museum is closed since November 2010.

Since last year my daily work was in the museum or museum related. I did the guide tours for kids and adults. At the moment I’m doing the public relation work, mostly the Social Media like Facebook, Twitter and Co, beside other organisational things.

I think Public Relation is very important in the archaeological fields. So I’m really happy about the Archaeological Day 2012. If we are only doing our researches the rest of the world will not be interested what we are doing and we don’t get their support and they will not understand why our work is important for them. So we need more “mediators” between Archaeologists and the Public.

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As Yet, Untitled

As Yet, Untitled

By on July 2, 2012 in Commercial Archaeology, Day of Archaeology, DayOfArch2012, Digital Archaeology

Disclaimer: The thoughts, opinions, and outright genius, presented in this blog are solely the responsibility of the author and in no way represent any archaeology firm or company.  That should cover it.

June 29, 2012 is this year’s Day of Archaeology.  I was supposed to be in the field but as I’m not this post is going to be slightly different.  Last year (Part 1 and Part 2) I was monitoring for another company and I was in a very different place.  What a difference a year can make.  On to my day.

In most CRM (Cultural Resource Management) firms in the United States, well, the Great Basin anyway, there is a lot of time spent typing up site records.  We generate a mountain of paperwork when we record a site in the field.  Let’s break down a simple site.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) used to have a minimum four page form for filling out site records in several intermountain states.  It’s called the IMACS form and it stands for “InterMountain Antiquities Computer System”.  Odd name for a form, I know.  It was designed to have codes for each entry that could be entered into a database (using an encoding form) with the intent that the information could be recalled more efficiently.  Side note: people here sometimes refer to a single form as an “IMAC” form.  That, as you can see, is incorrect.  The “S” stands for system and is not a pluralizer (what?) of IMAC.  Back on track.

The form consisted of two pages of administrative and environmental data (i.e. Landform, location, sediments, vegetation, etc.) and then additional pages depending on the type of site you have.  There are two pages for prehistoric sites (Page 1 and Page 2) and two pages for historic sites (Page 1 and Page 2).  There are even more pages for things like rock art.  As you can see, I’ve mentioned all of this as being in the past.  The BLM came out with a new form, sort of, in October of last year.

The new form is one page.  All the data you were expected to collect on the old forms now goes on one page and if you forgot something because you are new then, I guess, you weren’t trained properly.  I like having one page because it’s less paper and I know how to fill out a form but I wonder about the next generation of users that are unsure of what to put on the form.  Everyone records a site by themselves at least once and, unless the training was really good, which it usually isn’t, then something will get missed.

What does this have to do with what I did today?  Well, I was typing up site forms from the field all day.  One site with few artifacts and over twenty features took me several hours.  I didn’t do any interpretation or research.  I simply typed up what was recorded and made the record digital.  This procedure is not unique to the company I currently work for by any means.  Most companies have armies of field techs typing up site records.  The process really slows the project down and is often the reason projects go over budget.

Instead of manually digitizing site information in the field we should be collecting it in a digital form to begin with.  I don’t know how long it took archaeologists to trust those newfangled GPS devices back in the day but I’m sure it was longer than the rest of the scientific community.  The same is true for digital site recording.  I feel that we are behind the curve on this one and need to catch up.  I’m attempting to do just that one step at a time.  A few weeks ago I finally convinced a field supervisor to let me record at least my portion of the sites on my iPad.  Since I’m a Crew Chief that means I do the bulk of the writing.  We figured that when calculated at the rate for office work I probably saved about $3-4000 during one 8-day session.  If all the crew chiefs were doing what I did we would have saved $9-12,000.  If the entire crew were doing that we would have saved at least $20,000.  That’s for one session.  I don’t know what the budget for that project was but I’m guessing we could have cut it in half.

There are naysayers out there that say tablets are too fragile and they are too expensive.  What if you drop it and break it?  What if you loose all of your data?  What if the battery dies?  Good questions, all.  And, they all have answers.

First, what if you drop it and break it?  Assuming the other questions are answered satisfactorily you are out a tablet.  Well, there is insurance that would replace the tablet.  Also, with as much money as you are saving you could just about afford to buy new ones every time you went out.  What about losing data?  When I used my iPad to record sites I tethered it to my iPhone periodically and uploaded the data, securely and encrypted, to my DropBox account.  The data was encrypted so even if the DropBox account were hacked it would take a super computer to break the code.  What’s that you say?  You don’t have cell service in the middle of no where?  No problem.  Get a rugged external hard drive that lives in your backpack.  Seagate makes one that is 250GB, has its own battery, generates a WiFI signal, and can be transferred to and from using any tablet or smartphone.  As far as the battery goes, it’s generally not an issue.  The iPad battery will more than last through a work day of any length, and generally longer.  If it does die there are external battery backs of different types (here, here, and here) that will provide a few charges should you need them.

So, what I did today was type up site records while fighting to stay alert and focused.  I also daydreamed about a day in the, hopefully, not to distant future, where we spend more time in the field than in the office.

Thanks for reading and I’ll see you in the field.

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Archaeology is Anthropology

By on June 30, 2012 in Community Archaeology, Day of Archaeology, DayOfArch2012, Historical Archaeology, Maritime Archaeology

As a college student, the question of my major and future career ambition is one of those frequently asked questions that I contend with on a daily basis. Very few seemingly understand what it means to study cultural anthropology- that isn’t necessarily a value judgement, merely an assessment of my personal experiences. The FAQ takes various forms, but amounts to something like “What are you going to do with that?” or “Oh, so you’re going to be a teacher.”

One of the many docks that is part of the inventory of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore

I must admit that I often ask myself the same question(s), which prompted me to participate in an internship rather than a field school this summer as part of my undergraduate degree requirements. I knew that I had to find something that interested me both as an anthropologist and as a historian.

I ended up working on a project that satisfies both of those requirements. So far this summer, I have participated in a NAS fieldschool that was held in Traverse City, Michigan and helped other underwater archaeology students with their individual projects. I have attended various organizational events as a representative of my site supervisor/mentor. But for me, one of the coolest things about this internship is my participation in a complete inventory of the historic docks and piers of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.

Last summer at this time, I was spending the day conducting research on a shipwreck that washed ashore in the same area in late 2010. This summer, I spent the day (once again) doing research. And while the area of historic research is not really in my scope of interest, the information that I found on one of the historic sites is rather fascinating (which for me was rather unexpected). The dock that I am researching is called Aral Dock and is one of many century old docks in the Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore that has all but disintegrated into just pilings. The dock itself was rather homogeneous for the area in both build and use. Cargo such as lumber and agricultural items was loaded and unloaded at the dock and was sent on its way to various ports around the Great Lakes. Aral Dock is not interesting (for me) because of it’s construction, or materials, or rate of decay; Aral dock is interesting because of the scandal that surrounds it.

Research through local and regional newspapers as well as oral history from residents shows that there was a double homicide on this particular dock, earning it the nickname “Murder Dock”. The reason was money related- taxes, specifically- and the murder touched the small agricultural port town in a way that was unexpected for that community.  As a student of anthropology and history, this salacious history of an area that is currently considered to be quiet and relaxing for residents and tourists alike is an interesting study in local anthropology.

The area itself was a combination of industrial and agricultural, with the docks acting as a material reminder of how these people once lived and worked. What remains of the historic docks in the area is submerged in varying depths of water, ranging from shoreline depths to fifteen feet. Position fixing has been a chore, especially because of the wave action that is common in this specific bay on Lake Michigan. That is not to say that this experience hasn’t been enlightening or enjoyable. I can now say with confidence that I know what it is that I can do with my degree in Anthropology: I want to take what I have learned and apply it the field of historic archaeology, specifically sites that are underwater. Yes, I will likely spend more time in a library, museum, or historical society than I will in the field. I will likely be spending large amounts of time sifting through innumerable amounts of historic photos and oral histories as I did on the Day of Archaeology. But I have come to realize that there is no better way for me to combine my interests in history and human culture than by studying the physical material remains of the people that once occupied the most beautiful place in America.

Plus, my office will have one heck of a view. So, there’s that, too.

 

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Survey, Shell Middens, and Ceramics: Pensacola’s Prehistory

By on June 30, 2012 in Day of Archaeology, DayOfArch2012, Education, Excavation, Finds

Day of Archaeology 2012 falls in the middle of the University of West Florida’s (UWF) 10 week long field school season. The university offers four archaeological field schools—three terrestrial (Campus Survey, Colonial Frontiers, and Arcadia Mill) and one maritime—and I am fortunate to serve as a supervisor at Campus Survey. Under the direction of Dr. Ramie Gougeon and graduate student supervisors, university students transform classroom knowledge into real world experience. Campus Survey teaches students about archaeological methods and techniques related specifically to cultural resource management (CRM). Students learn how to use a compass, read maps, and develop other field techniques while also sharpening their digging skills. After completing the survey portion of the field school, students also excavate a prehistoric site—named Thompson’s Landing– on UWF’s campus.

Campus Survey begins with students learning about archaeological survey techniques by digging countless shovel tests.

To begin this summer, we surveyed a portion of campus near Thompson’s Landing. Campus growth and general improvements may place a road within the survey area. As the students learned how to dig shovel tests, take notes, complete paperwork, and successfully navigate the woods, they also encountered what most people consider the most interesting part of archaeology—the artifacts!

Within the first three weeks, the students discovered and defined the boundaries of four separate lithic scatters. Two shovel tests revealed interesting features—one of shell and the other a burnt pit—that led to the first units of the summer. Unfortunately, the shells appeared modern and the other feature is likely a burnt tree. Despite these faux features, the survey portion provided great information about larger research questions relating to Pensacola’s prehistory. The lithic scatters suggest information about prehistoric peoples’ behaviors and activities while also providing information about site formation processes.

A completed shovel test– proof that a round shovel can dig a square hole 1 meter deep!

Research questions and excavations at Thompson’s Landing, however, focus more specifically on shells and ceramics. Last year, field school students unearthed a substantial shell midden with complicated, ill-defined chronology. This year we hoped to identify discrete shell deposits to better outline periods of use, to understand subsistence patterns, and to improve our knowledge of ceramic differentiation through time within the region. With the aid of auger test results, the completion of five units, and the use of student manpower, the site began to provide answers.

We exposed the shell midden in its entirety before bisecting it and excavating in levels.

Of these five units (three of which included shell midden), one proved essential to answering some of our questions with ease. The shells present included rangia and polymesoda, two different types of clams. Between the two, rangia usually serves as the dominant species, yet the midden primarily yielded polymesoda shells. The dietary shift caused new questions to arise: Did food preferences change? Did environmental factors affect the shells availability? Perhaps changes in salinity or water temperature affected the shells and enabled polymesoda to dominate?

Volunteer, Lianne Bennett, sits next to the exposed shell midden.

As we contemplated the significance of the shells, ceramic sherds began to appear in the midden. The sherds recovered were shell-tempered, consistently dating the midden to the Mississippian period. Despite modern trash, such as glass and iron fragments, resting a few centimeters above the shell midden, no modern artifacts appeared within the feature. The first half of field school enabled students to learn, provided a feature comprised of an intact artifactual assemblage, and the beginning of a fantastic answer to one of our research questions!

The material culture associated with the shell midden– from one level of one half of the unit from one day.

A shell tempered sherd with the incised and punctated decorations suggesting a Moundville Incised variety Bottlecreek. The small handle likely enabled people to hang the vessels while preparing the food.

Shell-tempered ceramic sherds recovered from the shell midden consistently date the midden to the Mississippian period. The sherds pictured above are identified as Moundville Incised variety Bottlecreek.

The archaeological process often follows a pattern in which the discovery of new information leads to new questions. I hope the next year fuses the information we have (or have unearthed) with the data and knowledge that archaeology helps to uncover. If you’d like to know more about our field school, like the UWF Campus Field School Facebook page.

 

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Making Archaeologists

Making Archaeologists

By on June 30, 2012 in Day of Archaeology, DayOfArch2012, Education, Excavation, Historical Archaeology
Matt Hagar, Beth Pruitt, and Lauren Hicks on the East Cove screen.

Matt Hagar, Beth Pruitt, and Lauren Hicks on the East Cove screen. Source: Kate Deeley

The weather report says that today is hot and humid. High 101° F.  Heat index near 110° F. The students of the 2012 Archaeology in Annapolis field school from the University of Maryland know that it will be a sweltering and tiring day as they walk through their morning haze to collect their equipment from storage. They also can’t wait to see what they will find today.

Two weeks ago, we were in Annapolis. In view of the Maryland state capitol building, we excavated in three backyards, exploring the connections of past tenants to the Naval Academy and to nineteenth century immigration to the United States. For the second half of the field school, we moved to the Wye House plantation on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, home to a line of Edward Lloyds stretching back to the mid-seventeenth century. Here, the students chase the foundation walls of two slave quarters discovered last year.

South Long Green students.

South Long Green students. Source: Ben Skolnik

The site is separated into two parts. The South Long Green is located on the yard of the plantation, within sight of the Great House, and the home of the remains of a two-story brick slave quarter. The East Cove, where the students search for a building called the “Brick Row Quarter” on a historic map, is sheltered by a thicket of trees across the creek from the Long Green.

In running the field school, co-directors Kate Deeley, Ben Skolnik, and I recognize that we must perform a balancing act—prioritizing in turns the education of undergraduate students, our PhD dissertation research, and the communication of information to the public. It is a mixture of a classroom and training grounds. The instruction is as much somatic as it is intellectual, and the students have come a long way in their movements within the units, techniques with the trowel, and familiarity with the artifacts and their significance.

Richard Nyachiro with his measuring tape.

Richard Nyachiro with his measuring tape. Source: Ben Skolnik

The other element to add to the juggling show is motivation and good spirits, especially on a day like today.  The excitement grows as the brick rubble, glass, nails, and ceramic sherds coalesce into interpretations about where these buildings are situated on the landscape and in time. Despite this, the work is hard and the knowledge that Monday will be their last day to dig their units is beginning to settle in. Conversation is informal and playful—ranging from the childhood nostalgia of Pokémon to everyone’s top desert-island reading choices—and it helps the buckets of dirt go swiftly by.

Duncan Winterwyer with his root clippers.

Duncan Winterwyer with his root clippers. Source: Ben Skolnik

After lunch, the students are joined by Dr. Mark Leone and gather on the East Cove for the site seminars, which are held every Friday. The shade of dense trees is a relief.  One by one, the crew of each unit describes to the rest of the class the accomplishments and interpretations of that week. Using an extended folding ruler as a pointer, the crewmates take turns to indicate features, explain level changes, and point out soon-to-be-excavated artifacts.

It is a chance not only for the students to connect their unit to the others within the larger landscape, but also to proudly demonstrate their knowledge and achievements. They grow accustomed to fielding questions about the steps they took and the conclusions they continue to draw from their findings. After the students on the East Cove complete their tour, we move across the creek to the South Long Green.

Brittany Hutchinson with her shovel.

Brittany Hutchinson with her shovel. Source: Ben Skolnik

The students applaud their peers and create a rough circle in the shade of a tulip poplar tree. Though the environment is quite different, this is still a college class. There are weekly reading assignments, and each Friday afternoon the students discuss what they have read. The articles for today, focusing on race, class, gender, and identity in historical archaeology, are Barbara Little’s “She was… an Example to Her Sex” (1994), Maria Franklin’s “The Archaeological Dimensions of Soul Food: Interpreting Race, Culture, and Afro-Virginian Identity” (2001), and Theresa Singleton’s “Race, Class, and Identity among Free Blacks in the Antebellum South” (2001). The students direct the conversation, working through the topics of race, critical theory, politics, and the differences between an archaeology of gender and a feminist archaeology.

Like any other class, writing assignments provide a means for the students to individually articulate what they have learned. To balance this academic obligation with the project’s emphasis on  public outreach, the students contribute to the Archaeology in Annapolis blog. They demonstrate their comprehension of the work they complete in their units while also practicing their abilities to communicate this information to a general audience. Undergraduate Paige Diamond’s post, written today, highlights the discovery of the east wall of the two story quarter.

Julia Torres Vasquez and Molly Greenhouse create the American Plantation Gothic.

Julia Torres Vasquez and Molly Greenhouse create the American Plantation Gothic. Source: Ben Skolnik

Throughout the day, Ben pulls students aside to pose for “dirty archaeologist portraits.” He encourages them to take pride in their sweat-soaked, filthy appearance and take pictures with their field equipment. They take possession of this identity—archaeologists in the field. The portraits show the students as they are now at the end of the field school: trained archaeologists armed with the methods and knowledge that will allow them to contribute a unique perspective to this or any other field.

To see more archaeologist portraits from today, please visit our Flickr account. For more information about our excavations, please visit our blog.

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Philadelphia Archaeological Forum Logo

Historical Archaeology & Visual Art

By on June 30, 2012 in DayOfArch2012, Digital Archaeology, Historical Archaeology, Illustration

I am an historical archaeologist who teaches at Cheyney University and at West Chester University, two campuses of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education that are located in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania USA. I am not teaching during the summer term which gives me time to pursue my research which involves studying the public’s engagement with the archaeological resources in Independence National Historical Park (a U.S. National Park Service property commemorating the birthplace of American democracy). Today, June 27th, has been a ‘catch-up’ day for me where I had time to move ahead on several items on my ‘wanting to do’ list. First, I wrote to the editor of the “Images of the Past” column of the Society for Historical Archaeology Newsletter (Benjamin Pykles) proposing a write-up about Jackson Ward ‘Smokey’ Moore, Jr.  Moore, a retired archaeologist and a Native American Chippewa, excavated in Philadelphia in the 1960’s at the site of Benjamin Franklin’s mansion.

Jackson Ward 'Smokey' Moore restoring a historic dish

Jackson Ward ‘Smokey’ Moore, Jr. in a National Park Service Public Affairs Photo, circa 1960. (Independence National Historical Park Archives).

My offer to undertake this write-up required researching the Newsletter’s back issues to determine the type of information expected for the column and I spent an hour doing this prior to contacting Pykles to make sure I had the kind of information wanted. I then turned to some on-going background research I’ve been doing for a possible book project that the art photographer John Edward Dowell Jr. and I have talked about doing. This would be a book designed for the general reader which would feature photographs John took during the excavation of the President’s House archaeological site in Independence Park. These photographs document the archaeological excavation and its findings about slavery and freedom at the birth of the American nation and, in doing so, they help create African American history. They are also art pieces made by a Black artist. Beyond documenting new American history evidence and documenting new African American history evidence, his photographs are art pieces (re’ artifacts) of black visual art. Today I spent time researching and considering how these images therefore fit into the history of Black visual art. After reading a significant portion of N.I. Painter’s Creating Black Americans I realized that Dowell’s President’s House archaeological site photographs not only help make Black history more visible but also help make black art history more “visible” and that this is something we would likely want our manuscript to address given that the history of black visual art, like African American history, has been ignored, overlooked, and excluded in the canon.

View of the President's House by J. E. Dowell

ne of artist John E. Dowell’s photographs of the President’s House Site in Independence Park (right center, above the blue tarp-covered, back dirt pile). Dowell takes large format images (2 x 5 – 4 x 20 feet) which are then digitally scanned to produce highly detailed, deeply contextualized, images. His photographic style is known to convey life in the urban metropolis and he uses both unique perspective and lighting — namely pictures shot from high-rise vantage points that are taken at sun-up and sun-down.

Later on in the day I began typing up the meeting notes taken during the last monthly meeting of the Philadelphia Archaeological Forum (PAF). I am Secretary of that non-profit advocacy group and I post the meeting minutes on the PAF listserv. However, I am coordinating a local version of the Day of Archaeology for the PAF and I switched to work on this task. I am coordinating Philadelphia area Day of Archaeology contributions from local area archaeologists as well as members of the public during the period June 25th-June 28th. I will use these contributions to develop a new page of content for the PAF webpages at www.phillyarchaeology.orgthat will help demonstrate and explain what people in our area do with archaeology both at work and at play. I will also be forwarding the contributions to the coordinator of the international Day of Archaeology blogging project.

Philadelphia Archaeological Forum Logo

The logo of the Philadelphia Archaeological Forum, which is based on a commonly found historic dish.



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Map of Britain with pins in

Mystery, Diversity and the Joy of Archaeology

By on June 30, 2012 in DayOfArch2012

Human beings are odd beasts. So much more than political animals, our ‘habits’ are so varied that they sometimes seem far from habitual. Capable of action on all scales, from building enormous monuments that take millions of people over many generations to a single individual caring for a companion in the face of incurable illness.

Yet, go with any person to the place they sleep and you will learn much about them, their society, economics, politics, aesthetics and so on. You can learn from the materials of that space – Do they sleep on a bed? under blankets? are they clean? Do they have Justin Beiber posters? Picasso prints? Turner originals? Is there water by the bed? is the cup glass, pottery or metal?

Continue Reading →

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Lots of Little Jobs and One Big Job

By on June 30, 2012 in Day of Archaeology, DayOfArch2012, Digital Archaeology, Publishing

My day of archaeology, like the title says, consistence of lots of little jobs and one big job. The one big job actually has nothing to do with archaeology but pays the bills. I spent the vast majority of my Day of Archaeology working at Gengage. Gengage is the Scottish Healthcare Genetics Public Engagement Network. If it sounds like it has nothing to do with archaeology that is because it does not have anything to do with archaeology. I am currently a PhD student at the University of Edinburgh after finishing my Masters, after working in CRM in the US. While I got some funding to cover my tuition I still have to pay rent and buy food. So 9 to 4 was spent at the Gengage office making ends meet.

However, just because you have a job that has nothing to do with archaeology does not mean you can not make it relevant to archaeology. I spent that 9 to 4 editing videos a skill that has helped me in archaeology and will probably continue to. I used the video editing skills I picked from Gengage to edit the videos of the Barriers to Participation in Archaeology Online workshop. You can see the different videos here, here, here, here, and here. Just because your current job has nothing to do with archaeology does not mean you can’t make it relevant.

The rest of my day was broken up into a bunch of smaller jobs for the variety projects I am involved in:

  • Spent an hour on the phone to one of my more archaeology related jobs, Profiling the Profession project with Landward Research. If you do not not know what Profiling the Profession is then check out the Landward website all of the profiling the profession reports are there. We discussed the new project, which is about to get started, and what need to be done over the next few weeks. I won’t bore you with the details.
  • I spent a half hour working on the Open Access Archaeology blog. Basically, I looked at recent open access archaeology publications and made a blog post for each one, about three in total. I also connected the posts with Twitter. All of the posts are in a queue so that if I miss a day a post still goes out. This day I blogged about a new open access issue of Expedition and a new landscape article about the Inca providential capitals, the posts will be out in a few days.
  • I also blogged a little bit about soil identification for archaeologists on my personal archaeology blog. That took up another half hour.
  • I then spent about an hour looking through job adverts on Archaeologyfieldwork.com. Not because I need a job but because it is part of the research I conduct on jobs and pay conditions in archaeology. This mainly involved transferring data from job postings into an excel sheet, FUN TIMES (sarcasm).
  • Finally, I spent about two hours working on my PhD research. This involves working with agent based modelling to create a site predictive model. Right now I am cleaning up one of my models on hydrology, the purpose of which is to get an accurate idea of where water would be in my arid environment. Like all computer modelling I spent about 1hr and 55 mins. trying to figure out why my agents were not doing what they were supposed to and five minutes hating myself because of the stupid coding mistake that was screwing everything up. Here is a pic, not much to look at.

It looks like I got a lot done but actually it was not too much. However, that is how I work. I like to break down my work into bit sized tasks that I complete over several days or weeks.

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