What We're Doing Here

This summer is a return to my dissertation field site, Buen Suceso. For those new to the blog (or who don't feel like reading the back posts), Buen Suceso is the site of an ancient village, belonging to the Valdivia culture. The site dates to around 2000 BC, which places it in the Late Valdivia period. Valdivia is the earliest agricultural, sedentary, and pottery producing culture in the region¹. It is also the period when social hierarchies first developed. Buen Suceso is unique in that the people who lived here seem to have rejected those hierarchical developments, and instead created a community that was more expressly egalitarian².

We have several specific, and hopefully attainable goals for this summer:

1. Create a topographic map of the site. I did this as a grad student, but was relying on an old Brunton compass, a telescoping level that eventually had a stick taped to the top of it to get sufficient height, and my somewhat iffy trigonometry. This time we're using a Total Station with millimeter accuracy to more closely map the local terrain. 

   

   The family that surveys together stays together.

2. Locate and excavate ancient houses. We want to know if the egalitarian ethos at the site was something that existed just in communal spaces, or if it was something expressed within and between households as well. To do that we need to identify multiple houses so that we can compare them. We're starting by digging test pits in three areas of the site, so that we can get a sense of what lies below the surface. Once we see what those turn up we'll select a few additional areas for expanded excavation. 

   

   Luis and Robert digging a test pit.

3. Work with the local community. This field season is the first of two years funded by Fulbright. Next year will focus on heritage workshops and including the archaeology in the tourist resources that the local community, Dos Mangas, has to offer. To do that well, though, requires thought and planning, so I'm starting that conversation with the community this year. 

   

   At the monthly community meeting, presenting a UTRGV pennant in friendship.

We'll keep you posted on the progress of these goals as the summer goes along.

¹ For the more technical among my readers, I'm not ignoring the San Pedro tradition but I am simplifying for my audience.
² If you're curious to know more about why I say this, check out my dissertation or wait a bit longer for the forthcoming article.

Beginnings are hard

Our arrival back in Dos Mangas was more than I could have hoped for, in many ways. It was wonderful to walk down the street and greet old friends. I could not have had a warmer welcome. Despite that the arrival is still a bit of an adjustment, and difficult mentally at times. Hello culture shock. The village is quite different from our landing pads in Quito and Guayaquil, and adapting to the rhythm and paces of village life take some time. Throw in that I'm traveling with an infant, and it feels just a tad more difficult.

Also, it's really wet here, meaning everything is muddy and dreary. It's also causing me anxiety about the project. We're already getting a bit of a late start (losing about a week of field time because of a delayed permit and some other issues) and the heavy rains will put a further damper on things. And because of the rains we're also impacted by excessive vegetation.

The river valley in May 2006.

Same valley, June 2017. Yeah, it's wet here.

On Father's Day we took a hike out to look at the site. First, I have to give my husband major props for coming willingly on this adventure. And also for tromping through mud instead of doing whatever else you're "supposed" to be doing on Father's Day.

This photo just makes my heart melt.

The land where the site is located has been farmed in the past, but has been left untouched for about two years. There's lots of vegetation and it's hard to see much of anything. My plan of "here, look at the site" turned into a much shorter visit of "well, it's under there somewhere". So, first order of business will be getting some guys out with machetes to clear things enough to map and place some excavation units.

I'm hopeful to get the clearing started on Thursday or Friday, and then to be underway with excavations on Monday. That means the season will be six weeks long instead of seven, but hopefully we can still get a lot done.

I'm Baaaaack

On the ground, in Ecuador. Thanks to a Fulbright Scholar award I'm able to return to my dissertation site and carry out another season of field work. My university did a nice little write-up on the award:

So here I am, with my husband and infant son, hoping to identify ancient households and excited to revive my collaboration with the comuna of Dos Mangas. The blog will once again become half travelogue, half critical engagement with archaeological themes. As internet access can be hard to come by, this will also be my primary mechanism to let friends and family know what we're up to, and that we're still alive and well. I'll also add more details about the project goals once the initial craziness of settling in is over. More soon!

Changes Ahead

Hi All!

Sorry for the recent silence, but I'm working on migrating to a new format that condense the various bits of myself that have been scattered around the web. Stay tuned!

Return to Dos Mangas Pt. 2: Archaeology

The third and final post about my trip to Ecuador.

A trip back to Dos Mangas would not have been complete without a tour of some of the key archaeological sites that I identified a few years back, with an eye to future research. We went back out to Buen Suceso, and while the field with the Valdivia site has been plowed twice in the intervening years it hasn't been planted, which has minimized some of the damage to the site. This time we were also able to do some informal survey in the fields on the other side of the dirt road that bisects the former boarding school lands. Much to my joy we found some pretty interesting evidence of a Manteño occupation, including several low platforms where houses were likely located. 

Ask and ye shall receive. Large chert flake, olla rim sherd, and Manteño mascarone found in the field. Quarter for scale.

The community is talking about turning this area into a protected archaeological zone. Considering that artifacts from the entire prehispanic cultural sequence are present in these few fields, that seems like a worthy goal. These fields also lie alongside one of the existing ecotourism paths that the community has developed. If the community moves ahead as planned then we will have the opportunity to integrate archaeological information alongside the existing tourism economy.

Before and after my little tour. The joys of working in a tropical environment.

Back in the village proper, the state of archaeology wasn't as positive. If you remember my last post, you'll recall that USAid has contributed extensively to Dos Mangas, including sponsoring a remodel of the casa comunal. The final project looks great, but there's one downside. The materials from my excavations were stored there, and when they did the remodel, they moved the bags and boxes. Into a disused house. That's missing half its roof. If you're having trouble imaging the condition of my excavated collection, well, I have a picture for you.

Sadness.

The community members who were the most involved in the project weren't aware that the collection had been moved, or its current state. I left behind some funds and detailed instructions about how prevent further damage to the site, and it will be moved to a better storage location within the community tourism interpretation center.

The collection will have a new home on this side of the village. There's also some available land to build a small museum....

The last big achievement that we managed during my visit was to sign a convenio between myself and the community. This document outlines our mutual benefits and obligations as we move forward with future archaeological work and the integration of these projects with community tourism and development goals. I can't wait to get back to work!

Return to Dos Mangas pt. 1: Community

Note: this post may be most interesting for friends and family who visited me during fieldwork, or for people who read the early posts on the blog.

What a homecoming!

Simply put, my arrival in Dos Mangas was more than I had hoped for. The garua was really heavy, so the road was wet and muddy and the night was colder than I had anticipated. After a long-ish bus ride from Portoviejo (with a change over in Xipixapa) I arrived in Manglaralto at the combi stand to Dos Mangas. I recognized some of the drivers but the feeling wasn’t necessarily mutual, but after answering some of their questions about what I was up to, and responding that I had lived there for a year, the light bulb went off.

I rode into town in the back of a covered pickup truck, the normal mode of transportation, seated with several comuneros and preoccupied with the feeling of being a stranger to people I had once felt a sense of belonging (though I’m not sure if I belonged with them or to them at the time). I paid my fifty cents for the ride (fifteen more than four years ago) and got off at the casa comunal. All the doors were closed, including to the second floor hostel, but someone came by pretty quickly and waved over the lady with the keys to let me in. The hostel had been fairly close to completion when I left four years ago, but it was clear that they had made some improvements in the mean time, with the help of USAid, whose sticker is emblazoned on everything. The hostel can host about 12-15 people at any time, and has a kitchen, dining room, and common space. It would be an awesome base for a field school if I’m ever in a position to lead one.

The casa comunal renovations, sponsored by USAid.

One of the renovated room, with a private bath!

After dropping my stuff and changing into long pants and my boots, I went off to say hello to some of my nearest and dearest from my time in Dos Mangas four years ago. My first stop was to see Luis, who has been my assistant from the time I began investigations in Dos Mangas in 2006, and who has been keeping an eye on things since I left. His face lit up when he saw me, and I was glad to see him looking so well. Then we made the circuit to visit various friends. I received so many enthusiastic embraces, and a few tears, and everyone wanted to feed me.

Ever-enthusiastic Efrain.

Fanny, Chico and their kids.

Luis and Vicente.

On Saturday, my only full day to visit, I was able to wander around the village and I was struck by how much had changed, and how much was still the same. The road into town actually has a bridge over the river now, meaning it doesn’t turn into an island during the rainy season. There’s also a new high school, so children don’t have to travel to continue with their education, an investment that can be a barrier for many. The church has been redone, the casa comunal has been remodeled, and it's clear that the community has benefitted from the support of USAid. But it's the same two roads, the same people, and the same excitement to get back to work!

The new colegio, located next to the primary schools.

Remodeled church, with room for parking out front!

This is where I used to live. Now a hostel.

A lot of our chatting during that visit was retelling stories about my daughter, known on the blog as Little Miss, who was two and a half when we left. One young woman who used to care for her recounted that she was always asking for “co-co”, comida in her own little language. Many people were sad that she didn’t join me on this trip. I started missing her from my arrival at the taxi stand into Dos Mangas – she was an ever-present part of my time here, and much of my day was organized around taking care of her, whether that was dropping off and picking her up from the village day care, or spending the good part of the day at the local clinic to treat one of her many sinus infections or other ailments. It’s not often that I go a week without seeing her, so this was the double whammy. I got a cute little video of some of her friends, and hopefully she can come back into the field with me soon!

Stay tuned for my next installment, a look at the archaeology after four years!

Presenting Archaeology and Communities in Ecuador

The main purpose of my trip to Ecuador was to present a four-day workshop titled "Archaeology as a Community Resource" to community representatives at the regional office of the Instituto Nacional de Patrimonio Cultural (INPC) in Portoviejo. Most of the participants have some sort of community-based tourism project in their town. Some traveled 6-8 hour roundtrip every day to participate in the six hours of seminar each day. If I hadn't already felt a responsibility to make the workshop as useful as possible, knowing that people traveled that long in order to hear me talk certainly did the trick! Representatives from the local INPC office and nearby archaeological site also joined us for portions of the seminar.

Museo Portoviejo, where the workshop was held.

The historic building of the INPC Region 4 offices.

The first day focused on archaeology as a field of study, as a scientific and interpretive endeavor. We talked about stratigraphy and, overall, the importance of context to archaeological interpretation. We did a series of activities related to stratigraphy, chronology, and context drawn from outreach activities on the AIA website and Intrigue of the Past, an online curriculum for school teachers developed by the Research Laboratories of Archaeology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. The goal was not only for the participants to understand these concepts, but to have materials and activities that they could take back to their communities and use in their own educational efforts.

The second day we discussed the archaeological cultures of coastal Ecuador. I had two main goals for this module. The first is that participants become familiar with the archaeological cultures on the coast, spanning from the Archaic period until Spanish conquest, material that isn't covered in schools. This included being introduced to some of the characteristic pieces of material culture from each period to help them associate these cultures with what they find in their communities. The second goal was to move beyond "the cult of the object", away from an artifact as a museum piece or one that might be worth money on the black market (a fine distinction at times), and towards a greater appreciation of what an artifact can tell us about past societies, particularly when found within its original context. We used some objects from the INPC bodega to help with this discussion, and participants brought photos of some of the objects recovered in their communities. The need and desire for discussion of past societies within primary school curriculum was highlighted by participants. 

On Day Three we discussed community rights and responsibilities according to the national patrimony laws. This was the most interesting and difficult of the days for me. While the constitution states that everyone has an obligation to protect national patrimony, and laws outline the penalties involved for those who damage, deface, or loot (see resources here), there seems to be a gap between what is expected and the skills and resources of various governing bodies. The scenario presented by representatives from one community is not uncommon: archaeological remains are eroding out of a nearby river bank. The next time the river crests it will wash those objects away. If the community rescues them now, to put on dispay in their community center, they will be looting. If they wait until the river floods it will be too late, and they will lose this resource they are trying to develop. The INPC doesn't have the staff or funds to carry out a full rescue project. What can the community do?

We were fortunate to have the director of the INPC office join us on this day. The discussion wasn't easy, and no satisfying agreement was reached. A key point in the community's favor seemed to be the fact that they wanted to gather these objects to display them within their community. This fulfilled the public accessibility and dissemination mandates of the patrimony law. We spoke about ways in which they can document the current state of the materials (photographs with scale, showing the landscape context, etc) in order to document as much about the archaeological context as possible. Of course, no one was willing to say "yes, once you've documented it you can remove it" and not just because of the patrimony law but also because we know that once you remove one object you'll find another, and another, and another (the archaeology version of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie).

Workshop participants on Day 2.

Over the course of these three days we also spoke about ways that communities can integrate archaeology into their community development projects. The culmination on the fourth day consisted of brief presentations by each community of their plans of action to this end. Some focused on education of children to build an interest in protecting the past, while others targeted adults as role models to begin this work. Some plans tied the presentation of archaeological remains to current artisan practices in communities. Others discussed the need for protection committees to mitigate damage to sites from land use practices and development.

To close the workshop we were very lucky to receive a tour of the site of Cerro Jaboncillo. This was a Manteño site, one that has been famous for awhile but that only recently been excavated, so from an archaeology nerd standpoint I was very excited for the visit. The Ciudad Civico Eloy Alfaro in nearby Monticristi has developed interpretive material for the site, and the visit was a good opportunity to for workshop participants to see excavations in progress and how this information was presented to a general public. The representatives from Ciudad Alfaro were extremely generous and helped provide a nice capstone to the workshop.

Workshop participants at Cerro Jaboncillo.

This workshop is just the first step in a changing relationship between archaeologists and communities in Ecuador, and if I get the chance to present it again I'm sure I'd do some things differently. I'd love to be able to visit each community and provide a more customized approach, but given the distance people traveled in order to come to Portoviejo that may not be feasible. Regardless, I hope that people stay in touch and I look forward to seeing how they implement things in their communities!

Press from the workshop:
Sept 22 Day 1
Sept 23 Day 2
Sept 25 Day 4
Sept 25 Visit to Cerro Jaboncillo
Sept 25 El Diario (short piece, mostly correct)

Returning to Ecuador!

Tomorrow I will travel to Ecuador for the first time since I completed my dissertation research in 2010. I have been invited by the Region 4 office of the Instituto Nacional de Patrimonio Cultural (INPC) to present a 4-day workshop entitled "Arqueología como un Recurso Comunitario" in Portoviejo. Participants in this workshop are community guides and university students from the region. 

The workshop will begin with a discussion of the goals and methods of archaeology as a discipline, and general information about the prehispanic cultures on the coast. The meat of the workshop will be participant-driven, as we discuss Ecuadorian patrimony laws, the value of protecting archaeological materials within communities, and develop plans that can be deployed within each community to continue these discussion and help think about archaeology among the other resources that communities have, like land, water, and artistic talent. While the community guides come from places that have some degree of tourist infrastructure, the emphasis of this workshop is not necessarily tourism. We will discuss the potential of archaeology for economic development more broadly, but also discuss other uses of archaeology, including but not limited to community identity and history.

This is the first time that I'm leading a workshop of this nature, so I am both very excited and very nervous. I'm building on educational material and formats that I've used in my job, but expanding on them and adapting them to the Ecuadorian context. I just hope the participants are up for some knowledge co-creation!

The trip won't just be the workshop, though. I'm taking advantage of the opportunity of being in the country to visit with a dear friend, check out an archaeological site that's been recently opened to the public, visit a fellow archaeologist's lab to rummage through more ceramics, and speak with the master's program in neotropical archaeology at ESPOL in Guayaquil.

Competing with the workshop for the feature of the trip will be my return to Dos Mangas. I'm looking forward to presenting the final analysis from my dissertation project, seeing old friends, and beginning discussions for a new, collaborative research program with the community.

Dos Mangas, one of the first photos I took back in 2006. I can only imagine what it will look like today!

To say I'm excited doesn't quite cover it. I'll try to update on my Ecuadorian adventures along the way, so check back. Hopefully this marks the start of a significant re-engagement with Ecuador, and none-too-soon!

My Future in Blogging Archaeology: Blogging Carnival Month 5

Looking at the date on my last post, I've been MIA for about two and a half months. That was a flurry of work and dissertation writing in which every spare moment (and just about every vacation and sick day) was used to get a new draft out to my committee. I'm happy to report that I managed that milestone last week, and while I'm not done done, it's out of my hands, at least for a little while. I've been enjoying a brief respite while I reorient myself and figure out where to dive in next.

Word cloud from my theory chapter. I'm one of "those" archaeologists. And by that I either mean one whose theory is dominated by words like "practice" or one who procrastinates by putting their theory chapter into a word cloud.

So, I'm going to try to squeeze in this post just under the wire. I managed to respond to the first month's question for the Blogging Archaeology Carnival (#blogarch) back in November, and that was it before I got pulled into a vortex of family holidays, international travel, and dissertating. The last query for #blogarch in the lead-up to #SAA2014 asks us to discuss our goals for blogging and where we hope it takes us and archaeology.

My first goal has to be to write more, to actually use this platform on a regular basis. So many of the conversations that prompt blog posts are incident-specific, and if you're not writing the conversation passes you by. So, for example, there is no official response on here against the National Geographic Channel's "Nazi War Digger" series (though I join with many others in condemning the show), and I have a draft post from back in February that I never finished that responded to a twitter conversation about the stand that archaeologists have to take to prevent looting (it's funny how those two points seem to go together in retrospect). I'm hoping that now that I have a little mental space freed from the dissertation that I can be more responsive to issues that arise and use this platform to address them.

My second goal would be to use the blog to share my research as I think through issues related to methodology and research content. That's an admittedly frightening prospect, to open myself and my research up to the comments of anyone with an internet connection. It's important, though, particularly in the context of the work I do - if I'm really committed to collaboration and outreach then I have to make this stuff available. I'm sure this is something that will require some tweaking as I go forward - while my work is my work, the work I do as an employee is not entirely mine, and some of the projects I work on have community privacy concerns, etc.

Only two goals, but fairly major goals. I think the first will be a bit easier (and less scary) to achieve than the second one, but I'm excited by both. Particularly for those who put their research out there, how do you balance competing concerns of public and private knowledge, and how do you overcome the nervousness factor?

25 Grand Challenges for Archaeology - But for Which Archaeologists?

A story started to circulate late this week heralding a the release of survey results outlining "25 Grand Challenges for Archaeology". The initiative, led by senior researchers in both academia and CRM, was published in the most recent issues of American Antiquity and PNAS (Peter Peregrine, one of the authors, was also kind enough to post pdfs on his page, allowing even those without institutional affiliation to read the study). My commentary is built primarily from the AA article.

Some very useful discussion is already happening on other blogs (here and here) and got me to read the study a bit more closely and think about the themes the authors identified. I posted Michael E. Smith's blog response (the second link above) to my Facebook page along with the commentary that the list left me feeling a little "ho-hum". What followed was a lively discussion that helped me tease out my lack-luster response to the study, which I present here.The items set out in the list are "big" themes, and while I think that it is very useful to set out these grand challenges, I didn't feel very excited after reading it. While my level of enthusiasm doesn't mean much in the grand scheme of things, I do think that if broad sectors of archaeologists don't get fired up by these suggestions, then neither will the general public, who we need on our side. My critique of the study centers around two themes (participation and content) that I am hopeful will be addressed by the authors in greater detail, perhaps in later publications.

First, the authors of the study were quite concerned about the overrepresentation of older participants in the survey (or the lack of young and student archaeologist, as they describe it). It concerns me as well. An informal survey of my networks (which are primarily populated with early-career and student archaeologists) left a lot of us scratching our heads about how the survey was distributed, because we don't remember ever receiving notice of it. In my case, I was also starting a full-time job around the time that it went out, which may explain some amnesia, but it is worrisome that so many people in the under-represented age demographic don't remember receiving the survey.

The authors don't go into great detail concerning their research methods in the AA article, but I think it's important to look at who led the study and the report in this regard. The demographic that responded in greatest numbers seem to me to be similar to the authors themselves, suggesting that informal networks may have played a big role in getting people to respond. That makes it problematic, then, that 11 out of 14 authors are male, that they are all senior in their fields, and they are all white. As anyone who has attended a professional meeting in the last few years can tell you, the face of archaeology (in the US at least) is changing. Women are taking over, and people of color are more numerous, though still underrepresented. Finally, though Canadian, European, and UK societies were included in the survey, the respondents were overwhelmingly from the US. What languages were the survey distributed in, and was there any effort to include the international members of North American professional societies, or societies located in the Global South?

Second, the authors "explicitly excluded responses to the survey that addressed 'disciplinary challenges with respect to the practice of archaeology, such as changes in financial and legal frameworks'" (Kintigh et al. 2014:6-7). I think this is a missed opportunity. As my colleagues indicated during informal discussions, the decreasing excitement for archaeology in the face of "Ancient Aliens", "Diggers", or lawmakers' outright hostility to archaeology, is a real issue that needs to be addressed. The types of "big" questions proposed in the article come off as dry and unexciting to most people not directly engaged in that research. While I think there are ways to successfully convey what people do under each of those headings for a general audience, they were framed in such a way as to not promote much conversation outside of archaeology. 

Ultimately, the topics heralded in the report seem likely to further the insularism of so much of archaeology these days by emphasizing what archaeologists can discover about the past, without really emphasizing they ways in which we can contribute to current debates outside of the discipline (though there are some exceptions to this). Given the work I do, I was surprised to see how little attention was given to the valid research questions that accompany the politics and social context of archaeological inquiry (nothing about working with contemporary people, or our contributions to discourses surrounding heritage, or the political sphere that our work often enters). I realize that the authors had limitations and certain goals, but the themes they emphasize serve to obscure the excitement that we feel for our discipline and that we so desperately need to convey to other people.

So, what next? I think we need to encourage informal and formal discussion of these topics among the demographics that were underrepresented in the original study, and then move that to a more formalized response. There's momentum building for an ad hoc meeting in Austin to be held Friday night over a few beers, in typical archaeological fashion. If you're interested, drop me a line, or check back here as we get closer to the meetings.

The "25 Grand Challenges for Archaeology" may not result in more research on those topics, but it will at least get us all thinking more critically and publicly about where we see the discipline going, and that's a useful result in and of itself.

UPDATE (1/27/14): The study authors published the raw data from the responses, including the survey they used and the 40% of responses that addressed the "excluded" topics, on The Digital Archaeological Record (tDAR). You need to set up an account to download it, but it's free. The responses are quite interesting (some made me chuckle), and it gives you an idea of the kind of synthesis work that was required.

Show Us Your Ink!

In the way that many of the best(?) ideas do, #archaeologytattoos was born late one night when a few of us were chatting on Twitter.

We know you have them, and this is a chance to show them off!

Send me an email with a picture of your design - the information you share is up to you!

Things we'd love to know:

• Who are you? Do you blog or tweet? Where do you live? What kind of archaeology do you do?
• What inspired the design? We'd love to know not just the meaning of the image but the reason for having it permanently added to your body, too!
• Who did the work? A work of art deserves credit to the artist, so please let us know who did the design and needle work. Recommendations for great artists are appreciated!

I'll collect submissions as they come in and prepare a post when we have a nice bunch, maybe shooting for then end of January? For those of you going to the SAAs in Austin, the good news is that the weather should be warm enough for us to show some of these off in person!

#AcWriMo Brought Me Back For More

This was my second year participating in the annual #AcWriMo - Academic Writing Month. You can read more about the concept here. There's a lively online community of people participating, commenting, and sharing strategies, and as you can tell by the hashtag, much of this is done on Twitter. There's also a massive GoogleDoc spreadsheet where everyone declares their goals for the month and reports on their daily achievements. I think this year we had around 700 people declare their intent to participate. This type of constant, but slightly anonymous, accountability offered by the spreadsheet seems to work really well for me.

Last year's #AcWriMo was incredibly productive for me, as it got me on track with consistent writing and built some habits that allowed me to write a complete, but very rough draft of my dissertation in about three months. The most critical thing about #AcWriMo for me last year was finding out first-hand the importance of daily writing. It's not just a matter of slowly chipping away at a big project through steady work, but daily writing also builds momentum, and over time you are able to write more and more.

Last year I also discovered the beautiful software that is Scrivener, which I now swear by for writing anything longer than the shortest conference paper, and Skim, a FREE PDF annotation software that lets you mark up even un-OCRed documents. Added to Papers, for bibliography and digital library management, and these are the three programs I run constantly. People clued me into a host of other apps for Mac, most of which are free or run online and which boost productivity significantly. When I really want to crank out work I run FocusBooster (a free pomodoro app) and give myself some low background noise from Coffitivity. It's a blissful, productive bubble. I should also give a shout-out to the PhDometer, which has the benefit of counting total words written, not just the words you keep, which is what Scrivener or Word do. The PhDometer is a more reflection of the creation and editorial process involved in (particularly) academic writing.

Last year was so productive, and helped me develop some really great writing habits, so it was really a no-brainer to jump in again for this year's run. I even got tapped to help with the organization this time around. I'll be back with a post in the next few days reflecting on how this year's month went for me.

Blogging Archaeology Carnival Month 1: Why I Haven't Blogged

This post is a response to Doug's call for a blogging carnival in the lead-up to the 2014 meeting of the SAAs in Austin, TX this April. I'm adding my voice to many other archaeologists who blog to answer the questions Doug has set out for us this month. Briefly, he asks:

• Why blogging? – Why did you, or if it was a group- the group, start a blog?
• Why are you still blogging?
• Why have you stopped blogging? 

The most pertinent of these questions for me are the first and the third. As to why I started: I began this blog shortly before embarking on my year of dissertation research in Ecuador. I wanted a way to stay in touch with people from home, and my parents wanted a way of keeping tabs on their only child and granddaughter. Because internet access was limited, blogging was actually a good way of communicating with people - instead of writing or responding to numerous emails, I could craft a blog post, throw it up when I could log on, and then every one was on the same page. It was also a good exercise in working through some of the things I went through that were tangential to the archaeology but still a critical part of the experience, like living in a foreign country for an extended period of time and parenting a toddler. The blog was useful after I left the field as well. I, as well as some friends, have used my entries in classes to give students an idea of the experience of conducting fieldwork, and I used some of my entries as the bases for various dissertation chapters.

Since I returned from the field in May of 2010 I've posted five times, the last of which was over two years ago. I guess that means I have officially stopped blogging. Don't get me wrong, though, I'd love to blog more. So, why don't I? The answers to this question are varied. Perhaps the easiest answer is that I started this blog to document my experiences in the field, and that was a finite period of time that is now over. Without that adventure the impulse to blog has diminished.

Since my heyday of blogging my life has also undergone a number of changes. The husband I write about now is a different one than the one I wrote about when I was in Ecuador. Baby Girl is now officially Little Miss, and she needs different things from me. I also started a full-time job in May of 2012, and it was a bit of a shock to the system to go from a grad student schedule to a 9-5 one. Meanwhile, I'm trying to finish writing my dissertation in my free time. None of those things prevent me from blogging, but they got in the way in the past, and got me out of the habit.

The job I have now requires me to be the social media liaison for issues we deal with, and sometimes I just don't have anything left over at the end of a day to reflect on in a personal space. I also worry about people conflating my personal views on an issue with the official views of my organization, and because I am passionate about the work we do, I have definite, personal, opinions on a lot of those same topics.

Ultimately, though, I think I've struggled with finding my voice - feeling that I have enough authority about any given topic to write a whole post about it. I think it's related to the impostor syndrome, and a by-product of my graduate training and all the road bumps I've run into trying to wrap up my dissertation. But you know what? That's bullshit. I pontificate on Twitter or Facebook,  and I jump into cyber-debates and engage with colleagues face-to-face.

So, here's my promise to myself: I'm going to party with the rest of you on this #blogarch carnival, and give this thing another whirl. Besides, I went through all that trouble to compose this kick-ass background photo, and it would be a shame to waste it.

No Anthropology in Florida?

In a statement that's gotten a fair bit of press, at least on my Facebook news feed, Florida governor Rick Scott advocated for a change in the focus of higher education funding away from subjects in the humanities and social sciences and towards those in the STEM fields - science, technology, engineering, mathematics. It's part of his plan to develop job skills in students in Florida, which of course sounds like a good thing, but really isn't that simple.


The reason he's getting so much attention, at least from my Feed, is because he specifically selected anthropology as an example of a 'worthless' major. As you can imagine there was the expected level of outrage, a letter issued by the American Anthropological Association, and general slagging off of the governor for his position. I will be one of the first advocates for the critical thinking skills that can be gained from an anthropology major, not to mention the exposure to other belief systems and ways of life. I have to ask myself, though, why did he choose anthropology to pick on?


This article I read recently may provide the answer. John Hawks, Associate Professor of Anthropology at UW-Madison, argues, among several points, that anthropology really does a poor job of engaging with and communicating our research to the public. He sees this reflected in the overall piss-poor job prospects for graduate students in anthropology, compared to other fields such as sociology or geography. Essentially, anthropology isn't creating those ties and opportunities outside of academia that are necessary to justify their existence. This isn't a far cry from the argument made by Dr. Jeremy Sabloff in his Distinguished Lecture at the American Anthropological Association annual meeting in 2010 (note that he subtitled his talk with 'We Urgently Need Anthropological Public Intellectuals').


So, calls are coming from every direction, and some people are responding, but not necessarily with the wholesale change that may be required, and certainly not at the institutional level where a lot of the change needs to happen. Dishearteningly few anthropology programs in the States conduct community engagement programs or service learning, and this is particularly true of larger universities, those R1s, where the focus is still on 'pure' research and peer publications for the tenure process, rather than the ability to speak to the general public.


It's odd, though, that Gov. Scott should pick on anthropology in Florida. The Florida Public Archaeology Network is a dynamic and vibrant example of community outreach, teaching skills, providing employment, and showing just what archaeology (and by extension anthropology) can do. Of course, if you are a cynic like me, you see Gov. Scott's call for what it is - less funding for those disciplines that broaden minds and might contribute to a more liberal voting base.

Revive, Redesign, Reengage

So, if you scroll down just a bit, you'll notice that I haven't updated this blog in over a year. There's a reason for that - well, a lot of them, but the main reason is that the blog, in its previous incarnation, had served its purpose. I was done with fieldwork, my family had been able to follow what I was up to, and I no longer had the 'place excitement' of being in Ecuador to drive my posts.


So, I'd outgrown the old format, but that doesn't mean I don't have things that drive me now that I'm back at the University. They're just different things. In the last year I've engaged more with pedagogy withing archaeology, and anthropology more broadly, and as I go on the job market this year I'm thinking about how structural decisions at institutions impact both education and careers in academia. I am also, in part through my teaching, engaging with public uses and misuses of archaeological and anthropological ideas and data. 


So, rather than a travelogue, when you come here you can expect to find a mix of my thoughts on teaching and scholarship, responses to popular news articles, and the occasional dose of moaning about dissertation writing and the job market. I hope my posts keep you interested, and maybe provoke a deep thought or two.

Where I've Been

I found something today that perfectly demonstrates the love/hate relationship that I and many other grad students have with our dissertations:

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive/phd080910s.gif

Particularly because I was so eager to get home, and kind of tired of Ecuador after a year, it's been difficult for me to return mentally to that place to think about the data I collected.

Fortunately I had a great lunch with an old friend last week who has kicked me back into gear, and now I'm actually excited to work on my dissertation! I'm currently working with another colleague to get a session together for the 2011 Society for American Archaeology Annual Meeting, which means I need to come up with a paper to present. I've also decided to go ahead and try to beat the Mr. to the finish line of the dissertation writing experience. Maybe we can get there together and put this grad-student life behind us!

Drowning in Documents

In preparation (or is it procrastination?) for getting started on writing the dissertation I've decided that I need to organize my electronic files in some sort of bibliographic software. The goal is to know what I have so that I can figure out what I'm missing and then know what I need. Simple enough, right?


I began the process of converting my physical library into an electronic one before when moved to Wales in 2007, since I knew I'd need to write grant proposals while all my books were packed away into storage. The work that I put in then (hours and hours of scanning) have paid off in two ways: 1) My entire academic library fits onto one Billy bookcase, and 2) I always have my resources just a mouse click away, as the computer is infinitely more portable than a bag full of books. There is a downside to this process, though.


I am drowning in electronic documents. As a conservative estimate I would say that I have 1000 files on my computer that need to be recorded in some type of bibliographic software. Most of the files are centralized (two folders - Ecuador Stuff and Everything Else), but there are others scattered throughout my computer, sitting in the folder of the class when I downloaded it to write a paper, or, even worse, languishing in the catch-all "Prelim" folder that contains everything I used to study for my comprehensive exams prior to fieldwork. Not only do I not know what I have, but I don't even know where it is!


My husband has BiblioScape, so I downloaded their free version, BiblioExpress, to give that a try. The program is quite simple, and reminds me of a more basic version of the EndNote 9 that I had once upon a time. It's limited, but it could record it all, which is the point of this exercise, and best of all, it's free. 


Through our university library we have free access to RefWorks, which is an online based application. I downloaded it a while ago, but I could never get the offline version to work correctly. Even though spotty internet is no longer an issue for us, I still prefer the ability to do the data entry on my computer, and not have to navigate a website. A friend recommended Zotero, which sounds awesome, but it's a plug-in for Firefox, and I'm using Chrome. Also, it's web-based.


My preference, at the moment, is EndNote X4. I downloaded a free 30-day trial from their website, and if I like it I can buy it through our university for a very reasonable sum. One of my favorite features is that I can import the PDFs into the program, which means that even if I move files around during subsequent housecleaning the program will still open them for me, which is a big plus in light of the disorganized state of my files.


So the question remains, how should I organize my electronic files on my computer, and how should I organize the references within EndNote? One giant folder, my current two and a bit, or detailed sub-folders by category? The same for within EndNote: should I keep an Ecuador library and a non-Ecuador library (even though there are some cases of overlap), or put them together and separate them into groups by topic within the program?


Any of you out there with experience in this kind of thing, any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.