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Over the last several years, Jefferson Patterson Park and Museum (JPPM) has enjoyed a productive relationship with Huntingtown High School in Calvert County, Maryland. In previous years, the school’s archaeology classes produced cell phone tours for the park, with the students working on the projects at every level, including conducting oral history interviews, developing tour themes and scripts, recording the tours and writing press releases.

Rockingham hunt pitcher from the privy.

This year, JPPM decided to take on a different type of project, with the newly-formed “Historical Investigations” class. The students are analyzing the contents of a mid-19th century privy from Baltimore’s Federal Reserve site (18BC27). Archaeologists excavated the site in 1980, but since the artifacts were never studied or a final report prepared, the students are working with an assemblage that has never before received any attention.

This particular privy was filled with broken plates, spittoons, chamber pots, medicine bottles, and a torpedo bottle once used to hold carbonated beverages. One spectacular find from the privy was a large Rockingham pitcher depicting a boar and stag hunt, made around 1855 by a Baltimore pottery firm.

Teacher Jeff Cunningham and a student mend a creamware chamberbpot, while another student works on a sponged cup.

The students completed cataloging the artifacts (2,200+), mended the ceramics and glass from the privy and determined minimum ceramic and glass vessel counts. Each student chose a particular artifact to research in depth, creating illustrated essays that were both posted on JPPM’s website and produced as posters for display. In addition to writing a standard archaeological report on the privy, the students also created an exhibit of their findings that are currently on display at a local public library.

Two of the students are justifiably proud of the exhibit on display at the local branch library.

It was exciting to work with students on a project that provides them with real-world experience in a supportive setting, conducting the type of analysis normally done by professional archaeologists. Even better, is watching the students get a thrill from each new artifact and the information it holds.

What types of engaged work are you doing with local high schools? Share your experiences with us in the comment section!

Join us for a Webinar on Thursday, July 25.

Congress’ summer recess is fast approaching. What does that mean to SHA and to you? August is a great time to invite Representatives and Senators to visit local archaeological, historical and architectural sites, and to learn about the importance of cultural heritage education and preservation.  It is also a chance for us to advocate for funding for SHPO offices, curation efforts and Section 106.

Please join SHA’s government affairs counsel Cultural Heritage Partners, PLLC on Thursday, July 25, at 1 pm EDT for a 30-minute webinar: “Making Our Voices Heard During August Recess.” Cultural Heritage Partners attorneys Marion Werkheiser and Eden Burgess will teach you how to reach out to local Congressional offices, prepare for visits, deliver SHA’s message, and make an impact that lasts. Join us and get empowered!

Reserve your Webinar seat now at:

https://www4.gotomeeting.com/register/750123079

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.

The Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project has been a public archaeology/community service learning program from its inception when Western Michigan University’s (WMU) anthropology department was invited to help Niles, Michigan find its “lost” eighteenth century fort. As it only enjoys one full-time, permanent faculty member, principal investigator Michael Nassaney, the success of this public component is highly dependent on the involvement of undergraduate and graduate students and community volunteers. Though grassroots in nature, it has managed to consistently offer popular public events and to expand its outreach through traditional and digital methods. Student involvement in the Project takes the form of inclusion and emersion, not just in the practice of historical archaeology, but also in the sharing of it.

Principal Investigator, Michael Nassaney conducts a lecture during the Annual Open House at the Site.

Fort St. Joseph is located within present-day Niles, MI. Occupied from 1691 to 1781 by the French then British, it served as a mission, garrison, and trading post on the frontier of the Great Lakes fur trade. The Project began in 1998 when a local history group invited WMU archaeologists to conduct a survey in search of the colonial outpost. Shovel test pits soon revealed trade goods, faunal remains, and intact architectural deposits, presenting the city and community the opportunity to reconnect with the colonial legacy in their backyard in a tangible way. For the last fifteen years, the partnership between WMU and the City has involved excavations and public education and outreach conducted by an active, engaged and ever-changing group of students and volunteers.

My involvement with the Project began in the spring of 2006 in the laboratory. Though my undergraduate degree was in Economics, I had a deep love of all that was old and a sense that archaeology had the power to tell the stories of everyday life past that were elusive in the written record. I planned to take the field school at Fort St. Joseph in the summer and was invited by Dr. Nassaney to get familiar with 18^th-century material culture by helping to catalog artifacts from past seasons’ excavations. A couple hours in and I was hooked on the lab. I went on to do my master’s thesis on the topic of curation and collections management, but while I was busy studying the other three fields and finding my niche within archaeology I was also almost constantly “doing” public archaeology.

A thematic artifact display case assembled by the author.

My first field season I, along with the other field school students, learned the history and context of the Fort along with proper archaeological excavation and recording techniques ourselves and then turned around and almost immediately helped educate week-long each summer camps of middle school/high school students and adults from the community in the same. We spent the second half of the season gearing up for what has since become the annual Open House at the fort site. We educated while advertising and soliciting support for the event throughout the community. We designed t-shirts. We created content for and executed the layout of informational panels. We selected finds for and put together artifact display cases. We painted signs to direct traffic to the site.  All this under the guidance of one principal investigator, the director of Niles’ Fort St. Joseph Museum, and one site veteran (and therefore public archaeology veteran) graduate student teaching assistant, who herself pulled together a group of historical reenactors to interpret the French and British periods at the fort. All field schools involve experiential learning. My first field school also happened to be a crash course in public relations, event planning and museum studies.

A field school student interacts with Open House visitors.

I served as the Fort St. Joseph Museum Intern during my first year of grad school, working on multiple initiatives to increase the public profile of the Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project. I wrote text, chose images and oversaw the design of an informational brochure. I organized a “Meet the Archaeologist Day” at the Museum as well as a luncheon for the most involved members of the community, the goal of which was to solicit their input on future exploration and interpretation of the Fort. The next year I was a field school teaching assistant and along with fellow grad students worked to execute both the summer camps and Open House again, building upon all learned the previous year.

Over the next couple of years my peers and I represented the Project at community events throughout southwest Michigan in addition to attending professional conferences where we shared our research, and also our public archaeology experiences and learned how others were involving their local communities. My last year of grad school, I interned with the Project again, this time taking on public archaeology of an “e” nature. In the interim between my first internship and this one, web presence had surged in importance as an outreach tool, and Facebook was doing the same. The Project at this point had little to no real estate of its own on the internet. Working with WMU’s College of Arts and Sciences webmaster, I built a site for the Project on the University server and also set the Project up on Facebook. Moving beyond the brochure, I also edited the inaugural edition of the Project newsletter, the Fort St. Joseph Post.

Both undergraduate and graduate students alike have continued to maintain and expand the public archaeology offerings of the Project. In 2011 a Project blog was launched to allow field school and other students the chance to share their experiences with the Project first hand, both during the field season and the academic year. Students have also helped to produce two volumes in a booklet series, which aims to examine various aspects of Fort St. Joseph and it’s role in the larger political, economic, social, and cultural contexts of New France.

Middle and High School student summer campers are brought up to speed on ongoing excavations.

The Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project offers undergraduate and graduate students a unique opportunity to dive headfirst not just into archaeology, but public archaeology, learning how to while doing and serving the community at the same time. As with any sort of grassroots initiative, there is need for and therefore the ability to accommodate different interests and talents. And as I can personally attest, this chance to be a jill-of-all-trades can lead one to learn skills that have a great deal of value in the real under-funded/tight-budget world. But being on the student side of this equation, I didn’t experience the one obvious downside of a university-based initiative, namely the revolving door. Students come, put in their time, and go, which makes it somewhat difficult for those in charge to maintain at a consistent level the features that the community comes to expect . WMU offers a terminal master’s degree in anthropology, which makes the problem even more acute.  Perhaps this is where the community itself must step up their involvement. What challenges have others encountered and how have they been overcome?

I was fortunate to have the Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project be my first foray into archaeology. I learned a ton, I was given a lot of responsibility; in turn I felt valued and which pushed me to take initiatives and to do my best to excel at all of the opportunities I was offered. I know not everyone has such chances in their pre-careers. Current and former students involved in public archaeology initiatives, in what ways were you “allowed” to contribute as a student? How has your experience as a student of public archaeology informed your archaeology practice?

For more on the Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project visit our Website, read our Blog, and check us out on Facebook!

The SHA’s Academic and Professional Training Committee (APTC), working with the Conference Committee, offers a range of training and professional development opportunities at the annual conference. We have workshops, roundtables, and fora covering many topics, most developed in response to member interest and needs. To augment these, the APTC plans to try year-round training (not during the conference). You have the opportunity to be part of this on July 17.

This past winter, members of the APTC started kicking around the idea of putting together a set of webinars to offer training and instructional opportunities for the SHA during the year between the conferences. These would supplement the annual conference workshops, which will remain unchanged.

Webinars (a portmanteau of “web” and “seminars”) are on-line sessions where attendees can interact (audio at least, also video if people have cameras in their computers) and, depending on the software involved, view the moderator’s desktop together. Webinars are increasingly common in business and other fields, and they allow  people scattered across the globe to meet to discuss business, undergo training, or just catch up, all at minimal cost.

The APTC would like to see members of the SHA interested in hosting or attending such web-based training sessions step forward with ideas for webinars. These could range from technical material like database management, curation techniques, or remote sensing applications to theoretical, topical, or regional topics. Professional development topics such as job hunting or transforming your dissertation into a book (thanks, Myriam Arcangeli [@Terrailles]) would also work. The field is very wide open.

Some Things to Consider

One of the benefits of this medium is the low cost. In its initial stages, we would run the webinars through systems such as Google Hangout (with up to 10 seats) or Blackboard Collaborate (for more). With no room to rent, no travel to subsidize, and only the host’s fees (if there are any) to defray, we envision these to be among the most cost-effective development tools available.

There are, of course, a few obstacles. Depending on your preferred method of content delivery (audio only, audio and video, chat), you place different data and computing demands on participants. If an attendee is on a dial-up connection, they may not be able to stream video. Also, some of the webinar delivery systems require downloaded content that, while not usually excessively resource-hungry, may require some lead time for users to get approved and installed (I’m looking at you, Department of Defense archaeologists).

Webinars and the Student Member

As webinars let people log in from wherever they can get internet coverage, they do not require the travel funding that can be a big impediment to attendance. This is particularly true for college students. We are particularly interested to get feedback from students about what kinds of webinars they would be interested in attending.

The scheduling flexibilities of webinars will allow us to focus on applying for graduate schools, preparing for conferences, and other topics that would be more useful earlier in the year than the conference allows. The APTC will be working with the Student Subcommittee of the APTC to develop student-oriented opportunities.

Getting the Ball Rolling

If you have an idea about a topic, you can e-mail me at cdrexler@uark.edu, tweet me (@cgdrexler), or stick an idea in the comments section.

If you’d like to host a webinar at some point in the future, send me a note and I’ll get you an invite to our first webinar on July 17, from 2-3 pm (Eastern). This inaugural webinar will focus on… webinars! We’ll focus on topic ideas, get some background on content development, and discuss the use of the technology. Drop me a line if you want to participate!

Acknowledgements

Amber Graft-Weiss and Terry Brock contributed to a lively Twitter discussion on this topic that helped develop and refine where we would like the webinars to focus. Shelley Keith, of Southern Arkansas University, advised on materials related to webinar content development.

In my mind, public archaeology involves reaching out and interacting with different audiences, ranging from those with little knowledge of what archaeology actually is (no, I don’t dig up dinosaurs—yes, I think dinosaurs are cool) to individuals whose passion and skills for archaeology rival or exceed my own. Until recently, my interaction with the public has largely been face to face, via public lectures, working with volunteers in the field and laboratory, and conducting hands-on workshops.

Public lectures are a great way to reach an interested audience—and students who want extra-credit—but I find that the level of interactivity is usually not very high.  Sure, people can ask questions, or come up and speak directly with me afterwards, but they may still be formulating their thoughts on what I just presented to them—or thinking about the long ride home in heavy traffic.  Field and laboratory volunteers—especially those who return regularly and for extended periods of time—can get that thrill of discovery and also know that they are contributing meaningfully to interpreting an historic site. Hands-on workshops are much more regulated affairs—but can provide members of the public with an insight into how we approach analysis of the past, and, perhaps, give them something tangible to take home and further reflect on what archaeology can tell them about the past.

Not everyone has the time or means to journey to our public events or venues, and the question must be asked: how do we reach these individuals? Many of us maintain our own project blogs or websites, Facebook pages, or Twitter accounts—and these certainly are a useful way of reaching out to a wider public.  Some web sites are sophisticated virtual extensions of established museums, exist as museums with no physical brick-and-mortar component, or represent places that no longer exist in the real world. Even with these virtual media, the level of meaningful interactivity between the user and the site can vary.

VCU students scanning an historic artifact at Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest. Courtesy of the Virtual Curation Laboratory.

For over a year now, I’ve been working with undergraduate students at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) in our Virtual Curation Laboratory (details can be found at: http://vcuarchaeology3d.wordpress.com/).  We’ve been using a NextEngine Desktop 3D scanner to create digital models of historic artifacts from a wide variety of heritage locations in Virginia and Pennsylvania, and, in some cases, using the digital models to generate plastic replicas using a MakerBot Replicator. The Virtual Curation Laboratory was initially funded by the Department of Defense’s Legacy Program (Legacy Project #11-334) to test how well the NextEngine Desktop 3D scanner could be used to virtually curate fragile artifacts, “preserve” them digitally, and make them more widely available to researchers to ease determinations of National Register of Historic Places (NHRP) for sites on military lands.  A secondary goal was to help raise awareness of military personnel and their civilian neighbors about significant cultural resources under the care and protection of the Department of Defense.

Digital model of a tin toy soldier from Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest. Created by the Virtual Curation Laboratory and used with permission of Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest.

Because the NextEngine scanner is portable, and because we wanted to scan a wide variety of historic artifacts, my students and I travelled to a wide variety of heritage locations and collections repositories to create scans of both common and unique objects—mostly “small finds” that help tell the story of the nation’s historic past.  VCU students have created 3D digital artifact models of historic objects from archaeological collections at George Washington’s Ferry Farm, Mount Vernon, Jamestown Rediscovery, Colonial Williamsburg, Montpelier, Poplar Forest, The State Museum of Pennsylvania, among other locations.

Digital model of a tea pot lid finial in the shape of a satyr’s head from James Madison’s Montpelier. Created by the Virtual Curation Laboratory and used with permission of James Madison’s Montpelier.

Many of these items are rare and the general public would have little opportunity to touch the actual object, or even see it in some cases due to limited exhibit space. The process of creating a digital model, particularly the NextEngine’s lasers playing across an object in a darkened room as it scans an object, certainly grabs the attention of even casual visitors to an historic site.

Illustration of visitors to George Washington’s Ferry Farm watching scanning of historic artifacts in progress. Illustration by Jamie Pham and courtesy of the Virtual Curation Laboratory.

Virtual curation—the creation of intangible digital models from tangible artifacts—has clear benefits to opening up America’s historic past in ways never before possible. We can combine virtual curation with social media as part of a dedicated strategy to promote and build a truly participatory culture that changes how we experience and think about heritage. Public and scholarly interaction with digital artifact models can certainly foster a more reflexive archaeology. Diverse observers can move virtual objects or travel through virtual worlds, creating a dialectical relationship between past and present–and expand interpretation and reflection beyond a narrow group of scholars. Resulting images from 3D scans can be processed and sent out to scholars, researchers, or the lay public as they are generated, opening up windows for countless interpretations and reinterpretations of artifacts by people who might otherwise never have access to these unique small finds. Virtual models, especially of fragile artifacts, create a closer connection between ourselves and events, or even individuals, from the past.

Colonoware vessel from George Washington’s Mount Vernon Estates and Gardens. Created by the Virtual Curation Laboratory and used with permission of George Washington’s Mount Vernon Estates and Gardens.

3D technology creates an “active” role for the consumer of archaeological depictions in a way that is not possible if we rely on more traditional, static graphical techniques, such as pen-and-ink illustrations or black-and-white or color photographs.  Viewing an object in motion gives us a greater sense of the purpose for which it was created.  Archaeological materials are best understood when they can be revisited time and time again, and subjected to new theoretical insights and radically different perspectives by all of us interested and invested in the historic past.

Susquehannock zoomorphic effigy pipe in the collections of The State Museum of Pennsylvania. Created by the Virtual Curation Laboratory and used with permission of the Pennsylvania

A recent presentation by a student really brought home to me the power of these 3D digital artifact models for creating meaningful interaction between the student and a member of the audience. VCU student Rachael Hulvey was showing a model of a Susquehannock effigy pipe that was identified by the discoverer as representing a bear.  We in the Virtual Curation Laboratory all agreed that the animal was clearly not a bear, given its long tail.  In the static photograph published this pipe, the elongated tail is not visible.  However, the animated digital model showed the tail and all other salient features, and a member of the audience was able to identify the animal as representing a fisher (Martes pennant)—a member of the weasel family with a penchant for eating porcupines.

Plastic replica (left) of an 18th century bone brush (right) recovered at George Washington’s Ferry Farm that is incorporated into their “touch box” for visitors requiring a more tactile than visual experience. Courtesy of the Virtual Curation Laboratory.

Physical plastic replicas can also be produced from the digital models as needed for educational and study purposes. Educational institutions or researchers could readily access these digital models from secure internet sites, and print copies on their own 3D printers. In our outreach efforts here at the Virtual Curation Laboratory, we find that the general public and non-archaeology students prefer the plastic models to digital models that they can manipulated on a computer screen.  These plastic models can be reintroduced into field contexts. At George Washington’s Ferry Farm, plastic replicas produced from scanned objects can be safely incorporated into public lessons for people of all ages, while the actual objects are safely and securely stored within a laboratory context.  The plastic replicas have also been incorporated into a “touch box” at George Washington’s Ferry Farm for visitors who have impaired vision.

VCU student Ashley McCuistion holds plastic replicas of scanned artifacts used at public programs in the field at George Washington’s Ferry Farm. Courtesy of the Virtual Curation Laboratory.

With the increased use of and accessibility to 3D images and data, one question can be posed: how might historical archaeology be transformed when archaeologists and members of the general have equal access to studying intangible virtual models instead of tangible artifacts?

Abstract submission for the 2014 conference closes in four weeks. The clock is now ticking if you haven’t yet done so. What is your paper? Are you in a symposium? Do you prefer participating in a forum panel discussion, a three-minute forum or an electronic symposium? Do you prefer presenting a poster rather than a paper this year? If so, you should get a place of choice in the Convention Centre as we encourage this type of participation. Oh, by the way, did you know that the Québec City Convention Center is the only one in Canada offering free hi-speed wifi to conference attendees?

We have revamped the submission process to make it more transparent and user friendly for you. You can go straight there from the conference home page: http://www.sha2014.com/index.html. Have a look and let us know if this move from traditional practice suits your needs.

This year, presentations are being grouped into several themes. It will thus be easier for you to fit your paper into a slot corresponding to your interests if you aren’t already participating in a organized session. This is what you will see: Archaeological Methods; Diaspora Archaeology; Environmental and Landscape Archaeology; First Nations Archaeology; Identity and Community Archaeology; Information Technology; Legislation and Archaeological Practice; Material Culture Studies; Military Archaeology; Other; Regional Studies; Theory; Underwater and Maritime Archaeologies; Urban Archaeology.

Once into the category that interests you, you can explore sessions that have been entered into the system or that the conference committee proposes for you. Are you interested in organizing a session on one of the following subjects: The Ethics of Archaeological Practice; Historical Archaeology and the Media; Commercial and Governmental Archaeology: New laws, new practices; Archaeology and UNESCO World Heritage Sites; New Research in Material culture studies: Ceramics; Historical Archaeology as Anthropology; globalization and environmental archaeology; The Historical archaeology of Central America and the Caribbean; Who owns the past: sacred sites, battlefield archaeology, sites of pain, difficult heritage. Should none of these sessions tickle your fancy, you can propose a new one.

We hope this new process and a simplified interface will make the submission process easier for you and that it will result in a strong and interesting conference for all. Contact the Conference Committee through our web site at www.sha2014.com should you have any comments on the submission process. There will be regular updates and contextual information on the SHA Facebook page. Don’t forget to follow the progression of the conference on Twitter as well at #sha2014. Both the Facebook page and the Twitter feed give you lots of opportunities to interact with conference organizers and other colleagues. We are looking forward to reading you there. And of course, we are particularly looking forward to seeing you in Québec City next January!

Submitting a session is now as easy as riding a bike! Come and see the Québec Seminary courtyard while your riding with us!

Dear Colleagues,

The following books are available for review. If any of them pique your interest do let me know.

Rich Veit–SHA Book Reviews Editor rveit@monmouth.edu

All the King’s Horses: Essays on the Impact of Looting and the Illicit Antiquities Trade on Our Knowledge of the Past
Paula K. Lazrus and Alex W. Barker, eds.
The SAA Press, The Society of American Archaeology, Washington D.C.,
2012. 168 pp., index. $24.95 regular price, $19.95 SAA member discount price.

Archaeological Sites: Conservation and Management
Sharon Sullivan and Richard Mackay, eds.
The Getty Conservation Institute, Los Angeles, California,
2013. 736 pp. $70.00 cloth.

Becoming White Clay: A History and Archaeology of Jicarilla Apache Enclavement
B. Sunday Eiselt
The University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City, Utah,
2012. 320 pp., 23 B&W Illus., 31 line drawings, index. $45.00 cloth, $56.00 eBook.

Bijoux de pacotille ou objets de piété? Les bagues dites “jésuites” revisitées à partir des collections archéologiques du Québec
Caroline Mercier
Cahier d’archéologie du CELAT, Quebec, Canada,
2012. 87 figs., 16 tables.

Clanricards Castle: Portumna House, Co. Galway
Jane Fenlon, ed.
Four Courts Press, Portland, Oregon,
2012. 192 pp., glossary, bibl., index. $65.00 cloth.

Curating Human Remains: Caring for the Dead in the United Kingdom
Myra Giesen, ed.
The Boydell Press, Woodbridge,
2013. 197 pp., 22 figs., 2 tables, index. $99.00.

Custer, Cody, and Grand Duke Alexis: Historical Archaeology of the Royal Buffalo Hunt
Douglas D. Scott, Peter Bleed, and Stephen Damm
University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Oklahoma,
2013. 232 pp., 63 B&W Illus., 2 maps, index. $24.95 cloth.

Duncluce Castle: History and Archaeology
Colin Breen
Four Courts Press, Portland, Oregon,
2012. 246 pp., full-color illus., 6 tables, glossary, bibl., index. €19.95 catalogue price, €17.95 web price.

Hawaii’s Past in a World of Pacific Islands
James M. Bayman and Thomas S. Dye
The SAA Press, The Society for American Archaeology, Washington D.C.,
2013. 29 figs., 5 tables, glossary, bibl., index. $24.95 regular price, $19.95 member discount price.

Historical and Archaeological Perspectives on Gender Transformations: From Private to Public
Suzanne M. Spencer-Wood, ed.
Springer, New York, New York,
2013. 430 pp., 66 illus., 16 illus. in color, index. $179.00 eBook, $229.00 hardcover.

Interpreting the English Village
Mick Aston and Chris Gerrard
Windgather Press, Oxbow Books, Oxford,
2013. 456 pp., 257 figs., bibl., index. $49.95 cloth.

Lightning in the Andes and Mesoamerica: Pre-Columbian, Colonial, and Contemporary Perspectives
John E. Staller and Brian Stross
Oxford University Press, New York, New York,
2013. 278 pp., 57 illus., 8 pp. color insert, index. $74.00 hardback.

Old Myths and New Approaches: Interpreting Ancient Religious Sites in Southeast Asia
Alexandra Haendel, ed.
Monash University Publishing
2012. 312 pp., $49.95 cloth.

Soils, Climate & Society: Archaeological Investigations in Ancient America
John D. Wingard and Sue Eileen Hayes, eds.
University Press of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado,
2013. 272 pp., 34 figs., 29 tables, list of contributors, index. $70.00.

Tales of Gotham, Historical Archaeology, Ethnohistory, and Microhistory of New York City
Meta F. Janowitz and Diane Dallal, eds.
Springer, New York, New York,
2013. 369 pp., 58 illus., 26 illus. in color. $139.00 eBook, $179.00 hardcover.

The Archaeology of the Prussian Crusade: Holy War and Colonisation
Alexander Pluskowski
Routledge, New York, New York,
2012. 427 pp., 85 figs., glossary, bibl.,index, $48.95 cloth.

The Cherokees of Tuckaleechee Cove
Jon Marcoux
The University of Michigan Museum of Anthropology Publications, Ann Arbor, Michigan,
2012. 296 pp., 136 figs., 60 tables, $33.00.

Uncovering History: Archaeological Investigations at the Little Bighorn
Douglas D. Scott
University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Oklahoma,
2013. 272 pp., 53 B&W Illus., 1 map, $32.95 cloth.

The SHA Conference in Leicester, England, was the experience of a lifetime! The idea of attending such an event as an undergraduate was exciting, but a bit intimidating. The reality of my experience was that the SHA is a community that truly welcomed students and provided arenas for us to network with archaeologists who have similar research interests and learn about current issues, ongoing research, and new technologies.  Immediately after arriving at the University of Leicester for the conference I met two senior archaeologists with distinct research interests. They were welcoming and sincere in their interest in who I was and what I was interested in. Only in the conference setting can you have the opportunity to meet so many professionals from around the world who are doing archaeology! Within a few minutes of my arrival at the conference I felt more like I was among peers than a lowly undergraduate and I commend the members of the SHA for this.

The presentations given at the conference covered a wide variety of topics. I enjoyed the breadth of topics as well as papers on sites close to home, which fit my own interests in colonialism, mining, and military history. I attended presentations on experimental archaeology in the re-creation of canons, talks on unfamiliar locations like Saint Eustatius in the Caribbean, fascinating underwater sites, Shakespearian theatre settings, and the presentation on vaginal douching in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries by the student paper prize winner, Ashley Morton. There was certainly a topic to interest everyone!

The Conference presented opportunities to learn about contemporary issues for students in the field of historical archaeology. Thursday morning I attended a panel specifically for students, titled: Navigating the Field: Education and Employment in a Changing Job Market. The discussion was sobering at times, and I left a little discouraged, but after ruminating over the discussion, I found it to be very useful. The current job market is difficult, but I learned the importance of learning necessary job skills and the importance of making the most of your opportunities.

Another highlight of my conference experience was a symposium, titled: Reconsidering Archaeologies of Creativity, which was chaired by Dr. Scarlett. The discussant following the session was Dr. Krysta Ryzewski, of Wayne State University. The discussion format was unique and captivating because Dr. Ryzewski instead of presenting a paper synthesizing the work presented in the symposium she hosted a dialogue between her and the presenters that was excellent, and enlightening.

During the course of the conference I had many productive conversations. Some conversations resulted in possible opportunities for future work.  One discussion focused on a potential summer field project. Just one example of the opportunities that came from my conference attendance, this highlights one of the most important reasons for a student to attend a conference… networking!

The benefits of attending extended beyond my time in Leicester. In reviewing my notes from the conference, I found several notations referring to different archaeological theories. Seeing the use of theory in presentations and experiencing the ensuing discussions sparked a fascination with archaeological theory, which was something I had only a rudimentary understanding of beforehand. I now find myself using every spare minute to study different theoretical subjects.

I strongly recommend that any student attending a conference attend as many student events as possible. I personally wish that I had attended more than I did. The people that you meet at these events are your future colleagues, and the relationships you create at the conference can lead to collaboration in the future. I was able to meet some great people at the Past Presidents’ reception, and I have maintained contact with several of them. I also spent much of the rest of the conference with two of the students I met that evening, and we had some great conversations in which I learned a lot about what a Master’s Program is all about.

Another tip I recommend students take advantage of is to visit the Technology Room. I spoke with Tim Goddard. We talked about how the Technology Room is designed to be an accessible place for people to learn from fellow archaeologists about the latest technologies, and their strengths and weaknesses. During my visit to the technology room I found that this was the case, the people manning the tables were accessible, and excited about the technologies on display.

A few more tips that I learned about the conference are: to bring business cards, plan to attend the talks that interest you as well as those on subjects you don’t know much about, and take good notes. Business cards are handy to hand out to different people that you meet even if you have to make your own. Going to papers on subjects you don’t know much about will expand your knowledge and possibly interests. For example, if you are interested in historical archaeology in the American West, attend some presentations on underwater archaeology, or European archaeology, you may find  that you learn more from the different perspectives given in these talks than on presentations on subjects that follow your personal interests. While there your brain will be swimming with information by the end of the conference, by taking good notes you can sort things out after the conference.

Personally, attending the SHA conference opened doors I never imagined possible. During the conference, I had the opportunity to meet Dr. Doug Scott, who recently retired from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He gave a talk on a project he had completed at Pecos Pueblo, an area in which I have a lot of interest. When I returned home from the conference and was considering which institutions I would like to attend for graduate school, I decided to look at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The program seemed to fit my interests perfectly, so I chose to apply. I was accepted and will be attending their program in the fall. I was grateful to have Dr. Scott’s honest opinion of the University and I am appreciative of the time he took to discuss the graduate school process with me. These types of opportunities really make the whole conference experience invaluable.

My attendance at the conference would not have been possible without the help of Dr. Crowther at ASU who provided the financial assistance necessary to make the trip to England possible. I also have the deepest appreciation to Dr. Dick Goddard, and Tim Goddard for presenting the idea of attending the conference, putting me up in Leicester, and being amazing friends, teachers, and mentors. This has led me to some questions: for those of you who attended the conference in Leicester, did you receive any assistance to help you to participate in the conference? What are some resources out there to help with expenses?  What were some of your conference experiences? How can we encourage more students to attend, and participate, in future conferences?

Occupy and its offspring have brought issues that are of intrinsic interest to our discipline into the public consciousness in profound ways. I suggest that historical archaeologists have much to learn through a careful study of how Occupy has framed these issues, and much we could do to further advance them in the public mind.

History and issues

Occupy began with a series of meetings between small working groups and veteran political organizers in late summer 2011, culminating in a planned march and gathering in New York’s Zuccotti Park on September 17. After a series of increasingly public actions drew (generally negative) media attention, the movement spread organically to other large (and eventually, small) cities across the United States. By late October, groups that took the Occupy label had spread around the globe–the German “Blockupy,” for instance. Following both evictions and intentional withdrawal from public spaces in most cities during the winter, small actions resumed in Spring 2012, but more significantly, a number of issue-oriented movements in the spirit of Occupy have replaced long-term, place-based encampments. These include such diverse things as “Occupy the Police,” “Occupy Anthropology,” “Occupy Sandy” (a reference to the hurricane that struck the Northeastern U.S. in October 2012), and the “Rolling Jubilee” anti-debt movement. (For brief histories of Occupy, see the Al Jazeera English-produced Fault Lines documentary History of an Occupation, and A History of Occupy (Earle 2012), from which I have drawn most of the above summary.)

Occupy has always been a big-tent movement, both in terms of its membership and of the issues its activists raise (Earle 2012). This is a hallmark of consensus-based groups. Two themes stand out to me as fundamental to most of those who continue to organize under the Occupy banner: A focus on community formation and reproduction, especially in the interstices of the state; and an accessible, critical analysis of the social implications of global capitalism. In other words, “How do we validate intentional, interest-based social ties between people?” and “How do we demonstrate the ill effects of profit and exploitative labor on the daily lives of people in our communities?” Community-formation and reproduction, and the effects of capitalism, are significant parts of the research agendas of many of us working in this field (Matthews 2010), and Occupy has helped prime the public to be receptive to capitalism-centered theory and praxis (McGuire 2008) in ways that we have rarely seen.

Implications

The interests of Occupy and historical archaeology align in ways that go beyond our shared intellectual concern with daily lives and global forces. We are part of what Occupy has constructed as “the 99 percent,” whether we work in academic settings that are increasingly under neoliberal assault (Agger 2004), in the public sector that is being squeezed under the weight of flawed austerity policies, or in cultural resource management with its rigid profit motive and accompanying class structure (McGuire 2008). Occupy’s concerns are our concerns, writ both large and small, in the communities in which we live and work.

Moreover, both Occupy and historical archaeology attempt to make manifest (sensu González-Ruibal 2008) that which is hidden. For the former, it is how such things as the machinations of global political economy impact communities struggling with, say, disaster recovery. For us, making manifest is our stock in trade, encompassing everything from excavation and documentary research to publications and talks aimed at, as the saying goes, “giving voice to the voiceless.” Occupy and its offspring challenge us to go beyond simply revealing what is hidden, to the realm of praxis. Occupy Sandy, for instance, continues to organize help and build community through mutual aid work in New York and New Jersey neighborhoods where state and federal aid have not met the need. As of this writing, the Rolling Jubilee has bought and forgiven over $11 million in medical debt. Both of these examples demonstrate action that arose after careful study of a specific social problem, one that has its genesis in largely hidden forces but directly impacts real lives in real communities. That action in turn works to critique the system that nurtures and sustains the problem itself.

In short, Occupy demonstrates praxis–a dialectic of analysis, critique, and action. Our field excels at summoning new knowledge from its hiding places, but knowledge and critique without action is of questionable utility. An Occupy-inspired historical archaeology would rest on all three legs of praxis. So what might some examples look like in practice?

Occupying historical archaeology

In short, it would be an archaeology that seeks out the hidden lives disrupted by capitalism, by non-local politics, by market relations (Matthews 2010: 14), by government policies that prioritize austerity over people’s well-being (Buchli and Lucas 2001).

These disrupted lives are all around us, in our own communities. They’re being lived by perhaps thousands of homeless in the storm sewers beneath Las Vegas, as well as in a network of self-dug (and quickly demolished by police) tunnels in Kansas City. They’re being lived by people being sent to jail for unpaid debts. They’re being lived by people forced into tent cities in some of the wealthiest regions of the United States.

This would be an archaeology that is multidisciplinary, multi-sited, and politically engaged. It would be one that begins in the present but does not necessarily end there.

There are examples. These themes run through much work on the so-called “contemporary past.” They hum throughout Jason De León’s work on the Undocumented Migrant Project. And they are brought out vividly in the work of Rachael Kiddey and her team on homelessness in Bristol, which enlists the homeless in a reflexive archaeology aimed at understanding the material and social causes and experiences of living on the streets (Kiddey and Schofield 2011).

None of the above, to my knowledge, position themselves as aligned with Occupy–nor do I suggest that they, or anyone else, must. But they’re generating knowledge and critique and action that fall directly in line with the key themes that Occupy and its offspring are raising. A sense of nearness and solidarity with the people being studied is key (“we are the 99 percent”). Action that flows from praxis must be collective action involving the people who live under the weight of the social problem in question, otherwise it could be co-opted to reinforce alienation.

I suggest that our field has the ability to bring unique knowledge, analysis, and methods to bear on revealing present-day lives and experiences of people pushed to the margins. This would be useful knowledge and critique to activists who cross-cut social lines, united by class interests, and experienced in organizing community-based aid and consciousness-raising. Occupy is pointing us toward an object, and it welcomes new sources of willing bodies and minds. Are we willing to listen, study, and act?

References

Buchli, Victor, and Gavin Lucas
2001  The Archaeology of Alienation: A Late Twentieth-Century British Council House. In Archaeologies of the Contemporary Past, Victor Buchli and Gavin Lucas, editors, pp. 158-168. Routledge, London.

Earle, Ethan
2012  A Brief History of Occupy Wall Street. Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, New York.

González-Ruibal, Alfredo
2008  Time To Destroy: An Archaeology of Supermodernity. Current Anthropology 49(2): 247-279.

Kiddey, Rachael, and John Schofield
2011  Embrace the Margins: Adventures in Archaeology and Homelessness. Public Archaeology 10(1): 4-22.

Matthews, Christopher N.
2010  The Archaeology of American Capitalism. University Press of Florida, Gainesville.

McGuire, Randall H.
2008  Archaeology as Political Action. University of California Press, Berkeley.

All Images are by Jessica Lehrman from the Occupy Wall Street Flickr Archive and are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial.