News

Every historical archaeologist has at some point defined the discipline to the visitors at an archaeological site, a roomful of students, or a colleague or community member.  Most of us have a pretty clear notion of what distinguishes historical archaeology, and while it may diverge from what our teachers once told us, the conventional definitions in reference sources, or even the SHA’s own definition, we do seem to return to some consistent elements:  for instance, material things always seem to lie at the heart of what we do; most of us see ourselves as multidisciplinary scholars; we value rigor and replicability (even if we entertain sophisticated theory or are sometimes wary of being labeled a “science”); and we focus on peoples living in the last half-millennium or thereabouts.

Nevertheless, it is still completely reasonable that we have some distinctive visions of precisely what constitutes historical archaeology (or should define it) (compare the historical archaeology course syllabi definitions at the SHA Syllabi Clearinghouse).  The discussion over what defines historical archaeology has roots reaching over more than a half-century, and the dynamism of the discussion over our field is a good indication of historical archaeology’s dynamism and growth.  As the field now stretches its chronological boundaries into the contemporary world, encompasses an increasingly broad range of intellectual traditions, and pushes its geographic horizons to every reach of the planet, that discussion may be as lively as it was in the 1960s.  The SHA does not need to impose a definition of the discipline onto everybody digging something we might call historical archaeology, and in fact the discussion of the rich range of historical archaeologies is more important than forging a universal definition of the discipline that encompasses every time and place.  Instead, we need to continue to promote a rich discussion that reaches across global divisions, lines of historical difference and contemporary inequality, and moments in time.

The differences in conventional definitions of historical archaeology are perhaps most apparent outside the confines of North America.  As we prepare for our annual conference in Leicester in January, 2013 and then Quebec a year later, it is increasingly evident that what North Americans call historical archaeology goes by a variety of labels in Europe, Africa, South America, or the Pacific World: post-medieval, modern, and contemporary archaeologies all describe some scholarship akin to American historical archaeology.  Historical archaeology emerged at roughly the same moments in North America, the UK (with the Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology’s formation in 1966), and Australia (the Australasian Society for Historical Archaeology was founded in 1970).  All of these scholarly traditions push the conventional North American framing of historical archaeology in productive and exciting ways.

The most influential definitions of North American historical archaeology tend to revolve around the cultural transformations associated with Anglo and European colonization.  However, that definition looks out at the globe from the New World and has often somewhat ironically not examined the very European and African societies sending peoples to the New World.  For our European colleagues doing archaeologies of the last 500 years, the transformation into a post-medieval world reaches well into the medieval period and reveals dramatic variation from the Iberian Peninsula into central and northern Europe.  Pictures of Africa and Asia likewise have a historical depth that is not easily accommodated to a narrowly defined focus on European colonization alone.

Many historical archaeologists have focused on the ways in which emergent capitalism and colonization transformed the planet and provide an intellectual framework for historical archaeology.  Yet that sprawling profit economy was never utterly homogenous and integrated despite its global scale.  Capitalist penetration into New World colonies, Africa, and the breadth of Europe itself was inevitably variable across time and space, and archaeologists have particularly rich data to dissect the contextually distinctive spread of capitalism and local experiences of capitalist transformations.

The rapid growth of contemporary archaeology encompasses a breadth of research subjects that likewise stretches our conventional notion of historical archaeology.  William Rathje’s garbology studies laid much of the foundation for archaeologies of the recent past and contemporary world, and Americans have conducted a variety of modern material culture studies since the 1970’s taking aim on everything from electric cars to pathways of migration to wartime detention centers.  Archaeologies of the present-day world have been exceptionally active in the UK and Europe, where contemporary archaeologists have conducted creative, thoughtful, and challenging research on everything from wartime landscapes and prison camps (in Finnish, but video images) to Cold War materiality to punk graffiti.  For many of us this scholarship is intimately linked to historical archaeologies that have focused on more distant pasts and should have a clear role in a global historical archaeology that reaches firmly into the present.

The transformation to an increasingly global historical archaeology may be bearing the fruit envisioned by the very first historical archaeologists, whose January, 1966 gathering at Southern Methodist University was dubbed the “International Conference on Historic Archaeology” (my italics).  In 1968, SHA President Ed Jelks (1968:3) intoned that “Historical archaeology has much to gain in the long run from encouraging a spirit of concerted, interdisciplinary, international cooperation.”  Many of our colleagues in the nearly 50 years since the Texas conference have been committed to a historical archaeology that always thinks of global systemic relationships beyond our local sites, but we are especially fortunate to live in a moment in which there is a rich international scholarship of the last half millennium that is increasingly accessible thanks to digitization.

Indeed, that global historical archaeology may well be SHA’s next horizon for growth in terms of both the society’s literal membership numbers and the discipline’s more significant expansion as a scholarly voice throughout the world.  Historical and post-medieval archaeologists are researching nearly every corner of the world and bring rich scholarly traditions distinct from North American anthropology.  That global historical archaeology is profoundly shaped by the concrete connections made possible through online scholarship and communication across a wired planet, and it bears significant debts to the SHA’s own commitment to conduct international conferences.

The Society for Historical Archaeology is only one steward for this rich international scholarship, and that scholarship is inevitably richer for including a broad range of global archaeological methods, scholars, and approaches.  International historical archaeology provides increasingly rich possibilities for the scholarly growth of historical archaeology that is increasingly globalized, compelling, and intellectually rigorous.

Jelks, Edward B.

1968 President’s Page: Observations on the Scope of Historical Archaeology.  Historical Archaeology 2:1-3.

‘What are your hopes and fears for the future of archaeology?’

The Archaeologists Anonymous team are coming to the SHA conference and will be holding a panel session on the morning of Friday 11th January. In the run-up to the conference we’d like to invite all SHA delegates to send us your hopes and fears on a postcard and make the panel session a success!

How to get involved

The process is a simple one. You need to find a postcard, adapt its front cover somehow, and write your message (anonymously) on the back, and then post it to the address on the Arch Anon blog

Your postcard will join the other postcards we’ve received and will be prominently displayed on the blog – these postcards will form the basis for discussion points during the SHA panel. Your postcard could therefore lead vibrant debate regarding the future of archaeology during the 21st century at SHA: an important, international conference.

Why postcards?

We want to slow down the immediacy of digital communication and through regressive creativity provide an alternative to the fast-paced and hyper-identified world of Twitter, Facebook and email. We want to provide an opportunity for you to make something and use hand-writing rather than create through the technology of a laptop. Joining in will take a little time. You’ll need to find the ‘right’ postcard, think of your message and post it to us but we hope you’ll agree that the method is worth it. The postcards we’ve received are individual, striking and thought-provoking.

Postcards in archaeology

We also recognise the growing interest in postcards within the archaeological community. Sian Jones’ recent paper at CHAT in York considered the ways in which postcards from Whitworth Park in Manchester operated ‘as material objects’ whether ‘mass-produced, commoditized, personalised, exchanged and consumed’.

Why anonymity?

We are asking for contributors to send postcards anonymously as we want the message on the postcard to be more important than who is saying it. We are hoping that anonymity will allow the voices of undergraduates to be undifferentiated from the voices of professors. We are interested in all voices: whoever you are we would like you to send us your hopes and fears postcard.

The panel at SHA

The majority of places on the SHA panel will be filled on the day by members of the audience. It could be you! Joining the panel are Natasha Mehler (University of Vienna); Sara Perry (University of York); Sefryn Penrose (Atkins Heritage/University of Oxford); Sarah May (Independent); Emma Dwyer (University of Leicester); Katrina Foxton (University of York) and James Dixon (Archaeologists Anonymous).

The panel will draw on the postcards we’ve received to discuss the future direction of the discipline, the Arch Anon project, and the interconnections between anonymity and academia.

We are pleased that Katrina Foxton will be joining the SHA panel. Katrina’s recent work has focused on a specific collection of Victorian photographic postcards produced by Francis Frith (1822-1898), who took up the task of photographing every landscape and landmark in England during the 1860s. Looking at his work both in physical form and on the internet, Katrina’s work on postcards has considered how both the discursive aspects of the image content (including the achievement of a standardised way of obtaining that ‘perfect shot’, which is dependent on the material form and commercial success of the postcard) can lead to an understanding of postcard ‘culture’ and heritage today. Moreover, the prolific use of postcards in their hey-day has been likened to an early form of twitter (Staff 1979, Woody 1998, Procheska and Mendelson 2010).

Therefore, she is interested in the more recent mobilisation of these multi-dimensional photo-objects (Edwards and Harts 2004, Gillen and Hall 2011) within this particular archaeological debate, as it points to a further evolution in the postcard’s cultural life and its status as a epistolary medium.

We’re looking forward to hearing what Katrina has to say about Archaeologists Anonymous!

Can I bring a postcard along on the day?

We’d love you to be involved but we really want to have a stamp on the postcard so we can tell which countries the postcards have come from. And we really don’t want to know who’s made them. So please do post yours in time for SHA.

Any questions?  

Send us an email  – archaeologistsanonymous@gmail.com

See you in Leicester!

Hilary Orange, James Dixon, Stacey Hickling and Paul Graves-Brown (The Arch Anon team)

This year the Student Subcommittee of the Academic and Professional Training Committee (APTC) and the Advisory Council on Underwater Archaeology (ACUA) Student Council are cosponsoring a forum dedicated to helping students navigate the current job market in archaeology. Thanks to the efforts of my co-organizer, Barry Bleichner, the forum will host six engaging panelists, and it will be held on Thursday, January 10, 2013. For location, time and a list of panelists, click here.

The global economic downturn has shifted government funding priorities away from cultural and historic resource preservation, and jobs have been lost. However, the enthusiasm and dedication of archaeologists across the world has allowed public programming and archaeology education initiatives to grow with exceptional speed and direction (see list of organizations at the bottom of this blog).

This image exhibits the passion and devotion of the professional archaeological community and their beloved volunteers who engendered over 280 archaeology themed events on National Archaeology Day 2012. Without the work of volunteers and interns, many of these events may have been understaffed or inadequately prepared for the hundreds of visitors who participated in the day of celebration and education. Many of the volunteers were students who are being trained as the next generation of archaeologists.

I conducted a small informal survey to gain a better understanding of student perspectives about the current job market. According to the results, the insecurities that archaeology students have about the pressure to find work in a depressed economy are abundant, but with a network of support, students will find jobs! Remember, the insights to follow serve only as an introduction; the forum in January will host several professionals who are prepared to tackle these topics in-depth.

“Volunteer, Volunteer, Volunteer!”
Fewer paid positions at archaeological venues has meant an increase in the skill requirements of new hires as well as an increase in the amount and type of work produced by volunteers and interns. The anxiety of making yourself the ideal candidate for a job can seem overwhelming, but it is important to stay calm and work on acquiring new, resume-bolstering skills.

I asked respondents of my survey, “Beyond acing exams and essays, what can students do to prepare themselves to be great candidates for jobs in archaeology?” The overwhelming answer from students and professionals, alike? VOLUNTEER. One participant responded with fervor, “Volunteer, volunteer, volunteer! Entry level jobs can be hard to come by for students looking to gain experience. Volunteering allows you to not only fill up your CV and gain skills, but also make professional connections that could help you land that job.”

Employers are looking for people who are able to engage the community and solve problems with creativity and innovation. Volunteering can help you practice your skills while showing potential employers what you have to offer.

As a graduate student at the University of South Florida’s Applied Anthropology program, Becky O’Sullivan began her career by volunteering with Florida Public Archaeology Network (FPAN). Soon, this volunteer position became a paid graduate assistantship. This experience gave O’Sullivan an opportunity to practice what might not have seemed natural to her, “Presenting at a professional conference can be nerve-wracking, I’m naturally adverse to getting up to talk in front of large groups, but the benefits of sharing your work with others and in turn learning from their work far outweigh those drawbacks. A good presentation can make you rethink even your most basic assumptions about what archaeology is and should be and make you a stronger researcher as a result!” This excerpt, written by Ms. O’Sullivan in January 2012, is taken from FPAN West Central Region’s blog. Ms. O’Sullivan is now the outreach coordinator for FPAN’s West Central Region office.

Flexibility can be useful when you are looking for a paid job, but whether you are in a small town or a big city, there is a cultural organization willing to train you as a volunteer. Start by donating two hours a week; this allows you to keep your “after-college bill-paying job” while you start to build professional connections in your field. Once your schedule opens up, you can invest more time in a project to which you already contribute.

Keep an Open Mind
In response to my questionnaire, one student reports about her experience using her degree outside of archaeology, “As far as alternate job routes go, I am looking at teaching positions from a wide range of disciplines. I find that my type of scholarship will probably fit in better in an American Studies department, so I am looking at jobs in American Studies, history, and American Indian studies departments along with anthropology.”

Try reexamining your own career goals and consider different ways to use your educational background in archaeology. This exercise invites you to think about ways to make archaeology skills useful to employers outside the discipline. See the list at the bottom of this blog for ideas about where to find jobs.

When you are working on your CV or preparing for an interview, mention your special skills. Sometimes your “hobbies” (theater, photography, painting, archery, singing, film-making, poetry, basketball, etc.) can be a great asset to employers. Many successful archaeologists and anthropologists use such hobbies to enhance their projects and outreach programs.

The following excerpt comes from a book edited by John H. Jameson Jr. and Sherene Baugher called Past Meets Present: Archaeologists Partnering with Museum Curators, Teachers, and Community Groups,“In the face of an increasing public interest and demand for information, archaeologists are collaborating with historians, educators, interpreters, museum curators, exhibit designers, landscape architects, and other cultural resource specialists to devise the best strategies for translating an explosion of archaeological information for the public.” This book (and many others) provides examples of how archaeologists collaborate with people from other disciplines or work within other disciplines to help protect and share the cultural resources of our nation.

Communicate, Stay Involved and Believe in Yourself
Consider how large your support network is when you are looking for work. University students have many resources, but as a professor once told me, “Your most valuable tool is the connections you make with the people around you.” When you graduate, many other students will be at your side, and it is invaluable to keep in touch with friends and colleagues who may one day be able to help you land a new job.

You can acquaint yourself with people who are working as professionals in archaeology by attending and presenting at conferences. I am amazed by the kindness of professors and other professionals who I have met at various conferences. Reaching out to the people I admire has given me the confidence to continue working towards my goal of being a paid employee in the field. Social-networking sites like LinkedIn, Academia.edu, or Facebook can be great tools for keeping up with people you have met.

I met Becky O’Sullivan and Rita Elliott as an intern working on my undergraduate honors thesis about archaeology education and outreach. Talking with them gave me the courage to present my ideas to a wider audience. Rita Elliott and her team from the Society for Georgia Archaeology created ArchaeoBUS, a mobile learning classroom, and they have since shared Georgia archaeology with people across the state.

If you would like to reach me directly, my e-mail is rozalyn.crews@ncf.edu.

Archaeology outreach programs:
Project Archaeology, Florida Public Archaeology Network, Arkansas Archaeological Survey, Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, Northwest Cultural Resources Institute, Hawai`i Junior Archaeology Outreach Program

Job opportunities:
National Park Service, the U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, your local Sate Historic Preservation Office (SHIPO) or Tribal Historic Preservation Office (THIPO), a local museum or visitor center, a local university lab or ethnography department, or a state archaeology or history society. Don’t forget to check USAJobs for archaeology jobs around the country.

Works Cited

• Jameson, John H. and Sherene Baugher (eds.)
  • 2007 Past Meets Present: Archaeologists Partnering with Museum Curators, Teachers and Community Groups. Springer.

Early registration closes on Monday 3rd December, so you have only one week left to register for SHA 2013 before fees increase. Conference pre-registration will close on 21st December. Members of the Society for Historical Archaeology or Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology get a substantial discount on the registration fee, so don’t delay!

Don’t forget to book your accommodation; there are still rooms available in the four conference hotels, as well as other budget options in the city. And don’t forget to arrange your travel either. The conference committee has negotiated a special offer for delegates travelling up from London by train, and there are many other bargain train travel options for those who book in advance.

In the meantime, and as the cold winter nights are drawing in, our attention has turned to the cosy warmth and hospitality of Leicester’s pubs. The city has a great range, from continental-style cafe-bars to homely inns, all serving a wide range of drinks and food. Some of our favourites are on this map.

The East Midlands boasts a number of craft breweries, producing ales for sale in the city’s pubs. Everards is a major employer in Leicester, and most of the city’s pubs stock their ale; unfortunately the brewery is unable to offer group tours, but you can take an interactive tour of their Leicester brewery, here. The Grainstore Brewery is next to Oakham Railway Station, only a 25-minute train ride from Leicester, and offers group tours and tastings.

The Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) is a national voluntary organisation which campaigns for real ale, community pubs, and consumer rights; the members of its Leicester Branch keep a keen eye on the region’s pubs.

Delegates who have been lucky enough to get tickets for the now sold-out Guildhall Reception will have the chance to sample local ales, alongside local delicacies such as Melton Mowbray pork pies, Stilton cheese, and Leicester’s Indian cuisine; but if you are still looking for something to do on the evening of Thursday 10th January, do not despair! We will be holding a free pub quiz (sponsored by Antiquity), with a mystery prize for the winning team. Further details will follow…

“Ooh! I need this! I’m teaching my kids about this soon. This one too!” The teacher walked away from our table, two new archaeology- based math lessons in hand. I was almost giddy. As a public archaeologist, I love finding ways to reach out to educators, whose efforts shape the future of our communities. Attending teacher conferences, such as the Florida Council of Teachers of Mathematics, offers a unique chance to reach out to teachers.

The Florida Public Archaeology Network uses an education outreach strategy that involves working directly with teachers. Believe me, I love getting into classrooms and engaging students in archaeology activities—it lights my fire to spark curiosity and fascination in kids. But interacting directly with teachers affords a more efficient method of disseminating archaeology to students. According to Ruth Selig (1991: 3), each educator that attends an archaeology workshop reaches 120 students per year.

Statewide conferences for teachers of math, science, social studies, and even media specialists provide an apt forum to introduce archaeology resources to a large number of teachers in just a couple of days. Better, we don’t have to navigate the structure of a particular school district to make contact. They arrive at the conference and here we are–ready to provide resources that speak to specific standards and skills, using authentic archaeological examples.

In two or three days at a vendors’ booth, we see hundreds of educators. This year, we met teachers of various grades, curriculum specialists, district math coordinators, and even staff from Florida’s Department of Education. We offered a range of resources: lessons, free classroom visits, and teacher workshops (that often provide in-service credit). Teachers received our contact information and provided e-mail addresses if they wanted us to follow up with them.

We also offered a presentation to enhance our connection with the most interested teachers, treating it as a mini-workshop on some of our favorite math lessons. Each participant receives a folder with a bit of info about FPAN and copies of several lessons. I presented a slide show that demonstrates authentic examples of archaeologists applying principles of mathematics: mapping to scale, using the Pythagorean Theorem, and ceramic frequency analysis that explores a changing market. Then our educators get hands-on experience, trying some of our favorite lessons for themselves and asking questions as they arise.

The table and workshop both yield overwhelming positive response to the resources we offer. And I’ll be honest: I take personal and professional gratification from working at them. I was the child of two teachers; having watched my mother (a special education teacher) struggle for years to create her own curriculum and cobble together materials from disparate sources, I know educators can struggle to find engaging material with authentic applications of educational standards. Having a glimpse into the personal expenses that teachers can incur to offer the best experience for students, it delights me to no end when teachers ask how much a class visit costs. I know what will follow my answer: “It’s FREE?”  They are excited to discover that yes, there is a LOT of math in our science, and science in our social studies, and primary source research all over the place. Students, like other humans, relate better to a concept when they see authentic examples.  Seeing how skills may be used in “real life”—or even better, how a skill set can be used to explore or understand something fascinating, helps foster connections and sticky knowledge.

As an archaeologist, I love the responses we get from teachers—for any of these reasons—in a different way. The more they love our resources, the more likely they are to share them with students in the first place. They get support and authentic examples, and in the meantime increase archaeology literacy among the young population.

Having now participated in teacher conferences for a few years, I have found some strategies quite useful. Here is a quick list:

• Make contact info easily accessible. We have a postcard (that also features info about what we can do for teachers) to serve just this purpose.

• Post presentation information at your booth.

• Give it away if you can! After last year’s workshop we had some leftover folders, so we set the extra lessons out on our table. It was like Trick-or-Treat for grownups! Teachers were virtually swarming.

• If you offer lessons, address a range of grades. We handed out two lessons each for elementary, middle school, and high school.

• Align lessons with your state’s educational standards. This can be a doozy, as state standards around the country are in a state of flux right now, but teachers appreciate the effort.

• Provide lessons that meet standards in multiple subject areas, particularly in elementary and middle school. Teachers may teach to more than one subject, or cooperate with others to cover several subject areas.

If you have tried contacting teachers, what strategies have worked for you? Are there any tactics we should add to those we’re already using at teacher conferences? What challenges have you faced? Are there any methods for reaching educators that you would like to learn about more?

For a look at the educational materials that FPAN uses most often, visit Project Archaeology, or download our free lessons on Timucuan Technology, Coquina Queries, and a book of general lessons called Beyond Artifacts.

Bibliography

• Selig, Ruth
  • 1991     Teacher Training Programs in Anthropology: The Multiplier Effect in the Classroom.  In Archaeology and Education: The Classroom and Beyond.  Archaeological Assistance Study Number 2.  KC Smith and Francis P. McManamon, editors, pp. 3-7.  U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Washington, D.C.

Western Bohemia has a rich archaeological heritage and a scholarship reaching back well over a century, but virtually none of that archaeology has examined the post-medieval period.  In the wake of the Velvet Revolution, though, Pavel Vareka began a historical archaeology project at the University of West Bohemia that ambitiously reaches over most of the past millennium and pays particularly close attention to the last 500 years:  In the present-day Czech Republic this ranges across the 30 Years War (1618-1648) to the Revolutions of 1848 to two world wars and 41 years as a Communist territory in the Eastern Bloc.   Pavel is committed to partnering with global historical archaeology scholars, and an astounding number of well-preserved sites dot Western Bohemia.  Many sites along the border have continuous occupations since the 14^th century into the 1960’s, and few places can make a more persuasive claim for being transnational and multicultural than the Czech Republic, with Celtic, Germanic, and Slavic peoples migrating into the region in prehistory and more recently Moravians and Poles among the flood of peoples settling in the region.  Many Czechs migrated to the US beginning in the 1850’s, with one Chicago community dubbed “Pilsen” in reference to Plzen, the home of the University of West Bohemia.  In 1900, only Prague and Vienna had more Czech residents than Chicago, and the US today claims about 1.6 million people of Czech descent.

The shadow of World War II and communism hang over the contemporary Czech Republic, but they provide an exceptionally powerful setting to weave consequential historical narratives driven by archaeological materiality.  Last week Pavel and his colleague Michal Rak took me and my University of Oulu colleague Timo Ylimaunu to see some of the numerous sites scattered between Plzen and the German border about 55 miles away.  Pavel and Michal are documenting the cyclical abandonment of villages in the region during the 17^th-century, when numerous residents were driven from their homes by the invading Swedish Army and in many cases left villages standing with a rich range of domestic material culture in place.  Ironically, after World War II the communists consolidated many of the villages in the region and razed those close to the border, some of which had been continuously occupied a half-millennium.  The architectural and archaeological preservation on these sites is absolutely remarkable, and scores of such villages dot the region awaiting archaeologists.  Nevertheless, as in many places in the world, the archaeological resources themselves are endangered, poorly protected, or not valued by some scholars and communities.  While we were surveying a community cleared in the 1960’s, a metal detectorist was rooting through the ruins, casting aside nearly everything in search of World War II artifacts.  At a remarkable medieval church ruin with 20^th century burials near Plzen, graves had been opened by looters seeking valuables.

The opportunities for global scholars to partner with Czech colleagues are immense, and the groundwork laid by Pavel and his colleagues—and their commitment to work with international scholars—makes such work much more practical.  Learning the history of a whole new place can be truly exciting, and living in places like Plzen can be much less expensive than many American cities.  Liberated by Americans at the end of World War II, Plzen also is especially warm to American visitors today, and reminders of the Czechs’ appreciation for American troops are all over the present-day city.   Many historical archaeologists bring methodological training, material culture training, and a commitment to public engagement that can expand central European archaeology significantly.  The scholarship that can be explored in the Czech Republic and in global connections between Western Bohemia and North America are enormously important to expanding a truly global historical archaeology.

Next year the European Association of Archaeologists’s annual conference will be held in Plzen and hosted by the University of Western Bohemia, so for those who are curious to visit the region and see these exciting sites this will be a valuable chance to visit and to meet our post-medieval colleagues in central Europe and beyond.  The world is covered with enormously fascinating places to do archaeology, and West Bohemia’s rich prehistory, medieval landscapes, and sobering wartime and communist heritage rank among those places to which historical archaeologists should turn.

By Stacey Lynn Camp, University of Idaho

One of the biggest challenges of an academic job search is convincing a hiring committee that your skills and research interests are perfectly tailored to the advertised faculty position. Many advertised positions are ambiguous to begin with, with broad calls that span geographical and temporal specializations. Teaching responsibilities are also sometimes left to the applicant’s imagination, with the candidate charged with the task of deciphering what is expected of them in terms of their teaching and advising load.

Deciphering Teaching Expectations
If it is unclear what a university expects in terms of a teaching load (how many classes you will be expected to teach per academic year) or teaching pedagogy (how you approach teaching), you should spend a considerable amount of time looking into published material associated with the hiring department and its faculty on staff. This information can often be found on a department’s website, where course offerings are usually listed underneath a faculty member’s profile. At my institution, a number of faculty members in my department have published their teaching philosophies in teaching pedagogy journals.

One hint that teaching skills are prized at a university is a request for an applicant’s teaching portfolio, which can be made in the initial job announcement or requested from the applicant once they have made it through the first or second stage of the interview process. If, however, the job advertisement does not require extensive documentation of your teaching experiences, you should still take time to consider and research how many courses you will be teaching in the position, how many students you will be teaching in your courses, what courses you might be able or expected to teach in the department, the textbooks, book chapters, and articles you intend to assign as course texts, and the pedagogical strategies you will employ in the classroom.

No matter where you interview, questions about your teaching will inevitably arise. Even at the most competitive research schools you will be expected to teach a few classes every year, and it is important that you think carefully about how you will undertake course instruction and employ the pedagogical values that you hold dear in the classroom.

If you are one of the fortunate few who make it to the first or second round of interviews for the position, you should ask questions about the teaching and advising expectations and how those balance out with research and publication requirements of the position. These questions are important to the faculty hiring committee, as they show that the candidate has the foresight to consider what their responsibilities will be in this position.

Developing a Philosophy of Teaching
To demonstrate your commitment to teaching, you should consult publications on teaching pedagogy. There is ample literature on the topic that is both broad and discipline-specific in scope; at the very least, it is helpful to be aware of commonly utilized teaching strategies in academia and within the field of archaeology. Recently published literature within our own discipline includes Baxter’s Archaeological Field Schools: A Guide for Teaching in the Field (2009), Burke and Smith’s Archaeology to Delight and Instruct: Active Learning in the University Classroom (2007), and Mytum’s Global Perspectives on Archaeological Field Schools: Constructions of Knowledge and Experience (2012). Citing this literature in your teaching philosophy or mentioning it during interviews shows that you care about your students and you take the role of a faculty mentor and instructor seriously enough to read up on the subject matter.

When I applied for my current position as Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Idaho, a teaching portfolio was part of the initial request for applications. My teaching portfolio comprised of qualitative and quantitative data from my teaching evaluations, letters of support from professors who supervised me as their teaching assistant, letters of support from former students, handouts and assignments from my classes, syllabi from courses I hoped to teach at the University of Idaho, examples of graded papers and my feedback on student assignments, a faculty member’s assessment of my teaching in the classroom. and, perhaps most importantly, my teaching philosophy statement.

I knew that the university was a second tier research institute, which meant that my teaching and research experiences would be equally valued in the hiring process. As a result, I spent a great deal of time writing and thinking about my teaching philosophy. The teaching philosophy should not merely be a descriptive compilation of your accomplishments (e.g. teaching awards, good student evaulations, training in teaching pedagogy, etc.); the hiring committee should be able to find that information on your Curriculum Vitae. Rather, your teaching statement should be a coherent, consistent narrative that describes how you approach teaching, how that approach aligns with your research and dissertation project, and how you see yourself evolving as a teacher over the course of the next five or six years as an assistant professor.

Look at the teaching philosophy as an opportunity to explore the ideas, concepts, and methodologies you desire to impart to your students. This involves a bit of self-reflection; some questions you should ask yourself are: what is it that has driven me toward a career in anthropology? What is it that intrigues me about this discipline? What are the two or three key points or methodologies I want students to know when they leave my classroom? How does my work intersect with other disciplines in meaningful and interesting ways? How can I make anthropology and archaeology relevant to non-anthropology majors?

An Example of a Teaching Philosophy in Historical Archaeology
Let me give you an example of how I answered these questions and composed a teaching philosophy that reflected my personal and academic research interests. What I have always liked about historical archaeology is its multiscaler approach to interpreting a site, a community, or a region. By comparing and contrasting multiple data sources, historical archaeologists can identify gaps in historical knowledge as well as discover contradictions between what is said in the documentary record and what is found in the archaeological record. I encourage students to be active participants in this discovery process by giving them data to analyze and deconstruct, and devote nearly half of my Introduction to Historical Archaeology course at the University of Idaho to critically analyzing and assessing the limitations and advantages of using different sources of information, such as photographs, maps, probate inventories, newspapers, oral histories, and, of course, archaeological assemblages.

Thinking critically about where data originated, who produced the data, and for what purposes the data was collected or written is not simply a skill limited to the practice of historical archaeology. In today’s media saturated world, it is crucial that students, as consumers of media, learn how to assess the intentions of media producers and the validity of the data cited by the media. So, to make a long story short, one of my primary teaching goals is to prepare students to be critical consumers of modern day media and to understand how to verify the authenticity of the media’s claims using the tools of historical archaeology. My course readings, my assignments, and my in-class discussions all work together to impart this skill set to students.

Defining Teaching Experiences
For some applicants, the very thought of organizing a teaching portfolio evokes fear and anxiety. This is perhaps especially true for applicants whose teaching experiences have been limited, comprising of undergraduate mentoring in laboratory or field school settings or serving as teaching assistants for classes. At the very least, you will be expected to demonstrate that you have already started to build a strong repertoire of teaching and mentoring experiences that will serve you well in a faculty position

Even if you have yet to teach your own course, you should not discount other types of interactions and “teaching moments” with undergraduates. These experiences come in many forms, such as working with lab assistants, directing field crews, mentoring and advising undergraduates, or serving as a teaching assistant and directing discussion sections. Much of what we do as archaeologists involves hands-on learning and instruction, but it is up to the applicant to draw connections between what initially may be viewed as atypical forms of instruction and classroom teaching.

Concluding Thoughts on Teaching Philosophies
If you are hired for the position, you will be thankful for devoting energy and time to fleshing out your teaching objectives and philosophy. Teaching statements are an essential component of faculty assessment. When I went up for my third year review at the University of Idaho, I revised and edited my teaching philosophy statement that I submitted as a job applicant. I will be revising it once again when I go up for tenure next year.

Thinking through your approach to teaching can also result in research and publication opportunities. I have written on teaching pedagogy in archaeology (Camp 2010), and how giving students the chance to do archaeology over the course of an academic year and outside of the traditional summer field school model can help solve real-world issues facing campuses.

Inspired by positive student responses to my integration of archaeological experience into the classroom setting, I continue to seek new and innovative ways of delivering course content to my students. From my perspective, then, the best teaching philosophies are ones open to student input, self-critique, and continual revision as one grows and matures as a teacher.

 

Works Cited

Baxter, Jane Eva (2009) Archaeological Field Schools: A Guide for Teaching in the Field. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press, Inc.

Burke, Heather and Claire Smith (eds.) (2007) Archaeology to Delight and Instruct: Active Learning in the University Classroom. One World Archaeology Series. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press, Inc.

Camp, Stacey Lynn (2010) Teaching with Trash: Archaeological Insights on University Waste Management, World Archaeology 42(3):430-42.

Mytum, Harold (ed.) (2012) Global Perspectives on Archaeological Field Schools: Constructions of Knowledge and Experience. New York: Springer.

Welcome to Living Archaeology Weekend in Kentucky!  On the third weekend of September, every year, over 1500 people travel to the Gladie Learning Center in the Red River Gorge in Kentucky, to learn about technologies through time.  The objective of Living Archaeology Weekend (LAW) is to provide a diverse, high-quality, multi-sensory educational opportunity in American Indian and Pioneer technologies and other lifeways, archaeological interpretation, and archaeological site preservation.

The Audience

Each year, the Friday of LAW is devoted to a target audience of over 800 5^th graders from local and regional schools.  In recent years, the steering committee developed teacher training workshops, pre-field trip classroom visits, and formal curriculum that can be used throughout the year.  After their visit, students have the opportunity to enter an essay contest addressing the importance of preservation of cultural resources. The winning student receives accolades in the news, and pizza party for their class, and a set of classroom resources for their teacher.

On Saturday, LAW is open to the public and typically draws upwards of 900-1000 visitors.  On both days, the demonstrations are held on the rolling acreage of the Gladie Learning Center. The native technology and lifeways demonstrations are set-up along a creek floodplain, and the pioneer technology and lifeways demonstrations are located at the Gladie Cabin.

The Experience

The Native Demonstration Area hosts a number of exciting technology demonstrations, including flintknapping, bow-arrow, fishing, blowguns, pottery making, stone bowl and pipe making, willow basket weaving, and cane mat weaving. Visitors can try their hand at spear throwing with an atlatl, cattail mat weaving, cordage making, and hide tanning. At the pump drill demonstration, visitors use flint-tipped drills to make their own shell and rock pendants.

At the plant domestication demonstration, visitors learn about native crops, use native gardening technologies like digging sticks and shell hoes, and earn free packets of native squash seeds. Because the Red River Gorge is a World Hearth of Plant domestication, we have a demonstration on medicinal plant use on Friday. Learning about plants that were first domesticated in Kentucky, and how those plants were used for food, shelter, storage, and clothing is just one of the many experiences at LAW.

Other demonstrations focus on native arts and games. Visitors learn about cane flutes and listen to beautiful music. On Friday, members of the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians of Oklahoma lead students in the traditional stickball game. On Saturday, they demonstrate the Cherokee marble game and basket making.

Several of the pioneer demonstrations focus on corn, from farming and processing methods to tools and technology to crafts. At the spinning and quilting demonstrations, visitors can use drop spindles and tack a quilt. Students participating in Living Archaeology Weekend 2011 helped create a beautiful quilt for Community Hospice in Ashland, Kentucky. The blacksmith demonstrates methods of forging, melding, heat treating, and finishing. A longhunter recreator in period dress describes technology and trading on the early Kentucky frontier. Music demonstrations featuring traditional instruments celebrate the rich traditions of Appalachia.

The Gladie cabin, which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1989, formerly served as a hotel, a post office, and a home before being moved to the Gladie Cultural-Environmental Learning Center. Stewardship and preservation are also a primary goal of the event, and visitors are invited to tour the Gladie Cabin and learn about the importance of site stewardship. This particular cabin has been furnished over time with collected materials from the community. Rather than interpret a particular period in the cabin, or take out modern materials, we decided to harness the teachable moment and, next year, ask the visitors to think critically about the cabin and to decide what items might not represent the cabin history accurately.  Do you have ideas on more ways to interpret historic cabins?

Growing and improving

The steering committee is always brain storming ways to improve our materials and the experience. One oversight we recognized this year was that the connection between archaeology and the demonstrated technologies is not clear. One solution is to develop signage for each station noting clear, concise examples of archaeological signatures for each technology. We’d appreciate examples or suggestions below!

In addition to improving the actual event, we are constantly seeking new ways to attract educators in our region to the teacher workshop. If you have suggestions on reaching teachers and successfully attracting them to a certified training event, please let us know.

Support

LAW is made possible by a host of private sponsors and, in large part, by the Daniel Boone National Forest, the Kentucky Archaeology Survey, the Kentucky Organization of Professional Archaeologists, and the Kentucky Heritage Council. This year marked the 24^th year of the event and we are proud to say that it gets better every year!  Check out our website for more event details and links to education materials (www.livingarchaeologyweekend.org ).

The conference program for the SHA 2013 conference in Leicester boasts a number of trips and tours; here is your opportunity to see more of Leicester and the surrounding area. You can register for these trips and tours, which take place on the days immediately before and after the conference, via the online conference registration website, or with the registration form enclosed with your latest copy of the SHA newsletter. All tours depart from the Mercure Hotel, in the centre of Leicester. Any tour that fails to register a minimum number of participants will be cancelled, and any moneys paid will be refunded to the registrant.

‘City of contrasts’ – a walking tour of Leicester

Wednesday January 9, 2013. 11.00am to 3.30pm

Cost: $10.00; lunch is not included; there are many places to eat in Leicester City Centre.

Leicester is one of the most ethnically and culturally diverse cities in the UK outside London, with a rich urban heritage of archaeological sites and historic architecture. This walking tour led by local experts in Leicester archaeology and history will take participants through the city’s remarkable story from the Roman period to the 21st century. Leicester began life as a Roman provincial capital known as Ratae Corieltauvorum, and there are standing remains of a Roman building known as Jewry Wall next to Saint Nicholas’ church. The city was the county town in the medieval period, and the tour will include visits to medieval churches, the castle and the timber-framed guildhall. In the post-medieval period Leicester developed into a major industrial centre, and there are many fine 18th- and 19th-century houses, warehouses and commercial buildings to be seen. Leicester experienced dramatic growth in the 20th century with large scale immigration from South Asia, Uganda and the Caribbean among other places, and today has a rich cultural heritage of religious diversity and toleration, marked by the many Hindu, Sikh and Muslim places of worship across the city (not to mention fantastic international cuisine!)

NOTE – Participants should wear comfortable shoes for a day of walking.

‘If these pots could talk’ – the Staffordshire Potteries

Wednesday January 9, 2013. 8.30am to 4.30pm

$60.00; lunch included. 

A visit to the Staffordshire  Potteries which made many of the 17^th and 18^th century ceramics which are found on sites in the USA, such as creamware, salt-glazed stoneware, bone china and porcelain. See round the Gladstone Pottery Museum, one of the few surviving pot banks in the Potteries, where the processes from clay-processing to glazing, transfer printing and firing can be seen. Lunch will be taken at the Museum, followed by a talk from ceramics expert David Barker and a tour round the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery, with the finest collection of Staffordshire pottery in the world.

‘More glass than wall’ – Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire

Wednesday January 9, 2013. 9.00am to 4.30pm

$110.00; lunch included.

A unique opportunity for an exclusive visit to Hardwick Hall, a 16^th century masterpiece and one of the finest historic houses in Great Britain. Created by Bess of Hardwick in the expectation of a visit from Queen Elizabeth I, its huge windows look out over the surrounding countryside of Derbyshire. The house is famous for having one of the best preserved Elizabethan interiors in Britain, with an extensive collection of original early modern furniture, decoration and textiles. A grand staircase takes visitors to the High Great Chamber with its great frieze of the virgin goddess and huntress Diana in a forest, an allusion to the virgin Queen Elizabeth. Participants will have the house to themselves, with a guided tour led by the National Trust’s House and Collections Manager at Hardwick. The visit will include a light lunch.

NOTE – as the house is not normally open to the public in January, it may be cold and participants should dress accordingly.

‘All the world’s a stage’ – Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire

Wednesday January 9, 2013. 9.00am to 4.30pm

$65.00; lunch included.

A special opportunity to visit Shakespeare’s home town of Stratford-upon-Avon, one of Britain’s most popular tourist destinations. As well as the famous attractions associated with Shakespeare’s life and family, Stratford-upon-Avon is a beautiful market town dating back to the medieval period, with a wealth of historic timber-framed buildings. Participants will visit the Shakespeare Birthplace Museum, where original 16th-century furnishings and interiors have been painstakingly reconstructed and will also have the opportunity to see Hall’s Croft (home of Shakespeare’s daughter) and Holy Trinity Church where the playwright is buried. In the afternoon they will receive a tour of the Guild Chapel and grammar school, which date back to the 15th century, where new research has reconstructed the original layout and decoration of the buildings.

 ‘Ship ahoy!’ – Maritime Greenwich and the Cutty Sark

Sunday January 13, 2013. 8.00am to 5.00pm

$115.00; lunch included.

Maritime Greenwich was designated a World Heritage Site in 1997, testimony to its central role in the development of British and European maritime power between the 17th and 19th centuries. The tour will visit the major attractions which make up the World Heritage Site: the National Maritime Museum, which is the world’s largest maritime museum with a remarkable collection representing 500 years of British maritime and naval heritage; the Old Royal Naval College, designed by Sir Christopher Wren; and the Royal Observatory, straddling the Prime Meridian and housing the famous Harrison timekeepers among other displays (http://www.rmg.co.uk/). Lunch will be provided. In the afternoon, the tour will visit the Cutty Sark, the last surviving 19th-century tea clipper and once the greatest and fastest sailing ship of her time. The ship re-opened in mid-2012 after extensive restoration (following a devastating fire) with a new exhibition centre, so this is a great opportunity to see an important piece of maritime heritage brought stunningly back to life.

‘Poverty and prayer’ – the Minster and Workhouse at Southwell, Nottinghamshire

Sunday January 13, 2013. 10.00am to 4.30pm

$60.00; lunch included.

A visit to one of the East Midlands’ hidden gems, the historic Minster town of Southwell, Nottinghamshire. Southwell is known to have been an important Roman centre, and in the Anglo-Saxon period the town was granted to the Archbishops of York, who established a major Minster church here. The Minster is a beautiful miniature Cathedral, with a 12th-century Norman nave and a 13th-century gothic chancel and chapter house, famous for its wonderful naturalistic sculpted decoration.The small town surrounding the Minster contains pretty Georgian houses and shops. Outside the town stands a more dismal element of Southwell’s history; in 1824, the first Union Workhouse in Britain was built here, which survives remarkably intact and is now owned by the National Trust. A grim building designed to segregate, punish and reform the ‘idle poor’, the Southwell Workhouse became the model for the notorious ‘New Poor Law’ of 1834, and the bleak interiors display attitudes towards poverty, homelessness and institutional life from the 19th century to the present day. For delegates with an interest in institutions of incarceration and reform, this tour provides a unique opportunity to experience life in one of the most influential punitive institutions of 19th-century Britain.

NOTE – as the Workhouse is not normally open to visitors in January it will be very cold, and participants should dress accordingly. Comfortable walking shoes should be worn.

Ironbridge – Birthplace of the Industrial Revolution?

9.00am, Sunday January 13 to 4.30pm, Monday January 14, 2013.

Single occupancy $250.00; double occupancy $210.00 per person. Dinner, bed and breakfast included.

The Ironbridge Gorge was among the first group of UK sites to be designated as a World Heritage Site in 1988. The Quaker industrialist Abraham Darby first successfully smelted iron ore with coke here in 1700, and his grandson then built the world’s first cast iron bridge across the River Severn in 1779.  The Coalbrookdale Company created one of the first industrial settlements with its terraced rows of housing, institutes, churches and chapels.

This two-day tour will visit all of the museums which are part of the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust.  These include the open air museum of Blists Hill, the Coalbrookdale Museum of Iron, The Jackfield Tile Museum and Coalport China Museum with its splendid displays of bone china. Dinner and overnight accommodation in the Telford Golf Hotel and Resort.  A highlight of the visit will be an early evening lecture from the Academic Director at Ironbridge, David de Haan. He is a leading expert on the 1779 iron bridge, to cross which even the Royal Family had to pay tolls, and he will also lead a tour to the bridge and its toll-house next day.