Montana Archaeology

"Prehistoric Peacemaking"

2010-08-09T03:53:00.000-07:00

This is an oil painting I did a number of years ago. It portrays two precontact Native American groups in Montana, ready for war, but choosing to make peace instead. The large shields which covered more of the body were used previous to the introduction of the horse. Currently it is in a private collection in Nebraska.

Ancient buffalo jump discovered on Blackfeet Reservation

2010-08-09T03:34:00.000-07:00

BROWNING — A vast former hunting complex where bison were stampeded over a cliff at least 1,000 years ago has been uncovered on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in northwestern Montana, archaeologists say.

Researchers said the 9-mile-long area contains a well-preserved “drive-line” system used to funnel bison to their deaths, along with bison bones and the remnants of campsites with hundreds of tepee rings.
Maria Nieves Zedeno, an archaeologist from the University of Arizona’s School of Anthropology and Bureau of Applied Research, said it is one of the best-preserved drive-line systems she has seen.

“We really need to preserve this site for future generations,” Zedeno said.

The site is on a remote plateau overlooking the Two Medicine River, on land owned by the Blackfeet Tribe. Researchers said it could become one of the most significant and largest Blackfeet heritage sites in the region.

Plains Indians harvested bison hundreds of years ago by stampeding them over cliffs, and other jump sites, as they’re called, exist in the region.

John Murray, the tribe’s historic preservation officer, said the new site will help tribal members understand their history. He said officials hope to one day build an interpretive center at the site.

“The project is important to connect the culture and heritage,” Murray said.

Researchers said that besides the bison kill site, they have been uncovering artifacts with social and religious significance, including a camp site with 651 tepee rings.

Murray said some Blackfeet members have known about the site for some time, and that increasing oil and gas exploration on the reservation has prompted a push toward preserving cultural sites.

Zedeno said similar kill sites on the reservation have been destroyed by bone collectors, and other kill sites are either damaged or on private land.

At the most recent site, much of the excavation work has been going on at the base of the 30-foot cliff the bison were driven over. Another dig is taking place about 20 feet away that’s thought to be a processing area.

Bison scapulas have been found lined up in an intentional manner, but archaeologists are unsure of the significance.

(From: http://helenair.com/news/article_1dfedeee-a382-11df-8b68-001cc4c002e0.html)

Barton Gulch PaleoIndians

2010-03-21T12:32:00.000-07:00

"People of the Hearth" is an excellent video I show in my archaeology class about the Late Paleoindians that lived about 9400 years ago in Barton Gulch, in the mountains down by where Dillon, Montana, is now located. This is the Wikipedia article on it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barton_Gulch

Definitely worth watching. I am not aware of any other videos out there specifically on an archaeological site in Montana, so if you know of another, please let me know in the comments!

2010 Introduction to Archaeology Syllabus

2010-01-28T11:25:00.000-08:00

INTRODUCTION TO ARCHAEOLOGY

CRN 39222 / ANTH 103A /3 credits
Spring 2010/ T & Th, 3:30-4:45 pm / DON 206

Instructor: Lance M. Foster, M.A., M.L.A.
E-mail: lancemfoster@yahoo.com
Academic Web Site: N/A
Office Hours/Location: By Appointment (Home phone: 422-5911)

Course Description

Archaeology is the study of the human past through the remains of their material culture. Archaeology uses many different approaches and tools to study and explain how people lived in the distant and not-so-distant past. Artifacts, sites, settlements, and landscapes may be studied to help reveal how people lived, how they saw themselves and their world, what the environment was like, and how these factors interrelated and changed through time. In this class you will gain an overview of what archaeology is, how archaeology is done, and what it can tell us about our world, past, present and perhaps even a glimpse of our future. This course is intended to be an introductory survey of archaeology for undergraduate students, either as an elective or as a foundation for further studies in archaeology. There are no prerequisites for this course.

Course Outcomes

Students who participate fully in this class will:
• Students will be able to describe the scientific approach to archaeological investigation and ethics, and how this differs from popular misunderstandings about the discipline
• Students will be able to trace the historic origins and key thinkers of archaeology
• Students will able to discuss a basic understanding of archaeological cultures in Montana and the practice of archaeology in the state
• Students will be able to define and discuss the key terms and concepts used in archaeology, from artifacts and features, through excavation and analysis
• Students will be able to identify and discuss a basic outline of major archaeological cultures at the national and international levels
• Students will be understand and compare diverse interests in the past
• Students will be able to describe the concepts of archaeological ethics and stewardship
• Students will learn to apply the lessons of archaeology as applied to contemporary developments in society today

Required Texts

Ashmore, Wendy, and Robert J. Sharer
2000 Discovering Our Past: A Brief Introduction to Archaeology. 3rd edition. McGraw-Hill.

Diamond, Jared
2005 Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. New York: Penguin Books.

Feder, Kenneth L.
2005 Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries: Science and Pseudoscience in Archaeology. 5th Edition. McGraw-Hill.

Course Grading and Expectations

A. ATTENDANCE: Attendance will be taken for every scheduled class; students are responsible for making sure they sign the sign-in sheet themselves which is passed out at the start of every class. The student should also attend the entire class and not duck out early. This is because if students are having trouble in class it is often because they miss too many classes. In addition, if the student is failing, we are required to tell the administration the last day the student attended class, which may also affect some funding sources. Every full class the student attends is worth 5 points.
The only exceptions will be for documented medical situations. Please get the notes from other students if you have to miss a class. The professor will not provide copies of his lecture notes to students. Makeup exams will only be given for documented medical situations.

B. PARTICIPATION: Classes include lectures, discussions, and videos. Assigned readings must be done IN ADVANCE so you can DISCUSS the material in class. Lectures include material beyond that in your texts for which you will be responsible on exams, so note-taking and attendance are required. You are encouraged to bring in articles from the current news media to discuss. Class participation is expected and will count positively towards your final grade.

C. EXAMS: There will be two exams, a midterm and a final. Both are made up of fill-in-the-blank, multiple choice and matching, with short essay-type questions. Each will cover assigned readings for that time period as well as lectures and other class materials. The final will be cumulative to a small degree in that you will need to know the basic concepts of archaeology to interpret the record of prehistory and early history. There will be NO makeup exams except in fully documented serious circumstances. A makeup exam must be taken within one week of the missed exam, and will consist of all essay questions.

D. There is a Special Project worth 50 points which will be discussed in a later class.

Also, be sure and read the “Academic Integrity” statement from UM-Helena below; students will be held strictly accountable to this statement.

E. FINAL GRADE CALCULATION:

Attendance 30 classes = 5 points each = 150 points
Midterm (closed book) 50 points
Final (closed book) 50 points
Special Project/Presentation 50 points

300 points possible, divided by 3 = final score

100-90 points = A
80-89 points = B
70-79 points = C
60-69 points = D

Late policy/penalties: Assignments are due in HARDCOPY at the beginning of class on the day they are assigned; papers will be dropped one full grade for each day they are late.

Students with physical, cognitive, or psychological disabilities are encouraged to meet with the Director of Disability Services, Cindy Yarberry, in the ACCESS Center, to discuss possible accommodations. She can be reached at 444-6897 or at yarberryc@umhelena.edu. All information will be kept confidential. If a student requires testing accommodations, it is the student's responsibility to ask me to send a copy of the test to the ACCESS Center at least 24 hours in advance of the test

Academic Rigor
Based on the UM-H Academic Rigor Value Statement, here what you should expect from me:
1) that I communicate the course expectations to you and have them summarized on this syllabus;
2) that I come to class prepared, and that I give you useful feedback on your assignments in a timely manner;
3) that I am available to you outside of the classroom;
4) that you can collaborate with your classmates on writing assignments as long as the products of those assignments are truly your work;
5) that the assignments are relevant, meaningful and challenging;
6) that I approach guiding your learning in ways geared to your diverse talents and abilities;
7) that I reduce, if not eliminate, your perceived need to plagiarize, and that I challenge plagiarism should it occur.

Based on the UM-H Academic Rigor Value Statement, here is what I expect from you:
1) that you will set high expectations for yourself along with a strong sense of collegiate purpose; that you come to class prepared, and complete and submit assignments by the deadlines;
2) that you make the most of your time with me in and out of class;
3) that you treat fellow students and the classroom with respect, and participate in our process;
4) that you manage your time so that you can treat college and this course as real work with real value;
5) that you participate with complete honesty and integrity; and finally
6) that you accept responsibility for learning and the grades you earn.

Academic Integrity
The University of Montana-Helena adheres to high standards of academic integrity. A single instance of the following violations will result in an F grade for that assignment; a subsequent violation will result in an FX grade for the course (see Catalog), and in both cases I will report the violation to the academic dean:

• Plagiarism: submitting the words, work or ideas of others without properly crediting them; this includes tracing/copying the artistic work of others, including sources from the Internet
• Using work generated in another class, by you or someone else, for credit in this class without permission from the instructor.

Misc.
This syllabus is subject to change. Please turn off cell phones during class.
Students with unique learning needs are encouraged to see me to discuss course requirements and approved accommodations. Students who seek information about disability services should contact Disability Services Director Judy Hay, located in the Access Center, at 444-6897, or at hayj@hct.umt.edu.

Class Schedule
*IMPORTANT: Guest speakers are invited and 1-2 field trips are planned; due to weather considerations, etc., when they occur, the schedule will be adjusted accordingly.

WEEK ONE

Jan. 19 T First day of class; class introductions, class syllabus, standards and expectations; the required texts and other materials.
Reading assignments for next class: Ashmore and Sharer, Chapter 1: “Introduction,” pp. 1-24; Feder, Chapter 1: “Science and Pseudoscience,” pp. 1-16

Jan. 21 Th What Archaeology is—and what it is not. Archaeology defined; ethics and misuses of archaeology; archaeology as science, as history and as anthropology; archaeology as a profession.
Reading assignment for next class: Ashmore and Sharer, Chapter 2: “Archaeology’s Past”, pp. 25-38; Ashmore and Sharer, Chapter 3: “Contemporary Approaches to Archaeology,” pp. 39-60.

WEEK TWO

Jan. 26 T The History of Archaeology: Origins, development, and the contemporary scene. The (sub)culture of archaeologists and archaeology.
Reading assignment for next class: Feder, Chapter 2: “Epistemology: How You Know What You Know,” pp. 17-43 and Chapter 3, “Anatomy of an Archaeological Hoax”, pp. 44-63,

Jan. 28 Th Epistemology (how you know what you know), critical thinking, and scientific archaeology. The Cardiff Giant: frauds and hoaxes in archaeology.
Reading assignment for next class: Ashmore and Sharer, Chapter 4: “How Archaeology Works,” pp. 61-86.

WEEK THREE

Feb. 2 T Archaeological data, deposition and site transformation processes, research design; archaeological research projects.
Reading assignment for next class: Ashmore and Sharer, Chapter 5: “Fieldwork,” pp. 87-124 and Feder, Chapter 10, “Good Vibrations: Psychics and Dowsers,” pp. 261-277.

Feb. 4 Th Archaeology in the field: Survey, excavation, data processing, classification.
Reading assignment for next class: Ashmore and Sharer, Chapter 6: “Analyzing the Past,” pp. 125-156.

WEEK FOUR

Feb. 9 T Archaeology in the laboratory: Analysis of artifacts, ecofacts, and features.
Reading assignment for next class: Ashmore and Sharer, Chapter 7: “Dating the Past,” Pp. 157-178.

Feb. 11 Th
Archaeology in the laboratory: Chronology, seriation, sequence comparison, stratigraphy, geochronology, obsidian hydration, floral and faunal analysis, radiometry, archaeomagnetism, limited/experimental methods.
Reading assignment for next class: Ashmore and Sharer, Chapter 8: “Reconstructing the Past,” Pp. 179-211.

WEEK FIVE

Feb. 16 T Archaeological Interpretation: Analogy and the abuse of analogy, Identifying activities in space and time
Reading assignment for next class: Ashmore and Sharer, Chapter 9: “Understanding the Past,” Pp. 212-237 and Chapter 11, “Old Time Religion – New Age Visions,” pp. 278-310.

Feb. 18 Th Archaeological Paradigms: Culture History Approach, Processualism, Post-Processual and Emergent Interpretations, Multiple Approaches, Alternative Archaeologies
Reading assignment for next class: Ashmore and Sharer, Chapter 10: “Archaeology Today,” pp. 238-254 and Feder, Chapter 12, “Real Mysteries of a Veritable Past,” pp. 311-333.

WEEK SIX

Feb. 23 T Contemporary Issues in Archaeology: Ethics, looting and antiquities collecting; destruction in the name of progress; Cultural Resource Management (CRM); nationalism. colonialism and war; working with descendant communities; the responsibilities of archaeology.
Reading assignment for next class: None, as there will be an exam that class

Feb. 25 Th Contemporary Issues in Archaeology (continued); Midterm Exam Review

WEEK SEVEN

Mar. 2 T MIDTERM EXAM

Mar. 4 Th Discussion of Exam. Reading assignments for next class: Feder, Chapter 7, “Lost: One Continent – Reward,” pp. 177-206.

WEEK EIGHT

Mar. 9 T Outline of Old World Archaeology: Hominids: The Peopling of the World (Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Americas); DNA and archaeological evidence.
Reading assignment for next class: Feder, Chapter 4, “Dawson’s Dawn Man: The Hoax at Piltdown,” pp. 64-90 and Chapter 9, “Mysterious Egypt,” pp. 234-260.

Mar. 11 Th Outline of Old World Archaeology: Agriculture and the Great Civilizations; Internationally-significant archaeological sites/landscapes of the Old World.
Reading assignment for next class: Chapter 8, “Prehistoric E.T.: The Fantasy of Ancient Astronauts,” pp. 207-233.

WEEK NINE

Mar. 16 T New World Archaeology: The Peopling of the Americas; Controversies and Native American views.
Reading assignment for next class: Feder, Chapter 5, “Who Discovered America?,” pp. 91-145 and Chapter 6, “The Myth of the Moundbuilders,” pp. 147-176.

Mar. 18 Th New World Archaeology: Agricultural Societies and New World Civilizations; Internationally-significant archaeological sites/landscapes of the New World.
Reading assignment for next class (after Spring Break): Begin reading Jared Diamond’s “Collapse”, Prologue pp. 1-23, and further, to get a head start).

WEEK TEN

Mar. 22-26 SPRING BREAK – No Classes; College Open

WEEK ELEVEN

Mar. 30 T Montana Archaeology Overview: Prehistoric Archaeology in Montana; the Historic Indian tribes of Montana; Historic Archaeology in Montana: Mining, ranching, timber, industrial.
Reading assignment for next class: Diamond, “Part One: Modern Montana; Chapter 1: Under Montana’s Big Sky,” pp. 25-75.

Apr. 1 Th Lessons from Archaeology: Montana in Jared Diamond’s “Collapse.”
Reading assignment for next class: Diamond, “Part Two: Past Societies”: “Chapter 2: Twilight at Easter” (pp. 79-119) and “Chapter 3: The Last People Alive: Pitcairn and Henderson Islands” (pp. 120-135).

WEEK TWELVE

Apr. 6 T Lessons from Archaeology: “Collapse”: Easter Island and the Polynesians
Reading assignment for next class: Diamond, “Part Two: Past Societies”: “Chapter 4: The Ancient Ones: The Anasazi and Their Neighbors” (pp. 136-156) and “Chapter 5: The Maya Collapses” (pp. 157-177).

Apr. 8 Th Lessons from Archaeology: “Collapse”: The Anasazi and the Maya
Reading assignment for next class: Diamond, “Part Two: Past Societies”: “Chapter 6: The Viking Prelude and Fugues” (pp. 178-210) and “Chapter 7: Norse Greenland’s Flowering” (pp. 211-247).

WEEK THIRTEEN

Apr. 13 T Lessons from Archaeology: “Collapse”: The Vikings, Part I
Reading assignment for next class: Diamond, “Part Two: Past Societies”: “Chapter 8: Norse Greenland’s End” (pp. 248-276) and “Chapter 9: Opposite Paths to Success” (pp. 277-308.

Apr. 15 Th Lessons from Archaeology: “Collapse”: The Vikings, Part II
Reading assignment for next class: Diamond, “Part Three: Modern Societies”: “Chapter 10: Malthus in Africa: Rwanda’s Genocide” (pp. 311-328) and “Chapter 11: One Island, Two Peoples, Two Histories: The Dominican Republic and Haiti” (pp. 329-357).

WEEK FOURTEEN

Apr. 20 T Lessons from Archaeology: “Collapse”: Modern Societies: Africa and the Caribbean
Reading assignment for next class: Diamond, “Part Three: Modern Societies”: “Chapter 12: China, Lurching Giant” (pp. 358-377) and “Chapter 13: ‘Mining’ Australia” (pp. 378-416.

Apr. 22 Th Lessons from Archaeology: “Collapse”: Modern Societies: Asia and the Pacific
Reading assignment for next class: Diamond, “Practical Lessons”: “Chapter 14: Why Do Some Societies Make Disastrous Decisions?” (pp. 419-440) and “Chapter 15: Big Businesses and the Environment: Different Conditions, Different Outcomes” (pp. 441-485).

WEEK FIFTEEN

Apr. 27 T Lessons from Archaeology: “Collapse”: Practical Lessons: Societies, Businesses and the Environment
Reading assignment for next class: Diamond, “Practical Lessons”: “Chapter 16: The World as a Polder: What Does It All Mean to Us Today?” (pp. 486-525).

Apr. 29 Th Lessons from Archaeology: “Collapse”: Practical Lessons: “What Does It All Mean to Us Today?”
LAST DAY FOR SPECIAL PROJECTS PRESENTATIONS

WEEK SIXTEEN (LAST WEEK OF CLASS)

The Final Exams are scheduled as a whole by the college. To avoid conflicts and allow for extra length of some finals; as soon as I know the schedule for our final exam, I will inform the students. The other class will be a field trip.

May 4 T -Flex-

May 6 Th -Flex-

Outreach Seeking Collectors with Paleoindian Points from Montana

2009-09-20T05:21:00.000-07:00

It's been several months since I worked on Montana Archaeology blog, but I am making a fresh start with a clipping on PaleoIndians in Montana from today's Helena Independent Record (20 Sept 2009). Because of the lack of knowledge on Paleoindian culture in Montana, there is a new initiative led by Montana's SHPO to better feed Montana data into the national Paleoindian Database of the Americas (PIDBA), at the University of Tennessee's Department of Anthropology:

...By United States standards, Montana was one of the last states settled by Europeans. But as in much of the rest of the country, there were people here thousands of years before Columbus "discovered" America. We don't know much about them - and now the state would like to know more. The Montana Historical Society is working with Ruthann Knudson, a semi-retired archaeologist in Great Falls, in trying to locate more Paleoindian artifacts from around the state. These artifacts, primarily the sharpened tips of handheld tools, have been found sparingly around the state, but experts believe there are many more, just waiting to be dug up or to surface in an eroded stream bank. "There has been minimal systematic survey done in Montana," Knudson said. "Until we can collect Montana Paleoindian information, most of which is in the heads and collections of avocational or amateur archaeologists, we won't know what is out on the landscape and in collections."

State archaeologist Stan Wilmoth said around 100 Paleoindian artifacts and/or sites have been found around Montana - a small fraction of the 30,000 or so sites identified across the country. He hopes people with private collections will volunteer information about what they've found and where they found it, so Montana's finds can be added to a national Paleoindian Database of the Americas.

Nobody is quite sure who the first humans were in Montana, or how they got here. For centuries some have believed in the Bering Strait theory of people crossing a "land bridge" from Asia to Alaksa during the ice age, but proof has been elusive. What is known is that there were people in Montana as far back as 11,500 years ago - and we know that because there are human remains that have been carbon-dated to that time. "People have lived here for at least 13,000 years, and most people don't have a concept of that length of time," Knudson said. "It's important for all of us, no matter our genetic heritage, to understand how people have used this landscape."

Wilmoth said Paleo flint points are distinguished by their size - larger than those that came earlier - as well as fluted grooves at the point where the point was connected to its wooden handle. "They're very large, and they have exquisite marksmanship," Wilmoth said. "They used the best craftsmanship, the best materials. Most of them were used for hand-held spear points or knives."

Finding a Paleo artifact in Montana is rare - many of those found have been buried under several feet or more of dirt - but people in the Helena area have as much chance as anyone. Many of the sites found have been clustered around the Missouri River and its tributaries, and one of the state's best-known sites is in Montana City. Most are found by accident. Within the past five years, Wilmoth said, some points were discovered in the North Hills of the Helena Valley, when excavation work for a subdivision was being done. "Nobody was looking for it, nobody really knew what they had," he said. "They felt proud, but they were also worried that they would get in trouble for it. We want to be clear that we aren't interested in any of those legal issues."

While unearthing an entire campsite or burial ground would constitute an outstanding find, Wilmoth said even a single artifact from the Paleo era is worth bringing to the attention of the state. "An isolated point is never going to have the same information potential as a point in the ground at a site where we can build up the whole story," Wilmoth said. "But an isolated point can tell us about the geographic extent of particular cultural trends, some of the materials can be sourced to a location. If they're in a cached site, that tells us about social organization and the spirituality of the people involved. ...We imagine these were very small groups, 25 or 50 would be a good guess for that period," he said. "And they were probably pretty mobile."

Figuring out what people were up to 10,000 years ago is hardly an exact science, and comparing archaeology to detective work isn't inaccurate. There are still questions about Paleo sites that have been known about for decades.

"One of the things we're still working on is, 'Where did the stone come from?'" Knudson said. "And the question is, 'Did people travel for this stone, or trade for this stone?' There's never a clear answer. It's always a game." And it's a game she loves. People with information about Paleo artifacts in Montana, or questions about artifacts they've found or acquired, can contact Knudson at (406) 216-2676 or paleoknute@3rivers.net.

PaleoIndian Period (14,000 - 8000 years ago) projectile points and tool kits in Montana include artifacts from the early Paleoindian cultures known as Clovis, Folsom, and Goshen complex (similar to the Plainview points in Texas), as well as the late Paleoindian (sometimes known as Plano period in some areas of the Plains, but grouped in Montana with Paleoindian) which includes stemmed and unstemmed points: Plateau Stemmed, Agate Basin, Hellgap, Alberta, Alder complex (including the Ruby Valley point), Cody (includes Cody, Eden, Scottsbluff, and some include Alberta here), and the Hardinger complex (including the Metzal point).

In this photo of a general education collection of Paleoindian points from today's article, not all the point types found in Montana are represented, and not all the point types in this collection are found in Montana. Part of the situation is that most archaeologists either become specialists in Plains archaeology or in Plateau archaeology, and Montana contains both.

The collection does show examples of some point/tool types found in Montana: Clovis, Folsom, Goshen (compare to Plainview), Agate Basin, Alberta, Hell Gap, Cody, Eden.

To my best knowledge, Scottsbluff, Angostura, Plainview (in the strict sense), Fredricks [sic: Frederick], or Midland types have not been found in Montana.

The collection does not show examples of these Paleoindian points found in Montana: Plateau Stemmed (because the collection focuses on Plains types) or the types found at Barton Gulch, Alder/Ruby Valley or Hardinger/Metzal.

The Paleoindian Database of the Americas' page for Montana includes maps and a bibliography of published resources on Montana's Paleoindian sites. There are also downloadable data in Excel format, including the Mangus site, the Mill Iron site, and the Anzick Cache Site so far (as of Sept. 20, 2009). This paucity of information is the major reason why Wilmoth and Knudsen are involved in this outreach initiative-- to see what private collectors with Montana materials might have lying around in an old box in the barn that Grandpa picked up on the ranch generations ago.

New Clovis Find in Colorado Backyard

2009-02-26T17:22:00.000-08:00

It's not in Montana, but it is proof that just because a place has gone through intense urban development doesn't mean there aren't any archaeological sites there....

13,000-year-old tools unearthed at Colorado home

By ALYSIA PATTERSON, Associated Press Writer
Thu Feb 26, 3:34 pm ET

DENVER – Landscapers were digging a hole for a fish pond in the front yard of a Boulder home last May when they heard a "chink" that didn't sound right. Just some lost tools. Some 13,000-year-old lost tools. They had stumbled onto a cache of more than 83 ancient tools buried by the Clovis people — ice age hunter-gatherers who remain a puzzle to anthropologists.

The home's owner, Patrick Mahaffy, thought they were only a century or two old before contacting researchers at the University of Colorado-Boulder.

"My jaw just dropped," said CU anthropologist Douglas Bamforth, who is leading a study of the find. "Boulder is a densely populated area. And in the midst of all that to find this cache."

The cache is one of only a handful of Clovis-age artifacts uncovered in North America, said Bamforth.

The tools reveal an unexpected level of sophistication, Bamforth said, describing the design as "unnecessarily complicated," artistic and utilitarian at the same time.

What researchers found on the tools also was significant. Biochemical analysis of blood and other protein residue revealed the tools were used to butcher camels, horses, sheep and bears. That proves that the Clovis people ate more than just woolly mammoth meat for dinner, something scientists were unable to confirm before.

"A window opens up into this incredibly remote way of life that we normally can't see much of," Bamforth said.
The cache was buried 18 inches deep and was packed into a hole the size of a large shoe box. The tools were most likely wrapped in a skin that deteriorated over time, Mahaffy said.

"The kind of stone that's present — the kind that flakes to a good sharp edge — isn't widely available in this part of Colorado. It looks like they were storing material because they knew they would need it later," said Bamforth.

Bamforth believes the tools had been untouched since the owners placed them there for storage.

Mahaffy's Clovis cache is one of only two that have been analyzed for protein residue from ice age animals, Bamforth said. Mahaffy paid for the analysis by California State University in Bakersfield.

A biotech entrepreneur, Mahaffy is familiar with the process. He is the former president and chief executive officer of Boulder-based Pharmion Corp., acquired by Celgene Corp. for nearly $3 billion in 2007.

Mahaffy wants to donate most of the tools to a museum but plans to rebury a few of them in his yard.

"These tools have been associated with these people and this land for 13,000 years," he said. "I would like some of these tools to stay where they belong."

Re-opening the Historic Drumlummon Mine

2009-02-08T06:38:00.000-08:00

According to today's Helena Independent Record,the historic Drumlummon Mine at Marysville will probably be re-opening. Hopefully they will record the historic features in the mine before they remove it. There are some interesting things that survive deep in the mine:

Slowly, the darkness gives way to a fairly well-lit cavern, which is about 30-by-60 feet wide, with a 50-foot ceiling full of “stopes” or holes where miners blasted upward so the ore would fall down and they could cart it out to the mine portal in rail cars. Some stopes are as wide as 40 feet. ...It’s also in this room, known as the No. 1 Shaft Station, where the group pauses to marvel at the historic miners’ creativity. Someone used red bricks to create a retaining wall, which is perfectly curved to follow the natural rock lines. It’s a testament to a bricklayer’s skill, as well as to the money that was thrown around a century ago when the Drumlummon was producing millions of dollars in gold and silver. “That’s incredible. I’ve been in a bunch of mines, and I’ve never seen anything like it,” says Catherine Dreesbach, a DEQ mining engineer. Smitty proudly notes that the only other underground mine with a brick wall like this that he knows of is in South Dakota.

...About 2,500 feet in, the tunnel ends near a cave-in and cache of explosives. Bardswich says they’re thinking about hooking around and tunneling backward to connect with a new portal they hope to build. It’s at this tunnel’s end that the old miners signed sooty signatures on the walls, probably using carbon flames from their headlamps. Fatso Haley was here in 1925. So was Jack Smigaj and Jim Obernford. B. O’Conell drew a face in 1912. Smitty — not the one who’s here today — left his mark on March 11, 1917. Apparently he wasn’t the most popular guy, because someone else wrote that “Smitty eats ...” — let’s just call it manure. “You don’t see this stuff every day even if you work in a mine,” Dreesbach says, once again surprised by the Drumlummon. ("Drumlummon Dreaming", Helena Independent Record, Feb. 8, 2009)

And of course the historic adit, tunnels, stopes, etc. are all features of this underground cultural landscape that should be mapped and recorded before they are altered, as part of the historic record.

The people who now live in Marysville are not too thrilled with the prospects of a foreign country (Canada) coming in and messing with their quiet lifestyle; mining is a noisy and messy business. History shows that companies begin with a lot of progressive and amiable talk when the process starts, but the end results are always a damaged landscape and water pollution. The trouble is, in a terrible economy, gold is one of the few things that not only doesn't lose value, it actually gains value. Water and food are two others.

Historic mining landscapes are a significant part of Montana archaeology. Back in the days I worked in CRM (Cultural Resources Management) as an archaeologist, it seems like most of the sites I recorded in the Helena National Forest (1990-1995) were associated with historic mining, including the Ophir Creek Historic Mining District where Blackfoot City is located. Historic mining is one of the concerns of industrial archaeology; in Montana, the Klepetko Chapter of the Society for Industrial Archeology is the place to go to learn more about industrial archaeology, including historic mining.

Archaeology in Montana, 1805-1930

2009-02-07T20:38:00.000-08:00

From Lewis and Clark in 1805 until the WPA in the 1930s

[This section will be continually expanded as more information is gathered.]

Lewis and Clark and Archaeology

During their exploration up the Missouri River in 1805-1806, Lewis and Clark traveled through Montana and recorded many sites. Most of them were occupation sites, ceremonial structures, and buffalo kill sites. Some were abandoned villages that were still standing, including conical lodges covered with bark. They have over 100 such references in their journals. When they reached Great Falls, the wood used in these structures changed from cottonwood to willow. Willow was considered to be a Shoshonean trait. Ceremonial structures. Near Cascade Lewis and Clark found over 80 lodges, but mainly large heavy cottonwood log structures, 60 ft in diameter. In 1806 they encountered another large ceremonial structure on an island near Clark's Fork – Yellowstone. Details- buffalo skins, feathers, buffalo skulls. Prob. Pre-Sun Dance lodge.
Fortifications made of log and stone in Plains area, used by all tribes

Buffalo jump at Arrow Creek, 100 dead animals stinking, unused, many scavengers. (http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/lewisandclark/site16.htm)
This was located in Choteau County, "about 1-1/4 miles downstream from the mouth of Arrow Creek on the opposite, or north, bank of the Missouri River and approximately 9 miles by river upstream, or west, from the mouth of the Judith River."

At this site, in the beautiful White Cliffs section of the Missouri Breaks, discussed elsewhere in this volume, the members of the Lewis and Clark Expedition were probably the first U.S. citizens to see and record a buffalo jump site where the dead animals were still in place.

Before the advent of the steel-tipped arrow and lance and the rifle-musket, it was difficult for Indians to kill buffalo. A particularly fruitful method in the high Plains country was mass killing by the use of "jumps." These were located where buttes, eroded cliffs, and river gorges provided sufficient drop to kill or maim the beasts. The Indians enticed a herd within a short distance of the jump, and then started a stampede that carried the animals to the brink. There, the pressure of those behind forced those in front over the edge.

On May 29, 1805, on the westbound journey, the Lewis and Clark Expedition came upon such a jump. It was on the north side of the Missouri along the base of a 120-foot-high cliff that came almost to the water's edge. The men observed and smelled the carcasses of more than 100 dead and rotting buffalo, which wolves were devouring. Likely, some Blackfeet Indians, whose 2-week-old campsite had been discovered near the mouth of the Judith earlier that day, had conducted the jump. The explorers later appropriately named modern Arrow Creek, a little more than a mile to the west and flowing in from the south, as "Slaughter Creek."

The site was identified in 1963 as 24CH240 by a team from the Missouri Basin Inter-Agency Archeological Salvage Program, which surveyed sites in this part of the river. Even at the time Lewis and Clark passed by, the waters were eroding away the dead buffalo at the stream's edge. In the intervening 170 years or so, floods and erosional action have removed nearly all archeological evidence of the jump. The salvage team found only two pieces of bone fragments, some others of which the private owner had also observed.

On the return trip in 1806, Clarks saw petroglyphs on Pompey’s Pillar. Petroglyphs are designs incised into the rock; if the stone was sandstone, lines could be scratched into them, while other types of stone were harder and required designs to be pecked into the rock surface. In contrast, pictographs were drawings made with pigment, such as iron oxide.

Montana Archaeological Sites associated with the Lewis and Clark Expedition (sites mentioned in the journals)

Beaverhead Rock State Park (near Dillon) (also see Rattlesnake Cliffs, below)
http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/lewisandclark/site14.htm

Bozeman Pass
(http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/lewisandclark/site15.htm)

Buffalo Jump at Arrow Creek
(http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/lewisandclark/site16.htm)

Camp Disappointment
(http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/lewisandclark/site17.htm)

Junction of the Marias and Missouri Rivers
(http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/lewisandclark/site18.htm)

Gates of the Mountains
(http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/lewisandclark/site19.htm)

Great Falls Portage
(http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/lewisandclark/site20.htm)

Lemhi Pass, Idaho-Montana border
(http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/lewisandclark/site3.htm)

Lewis and Clark Pass
(http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/lewisandclark/site20.htm)

Lewis' Fight with the Blackfeet Site
(http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/lewisandclark/site22.htm)

Lolo Trail
(http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/lewisandclark/site4.htm)

Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument
(http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/lewisandclark/site23.htm)

Pompey's Pillar (Pompy's Tower) National Monument
(http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/lewisandclark/site24.htm)

"Rattlesnake Cliffs" = locals call this "Beaverhead Rock", and the Beaverhead Rock near Dillon as "Point of Rocks"
(http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/lewisandclark/site25.htm)

Ross' Hole (near Sula)
(http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/lewisandclark/site26.htm)

Three Forks of the Missouri (Missouri Headwaters State Park)
http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/lewisandclark/site27.htm

Travelers' Rest (near Lolo)
http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/lewisandclark/site28.htm

OTHER EARLY EXPLORERS

Petroglyphs preceded in observation by Francois LaRoque in 1805 similar along Yellowstone
Artifacts use- Shoshone steatite vessels
LaRoque- Canadian Fur- also steatite vessles. Near mouth of Bighorn more pictures.

1801-1802 w/ Kootenai. LaBlanc, LaGasse killed.

1808-1812 Thompson trading at Salish House – nothing to say about arch remains [but mention of Blackfeet moving south after acquiring guns, invading Shoshoni lands)
----
W. A. FERRIS, Fur trapper

LIFE IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS: A Diary of Wanderings on the sources of the Rivers Missouri, Columbia, and Colorado from February, 1830, to November, 1835. By W. A. FERRIS, then in the employ of the American Fur Company.
(http://www.xmission.com/~drudy/mtman/html/ferris.html/ferris.html)

In 1830-1835 W.A. Ferris (trapper) 15 mi below Beaverhead, green pipestone. Point of Rocks on Beaverhead River. Flint Creek.

Aug. 24:
"On the 24th we passed between two high rocky points jutting into the [Salmon] river, and came out into an open plain two miles wide. Near the entrance, is a bed of stone, which is frequently used as a substitute for soap. It is but little harder than chalk, of the same color, and when manufactured into pipes, and burnt, becomes a fine glossy jet color, and equally hard as stoneware."

Chapter XXXI, Sept. 20: "Fifteen miles below Beaver Head, is a quarry of green stone, that is semi‑transparent, and easily cut with a knife. It is highly prized by the Indians, for manufacturing into pipes. It is situated in a bluff, on the west side of the river; over‑looking the plain." (Ferris, Life in the Rocky Mountains, Chapter XXXI)

Chapter LIII: "I observed during our stay on the Sararah, that the Indians had two kinds of arrows in their quivers, one of which was made of a single hard stick, feathered and pointed with transparent flint, artfully broken to a proper shape, and firmly fastened to the end of the arrow with sinews and glue. The others were made of a hollow weed, having six or eight inches of hard wood nicely inserted, and firmly glued into it; to the end of which the stone point is fastened, and is poisoned with venom from the fangs of a rattle snake. Hence the slightest wound from them is certain death. These arrows may be known at sight, by the natural joints of the cane; and the artificial one, where the wood part is inserted. They are not solely used in battle, as some have asserted; but are equally advantageous in hunting, for the slightest wound causes the animal to droop, and a few moments places it within the power of the hunter. The flesh of animals thus poisoned, is harmless in the stomach."

Chapter LXIII: "Their weapons are bows, arrows, and war-clubs, and are of their own manufacture. Their bows never exceed two and a half feet in length, and are made usually of the rib bones of the buffalo, two of which, in the construction of this weapon, are neatly jointed, glued together, and wound with thongs about the joint; it is gradually tapered from the middle toward each end, is polished, and rendered more elastic by sinews glued on the back, from end to end, over which rattle snake skins are sometimes cemented for ornament. The string is always composed of sinews, twisted together into a cord. Bows are made sometimes of elk horn, and sometimes of wood, but are always strengthened by adding sinews to the back, and not, as an eminent western writer has observed, "by adding buffalo bones to the tough wood."

Their arrows (except the poisoned ones of the Sann pitches) are made of wood, slender, never above two feet in length, and are pointed with sharp transparent flints, neatly broken to a dagger-blade shape, from half to three-fourths of an inch in length, which never exceed the latter. These points are ingeniously inserted in a slit in the end of the arrow, are fastened by sinews wrapped around it, and are rendered less liable to damage by being covered with a coat of glue. They have three or four distinct feathers, six or seven inches in length, placed opposite to each other, remaining parallel, but turning gently on the arrow, in order to give it a spiral motion, which prevents its wavering, and enables it to cleave the air with less resistance.

They manufacture spears and hooks, also of bone, for fishing, but they are not to be compared to the same instruments made of metal by the whites. But they have been supplied by the traders with light guns, spears, and iron arrow points, which have in measure superseded their own weapons; still, however, bows and arrows are most frequently employed in killing buffalo."

----

MAXIMILLIAN, PRINCE OF WIED

1833 Maximillian, Prince of Wied. 2 large piles of elk antlers not far from confluence of Yellowstone and the Missouri. 80 miles above Ft. Union, 15 ft high, 30 ft diameter. No skulls. Strength of party red strokes. In 1830 no one could remember anything about the piles. Completely destroyed by river boat crews after the 1850s.

----

LEWIS HENRY MORGAN

1862 first professional anthropologist in Montana, Lewis Henry Morgan, but no interest in archaeology, mainly kinship terms. At Fort Benton he saw a lodge, 6-sided made of horizontal cribbed interlocked logs.

----

1866 Montana settlers- J.A. Hosmer traveling Yellowstone, conical lodges, one found lodge but tore it down for firewood. Rock markings, pictograph paintings on a log.

1870s. “Battle lodges” some still used, cone-shaped. Description by Yellowstone Kelly- sweat lodges, platform burials. Conical structures, and rock fortifications on hilltops.

1879. First archaeological report by P.W. Norris, superintendent of Yellowstone Park. Stone piles on prominent points, flint quarries along the upper Yellowstone near Emigrant. Long lanes of rock piles. Responsible for idea of “Sheepeater Indians.”

Also an article in the Helena Herald mentioning the Hellgate Gulch Pictographs near Townsend (http://www.greerservices.com/Assets/publications_pdfs/1998Plains_MTRockArtRec/1998PlainsMT_RARec_mg.pdf)

1892. Indian remains on upper Yellowstone. Col. William Brackett for Smithsonian. Indian semicircular forts from square rocks. 4 feet high near Emigrant. Completely destroyed. Fine buffalo jump- sketches.

Garrick Mallery mentioned in the BAE report on pictographic writing near Fort Assiniboine south of Havre, but no detailed information on site and still not located today.

So far most descriptions of Indian sites were from eastern Montana. Nothing really from western Montana until Professor Elrod 1908 brief description, photo of large panel of pictographs near Rawlins on Flathead Lake. The pictographs were badly weathered, almost imperceptible. He thought they were Indian writings. Risky business to put yourself into someone else’s mind [Taylor]. Some frequency so can guess, as marks llllll might be day counts.

American Museum of Natural History, NY, sent ethnographers- Lowie, Wissler, others in the early part of the 1900s, and they commented on remains they encountered.

But really the first scientific descriptions and archaeological research in Montana came from Brown and Nelson.

Barnum Brown was an old time naturalist who dug into a jump near Emigrant, and described stratigraphic levels.

Nels C. Nelson, (1875-1964) considered father of stratigraphic excavation in the New World. In 1917 over near Pryor Gap, Nelson found rock piles, and systematically peeled off rocks, but found nothing inside. "Nels Christian Nelson was a Danish-born archaeologist, who conducted archaeological work on shell mounds in California and the American southwest as well as in his native Denmark and Spain during the early decades of the 20th century. He worked on refining the stratigraphic methodology begun by researchers of the 19th century, and is probably best remembered as the person who fired the interest of later investigators such as A.V. Kidder in the prehistoric pueblos of the American southwest. "
(http://archaeology.about.com/od/nterms/g/nelsonnc.htm)
Nelson's work in the Pryor Mountains was mostly in the 1940s for the American Museum of Natural History; he did a series of popular and scientific articles on his excavations there (http://www.greerservices.com/Assets/publications_pdfs/1998Plains_MTRockArtRec/1998PlainsMT_RARec_mg.pdf)

----

Of course there were many collections of artifacts made by amateur enthusiasts, farmers, and ranchers. But otherwise not much happened until the 1930s, when the Depression resulted in creation of government work agencies like the WPA and CCC.

(SOURCE: Dr. Dee Taylor's Lectures; Vol. 3, no. 2 Archaeology in Montana “Short History of Montana Archaeology”)

2009-02-02T09:44:00.000-08:00

These are the working topics for the book MONTANA ARCHAEOLOGY so far:

I. A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF ARCHAEOLOGY (First things first)
- A. What archaeology is and is not (sorry, it's not about the dinosaurs that Montana is so famous for-- that's paleontology)
- B. SCALES OF ARCHAEOLOGY IN THE LAND (ARTIFACT, FEATURE, SITE, LANDSCAPE, SETTLEMENT PATTERNS, REGIONAL COMPARISONS) -- Not all archaeology is subsurface-- some of what it studies, still stands today
- C. HOW ARCHAEOLOGY IS DONE-- survey, excavation, analysis
- D. ARCHAEOLOGICAL ETHICS AND THE LAW -- collection, legal issues

II. ARCHAEOLOGY IN MONTANA (the bulk of the book)
- A. HISTORY OF ARCHAEOLOGY DONE IN MONTANA, FROM LEWIS AND CLARK TO TODAY. Special look at what the tribes of Montana thought, and still think, about the past and about archaeology
- B. CULTURES IN TIME- PREHISTORIC CULTURES (PaleoIndians, etc.) -TRIBES (connecting tribes to archaeological cultures)-
- C. PROJECTILE POINTS AND OTHER PRECONTACT ARTIFACTS; PREHISTORIC SITES AND LANDSCAPES
- D. CULTURES IN TIME - HISTORIC ARCHAEOLOGY IN MONTANA (exploration, trails and roads, military (forts and battlefields), furtrade, mining, ranching/farming, settlement, industrial, urban, underwater, etc.)
- E. HISTORIC ARTIFACTS; HISTORIC SITES AND LANDSCAPES
- F. PRESERVATION and analysis of archaeological historic/cultural landscapes (archaeological patterns on the land, typologies of prehistoric and historic landscapes)

IV. PLACES TO VISIT AND THINGS TO DO
- A. Info on places you can actually go visit, and any events; museums, historic sites, archaeological sites, landscapes

V. FOR MORE INFO: BOOKS, ORGANIZATIONS, WEBSITES
- A. Recommended sources (publications, websites) for the general public
- B. Organizations you can join; ways to participate in archaeology

BIBLIOGRAPHY - citations from sources consulted
GLOSSARY - specialized terminology
INDEX - how to find what you are looking for!

In some ways, this book is a public performance art piece; it is a work in progress... This project is not about jargon or trying to be the smartest monkey in the trees, but it's about the end-user: the kid with a school project, the guy in the hills that finds something interesting and old, the landowner or politician that has to make heads or tails of archaeology stuff they have to deal with-- and maybe even enjoy dealing with!

Montana Archaeology: An Introduction to the Author and the Project

2009-02-01T14:49:00.000-08:00

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

My first solo book, about the Native Americans of Iowa, will be published later this year (Fall 2009) by the University of Iowa Press. I have also been working on the research for a book on the archaeology of Montana, just a general introduction and guide for those interested in Montana's prehistoric and historic past. I developed and currently teach a class in introductory archaeology as an adjunct faculty member at the University of Montana, Helena College of Technology.

Although I got my M.A. in Anthropology from Iowa State University, I graduated with my B.A. from the University of Montana's anthropology department back in 1984. I grew up here in Helena, walking around in the hills with my family since I was a little kid, looking at the ghost towns, abandoned mines, and pictograph sites that peppered the forests. There was a lot more around you could see back in the 1960s and 1970s; much has been destroyed by time, vandalism, and development over the last few decades. At the University of Montana, in the early 1980s, I took courses from Dr. Dee Taylor, Dr. Carling Malouf, and Dr. Thomas Foor. Dr. Taylor taught the class "Archaeology of Montana" which I took (and got an A in!) I still have notes from his class, which provided part of the framework and content for this project.

I returned home to Montana from my time on the road for several years (1986-1990) as an archaeovagrant, aka shovelbum on various projects around the U.S.; it's called "paying your dues" in the world of archaeology. In 1990, I worked as a field archaeologist on the Helena National Forest (HNF). I then became a student intern for HNF in 1991 and returned to get my M.A. at Iowa State University. I continued to work as a field archaeologist during the summer seasons for HNF until 1994, when I graduated with the M.A. in Anthropology. Unfortunately I was not converted as a fulltime employee at that time, as was supposed to happen, and so I returned to ISU to get an M.L.A. in Landscape Architecture, with the focus in historic and cultural landscapes. I graduated with the M.L.A. in 1997.

From 1997-2006, my career took me in different directions, from working for the National Park Service in the Southwest and Alaska, to working for the Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA). In 2006, I returned to Montana and in 2007 started teaching a class in art at UM-Helena; in 2008 I developed and taught a class in archaeology; last year's blog entries on this site were part of that class. This is the second year I am teaching this class, but am taking a different approach.

ABOUT THIS PROJECT

This book is intended to be a basic introduction to the archaeology and historic/cultural landscapes of Montana. I started doing some background research for it last year, but when I read an article this week, I was inspired to take this book in a new direction:

Chris Anderson wants to give his next book to you for free. No, the Wired magazine editor-in-chief and author of The Long Tail hasn’t lost his mind, nor is he trying to go broke. It probably doesn’t even have anything to do with the fact that he’s a trained physicist and a descendant of one of the founders of the American anarchist movement. With his keen eye for trends in the Internet-driven world and the tech savvy that earned Wired its first National Magazine Award under his tenure, Anderson believes giving away his book will actually help him sell more books.

...Anderson’s strategy for giving away his new book (and for marketing products in general), aptly titled Free, is in many ways a testimony to the staying power of the printed book.

Anderson says he and his publisher plan to make Free (to be published in 2009 by Hyperion) available in every way possible, beginning with e-book and audio versions, and “further than that”—though he won’t say what, exactly, further will look like.

“I believe that the physical book is the superior product,” he says. “If I didn’t, I wouldn’t do this. I make a physical magazine, after all; we understand what paper can do that pixels can’t. Physical books will remain the superior way to read longer, immersive takes on a subject.”

...“I don’t come from the book or media world; I’m trained as a computational physicist,” Anderson says. “We in the software world wrote our code in public. That’s what beta testing is all about. Doing things in public is the norm. I took the habits that were most conventional, just like getting peer reviews in science, and applied it to my books.”

...No matter his commitment to the varieties of technology, the rise of blogging and other electronic forms of reading other than books, Anderson still subscribes to the paper and ink form.

“I’m a huge believer in the traditional book,” he says. “Everything else just helps cement the form of physical books.” (http://www.writersdigest.com/article/does-free-pay)

This is the rationale behind writing the book in public. One of the most enjoyable experiences I ever had was painting a mural on a bar in a village called Ara in Nigeria, Africa in 1996. People were always coming around, watching, offering criticisms and ideas. While some artists sequester themselves in a studio, I really enjoyed the energy of working in public. So that's why I decided to take Anderson's idea of writing in public and turning this Montana archaeology project into a publicly-written book. We'll see how it goes!

This blog/book is written for the interested general public, rather than specialists. Please add comments, ideas, corrections, things you would like to see! When the project is done, the book will be available not only as this blog, but as a free download in PDF form, as well as some hardcopy traditional published form yet to be determined.

COLLAPSE, Global Warming, and Peak Oil

2008-05-04T10:26:00.000-07:00

So as we have read Jared Diamond's Collapse, with its first part on the situation in Montana, we have come to do some real consideration of the economic, societal and environmental trajectory we seem to be on. But don't build your stockade in the woods, stock up on sacks of flour, and ammunition quite yet. There is a lot of info out there right now to consider in planning for your future, as well as that of your family and community. No one, I repeat no one, knows how it will all work out. Perhaps it will be apocalyptic, perhaps we will decline like Rome, perhaps everything will be fine for another 5, 10, 20 years. But this is life, and the reality is, life is about change. I don't know whether a future that looks like something out of "I am Legend" or "Soylent Green" is better or worse than one like out of "Silent Running" or "The Matrix." Or whether a future is coming that is more like "The Grapes of Wrath," or some GMO-nightmare where we must continue to consume our fair share at Wal-Mart and gauge the worth of our neighbor by how much he has in his bank account, what he drives or what he wears, rather than the character and morals he exemplifies in the worst of times. We'll see. The variables are too complex really. But in the meantime, here are some more thought-provoking sources for you to read and put in the ol' gray computer we were born with:

Growing up in Russia during its societal changes in the 1990s:
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/147683-Survival-in-Times-of-Uncertainty-Growing-Up-in-Russia-in-the-1990s

Causabon's Book, a blog from a modern homesteader and mother, trying to figure out her family's future:
http://sharonastyk.com/

Perspectives on Nature and Culture, Change, and possible future scenarios from a modern Druid:
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/
You can also check out his essay "How Civilizations Fall: A Theory of Catabolic Collapse" at http://www.xs4all.nl/~wtv/powerdown/greer.htm

Finally, "Life After the Oil Crash":
http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/

Class on Tuesday

2008-05-02T09:04:00.000-07:00

Class on Tuesday-- there will be a surprise

RECAP OF THE SYLLABUS FOR THE REST OF THE TERM: FINAL TERM PAPER INSTEAD OF FINAL EXAM

2008-04-10T10:28:00.000-07:00

After this week is over, we only have four more weeks of instruction to go in this semester!

It's time to look at where we are at in class, what's coming up and important dates... recapping the syllabus--- with the changes that we agreed upon in class!!!

Note the changes... important dates include April 29 (turn in your first draft of the term paper) and May 13 (turn in your final term paper-- no late papers will be accepted).

WEEK TWELVE

Apr. 8 T Lessons from Archaeology: “Collapse”: Easter Island and the Polynesians
(The class discussion was good. We watched the video "Archaeology: Riddles of the Monument Builders," the second segment, "Mysteries of Easter Island.")
Reading assignment for next class: Diamond, “Part Two: Past Societies”: “Chapter 4: The Ancient Ones: The Anasazi and Their Neighbors” (pp. 136-156) and “Chapter 5: The Maya Collapses” (pp. 157-177).

Apr. 10 Th Lessons from Archaeology: “Collapse”: The Anasazi and the Maya
Reading assignment for next class: Diamond, “Part Two: Past Societies”: “Chapter 6: The Viking Prelude and Fugues” (pp. 178-210) and “Chapter 7: Norse Greenland’s Flowering” (pp. 211-247).

WEEK THIRTEEN

Apr. 15 T Lessons from Archaeology: “Collapse”: The Vikings, Part I
Reading assignment for next class: Diamond, “Part Two: Past Societies”: “Chapter 8: Norse Greenland’s End” (pp. 248-276) and “Chapter 9: Opposite Paths to Success” (pp. 277-308.

Apr. 17 Th Lessons from Archaeology: “Collapse”: The Vikings, Part II
Reading assignment for next class: Diamond, “Part Three: Modern Societies”: “Chapter 10: Malthus in Africa: Rwanda’s Genocide” (pp. 311-328) and “Chapter 11: One Island, Two Peoples, Two Histories: The Dominican Republic and Haiti” (pp. 329-357).

WEEK FOURTEEN

Apr. 22 T Lessons from Archaeology: “Collapse”: Modern Societies: Africa and the Caribbean
Reading assignment for next class: Diamond, “Part Three: Modern Societies”: “Chapter 12: China, Lurching Giant” (pp. 358-377) and “Chapter 13: ‘Mining’ Australia” (pp. 378-416.

Apr. 24 Th Lessons from Archaeology: “Collapse”: Modern Societies: Asia and the Pacific
Reading assignment for next class: Diamond, “Practical Lessons”: “Chapter 14: Why Do Some Societies Make Disastrous Decisions?” (pp. 419-440) and “Chapter 15: Big Businesses and the Environment: Different Conditions, Different Outcomes” (pp. 441-485).

WEEK FIFTEEN

(Apr. 28 M LAST DAY TO WITHDRAW FROM CLASS)

Apr. 29 T Lessons from Archaeology: “Collapse”: Practical Lessons: Societies, Businesses and the Environment
DRAFT OF FINAL TERM PAPER DUE I will review them, make corrections, and return them to you in 1 week.
Reading assignment for next class: Diamond, “Practical Lessons”: “Chapter 16: The World as a Polder: What Does It All Mean to Us Today?” (pp. 486-525).

May 1 Th Lessons from Archaeology: “Collapse”: Practical Lessons: “What Does It All Mean to Us Today?”
(Short research paper originally due today is cancelled, along with the final; instead both will be combined as the final research paper due next week!)

WEEK SIXTEEN

May 6 T Fieldtrip to Montana Historical Society, Archaeological Collections, and State Historic Preservation Office
I RETURN YOUR DRAFT TERM PAPERS FOR REVISION You will have 1 week to revise them according to my comments and turn them back in for the final grade.

May 8 Th Last Class: Guest Speaker

WEEK SEVENTEEN (FINAL EXAM WEEK)

May 13, Tuesday: No lecture-- TURN IN FINAL TERM PAPERS AT BEGINNING OF CLASS! No late papers accepted.

FINAL EXAM:
According to the Final Exam schedule, the final exam for our class would start at 3:10 on Thursday, May 15. Since we are doing a final term paper in lieu of the exam, we don't need to worry about that.

GRADING CLARIFICATION:
Since the final paper is substituting for the short paper on Collapse (20 points) and the Final (30 points), the Final Term Paper is worth 50 points, half of your grade (the first test was 30 points, the first paper was 10 points, and class participation is 10 points). If you attended class regularly and participated (I do pay attention to that), that will count, remember...

Big Timber Archaeological Field School, Summer 2008

2008-04-09T07:52:00.000-07:00

Posted by request of Ellen Baumler at the Montana Historical Society:

Dear Colleagues,

Chris Merritt, a Ph.D. student in anthropology at U of M, is recruiting for a field school for credit at Big Timber, May 25-June 14. Chris is a very capable, energetic young man who is an experienced archaeologist. I can personally vouch for his credentials as I am serving on his dissertation committee. My daughter took his field school, under the directorship of Dr. Kelly Dixon, last year and it was a tremendous learning experience. Chris is doing some very exciting, groundbreaking work on the Chinese in Montana . The site in Big Timber promises to be very interesting and rich in artifacts.

Please pass the attached flyer along to anyone interested in Montana history or archaeology. It is a great opportunity.

Thanks for your time!

Ellen Baumler, Ph.D.
Montana Historical Society
406-444-1687

ARCHAEOLOGICAL
FIELD SCHOOL
In partnership with local private property owners, the University of
Montana is holding a field school to excavate the remnants of Big
Timber’s largely forgotten Chinese district. Chinese came to Big
Timber while working on the Northern Pacific Railroad in the
1880s. After completion of the railroad dozens of Chinese immi-
grants called Big Timber home, and started a variety of businesses
to service the townspeople of the town and travelers of the rail-
road, including four restaurants and numerous laundries. Today,
all that remains of the Big Timber Chinese community are stories,
and the buried archaeological deposits of a laundry/restaurant
located on private property. Field school participants will be re-
quired to camp in primitive conditions for three, five-day weeks.
Students enrolled in this course will learn surveying and excava-
tion techniques.
Dates: May 25-June 14, 2008; 4 credits
Requirements
♦ No Previous Experience Necessary!
♦ Personal Camping Gear
♦ All Food and Travel Provided during work
Phone: 406-243-2450
Fax: 406.243.4918
E-mail: christopher.merritt@umontana.edu
Interested?
BIG TIMBER CHINATOWN
Please Submit a Curriculum Vitae (or Resume), and an
unofficial copy of your university transcripts to:

Christopher Merritt, Ph.D. Student
University of Montana
Department of Anthropology
Missoula, MT 59812

Total Cost ($765 Lab Fee included):
*Undergraduate: Resident: $1645.60 Non-Resident: $3646.40
*Graduate: Resident: $1690.00 Non-Resident: $3764.60

Hotel Broadwater in Helena

2008-03-14T18:39:00.000-07:00

It's all gone now, but I remember it still standing when I was a kid, on the west edge of town...

Badfinger: Classic 70s Rock

2008-03-12T07:35:00.000-07:00

Feb. 21: Understanding the Past / Cannibalism and Creationism

2008-02-22T14:33:00.000-08:00

Feb. 21: Reading assignments for Thursday, Feb. 21: Ashmore and Sharer, Chapter 9: “Understanding the Past,” Pp. 212-237 and Chapter 11, “Old Time Religion – New Age Visions,” pp. 278-310.

Understanding the Past...and Difficult Subjects (Cannibalism and Creationism)

Monty Python is at it again, talking about things that people would really rather not talk about...in this case cannibalism and other nasty bits!

Today's assignment was to read the chapter in Ashmore and Sharer about how archaeologists try and understand the past through one of the three "schools of thought" in contemporary archaeology, Culture-History, Processualism, and Post-Processualism. The main thing to remember is that the Culture-History developed first, focused on historical explanations for culture change (what, when, where), and was the dominant approach up until the 1960s. Processualism was a materialist reaction which really began in earnest in the 1960s, as a dissatisfaction with the Culture-History school; processualism was an attempt to find laws of cultural change (how and why) through rigorous application of the scientific method. However it also could go only so far in grappling with issues of the human past, and so in the 1980s, it was critiqued itself in a new movement (actually a series of approaches) called postprocessualism, which tied to get at the individual's place in the human past and the attempt to learn about the ideology (meaning, symbolism, etc.) of past cultures. The outline of the chapter is found below.

We watched the second half of the videotape "Archaeology: Ancient America;" the first half we watched in Tuesday's class. The tape's first half was about the 9000-year-old Archaic culture of the U.S. Southwest, which would develop into the Anasazi, and then the Pueblo Indians. The second half was about the evidence for cannibalism found in some of the caves occupied during the times of the Anasazi, a matter of debate among archaeologists. We talked in class about the evidence, about the different types of cannibalism (ritual cannibalism, contingency cannibalism, and dietary cannibalism) and found that while cannibalism is nowhere near as common as popular imagination would believe, it has, and does happen in severe survival situations (contingency cannibalism as a result of the plane crash in the Andes, or the stories of the Wendigo in the Canadian subarctic) and in some ritual contexts in a few cultures (eating or biting the heart of a brave enemy to attain his courage in my tribe, the Ioway, or the former cannibalism of certain peoples in Papua New Guinea associated with the disease "kuru"). But there is no evidence of sustained dietary cannibalism of any group of people in a nonsurvival situation. Ultimately, this taboo is so embedded in human experience, it still brings up strong emotional reactions when discussed...even in scientists! ;-)

And in the last discussion of the day, we wrestled with the chapter in Feder about scientific creationism, and the evidence and social context of arguments for and against it. It was a tough discussion, I hope we will have more, but one we can't shy away from, whatever we ultimately decide to believe for ourselves about what we think we understand about the past. If anthropologists/archaeologists can't talk about taboo subjects, who can?

==========================

I. CULTURE HISTORICAL INTERPRETATION- Temporal and spatial syntheses of data- what, when, where

- A. Inevitable variation- all cultures change over time

- B. Internal factors:
--- 1. Cultural invention- new ideas arise within cultures
--- 2. Cultural selection- like natural selection
--- 3. Cultural drift- like genetic drift, tranmission incomplete so over time has a random effect
--- 4. Cultural revival- of elements that fallen into disuse

- C. External factors:
--- 1. Diffusion
--- 2. Trade
--- 3. Migration
--- 4. Conquest
--- 5. Environmental change

II. PROCESSUAL INTERPRETATION- Often based on data collected through culture history, test series of competing hypotheses- how and why

- A. Systems (synchronic)- interactions in system
--- 1. Feedback
--- 2. Negative feedback
--- 3. Positive feedback

- B. Ecological (synchronic)- interaction with its environment
--- 1. Cultural ecology: physical landscape, biological component, cultural environment
--- 2. Cultural adaptation
--- 3. Computer simulation

- C. Multilinear evolutionary concepts (diachronic)- over time, causality from either prime movers or multiple/multivariate factors
--- 1. Multilinear cultural evolutionary models
--- 2. Prime movers
--- 3. Multivariate strategy

III. POSTPROCESSUAL AND EMERGENT INTERPRETATIONS- original meaning of culture at level of individual, as decision-maker and meaning-laden context (cultural relativity)

- A. Decision-making models

IV. UNDERSTANDING THE PAST FROM MULTIPLE APPROACHES

- A. Combine all three

FEDER Chapter 11: "Old Time Religion- New Age Visions"
Scientific creationism: Noah’s ark, Footprints in time, Creationism through animatronics, Other guises of creationism
The Shroud of Turin- testing the shroud
Burial boxes of Jerusalem
New Age Prehistory
Current Perspectives: Religions Old and New

Reading assignment for next class, Tuesday, Feb. 26, 2008: Ashmore and Sharer, Chapter 10: “Archaeology Today,” pp. 238-254 and Feder, Chapter 12, “Real Mysteries of a Veritable Past,” pp. 311-333.

Paper Style Guide Issue

2008-02-21T08:45:00.000-08:00

I notice that the AAA website currently has problems with its style guide PDF file. Instead, use the SAA style guide, which is pretty much the same. It is at: http://www.saa.org/publications/Styleguide/styleGuide.pdf. You might want to download and save the entire PDF document for reference in case SAA has problems in the future when you are writing your Paper #2.

Feb. 19: Reconstructing the Past

2008-02-19T19:19:00.000-08:00

Feb. 19: Reading assignment for today’s class: Ashmore and Sharer, Chapter 8: “Reconstructing the Past,” Pp. 179-211.

Reconstructing the Past

Learn more about this image at The Darl Living Surface: A Transitional Archaic Camp

I. ANALOGY

Past activities can never be observed, so must interpret based on comparison with other societies- living, recorded in writing (history, ethnography)
Analogy- unknown is inferred from known

Uses and abuses of analogy (e.g., Abuse (use of only one criterion))

Specific and General Analogy

Specific analogy-
1. cultural continuity,
2. comparability in environment
3. similarity of cultural form
General analogy- actualistic studies between actual behaviors and particular material remains

Sources of Analogs:
Historical
Ethnographic
Ethnoarchaeology (living societies)
Experimental archaeology
More the analog links, more reliable-- sources such as history, enthnography, actualistic studies (experimental archaeology)

Analog + spatial order of data = reconstruction of past behavior

Learn about using GIS in archaeology at ESRI's Journal of GIS in Archaeology

II. IDENTIFYING ACTIVITIES IN SPACE

Three broad areas- Techno-economic (text terms it technology, but really focuses on both technology and economics), 2. Social Systems, and 3. Ideology

1. Technology (includes economy too, so sometimes also called Techno-economic) – most direct (physical) interaction with the environment- the set of techniques and knowledge to procure raw resources and transform them into tools, food, shelter, etc. -Cultural choices using the environment- Cultural ecology.

Cultural Ecology- interaction of people/culture with the natural environment. Much of it is focused on subsistence. Reconstruct the ancient environment through observation of the current landscape (topography and biotic & mineral resources) and collection/analysis of ecofacts.

2. Social systems- roles and relationships among people, such as kinship, political structure, exchange networks, etc. - settlement patterns- spatial arrangement at different scales- activity areas, households, sites, landscapes (site cachement), regions- which data are nonlocal and represent exchanges (analogies from ethnography, economics, geography)

Two different approaches:

A. Settlement Archaeology- study of spatial distribution of ancient human activities and occupations at scales from site to regional
B. Exchange systems- ways to acquire goods and services not available locally

Spatial patterns reflect behavioral patterns-

a. single structure/household/occupation level (ex: cave floor)- activity areas (food preparation, sleep, storage) (ex: Micromorphology)

b. sites or settlements may reflect social stratification and social control (size and elaboration of residential units)

c. region (GIS helps)
-reconstruct function of each component in the settlement system and look at ways the components fit together into system (social network)
-Regional Analysis (from economic geography)
Locational Analysis- located in place where maximum number of resources can most efficiently be used with least amount of effort, natural environment and also neighboring groups
Central Place Theory- as landscape fills with people, settlements tend to be evenly distributed, and central places- settlements with wider goods and services, arise at regular intervals in overall distribution- pattern tends to be hexagonal-lattice, like honeycomb
==Most recently broadest scale also focuses on the landscape, relationships among all cultural and natural features on the land
--Symbols attached to natural features in the land, such as mounds and rock art locations

3. Ideology- ideological systems- knowledge and beliefs as way to explain the world and meaning of life --most difficult to approach in archaeology- few material remains- symbols (symbolic archaeology) but difficult to be sure of the interpretation- writing IF present can help but many societies did not have writing, --rock art, pottery decorations, archaeoastronomy- study of ancient astronomical knowledge from material remains (observatories, medicine wheels, solar year, lunar phases, and stars), etc. can all help with this. Worldviews underlying concepts- three vs four, etc

The Goal of Archaeology is to reconstruct and understand past lifeways- most complete reconstructions should take into account all three areas—although technology-economy are the easiest areas to investigate, and social organization is not far behind, the reconstruction also should attempt to work with the ideological sphere as well, though as an immaterial aspect of culture (though its products often have material results), ideology is much more difficult and less amenable to the scientific method which was developed for material aspects of reality (and some scientists believe that materiality IS the only reality!)

Reading assignments for next class on Thursday, Feb. 21: Ashmore and Sharer, Chapter 9: “Understanding the Past,” Pp. 212-237 and Chapter 11, “Old Time Religion – New Age Visions,” pp. 278-310.

Feb. 14: Dating the Past

2008-02-14T18:37:00.000-08:00

Feb. 14: Dating the Past
Reading for Today: Ashmore and Sharer, "Dating the Past," pp. 157-178.

Dating the Past

This is a great video about radiocarbon dating, also known as carbon-14 dating! This is the most generally useful method of absolute dating used in archaeology.

The most important things to remember about dating archaeological data:

1. Every method has its applicability/limitations to certain situations, materials, and ages.
2. The more you can cross-check dates through different methods, the more reliable the dates.
3. Your dates are only as good as your data, the way they were collected, etc.
4. You generally will not do the dating yourself, only the sampling; data is sent to laboratories and specialists, and can be expensive.
5. Dating materials is not an end in itself; dating is only significant in terms of the research questions you are asking.

TOPICS DISCUSSED IN CLASS (Read the Chapter for details):

Direct dating- analysis of the artifact, ecofact, or feature itself to find its age
vs
Indirect dating- analysis of the material associated with the artifact/ecofact/feature to find the age (ex: the matrix around the artifact)

Relative dating- evaluating the age of one artifact/ecofact/feature relative to another (which is older than the other)
vs
Absolute dating- placing the age of the artifact/ecofact/feature on an absolute time scale (such as 4000 B.C. or A.D. 1970)…most are expressed in a range (the plus-minus symbol, or as "ca."= circa)

SERIATION
Seriation
Stylistic seriation
Frequency seriation - battleship-shaped curves

SEQUENCE COMPARISON
Sequence comparison aka cross-dating

STRATIGRAPHY
Stratigraphy

GEOCHRONOLOGY
Geochronology
Horizontal stratigraphy

OBSIDIAN HYDRATION
Obsidian hydration

FLORAL AND FAUNAL METHODS
Dendrochronology
Bone chemistry

RADIOMETRIC METHODS
Radiometric
Half-life
Radiocarbon dating (carbon-14)
Potassium-argon dating
Argon-argon dating
Uranium-series dating
Fission-track dating

ARCHAEOMAGNETISM
Archaeomagnetism

LIMITED AND EXPERIMENTAL METHODS
=========

Genographic Project

In today's class, we also watched a portion of the DVD about the National Geographic Society's "Genographic Project."

DNA studies such as the Genographic Project have been used to supplement and cross-check the archaeological record, and the spread of humankind across the globe.

Next class's reading assignment (Tuesday, Feb. 19) is Ashmore and Sharer, Chapter 8: “Reconstructing the Past,” Pp. 179-211.

Feb. 12: Analyzing the Past

2008-02-12T21:42:00.000-08:00

Feb. 12
Reading for today:
Ashmore and Sharer, Chapter 6, "Analyzing the Past," pp. 125-156.

Analyzing the Past: Artifacts, Ecofacts, and Features

We talked about Lithic Analysis today and in the video you saw an example of flintknapping. There are LOTS of vids on flintknapping on YouTube (See http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=flintknapping&search_type=&search=Search) and this is just one example...watch at least a bit of several listed on YouTube...including a 10-year-old flintknapper!

Remember! Next class (Thursday, Feb. 14) your first paper is due!

Today in class, we watched the videotape "People of the Hearth" about the PaleoIndian occupation of Barton Gulch in southwest Montana, about 9,400 years ago. It was very well done, with re-enacted scenes of daily life, and portrayed a processualist approach to archaeology. There were many specialized analyses in the video, including faunal analysis (ex: the deer bones at the site), floral analysis (ex: the use of goosefoot and prickly pear seeds for food), and lithic analysis (ex: the presence of obsidian). There were also several examples of experimental archaeology, including atlatl use, flintknapping, and cooking using ancient technigues such as sandwiching meat packets between layers of dampened bulrushes (Scirpus). Then we proceeded to the lecture; the outline is given below (just highlighted terms are given here; be sure and read the text!).

ARTIFACTS

Industries

Lithics:Chipped/Flaked Stone and Ground-stone

Lithics are the most common prehistoric artifacts in Montana

Chipped Stone:
Types of stone that fracture in a regular way: flint or chert, CCR, obsidian, basalt, quartz/quartzite
Variety of techniques
Core
Bulb of Percussion
Uniface
Biface
Flake
Blades
Lithic scatter
Debitage
Direct percussion
Indirect percussion
Pressure flaking
Retouching (retouched flakes)
Striking platform
Kinds of tools:
=Drills, gravers, points, blades, microblades, knives, spokeshaves, scrapers, shavers
Ground-stone
=Mano and Metate/grinding slab/quern
=Mortar and pestle
==>See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithic_analysis ; http://archnet.asu.edu/topical/Selected_Topics/Lithics.php

Ceramics
Ceramics: pottery, figurines, musical instruments, spindle whorls
(ceramics is additive technology vs lithics is subtractive)
Pottery
Potsherd (sometimes spelled shard)
Plasticity
Clay, temper, kneading/wedging
Pinching, Coiling, slabs, molds, wheel
Slip, glaze
Firing: up to three stages: dehydration, oxidation, vitrification
Analysis: by attribute (stylistic, form, technological); residues; provenience
Analyses: Form, wear use, residue
Montana Ceramics: Not much, only Intermountain Ware and the kind up in NE Montana
-->See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pottery

Metallurgy
Extracts metals from ores
Cold hammering copper
Annealing
Smelting
Alloys
Copper - bronze -iron (+ carbon = steel)
==>See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallurgy

Organic Artifacts
Problem with preservation
Wood, plant fibers (textiles, basketry, etc.), bone, antler, ivory, shell
Analysis: form, biotic resources

ECOFACTS
Classification different than artifacts; based on appropriate connection to zoology, botany, geology

Floral
1. Microspecimens: pollen, phytoliths
2. Macrospecimens: seeds, leaves, casts/impressions

Faunal
MNI= minimum number of individuals

Human Remains: biological / physical anthropology
Ethical issues
Diets
DNA
Mummification/bogs
Paleopathology
coprolites
==>See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forensic_archaeology; ETHICS: http://www.worldarchaeologicalcongress.org/site/about_ethi.php

Geological
Soils and Sediments
=Geoarchaeology purposes (4):
1. Establish stratigraphy of site
2. Date the site
3. Understand natural site formation processes
4. Reconstruct the ancient landscape
-geomorphology
==>See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoarchaeology

FEATURES
Again, formal, and technological analyses (stylistic not as common as location)
--location and arrangement show distribution and organization of human activities
1. Constructed features- Built to provide space for an activity or set of activities (ex: windbreak, house, grave)
2. Cumulative features- Formed by accretion rather than a preplanned or designed construction of an activity area or facility (ex: midden, quarry, workshop area)
-conjoining studies
==>See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature_(archaeology)

Sites mentioned in this chapter:
Stonehenge (England)
Chalcuapa (El Salvador)
Gordion (Turkey)
Shang Dynasty bronze vessels (China)
La Tene (Munsingen, Switzerland)
Hohokam (Arizona)
Olsen-Chubbuck (Colorado)
Upper Mantaro River Valley (Peru)
Star Carr (England)
Makapansgat (South Africa)
Tehuacan (Mexico)
North Acropolis, Tikal (Guatemala)
Lake Titicaca (Bolivia)
Acrotiri, Thera/Santorini (Aegean Sea, Greece)
Pompeii (Italy)
Ilopango volcano area (El Salvador)
Quirigua, Motagua River (Guatemala)
Scara Brae (Orkney Islands, Scotland)
Pyramids (Egypt)
Moche Valley (Peru)
Sweet Track, Somerset Levels (England)
Mono tribal sites (Sierra Nevada, California)
Bighorn Medicine Wheel (Wyoming)
Meer II (Belgium)

Next Class Readings for Thursday:
Ashmore and Sharer, Chapter 7: "Dating the Past," pp. 157-178

AGAIN, REMEMBER YOUR PAPER IS DUE AT THE BEGINNING OF THURSDAY'S CLASS

Feb. 7: Fieldwork

2008-02-07T12:40:00.000-08:00

Feb. 7
Reading for today:
Ashmore and Sharer, Chapter 5, "Fieldwork," pp. 87-124.
Feder, Chapter 10, "Good Vibrations: Psychics and Dowsers," pp. 261-277.

Fieldwork

ARCHAEOLOGICAL SURVEY

Archaeological survey: Methods archaeologists use to locate sites or acquire data from sites or regions without excavation; observing surface remains and using remote sensing for surface and subsurface remains (ibid. 87). Includes ecological factors. Reveals site numbers/types/form/size/spatial distribution. Not all sites found by survey, some known from history or general knowledge. High quality maps and/or aerial photographs necessary to plot site locations.

Three Basic Methods of Site Discovery:

1. Surface survey: Direct inspection of the terrain while walking at ground level, also called archaeological reconnaissance or reconnaissance survey. Should be done along transects at set intervals based on initial plans, but sometimes field conditions require rethinking the strategy. Oldest and most common survey method.

2. Aerial survey: Survey from above, including aerial photography (high altitude, low altitude, and radio-controlled airplanes with rigged cameras). Low raking light at sunrise and sunset very helpful. Not just regular film, use also infrared, radar, thermography (differential heat on ground). Satellites also used at times; for example Landsat especially useful for roads and regional studies. GIS (Geographical Information Systems) data incorporate multiple sources. All remote sensing techniques require ground truth (or "ground truthing") which simply means physically checking the ground itself to check the features being interpreted in the aerial photos, for example.

3. Subsurface survey: Survey of resources under the surface, either by direct intrusive methods like auguring, coring, or shovel testing (this last is the most common and often done on archaeological reconnaissance if the soil development indicates the likelihood of subsurface deposits; such tests are done on transects, and are often called STPs, or shovel test pits), or remote sensing technologies :
-- magnetometer (for variations in magnetism under ground, as with certain kinds of stone features like walls, or large areas of fired materials like clay in kilns)
-- resistivity detector- measures the differences in subsurface features to conduct electrical current, often because of moisture differences
-- ground-penetrating radar- sends back echoes revealing different densities below surface

These last three technologies require expensive technologies, expert interpretation of the results, and are generally limited in usefulness to larger built subsurface features and remains like walls and floors of structures, and sometimes burials
Not mentioned in the text, archaeologists have also used metal detectors, especially for systematic battlefield surveys; one of the first and most famous examples of this use was at the Little Bighorn Battlefield in Montana.

Once a site is located, it is given a trinomial designation in the U.S. as I described in the last class; other numbering or naming systems are used in other countries. Sites are sometimes also given names, either the historic name if known (Diamond City, near Helena), or as is common in the U.S., a landowner's name (MacHaffie Site, near Helena) or descriptive term (Pictograph Cave, near Billings). Finally, sites locations are established using satellite-based GPS (Global Positioning Systems). This is only a consistent development over the last ten years or so; back when I was doing surveys we used only a topographic map and the UTM system (boy that was fun…you young whippersnappers don't know how easy you got it these days!)

After a site is located, by old-fashioned walking or by one of the remote-sensing based surveys, then it all comes back to walking the ground, mapping the site, and describing what is seen on the surface. The site is mapped, either using traditional mapping technologies such as the transit, or newer technologies such as the laser transit and GPS. Topographic maps and planimetric maps can provide different views of the same site data.

EXCAVATION

Excavation is the principle method that archaeologists use to recover data beneath the surface, and is also sometimes a method of discovery. Subsurface remains are generally the best preserved and least disturbed data (but not always…note that subsurface remains can suffer massive disturbance through rodent burrowing even within recent years… and that some surface remains have laid essentially undisturbed for thousands of years in high remote deserts!)

The two basic goals of excavation:
1. Reveal the three-dimensional patterning/structure in deposition of artifacts, ecofacts, features; evaluation of the provenience and association
2. Assess the functional and temporal significance of the patterning; evaluation of the context
The goal is to reconstruct the past behavior; proper and complete records are VITAL to this effort-- archaeology without proper recordation, notes, maps, etc. is simply LOOTING

For the three-dimensional patterning, it is important to note the distinction between the two horzontal dimensions of a surface (usually synchronous..of the same time period), and the one of depth (usually diachronous…of different periods)

Stratigraphy

Stratification- observed layers of matrix (pl. matrices) and features; each layer is a stratum (strata is plural)

Law of Superposition- geological principle that the sequence of strata from bottom to top reflect the order they were laid in, from earliest at the bottom to the most recent at the top (Please check out the figures in your text for a nice illustration, fig. 5.14 on p. 104 and fig. 5.15 on page 105) Even though there may be cases of reverse stratigraphy that seem to fly in the face of the law of superposition, it still holds true (see fig. 5.15, p. 105).

Stratigraphy- the study and interpretation of stratification. Looking for evidence of redeposition or disturbance--sometimes clarification in complex cases is assisted through conjoining studies ("refitting studies") in which fragments of artifacts and ecofacts from different strata are fitted back together. Stratigraphic evaluation includes both temporal and functional evaluations.

Nonarchitectural features: middens, burials, hearths, quarries
Architectural features: walls, floors, platforms, staircases, roadways

One way to approach stratigraphic evaluation is by using a schematic diagram called a Harris Matrix, a way to abstract the relationships between various stratigraphic elements (see fig. 5-16, p. 108)

Excavation Methods

There are two basic kinds of excavations:

1. (Vertical) - Penetrating excavations- Mainly going deep vertically, to see in cross section the depth, sequencing, and composition of the deposits; test pits, trenches, tunnels.

2. (Horizontal) - Clearing excavations- clears occupation levels horizontally to see the extent of the deposit and the arrangement of features/artifacts/ecofacts of the deposit

Usually both types are excavation are used at a site to fit the different goals of research. Excavation is like taking apart a giant 3D puzzle, and putting it back together on paper/computer…thus the vital importance of complete notes and recordation!

The Toolkit
Take a look at the tools for an excavator's toolkit on p. 111…I will comment for you to note that the "gold standard" for archaeologists is the sharpened Marshalltown triangular trowel (medium size)…it is the identifying badge of the profession of field archaeologist beyond all others! At the minimum you also need a good compass (Brunton is the ideal, but Silva is ok too), folding rule, and tape measure (metric for prehistoric, standard inches and feet for historic). Add a shovel (flat-nose for excavations!) and a good screen, and by gum, those are the essentials.

Micromorphology- The microscopic study of fine deposit residues cut from excavated matrices such as floors.

Provenience Control

Horizontal and vertical provenience must always be the guide and structure for excavation; words fail here…Be sure and look at the excellent diagrams of the grid and excavations on pp. 112-113. It is one of those things easier to show than to tell.

Remember…excavation of a site is destruction of the site. Without proper controls, notes, and research design, there is little noticeable difference between archaeology and looting.
The goal is to take enough proper field notes, scaled drawings, photographs, and standardized info on forms, to be able to reconstruct the site as an ideal.

Field drawings are done as:
1. Sections (side/profile view, or vertical/stratified sections; arifacts in the unit walls, etc.)
2. Plan view (horizontal relationship of features and artifacts/ecofacts)

DATA PROCESSING

Data are collected (artifacts, ecofacts, soil samples from the matrix and features for pollen and other analysis, etc.). There are established systems of collecting, storing, processing, and labeling/storing the data for efficient retrieval later (much like a library or archives). Ecofacts are usually processed by specialists in faunal analysis, floral analysis (including pollen or phytolith analysis), etc. Lithic analysis is also important to understand where the source materials for stone artifacts originated.

CLASSIFICATION

Classification is the process of rearranging or ordering objects into groups on the basis of shared characteristics that archaeologists call attributes.

An attribute is any observable trait that can be defined and isolated. Three basic categories of _directly observable_ attributes are used in archaeology, and the classification will depend on the research questions being asked:

1. Stylistic attributes: color, surface finish/texture, decoration (painted/unpainted), alterations, etc. Stylistic types include pottery classifications based on decoration and finish (ex: the many types of pottery styles of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico

2. Form attributes: overall 3D form and aspects of the artifact's shape; dimensions (metric attributes)- length, width, thickness, weight. Form types include pottery component shape attributes (ex: thickness of wall, curve of wall, strap or loop handles) or grinding stones cross-sections (ex: round, rectangular, etc.)

3. Technological attributes: raw materials (constituent attributes) and traits relating to the manufacturing process. Technological types include metallurgy processes (ex: different alloys of copper such as brass or bronze) and kiln processes (ex: tempering of sand using sand grit or crushed shell)

Besides classification based on _directly observable_ attributes, artifacts can be classified using _inferred attributes_ measurable only by tests such as spectrographic or chemical analysis, which are not done in the field.

Classification serves 4 basic purposes:

1. Classification divides a mass of undifferentiated data into groups/classes

2. Classification allows the researcher to summarize characteristics of many objects by listing only shared attributes through the definition of …
---------Types: represent clusters of attributes that occur together repeatedly in the same artifacts. For example, Oneota Allamakee Trailed pottery which my tribe the Ioway made in precontact times, is typically distinguished by generally globular form (form attribute), trailed decorations such as chevrons (stylistic attribute), and shell-tempered clay (technological attribute)…other types of precontact pottery in the Midwest may have one or the other of these attributes, but all three attributes taken together make up the Oneota Allamakee Trailed TYPE.

3. Classification defines variability of the artifact, which can lead to further to understanding, as when variability in pottery in some cultures relates to social subgroupings of status or lineage identity.

4. Classification, by ordering and describing types, enables the researcher to suggest a series of relationships among classes.

Ultimately there is no right or wrong classification scheme…it is only a working cognitive tool to get at answering a particular research question. For example, for pottery, if one is studying food storage, one might choose to classify based on form attributes, but if one is studying social identity, one might choose stylistic attributes instead.

It is also possible to relate hierarchies of artifact classifications with hierarchies of social groupings, but depends on the base data.
- Individuals make artifacts based on cultural standards, or norms (attributes).
- Subassemblage -Patterned set of artifacts used by occupational or other groups (hunters, farmers, mothers, etc.).
- Assemblage -Patterned set of subassemblages that represent a community's behavior patterns.
- Archaeological culture -Patterned set of assemblages, sum total of material remains, assumed to represent the culture of a past society

Sites and other subjects also mentioned in this chapter:
Stonehenge (Britain)
Tehaucan Valley (Mexico)
Athens, Rome, Carthage (Mediterranean region)
Troy (Greece); Heinrich Schliemann
Olduvai Gorge (Tanzania); the Leakeys
Lascaux Cave (France)
Tell / tepe - hill/mound (term used in SW Asia/Middle East)
Shahr-I Sokhta (Iran)
Sarepta (Lebanon)
Nile Valley (Egypt)
Sybaris (Greece)
Cahokia (Illinois)
China Lake Valley (California)
Teotihaucan (Mexico)
Pompeii (Italy)
Cerén (El Salvador)
Koobi Fora (Lake Turkana, Kenya)
Lindenmeier Site (Colorado)
Royal "Acropolis", Copan (Honduras)

FEDER

FEDER's chapter on "Good Vibrations: Psychics and Dowsers" is a good match for the Ashmore and Sharer chapter. Feder discusses the real life hard work of finding and excavating sites (which I can vouch for personally), compared to the fantasy of being able to predict where a site is using a dowsing rod or pretending to be able to see into the past and explain what happened at a site.

Claims that are not testable, through excavation, etc., are not science. The evidence of incidents that have been tested does not support the claims of psychic archaeology or dowsing for sites.

On the other hand, Feder is pretty dismissive of water dowsing, but my very down-to-earth Grandpa swore by it, and he and his dad could dowse for water. I do not claim that ability. But then my Grandpa actually tracked down a Will-o-the-Wisp in his youth in the dark brush along the Missouri River in pre-WWII Nebraska, when no one else would go with him because they were afraid of ghosts. He didn't believe in ghosts, as he had never seen one. But the Will-o-the-Wisp he tracked down was actually a piece of phosphorescent wood, its internal gases causing it to float its ghostly way through the dark trees. Grandpa caught that Wisp that dark night…but he didn't crush it like lesser men when confronted with the unknown…he let the Wisp-wood go, content with discovering its mystery, and letting it go on its own mysterious way.

Archaeology is a matter of hard work, though we wish it were otherwise…wishing doesn't make it so.

I believe there is room for science and for mystery in this world. The trick is to not be deceived, and confuse one for the other. Science is an astounding tool to discover empirical truth…but it is a very cold God.

Next Time: Fieldwork
Readings for Next Class on Tuesday:
Reading assignment for next class: Ashmore and Sharer, Chapter 6: “Analyzing the Past,” pp. 125-156.

Feb. 5: How Archaeology Works

2008-02-05T12:11:00.000-08:00

Feb. 5
Reading for today:
Ashmore and Sharer: Chapter 4, "How Archaeology Works," pp. 61-86.
Archaeological data, deposition and site transformation processes, research design; archaeological research projects.

Above: An Episode From Trent de Boer's "Shovel Bum" 'Zine

How Archaeology Works

Lot of basic archaeological terms and concepts to cover today

ARCHAEOLOGICAL DATA Relating to human (cultural) activities.

Artifacts: "…Portable objects whose form is modified or wholly created by human activity" (ibid. 61) (ex: pottery, hammerstone, projectile point, glass bottle)

Ecofacts: "…Nonartifactual natural remains …that provides information about past human behavior" (ibid. 63). (ex: bones, seed, pollen, soils)

Features: "…Nonportable human-made remains that cannot be moved from the place of discovery without altering or destroying their original form…" (ibid. 62) (ex: hearths, burials, storage pits, postholes, postmolds, roads)

Sites (Note: not "sight"…"site" comes from Latin "situ") "…Spatial clusters of artifacts, features, and ecofacts…" (ibid. 63) Usually the boundaries are defined by an arbitrarily-chosen decline in density of artifacts, ecofacts, or features; occasionally can be defined by moats, ditches, etc. The site is the basic working unit of definition in archaeology. In the U.S., sites are given numbers based on the Smithsonian trinomial system: 24LC100 stands for: 24 = the 24th state in alphabetical order = Montana; LC = Lewis and Clark County; 100 = the number given to the site within Lewis and Clark County. (ex: a historic gold mine, a prehistoric camp, a kill site, a lithic scatter; a Mayan temple)

Landscapes (not in text, but becoming more frequent): Sites functioning as systems, interacting as part of and with the natural setting/systems, a setting which may also be modified by human activity (ex: a buffalo jump with drive lanes, cliffs, processing area, and camp some distance away; a mining area with camp, cabins, mill, roads, tailings, ore dump, garbage dumps, and shafts, adits, etc.)

Settlement Patterns (not in text): Systems of sites (and landscapes) connected to and interacting with each other across the larger landscape and region. (ex: tipi ring sites, buffalo jumps, and associated landscape settings from the Late Prehistoric across north central Montana; gold camps and mining districts across western Montana, including such places as Bannack, Nevada City, Virginia City, the site of Diamond City, and the historic core of Helena).

Regions: A geographic concept, definable by topographic features such as mountain ranges and bodies of water, but also by the cultures themselves (ex: Intermontane or Northern Plains regions of Montana; the Prairie-Plains of the Midwest; the Highland Mayan region of Guatamala and surrounding countries).

DEPOSITION AND TRANSFORMATION

Behavioral Processes
1. Acquisition
2. Manufacture
3. Use
4. Deposition

Transformational Processes - draws on "Taphonomy" (what happens to plants and animals after they die)
1. Changes caused by nature
2. Changes caused by humans

Matrix: "…The physical medium that surrounds, holds, and supports archaeological data…" (ibid. 71) (ex: soil, gravel, rock, sand)

Provenience (sometimes spelled provenance): Three-dimensional location of the data within the matrix, or on the surface. (ibid. 71)

Association: "Two or more artifacts [ecofacts, features]…occurring together in the same matrix"…"crucial to the interpretations of past events…" (ibid. 72)

Context: "…Evaluation of…data based on both behavioral and transformational processes" (ibid. 72)
=1. Primary context: undisturbed since initial deposition
=== a. Use-related: undisturbed data deposited where aquired/made/used
=== b. Transposed: deposited by activity outside of where acquired/made/used (ex: discard sites, middens)
= 2. Secondary context: "…Situations in which provenience, association, and matrix have been altered by transformational processes caused either by human or natural activity" (ibid. 74)

RESEARCH DESIGN
Research Design: The plan for gathering and evaluating the archaeological data.

Data Sampling
= 1. Data universe: "A bounded research area" (ibid. 76) (ex. Single site, portion of site, geographic area containing many sites; also can be temporal (time) boundaries rather than spatial (geographical))
= 2. Divide data universe into sample units ("the unit of investigation;" there are different types)
=== a. Nonarbitrary sample units: existing boundaries (ex: room, house)
=== b. Arbitrary sample units: no inherent natural/cultural relevance (ex: grid units).
NOTE: Sample units should not be confused with data; data = the artifacts/ecofacts/features within each sample unit.
Population: Aggregate/grouping of all sample units; not the same as the data universe.

Data Gathering:
1. Total Data Gathering: "…Investigation of all the units in the population" (ibid. 78); rarely if ever occurs, not practical, especially for large sites (bit note it is related to the unit of investigation!); sometimes this is attempted if a site will be totally destroyed, but really never accomplished.
2. Sample Data Gathering: Only a portion is recovered, due to time, money, etc. constraints; but sometimes also to leave some undisturbed for future investigation/study.

Data Sampling:
= 1. Probabilistic (Statistical) Sampling: Used to specify statistically how the data sample relates to the larger data population.
=== a. Simple Random Sampling: Ensures each unit has equal chance for selection using random number generation.
=== b. Systematic Sampling: Selects first sample unit randomly, while remainder selected by predetermined, equal interval from first.
=== c. Stratified Sampling: Used to ensure sampling will be done of significant variations in the population (ex: slope, ecotype, distance from water, etc.). The divisions of categories are made, and then random/systematic sampling from within each division.
= 2. Nonprobabilistic Sampling: Use personal experience and judgment, such as most at risk or accessible areas; problem is, without statistical sampling, cannot really say it is representative of the population.

Research Stages
1. Formulation- Problem/hypothesis definition; Background research; Feasibility studies
2. Implementation- Permits; Funding; Logistics
3. Data Gathering- Survey (Phase I and II data recovery); Excavation (aka Phase III)
4. Data Processing- Cleaning and conservation; Cataloging; Initial Classifications
5. Analysis- Analytic classifications; Temporal frameworks; Spatial frameworks
6. Interpretation- Application of Culture History/Processualism/Postprocessualism
7. Publication- Research Results used as foundation for new research
…Start again with …1. Formulation!

ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH PROJECTS

Archaeological research requires a broad range of expertise. While investigators try to be versed in multiple areas, no one can do it all; you need teams, and you generally need to outsource some types of laboratory analysis, such as dating materials.

Most archaeological research in the U.S. is done either as CRM work relating to environmental law compliance (the most common is Section 106 of National Historic Preservation Act, and NEPA, the National Environmental Policy Act). Some of this compliance work is done in-house by federal agencies like the Forest Service, but most of it is outsourced to private CRM contractor firms and occasionally universities have contracting efforts as well. Ultimately, contract archaeology is a business. Students who have graduated often end up working as field technicians doing contract archaeology; these folks are often known as "shovel bums."

I was a "migrant archaeo-tech" myself for a few years on projects across the U.S., from 1985 (after graduation with my B.A. in Anthropology from U of MT) to 1990 (when I finally landed a more settled job as a seasonal field-tech for the Forest Service). The job of "shovel bum" is hard, but much more romantic and interesting than many of the other "wage-slave" jobs most students get after graduation in restaurants, as office temps, cubicle slaves, etc. You do break your back and sweat as a shovel bum, but you breathe fresh air and see some interesting things. Interested? Check out the YouTube offering above, and the Shovel Bum cartoon on the archaeology channel. There is a site that helps hook people up with Shovel Bum jobs at http://www.shovelbums.org/; no recommendation or warranty is intended here, caveat emptor (buyer beware) and all that...I haven't worked doing this kind of thing since 1990 (wow, almost 18 years ago!)...if you do this, you are on your own there! But I enjoyed life as a archaeovagrant as a rootless soul in my twenties.

More rare is what people think of as traditional, research-oriented archaeology. These are most often associated with university field schools, which students pay for as part of a degree program. The University of Montana at Missoula holds a field school every summer (the one for 2008 isn't listed yet--this is the one for last year); other universities from across the U.S. do the same, with some projects within Montana or neighboring states. There are even some private organizations that run or participate in digs, like Earthwatch, but the participant usually pays a good chunk of money to do so. The other possibility is that the Forest Service and other federal agencies sometimes over opportunities as volunteers to help with short projects during the summer, sometimes archaeological projects, or more often historic preservation projects stabilizing historic buildings. You can find out more about that on the Passport-In-Time (PIT) website.

Next Time: Fieldwork
Readings for Next Class on Thursday:
Ashmore and Sharer, Chapter 5, "Fieldwork," pp. 87-124.
Feder, Chapter 10, "Good Vibrations: Psychics and Dowsers," pp. 261-277.

The Two Class Papers

2008-02-01T08:11:00.000-08:00

To help clarify some questions about the two short research papers that are required this term, as noted in the syllabus: "Guidelines/stylesheet will be supplied on how to incorporate the words, work or ideas of other authors into your two papers."

"D. TWO SHORT PAPERS:
(1) The first short paper (3 pages) will evaluate two or more websites/programs/articles on archaeology. A well-organized critique and comparison covering the intended audience, and research goals and theoretical perspectives, and relating the reviewed materials to information given in the course. This paper is due on FEB. 20 [ERRATA: SHOULD BE FEB. 14]."

For Paper #1, there was an error in the first part of the syllabus saying the due date was Feb. 20,...as stated in class during this week's Tuesday class the due date is FEB. 14as you can see in the daily schedule portion of the syllabus. The paper is to be a minimum of three typed or computer-printed pages on an archaeological topic of you choice, something you have an interest in or wonder about. You need at least three properly cited and quoted sources (see FORMAT below).

At least one source has to be from a library, such as a journal article. The Internet is great, but you need to be comfortable with research in a library as well, for success in academic studies. Besides the school library, you can use the public library downtown. When you do your paper, please hold down your citations to a sentence or a paragraph for each; don't submit a paper made up of nothing but great blocks of cut-and-paste citations, and little of your own thoughts. I want to see YOU and YOUR thoughts and opinions in the paper, SUPPORTED by the citations (the citations should not take the place of your own thoughts and opinions).

"(2) A second short paper (5 pages) will be an essay by the student reacting to the book "Collapse" by Jared Diamond, relating it to what has been learned about archaeology in the course, and using at least three other sources from the library or the Internet, properly cited, and original in thought. This paper is due on APRIL 30."

For Paper #2, "three other sources," mean other than, but in addition to, Diamond's "Collapse," so that there will be 4 sources.

RESEARCH PAPER FORMAT

Both papers should be 2-3 pages, double-spaced, typed, and in a professional format (Society for American Archaeology (SAA); handed out separately). LATE PAPERS WILL BE DROPPED ONE FULL GRADE FOR EVERY DAY THEY ARE LATE (A paper that would have been graded a B, will get a C if it is turned in one day late, etc.). Hardcopies are required; E-mailed papers are not accepted.

The format to be used is that by the American Anthropological Association, and the style sheet (very similar to MLA style) is at:
http://www.aaanet.org/pubs/style_guide.pdf

In brief, no footnotes are used. Instead, inline citations are used:

Dr. Puffbottom excavated a troglodyte vase of the 13th Dynasty at the Toucan site (Puffbottom 1932: 45), for a nonquoted citation.
"The troglodyte vase was the ugliest ceramic I found there" (Puffbottom 1932: 85), for a quoted citation.

And if you have a paragraph of cited text, indent the entire paragraph, and then add the citation at the end:

yada blah yada blah yada blah yada blah yada blah yada blah yada blah yada blah yada blah yada blah. yada blah yada blah yada blah yada blah yada blah yada blah yada blah yada blah yada blah yada blah. yada blah yada blah yada blah yada blah yada blah yada blah yada blah yada blah yada blah yada blah. yada blah yada blah yada blah yada blah yada blah yada blah yada blah yada blah yada blah yada blah. yada blah yada blah yada blah yada blah yada blah yada blah yada blah yada blah yada blah yada blah (Puffbottom 1932: 56-57).

And the cited sources belong at the end of the paper:

Puffbottom, Emil
1932 "13th Dynasty Troglodyte Vases at the Toucan Site, Pajarito Province, Maladonia." Journal of Troglodyte Studies 28 (5): 20-90.

See examples of how you cite magazines, journals, books (sole author or edited collections of articles), movies, websites/internet documents, etc. on the AAA stylesheet.

SPECIAL BONUS HINT AND FREE GIFT: THE TRADEMARKED "LANCE FOSTER SYSTEM OF DOING TERM PAPERS" ;-)

When I was doing my undergrad papers long, long ago, I used a structure/system for short papers based on the following, and generally got good grades doing it this way:

1. Name of paper, my name, date, class
2. Intro paragraph: what I'm going to talk about, the subject of the paper
3. Point 1 with citation 1
4. Point 2 with citation 2
5. Point 3 with citation 3
6. Tie together all three points; how do all three points relate to each other, in your thoughts...what do you think; has it confirmed or changed your opinion, added to it...?
7. Summary paragraph: what I talked about, what my conclusion is, and any last thoughts or brief citation that seems to wrap it all up nicely
8. CITED SOURCES

...ONE LAST REMINDER ON UNIVERSITY POLICY

"Academic Integrity
The University of Montana-Helena adheres to high standards of academic integrity. A single instance of the following violations will result in an F grade for that assignment; a subsequent violation will result in an FX grade for the course (see Catalog), and in both cases I will report the violation to the academic dean:

• Plagiarism: submitting the words, work or ideas of others without properly crediting them; this includes tracing/copying the artistic work of others, including sources from the Internet
• Using work generated in another class, by you or someone else, for credit in this class without permission from the instructor."

Jan. 31: 1421, Epistemology, the Scientific Method, and Hoaxes

2008-01-31T17:58:00.000-08:00

Along with the lectures in class (see the notes below), we have been watching the PBS program "1421: The Year China Discovered America?" We began watching it last class (Jan. 29), continued today, and will be finishing it next during next Tuesday's class. This program fits in very well with where we are in class, as it proposes a speculative and romantic scenario, typical of what many folks think archaeology is all about. The program discusses the possibility that a Chinese fleet from the Ming Dynasty may have reached the Americas 70 years before the arrival of Columbus. Gavin Menzies, wrote the book 1421: The Year China Discovered the World to propose this idea. It is an exciting idea, and there are some good points made in favor of the idea...but there are some major problems too.

Check out some of the sites on this subject for yourself, pro, con, or undecided (we will weigh the evidence ourselves during the next class):

1421 - The Year China Discovered the World, Menzies' own website
CNN story: "Did the Chinese Discover America?"
Reader reviews about the book from Amazon.com
Salon.com's critical article on the book
"The 1421 Myth Exposed" website

The upshot may have been given by Menzies himself, as he was quoted as saying, ""The more negative the reviews, the more the book sells!"

NOW ON TO THE CLASS NOTES FOR TODAY...

Jan. 31 Thursday
Readings for Today:
Feder, Chapter 2: “Epistemology: How You Know What You Know,” pp. 17-43
and Chapter 3, “Anatomy of an Archaeological Hoax”, pp. 44-63

FEDER, CHAPTER 2: EPISTEMOLOGY: How You Know What You Know

We know what we know by collecting information…
1. Directly through their own experiences…but people are notoriously poor observers
2. Indirectly through sources like friends, teachers, parents, friends, TV, books, internet, newspapers, etc

Ask yourself…but how did those sources get the info…
…was it through Revelation-from-Above (scriptures, dreams, visions), myths, tradition, authority (family, elders and experts), intuition, logic, empirical observation…how expert is the source in that specific topic?
(An anthropology teacher in Iowa once told me they had been teaching for over twenty years that my tribe was extinct! And that was one state away from our reservation!)

Also ask what motive, what agenda, what reason does the source have for giving you that information… are they trying to shape your opinion?…is the underlying motive related to religious, philosophical, nationalistic, commercial, financial, entertainment…?

Science provides one way to knowledge about the universe that is dependable. Science is a process…"a series of techniques used to maximize the probability that what we think we know really reflects the way things are, were, or will be. "Science is often wrong, but part of the inherent process is it is self-correcting…"The only claim that we do make in science is that if we honestly, consistently, explicitly, and vigorously pursue knowledge using some basic techniques and principles, the truth will eventually surface…." (Feder 2008:25).

Four Underlying Principles of Science:

1. There is a real and knowable universe.
2. The universe operates according to certain understandable rules or laws.
3. These laws are immutable- they do not change depending on where you are, who you are, or "when" you are.
4. These laws can be studied and understood by people through careful observation, experimentation, testing (and retesting), and research.

Science is unsurpassed in its ability to grasp and explain empirical truths and facts…facts and truths of material reality. Science is about material existence…which is when it comes to that which is not material (theology, religion, philosophy) these cannot be tested, and so are not part of science

Deconstructionism was/is an academic/philosophical movement based on an idea that everything is ultimately subjective..that there is no "truth" and that reality can never really be known.

(Deconstructionism is radical subjectivism--- scientism (the belief that the material world is all that exists) is radical objectivism. )

Induction and deduction
Hypotheses (pl.), hypothesis (s.)

Induction- Observation and formation of hypotheses…when observe nature, you are using induction to go from observations of specifics to come up with generalities…this is only the first part of science, related to the development of hypotheses, and is not sufficient in itself. Hypotheses can really come from almost anywhere…an observation, an intuition, a dream, a legend…but the crucial part is the testing.

Deduction- Constructing a way to test the hypothesis…in the form of "if..then" question…if the hypothesis is true, then the deduced facts will be true…this is the need for testing the hypothesis…it needs to be testable…if it is not testable, it is not science

(Read the text's example of the case of childbed fever in the 1800s)

The methodology of science applied to something that needs to be explained, then:

1. Observe
2. Induce general hypotheses (multiple working hypotheses…you need competing explanations) or possible explanations for what we have observed…the hypothesis MUST be testable…without a testable hypothesis, it is not science
3. Deduce specific things that must be true if our hypothesis is true (just because only one hypothesis is left, it is not necessarily true…it must also be tested)
4. Test the hypothesis by checking out the deduced implications

Occam's Razor- "Entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity"…the explanation/hypothesis that explains the observation with the fewest "ifs"/assumptions, is the best explanation…the simplest explanation is the best explanation

While some sciences can test their hypothesis through relicable experiments under laboratory conditions, not all can, at least not entirely…historical science disciplines like historical geology, history and prehistory require hypotheses but experiments are not always possible (but keep in mind there is a branch of archaeology called experimental archaeology, such as when people try to replicate stone tools using different methods)…

In this situation we apply what is called "the convergence of evidence" using multiple sources of evidence that can be used to crosscheck each other. In this case, we do not predict what the results of an experiment must be in order for our hypothesis to be valid, instead we predict what new data we must be able to find if the hypothesis is correct.

The scientific community is not perfect…scientists are known to have falsified data etc….scientists are human too. This is usually because of career or grant pressures, or because someone is just too in love with their own ideas and are not willing to let them go, even in the face of all the opposing evidence.

FEDER, CHAPTER 3: ANATOMY OF AN ARCHAEOLOGICAL HOAX

This chapter discusses the cases of three famous frauds in archaeology:

- Shinichi Fujimura, a Japanese archaeologist who consistently found the oldest sites in Japan…but was later found to have been a fraud, "salting"/planting sites with artifacts

- The Cardiff Giant, a carved stone man promoted as a petrified giant from before the Flood

- Pachaug Forest in Connecticut- planted artifacts

Rules for a Successful Archaeological Hoax:

1. Give the people what they want (feeds into their confirmatory bias)
2. Don't be too successful or too lucky…let others take the credit
3. Learn from your mistakes..when people unmask hoaxes, learn how they found out and don't do the same thing

Reading assignment for next class (Th Jan 31):
Ashmore and Sharer, Chapter 4: “How Archaeology Works,” pp. 61-86.

SPECIAL NOTICE: I will provide a special post tomorrow to clarify some questions I've received about the upcoming Paper #1, due at the beginning of the Feb. 14 class.

Jan. 29: The Development of Archaeology and Current Approaches

2008-01-29T12:41:00.000-08:00

Northwestern Projectile Points Typology, typical of the Cultural History Approach's development of culture chronologies

Jan. 29 Tuesday
Readings for Today:
Ashmore and Sharer, Chapter 2: “Archaeology’s Past”, pp. 25-38 and Chapter 3: “Contemporary Approaches to Archaeology,” pp. 39-60.

Topic for Today's Class: The History of Archaeology: Origins, development, and the contemporary scene. The culture of archaeologists and archaeology.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF ARCHAEOLOGY

Archaeology's roots are in what is known as Antiquarianism. Antiquarians were people who collected items (antiquities) from ancient cultures, such as those of the Greeks, Romans, Egyptians and Mesopotamians. Some of these collections were private, and others were acquired for museums. Most of these antiquities were from looters. Some of the collectors simply acquired these items as art objects for personal enjoyment or to enhance their social status. Other collectors began to see patterns in the collections, patterns that related to how old the items were, or where they were from. They began to arrange, or classify, these collections in according to their age, materials, place of origin, and appearance or form. Classification was the first step in the science of doing archaeology, and it is still important today.

William Camden: compiled known sites in England, in book Britannia (1587)
William Stukeley: studied/speculated about Stonehenge; helped create the Druid Revival
Ole Worm (Denmark) and Johan Bure (Sweden) studied Runes (runic inscriptions)
William Dugdale: In 1600s, first to say that stone tools were made by ancient Britons before metal-making, and not by elves

The Bible was interpreted as saying Earth was only 6000 years old, but once these items were found to be of human origin, and were found with the bones of extinct animals, then people wanted to know how old these items were…this produced great debate…which continues today.

John Frere at Hoxne, England, found human and extinct animal bones far below the surface at Hoxne in 1797. Boucher de Perthes found a similar site on the Somme River, France. And human remains were found about this time in the Neander Valley (Neander Thal), Germany (though they thought these bones were of a modern human with arthritis and other problems.

The debate changed course in the mid-1800s, when geologists such as Charles Lyell proved that the Earth was older than previously thought, and that the processes for change on the Earth were slow and gradual, the same in the past, as the present.
This slow gradual change was called Uniformitarianism. The idea that the Earth's features are changed in violent events is called Catastrophism. This originated in the idea of the Great Flood of the Bible. Today, we know Earth undergoes both types of change. This was also the period when Charles Darwin produced "The Origin of Species," and the idea of the same kind of slow change in animals and plants called the Theory of Evolution.

In the New World, the Europeans did not believe that Native Americans could have built the cities and mounds that were found all over the land, so they invented ideas they were built by civilizations which had migrated from the Old World: Hebrews from the Lost Tribes of Israel, Phoenicians, Hindus, Chinese, or even people from mythical lands like Atlantis, Lemuria, or Mu. They just could not believe that the Indians could have built such things. It was a result of the colonialist and racist ideas of the time. Unfortunately, they did not read accounts from French explorers in the 1600s who stayed in the moundbuilder cities of the Mississippi River Valley when they were still being used and built by Indians, before the continent-wide disease epidemics in the 1500s-1800s wiped out close to 90 percent of all Native Americans in the Americas.

Thomas Jefferson proved that the mounds were built by Native Americans, in his excavations of mounds in Virginia using stratigraphy, a study of the sequence of earth layers (strata -plural, stratum -singular), their relative age (older strata below, younger on top) and the artifacts found within the strata.

Even though Jefferson had proved that the Indians were responsible for building the mounds, communication of studies was still inadequate, so that even in 1848, E. G. Squier and E.H. Davis in their recording of mounds still refused to believed that the mounds of the Ohio and Mississippi River Valleys were built by Native Americans. This was laid to rest finally in 1856 with the publication of Samuel Haven's Archaeology of the United States. Haven examined all the evidence, dismissed the most fanciful interpretations, and concluded the ancestors of the living Indians had built the mounds. By the end of the 1800s, the scientific evidence was overwhelming: Native Americans were responsible for all of the mounds and other sites in the Americas, not Old World visitors.

NOTE: "Old World" and "New World" are terms that we often don't think about, we just use them. Of course, this usage is a European worldview. To Native Americans, the Americas are "The Old World" and the invading Europeans came from "The New World!"

Giovanni Belzoni: looter of Egyptian tombs for the British
Thomas Bruce removed the Elgin marbles from the Parthenon
Rosetta Stone: Jean Francois Champollion used to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics

Archaeology as a professional discipline emerged in the 1800s. It immediately had to grapple with how to make sense of all the information, all the STUFF that had been collected up to that point. To make sense of things, to interpret them, you need an interpretive framework. A model is an interpretive framework used in science.

"A model is essentially a form of hypothesis that describes the subject of investigation in a simplified way; it is constructed and tested according to the scientific method" (Ashmore and Sharer 2006: 34).

In the Old World, the first models were based in history. For example, Heinrich Schliemann used a legendary historical source, The Iliad, to locate the site of Troy in 1871. Today, many European scholars still link their profession more with history than anthropology.

The first historical system widely used by archaeologists, the three-age system, is generally credited to two Danish scholars working in the early 1800s, Christian Thomsen and Jens Worsaae, The three-age system is made up of the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age. Archaeology was being improved by such scholars as A.L. Pitt-Rivers (methodology) and Sir John Lubbock, who came up with the division in the Stone Age (Paleolithic "Old Stone Age" vs Neolithic "New Stone Age").

These historical systems did not have much applicability to the Americas, as Native Americans did not have Bronze or Iron metallurgy. So instead of history, anthropology provided the models, through the unifying concept of culture. New World archaeologists were generally anthropologists, and often also did work in linguistics, physical anthropology, and cultural anthropology, such as Frank Cushing who studied the Pueblo of the southwest.

Both came together as cultural evolution. This was the idea that cultures could be classified as they passed through a series of stages based on technology, and associated economic and social factors.

In unilinear cultural evolution (developed by Lewis Henry Morgan, Herbert Spencer, Edward Tylor, et al), the stages were best known as Savagery, Barbarism, and Civilization. This was often used to justify European dominance as the logical endpoint of this development. This idea that sets your own culture and civilization as the standard by which all cultures are measured is called ethnocentrism.

The next change was brought about by the anthropologist Franz Boas and his students. This was due to their extensive work collecting what they could of the disappearing and changing Native American cultures in the early 1900s. The evidence showed that cultures were much more diverse and complex in their developments, that they did not always pass through the same stages because of differences in resources, history, acquiring cultural elements from neighboring cultures, etc. This resulted in the idea of multilinear evolution.

THREE MAIN APPROACHES TO ARCHAEOLOGY: Culture History, Processualism, Post-Processualism

1. CULTURE HISTORY APPROACH

The Culture History Approach depends on a normative model, that is, culture is a set of norms or rules that govern behavior in a society.

The Culture History Approach is recognized by its building chronologies: chronological periods or phases, and then using these eventually to create time-space grids for a region. You can see these for Montana, when you see charts showing diagnostic projectile point types arranged in chronologies, typically within a Northern Plains context. The largest time-space unit is the Culture Area based on ethnographic traits; for Montana, this would be mostly the buffalo-centered Plains Culture Area for the middle and eastern third of the state, and some of the Plateau or Intermontane Culture Area for the western mountains.

Culture area- as seen in Native American culture areas: Plains, Southwest, etc.
Tradition- cultural continuity through time (diachronic)
Horizon- ties and uniformity across space at a single point in time (synchronic)

2. PROCESSUAL APPROACH

The Processual Approach was a new generation’s reaction against the Culture history approach. It did not feel that culture history was contributing to understanding human culture in a way that was scientific enough. The processualists wanted to create a Middle Range Theory, that would take the specifics of the archeological record of a site, and interpret the cultural process (the Middle Range Theory), to eventually formulate universal laws to explain human culture.

The Processual Approach is named for its concern for cultural process, how a culture “works,” rather than building chronologies. The Processual Approach depends on ecological and materialist models; it works with material such as technology and ecological resources, rather than social or belief systems, which are not preserved in the archaeological record nor testable by the scientific method. Leslie White and Lewis Binford are two archaeologists noted for working and promoting this approach. Processual archaeology is still the dominant approach in most universities.

Hallmarks of this cultural materialist approach include: Research models and the, Multiple working hypotheses (as many alternative explanations as possible), Cultural systems (subsistence interconnects with social, etc.), Multilinear cultural evolution (specificity to place, etc.).

Compatible with the scientific approach of Processualism:
Evolutionary archaeology: neoDarwinian approach of Dunnell, focused on reproductive success, focus on scientific methodology
Behavioral archaeology: specifically is concerned with the set of processes by which objects are made, are used and become part of the archaeological record (transformation processes—more on those soon); this approach is promoted by Michael Schiffer.

3. POSTPROCESSUAL APPROACH

The Postprocessual Approach was developed in reaction to the scientism of Processual Archaeology, which said you can’t study things that do not leave material remains. It was really developed in a time of academia called deconstructionism. Postprocessualists such as Ian Hodder believed that such ideational aspects of culture could be and should be studied alongside the material aspects. By not studying or at least trying to study ideas and thought in the archaeological cultures, too much was left out of understanding the human story. Hodder believed you could do this by using the reflexive method.

Postprocessual research focuses on the reflexive method: evidence does not exist apart from interpretation and theory, so one must continuously interpret and reinterpret; a single interpretation is not the goal. In addition, postprocessualists advocate a cognitive model of culture, as for example, “reading” artifacts as nonverbal texts of the culture that made them.

Other forms of archaeology include interests in how Marxism (class and labor) and Feminism (the place of women in the archaeological record) can inform and shape archaeology.

Reading assignment for next class (Th Jan 31):
Feder, Chapter 2: “Epistemology: How You Know What You Know,” pp. 17-43 and Chapter 3, “Anatomy of an Archaeological Hoax”, pp. 44-63,

Two Stories: Blogging Archaeology and Top 10 Discoveries of 2007

2008-01-29T07:40:00.000-08:00

I originally started this Montana Archaeology blog as a sort of online filing cabinet as an easy reference and bulletin board for online resources about Montana archaeology, kind of an online scratchpad for myself and whoever might happen upon it while surfing. And then when I began teaching the "Introduction to Archaeology" course at the University of Montana-Helena this term, I thought it might be a handy tool for students to see what was going on in class, and a way to begin to engage what has been called The New Media. While doing some surfing this morning before this afternoon's class, I found a great article on the use of blogs in archaeology. One of the quotes that caught my eye:

"The process of reading a blog is very similar to the process of making sense of archaeological material" (http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/blogs/part4.html).

Story 1: Archaeological Blogging

Archaeology Magazine has an article this month, Archaeology Blogs, which covers "Weblog History and Taxonomy," "Blogging and Academia," "Blogging Archaeology (Blogs are used by archaeologists to create a more transparent approach to fieldwork), and "The Archaeology of Blogging: How do we know what blogs to trust as sources of information or informed opinions?" This last part is very pertinent to what we are studying currently in class, namely, epistemology, or how do we know, what we know?

The article's author says:

When I began my blog, I had little idea of the history, potential, or diversity of the weblog as a medium. I am not sure that I have necessarily found the proper voice for my blog yet. It tends to vacillate between news on my own research and archaeology projects and more general observations on matters that catch my fancy. I've tried to speak at least some of the time to an audience in North Dakota where I now live and teach, and I also try to speak to my academic peers. The result, in hindsight, is a sometime bizarre blend of academic and popular. This uneven character of blogs is what distinguishes them from more formal academic writing, but is also what makes them such a compelling medium. Most academics, after all, drift between the mundane world of daily life and the obscure concerns of their research and writing. The idiosyncratic and uneven cadence of academic blogging perhaps brings out these juxtaposed facets of their lives better than anywhere else. In this regard, those of us involved in blogging archaeology and the archaeology of blogging, bring just a bit more of our life's work to light.

There are some great resources and ideas in this informative article...as a newbie to Archaeo-blogging, it is a real find!

Story 2: Top Ten Archaeological Discoveries of 2007

Archaeology magazine has also published its "Top 10 Discoveries of 2007" in its Jan/Feb 2008 issue, according to China's English version article (No, Montana didn't make it...but it is fun to read about anyways!):

1. Solar Observatory at Chankillo, Peru
Travelers have noticed the 13 stone towers rising over Peru's coastal desert since at least the nineteenth century. But researchers only last year discovered the structures' purpose: they make up a sophisticated solar observatory, one of the earliest known in the Americas.

2. Nebo-Sarsekim Tablet, The British Museum, UK
Last June, Austrian Assyriologist Michael Jursa was doing what he has done since 1991, poring over the more than 100,000 undeciphered cuneiform tablets in the British Museum. But while analyzing records from the Babylonian city of Sippar, he made a startling discovery with Biblical implications. It came in the unlikely form of a tablet noting a one-and-a-half pound gold donation to a temple made by an official, or "chief eunuch," Nebo-Sarsekim.

3. New Dates for Clovis Sites, North America
New radiocarbon dates kept the controversy over the peopling of the Americas simmering in 2007. An analysis of dates for the best-documented Clovis sites suggests the culture arose later and was shorter-lived than once thought, a finding that some say deals a blow to the "Clovis first" theories that maintain the big-game-hunting people were the first immigrants to the New World.

4. Early Squash Seeds, Peru
New research favors the idea that agriculture began in the New World shortly after it first appeared in the Old World. Tom Dillehay of Vanderbilt University has the squash seeds to prove it.

5. Ancient Chimpanzee Tool Use
Archaeologists led by Julio Mercader of the University of Calgary have uncovered the first known ancient chimpanzee archaeological site, a grouping of stone hammers that were used by apes 4,300 years ago to smash open nuts. By analyzing pollen grains embedded in the stones, the team was able to identify five species of nuts the tools were used to open, four of which are not eaten by humans.

6. Urbanization at Tell Brak, Syria
Archaeologists have long believed that the world's oldest cities lay along the fertile riverbanks of southern Mesopotamia, in what is now Iraq. There, in a land of plenty, went the idea, powerful kings began coercing their subjects to live together some 6,000 years ago. Their great invention--the city--later spread throughout the Near East. But last August, Harvard University archaeologist Jason Ur and two British colleagues turned that idea on its head. Their intensive field survey and surface collection of potsherds at the site of Tell Brak in northern Syria revealed that an ancient city rose there at exactly the same time as urban centers first sprouted up in southern Mesopotamia, but followed a very different model of development. "Urbanism," says Ur, "is not one brilliant idea that occurred one place and then diffused."

7. Lismullin Henge, Tara, Ireland
Early last year, archaeologists working on the route of a controversial highway near the village of Lismullin, Ireland, stumbled across a vast Iron Age ceremonial enclosure, or henge, surrounded by two concentric walls. The 2,000-year-old site is just over a mile from the Hill of Tara, traditional seat of the ancient Irish kings and site of St. Patrick's conversion of the Irish to Christianity in the fifth century A.D. The discovery of the massive henge, measuring more than 260 feet in diameter, confirms the long-held belief that the area around the hill contains a rich complex of monuments.

8. Polynesian Chickens in Chile
Scholars have long assumed the Spaniards first introduced chickens to the New World along with horses, pigs, and cattle. But now radiocarbon dating and DNA analysis of a chicken bone excavated from a site in Chile suggest Polynesians in oceangoing canoes brought chickens to the west coast of South America well before Europe's "Age of Discovery."

9. Homo habilis & Homo erectus, Kenya
Whether they are mother-and-daughter species or two sisters, the relationship between Homo habilis and Homo erectus is becoming strained. A pair of discoveries near Lake Ileret in Kenya call into question the idea that H. erectus, the species from which modern humans evolved, is descended from H. habilis, the earliest hominid known to use stone tools.

10. Greater Angkor, Cambodia
The capital of a Khmer state that flourished between the ninth and fifteenth centuries, Cambodia's Angkor is one of the most intensively studied sites in the world. But it continues to inspire more questions than answers, the most fundamental being why the sophisticated Khmer Empire collapsed. In 2007, research into the mysteries of the world's largest preindustrial city reached a milestone with the completion of a 10-year mapping project, which yielded clues suggesting that the sprawling metropolis may have collapsed under self-induced environmental pressures related to overpopulation and deforestation.

Wow, I am going to have to get the magazine and read up on some of these. The Clovis story is definitely of importance to Montana's archaeology. And the likelihood that Polynesians may have reached the Americas before the European entrance, at least in some locations, is not only interesting on its own, but since the controversial Kennewick Man had some skeletal features more similar to either the Ainu of Hokkaido, or the Polynesians, this is something that makes you go, hmmm.

Archaeology on the Web

2008-01-26T17:18:00.001-08:00

There is so much about archaeology on the web, it can be rather overwhelming.

There are several excellent entry points for discovering archaeology on the Internet, such as:

http://about.archaeology.com

and

http://www.archaeology.org/wwwarky/general.html

Do a little surfing to see what's been going on in the world of archaeology.

But don't forget to have fun too...archaeology is well-known for its off-the-wall humor!

Jan. 24: What is Archaeology? ...and what Archaeology is not

2008-01-24T11:23:00.000-08:00

Jan. 24 Thursday
Readings for Today:
Ashmore and Sharer, Chapter 1: “Introduction,” pp. 1-24
Feder, Chapter 1: “Science and Pseudoscience,” pp. 1-16

What is Archaeology?

Archaeology is the study of the human past through its material remains.

The Archaeological Record is the material remains of the past (sites, artifacts, features, etc.)

Archaeology is not a focus on the collection of artifacts: An artifact out of context is like a word on a page of a book…torn out of the book and off of the page it can tell us very little. The unfortunate extreme of a focus on the artifact is looting (see the example of Slack Farm in the Ashmore text, or the destruction of the looting of the museums in Iraq in wartime).

Archaeology and looting both destroy sites; the difference is that archaeology recovers the story as well as the material remains so that we can all learn more about who we are and where we came from…and maybe a little about the purpose of life; looting is all about greed and money.

Archaeology is about the story of humankind, the story that the remains can tell us, not the stuff itself. The difference between archaeology and history is that history focuses on the important people and big events; archaeology focuses on what everybody did, the little guys too, how they lived, what they ate, to borrow from James Deetz, the “Small Things Forgotten.” History is what people tell us they did; archaeology reveals what they actually did.

In the Old World, Archaeology developed out of the disciplines of antiquarianism, classical studies, the humanities in general, history and art history, because of the proximity of the Roman and Greek Worlds, as well as those of Egypt and the Bible. There are lots of written resources to draw from.

In the New World, there is not this same depth of written history. Archaeology here developed as one of the four subdisciplines of anthropology, in its earlier years especially with the focus on the Moundbuilders of the Mississippi Valley, the Puebloan cultures of the southwest, and of course Mesoamerica’s spectacular Mayan and Aztec cultures, and the Inca of South America.

Archaeology is necessarily interdisciplinary in its practice, drawing from science, history, anthropology, and many other disciplines such as soil science, geology, biology, geography, and computer sciences (especially GPS and GIS related technologies).

Archaeology as Science

Archaeology is practiced as a science. That means archaeology relies on the scientific method. In the scienctific method, a model of what one is studying is proposed. Then a hypothesis that can be tested (a testable hypothesis) is formed, and fieldwork and/or laboratory work is done to test it. If the test fails, the hypothesis is rejected.
THIS IS IMPORTANT TO REMEMBER!
There is no proof in science, only the elimination or disproof of inadequate hypotheses.

To paraphrase Sherlock Holmes, when you have rejected all the alternative explanations, then whatever remains, no matter how unlikely, is what actually happened. This also relates to what is called Occam’s Razor: In almost cases, the simplest explanation is the best one. We will look at this a bit more later on.

Like many sciences, archaeology is not always done through laboratory and the experimental approach. Much must be done through simple observation, which is why archaeology has been described as a historical science.

Archaeology and History

Oral history and Documentary history
Historical archaeology: ex. Martin’s Hundred and Ivor Noel Hume
Prehistoric archaeology and Protohistoric archaeology

Archaeology and anthropology

Anthropology: the four field approach
Diachronic vs synchronic
Ethnography and ethnology
The definition of “Culture”

Archaeology as a profession

Education and training: There are opportunities for you participate in archaeology without the decrees (in Montana there is the Passport-In-Time (PIT) program, and other fieldwork opportunities, but to be a professional archaeologist, you need to go through the academic hoops). You need at least a Master’s degree with appropriate work experience to get a private level or government-level job, but Ph.D. is the expected degree, especially for the highest level jobs in government and universities.
Professional organizations – include Montana.

CRM Cultural Resources Management (sometimes called heritage resources management) is the most numerous kind of paid archaeological jobs, because of the need for compliance with federal environmental laws like the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and resulting regulations at the federal and state levels. University jobs are a lot fewer, and harder to get; you can often get temporary instructor positions (which is what I am doing) but tenure track careers are much harder to find and secure.

Two fairly new developments are: 1) Community-based archaeology and 2) Indigenous archaeologies. Community-based archaeology is run by and for the benefit of the community itself (such as in Alexandria, Virginia or Cochiti Pueblo). Indigenous archaeologies combine the endeavors of archaeology with the viewpoints and culture of the served indigenous group, such as the Navajo Nation archaeology program.

Four Goals of Archaeology
1. Description and classification of recovered physical evidence; outline the distribution of remains of ancient societies in both time and space. Constructing chronologies and describing the specifics of the culture. (Ashmore’s “Form”). Most archaeologists working today work in this level and the next…
2. Purposes of the objects found, determined from an analysis of the objects themselves and the interrelationships among different pieces of evidence; reconstruct past human activities (what Louis Binford has called “Middle Range Theory,” the reconstruction of past lifeways). (Ashmore’s “Function”)
3. Changes that occurred in past societies; determine how and why ancient cultures changed over time. The search for universal laws. (Ashmore’s “Process”). Limited success doing this so far.
4. Understanding past societies within their own cultural contexts; goal to determine the attitudes and beliefs of ancient peoples and to learn things form the past that may be of use to us in the present. (Ashmore’s “Meaning”). This fourth goal is very tricky and many archaeologists believe it cannot really be properly done.

Now...What Archaeology is NOT!

Archaeology is not the study of the nonhuman past—the study of dinosaurs is paleontology, not archaeology.

Archaeology is not simply the collection of artifacts— You read in Ashmore the tragic destruction of the site at Slack Farm in Kentucky. Looting, also termed “pothunting,” is not archaeology.

There are other ethical issues to consider that we get into as the course goes along, such as the misuse of archaeology to promote nationalism, bigotry, and devalue the past, including the intelligence and capabilities of our own ancestors.

Now we come to Pseudoscience and archaeology….the many hoaxes, scams, delusions of the past and present. Feder’s book is excellent in this, which is why I selected it as one of our textbooks. There is a lot of confusion about our past, that’s for sure, and what science is.

Feder’s book is really about looking at various extraordinary claims about archaeology, and the evidence of support (or lack thereof) in terms of science. Science by its nature and methods is necessarily skeptical. Remember, using the scientific method you cannot prove anything to be “true” in science, you can only reject explanations that are proven to be untrue or inadequate. Often things that seem plausible are only in those fields and areas you are not familiar with yourself.

Why do people come up with weird explanations rather than trying to find the real truth?? Feder lists 6 possible motivations:
1. Money- the big motivator of our culture and times!
2. Fame and notoriety
3. Nationalism and bigotry
4. Religion or trying to prove another belief system
5. Romance and escapism
6. Psychological instability/motivations or personal idiosyncracies

BUT also remember…aside from the scientific method itself, the community of scientists and skeptics are also a community of belief…often very antagonistic, hostile or dismissive of areas that are not amenable to the scientific method and empirical reality: theology (God and religion), the occult and psychic realms, etc. In fact remember, science is also not concerned with studying such things as philosophy, art, poetry, literature, etc.

When it comes to empirical, material, physical reality, nothing is as well-equipped as science to discover the facts and truth. But it can be and has been argued that there is much more to life than material reality. Just try to use hammers for nails and screwdrivers for screws! Use science to investigate material reality…use critical thinking and other tools for the rest!

Try to remember: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, which is a corollary to Occam’s Razor!

When it comes to claims of our past...

...the Bottom line
1. Learn and use critical thinking.
2. Occam’s Razor: The simplest explanation is almost always the correct one; Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.
3. If you want something to be verifiable as empirical reality, then understand and use the scientific method.
4. What are the motivations of the source? To sell a book or TV show? To make money or become famous? Real archaeology is most of the time not very exciting or glamorous!
5. Have fun reading and watching what you enjoy!… but be able to distinguish fantasy and romance, from reality…the truth can be as strange as any fiction, and even more enjoyable!

READINGS FOR NEXT CLASS:

Ashmore and Sharer, Chapter 2: “Archaeology’s Past”, pp. 25-38 and Chapter 3: “Contemporary Approaches to Archaeology,” pp. 39-60.

Jan. 22: Class Introduction and Head-Smashed-In Video

2008-01-23T10:38:00.000-08:00

Jan. 22 (yesterday) was the first day of class. We introduced ourselves, and our personal interests in archaeology, handed out and discussed the class syllabus, standards and expectations, and the required texts.

The class then watched a video from the Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump. It was a good introduction to the ancient lifeways and contemporary culture of the Piegan Blackfeet who live here in Montana and across the border in Canada. Archaeologists and tribal members described the positive changes in interactions between the Blackfeet and archaeologists who had learned the importance of consultation and partnering with indigenous people. The whole website is great. For this class, be sure and read the pages on Archaeological Facts here with page 2 on the landscape of a buffalo jumphere at the Head-Smashed-In website. There is also an excellent 15-page PDF document called Buffalo Tracks you should download and read for this class.

Buffalo jumps are perhaps the most spectacular type of prehistoric Native American-associated site in Montana. You can visit buffalo jumps in Montana too…such as at Madison Buffalo Jump near Three Forks, Wahkpa Chug'n near Havre, and the First People's Buffalo Jump (near Ulm, between Helena and Great Falls; it is also known as the Ulm Pishkun). Read the post below from Friday, January 18 to find out more.

Reading assignments for Thursday’s class (Jan. 24):
Ashmore and Sharer, Chapter 1: “Introduction,” pp. 1-24; Feder, Chapter 1: “Science and Pseudoscience,” pp. 1-16

"Introduction to Archaeology": Class Syllabus

2008-01-22T11:52:00.001-08:00

Starting today, I am teaching a course this spring semester 2008: "Introduction to Archaeology," at the UM-Helena as adjunct faculty. This blog will be used this semester as a teaching aid for the class and to help me organize classes. Class outlines and supplementary materials and items of interest will be posted here as well. Today I will start by posting the syllabus.

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ANTH 250: Introduction to Archaeology CRN 37473 / 3 credits
Spring 2008/ T & Th, 2:45-4:00 pm / Room DON 206
Instructor: Lance M. Foster, M.A., M.L.A.
E-mail: lancemfoster@yahoo.com
Academic Web Site: http://montanaarchaeology.blogspot.com
Office Hours/Location: By Appointment

Course Overview
Archaeology is the study of past human cultures through their material remains. Archaeology uses many different approaches and tools to study and explain how people lived in the distant and not-so-distant past. Artifacts, sites, settlements, and landscapes may be studied to help reveal how people lived, how they saw themselves and their world, what the environment was like, and how these factors interrelated and changed through time. In this class you will gain an overview of what archaeology is, how archaeology is done, and what it can tell us about our world, past, present and perhaps even a glimpse of our future. This course is intended to be an introductory survey of archaeology for undergraduate students, either as an elective or as a foundation for further studies in archaeology. There are no prerequisites for this course.

Course Objectives
The Introduction to Archaeology course is designed to be transferable and comparable with other Introduction to Archaeology courses taught by the Montana University system. This course is based upon the Seven Principles for Curriculum Reform, as proposed by the Society for American Archaeology (SAA), which are based on SAA's Seven Principles of Archaeological Ethics. Through the full participation in, and completion of, this class, the student will know the following principles and be able to accomplish the associated tasks:

1. ARCHAEOLOGICAL METHODOLOGY: Describe the BASIC ARCHAEOLOGICAL SKILLS: how to locate, record, investigate, analyze, and interpret archaeological sites. Survey, excavation, analysis, interpretation.

2. COMMUNICATION SKILLS: Demonstrate good COMMUNICATION skills: written, oral, visual, and interactive, to understand and tell the story of the past

3. ARCHAEOLOGICAL ETHICS: Discuss critically PROFESSIONAL ETHICS AND VALUES in archaeology: skills, honesty, responsibility to science and to the many different publics

4. Understand and compare DIVERSE INTERESTS IN THE PAST: different people's associations with prehistory and history

5. Describe the processes and methods of STEWARDSHIP: preserving nonrenewable cultural resources through policy, law, and public education

6. Discuss critically archaeology's SOCIAL RELEVANCE: connections of past human systems and adaptations with today's world

7. Describe not only specific case studies but general archaeological principles relating to REAL-WORLD PROBLEM SOLVING: practical application of knowledge from the human past

Required Texts

Ashmore, Wendy, and Robert J. Sharer
2000 Discovering Our Past: A Brief Introduction to Archaeology. 3rd edition. McGraw-Hill.

Diamond, Jared
2005 Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. New York: Penguin Books.

Feder, Kenneth L.
2005 Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries: Science and Pseudoscience in Archaeology. 5th Edition. McGraw-Hill.

Course Grading and Expectations

A. ATTENDANCE: Attendance will be taken regularly. Class participation counts as part of your grade, and absences will negatively impact both what you learn and your final class grade. If you will be absent, tell in advance and the absence may be excused. Please get the notes from other students if you have to miss a class. The professor will not provide copies of his lecture notes to students. Makeup exams will only be given for officially excused absences.

B. PARTICIPATION: Classes include lectures, discussions, films, and slide presentations. Readings must be done IN ADVANCE so you can DISCUSS the material in class. Lectures include material beyond that in your texts for which you will be responsible on exams, so note-taking and attendance are required. Taping lectures is permitted, but not for sale or profit. You are encouraged to bring in pertinent articles from the current news media to discuss. Class participation will be part of the grade.

C. EXAMS: There will be two exams, a midterm and a final. Both include essay-type questions as well as multiple choice, and each will cover assigned readings for that time period as well as lectures and other class materials. The final will be cumulative to a small degree in that you will need to know the basic concepts of archaeology to interpret the record of prehistory and early history. There will be NO makeup exams except in fully documented serious circumstances. A makeup exam must be taken within one week of the missed exam, and will consist of all essay questions.

D. TWO SHORT PAPERS:

(1) The first short paper (3 pages) will evaluate two or more websites/programs/articles on archaeology. A well-organized critique and comparison covering the intended audience, and research goals and theoretical perspectives, and relating the reviewed materials to information given in the course. This paper is due on FEB. 14.

(2) A second short paper (5 pages) will be an essay by the student reacting to the book "Collapse" by Jared Diamond, relating it to what has been learned about archaeology in the course, and using at least three other sources from the library or the Internet, properly cited, and original in thought. This paper is due on APRIL 30.

Both papers should be 2-3 pages, double-spaced, typed, and in a professional format (Society for American Archaeology (SAA); handed out separately). LATE PAPERS WILL BE DROPPED ONE FULL GRADE FOR EVERY DAY THEY ARE LATE (A paper that would have been graded a B, will get a C if it is turned in one day late, etc.). Hardcopies are required; E-mailed papers are not accepted.

E. FINAL GRADE CALCULATION:

30% = Midterm exam (multiple choice, matching, and essay)
10% = Review Paper on Programs, Articles, or Internet Sites
10% = Class Participation
20% = Paper on "Collapse"
30% = Final exam (multiple choice, matching, and essay)

100-90 points = A
80-89 points = B
70-79 points = C
60-69 points = D

-/+ added based on class participation and attendance

Late policy/penalties: No late assignments will be accepted without prior arrangement and agreement with instructor.

Academic Rigor
Based on the UM-H Academic Rigor Value Statement, here what you should expect from me:
1) that I communicate the course expectations to you and have them summarized on this syllabus;
2) that I come to class prepared, and that I give you useful feedback on your assignments in a timely manner;
3) that I am available to you outside of the classroom;
4) that you can collaborate with your classmates on writing assignments as long as the products of those assignments are truly your work;
5) that the assignments are relevant, meaningful and challenging;
6) that I approach guiding your learning in ways geared to your diverse talents and abilities;
7) that I reduce, if not eliminate, your perceived need to plagiarize, and that I challenge plagiarism should it occur.

Based on the UM-H Academic Rigor Value Statement, here is what I expect from you:
1) that you will set high expectations for yourself along with a strong sense of collegiate purpose; that you come to class prepared, and complete and submit assignments by the deadlines;
2) that you make the most of your time with me in and out of class;
3) that you treat fellow students and the classroom with respect, and participate in our process;
4) that you manage your time so that you can treat college and this course as real work with real value;
5) that you participate with complete honesty and integrity; and finally
6) that you accept responsibility for learning and the grades you earn.

Academic Integrity
The University of Montana-Helena adheres to high standards of academic integrity. A single instance of the following violations will result in an F grade for that assignment; a subsequent violation will result in an FX grade for the course (see Catalog), and in both cases I will report the violation to the academic dean:

• Plagiarism: submitting the words, work or ideas of others without properly crediting them; this includes tracing/copying the artistic work of others, including sources from the Internet
• Using work generated in another class, by you or someone else, for credit in this class without permission from the instructor.

Guidelines/stylesheet will be supplied on how to incorporate the words, work or ideas of other authors into your two papers.

Misc.
This syllabus is subject to change. Please turn off cell phones during class.
Students with unique learning needs are encouraged to see me to discuss course requirements and approved accommodations. Students who seek information about disability services should contact Disability Services Director Judy Hay, located in the Access Center, at 444-6897, or at hayj@hct.umt.edu.

Class Schedule

WEEK ONE

Jan. 22 T First day of class; class syllabus, standards and expectations; the required texts and other materials. Video introduction to archaeology.
Reading assignments for next class: Ashmore and Sharer, Chapter 1: “Introduction,” pp. 1-24; Feder, Chapter 1: “Science and Pseudoscience,” pp. 1-16

Jan. 24 Th What Archaeology is—and what it is not. Archaeology defined; ethics and misuses of archaeology; archaeology as science, as history and as anthropology; archaeology as a profession.
Reading assignment for next class: Ashmore and Sharer, Chapter 2: “Archaeology’s Past”, pp. 25-38; Ashmore and Sharer, Chapter 3: “Contemporary Approaches to Archaeology,” pp. 39-60.

WEEK TWO

Jan. 29 T The History of Archaeology: Origins, development, and the contemporary scene. The (sub)culture of archaeologists and archaeology.
Reading assignment for next class: Feder, Chapter 2: “Epistemology: How You Know What You Know,” pp. 17-43 and Chapter 3, “Anatomy of an Archaeological Hoax”, pp. 44-63,

Jan. 31 Th Epistemology (how you know what you know), critical thinking, and scientific archaeology. The Cardiff Giant: frauds and hoaxes in archaeology.
Reading assignment for next class: Ashmore and Sharer, Chapter 4: “How Archaeology Works,” pp. 61-86.

WEEK THREE

Feb. 5 T Archaeological data, deposition and site transformation processes, research design; archaeological research projects.
Reading assignment for next class: Ashmore and Sharer, Chapter 5: “Fieldwork,” pp. 87-124 and Feder, Chapter 10, “Good Vibrations: Psychics and Dowsers,” pp. 261-277.

Feb. 7 Th Archaeology in the field: Survey, excavation, data processing, classification.
Reading assignment for next class: Ashmore and Sharer, Chapter 6: “Analyzing the Past,” pp. 125-156.

WEEK FOUR

(Feb 11: LAST DAY TO DROP/ADD CLASSES)

Feb. 12 T Archaeology in the laboratory: Analysis of artifacts, ecofacts, and features.
Reading assignment for next class: Ashmore and Sharer, Chapter 7: “Dating the Past,” Pp. 157-178.

Feb. 14 Th RESEARCH PAPER #1 DUE TODAY
Archaeology in the laboratory: Chronology, seriation, sequence comparison, stratigraphy, geochronology, obsidian hydration, floral and faunal analysis, radiometry, archaeomagnetism, limited/experimental methods.
Reading assignment for next class: Ashmore and Sharer, Chapter 8: “Reconstructing the Past,” Pp. 179-211.

WEEK FIVE

Feb. 19 T Archaeological Interpretation: Analogy and the abuse of analogy, Identifying activities in space and time
Reading assignment for next class: Ashmore and Sharer, Chapter 9: “Understanding the Past,” Pp. 212-237 and Chapter 11, “Old Time Religion – New Age Visions,” pp. 278-310.

Feb. 21 Th Archaeological Paradigms: Culture History Approach, Processualism, Post-Processual and Emergent Interpretations, Multiple Approaches, Alternative Archaeologies
Reading assignment for next class: Ashmore and Sharer, Chapter 10: “Archaeology Today,” pp. 238-254 and Feder, Chapter 12, “Real Mysteries of a Veritable Past,” pp. 311-333.

WEEK SIX

Feb. 26 T Contemporary Issues in Archaeology: Ethics, looting and antiquities collecting; destruction in the name of progress; Cultural Resource Management (CRM); nationalism. colonialism and war; working with descendant communities; the responsibilities of archaeology.
Reading assignment for next class: None, as there will be an exam that class

Feb. 28 Th Contemporary Issues in Archaeology (continued); Midterm Exam Review

WEEK SEVEN

Mar. 4 T MIDTERM EXAM

Mar. 6 Th Video
Reading assignments for next class: Feder, Chapter 7, “Lost: One Continent – Reward,” pp. 177-206.

WEEK EIGHT

Mar. 11 T Outline of Old World Archaeology: Hominids: The Peopling of the World (Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Americas); DNA and archaeological evidence.
Reading assignment for next class: Feder, Chapter 4, “Dawson’s Dawn Man: The Hoax at Piltdown,” pp. 64-90 and Chapter 9, “Mysterious Egypt,” pp. 234-260.

Mar. 13 Th Outline of Old World Archaeology: Agriculture and the Great Civilizations; Internationally-significant archaeological sites/landscapes of the Old World.
Reading assignment for next class: Chapter 8, “Prehistoric E.T.: The Fantasy of Ancient Astronauts,” pp. 207-233.

WEEK NINE

Mar. 18 T New World Archaeology: The Peopling of the Americas; Controversies and Native American views.
Reading assignment for next class: Feder, Chapter 5, “Who Discovered America?,” pp. 91-145 and Chapter 6, “The Myth of the Moundbuilders,” pp. 147-176.

Mar. 20 Th New World Archaeology: Agricultural Societies and New World Civilizations; Internationally-significant archaeological sites/landscapes of the New World.
Reading assignment for next class (after Spring Break): Begin reading Jared Diamond’s “Collapse”, Prologue pp. 1-23, and further, to get a head start).

WEEK TEN

Mar. 24-28 SPRING BREAK – No Classes; College Open

WEEK ELEVEN

Apr. 1 T Montana Archaeology Overview: Prehistoric Archaeology in Montana; the Historic Indian tribes of Montana; Historic Archaeology in Montana: Mining, ranching, timber, industrial.
Reading assignment for next class: Diamond, “Part One: Modern Montana; Chapter 1: Under Montana’s Big Sky,” pp. 25-75.

Apr. 3 Th Lessons from Archaeology: Montana in Jared Diamond’s “Collapse.”
Reading assignment for next class: Diamond, “Part Two: Past Societies”: “Chapter 2: Twilight at Easter” (pp. 79-119) and “Chapter 3: The Last People Alive: Pitcairn and Henderson Islands” (pp. 120-135).

WEEK TWELVE

Apr. 8 T Lessons from Archaeology: “Collapse”: Easter Island and the Polynesians
Reading assignment for next class: Diamond, “Part Two: Past Societies”: “Chapter 4: The Ancient Ones: The Anasazi and Their Neighbors” (pp. 136-156) and “Chapter 5: The Maya Collapses” (pp. 157-177).

Apr. 10 Th Lessons from Archaeology: “Collapse”: The Anasazi and the Maya
Reading assignment for next class: Diamond, “Part Two: Past Societies”: “Chapter 6: The Viking Prelude and Fugues” (pp. 178-210) and “Chapter 7: Norse Greenland’s Flowering” (pp. 211-247).

WEEK THIRTEEN

Apr. 15 T Lessons from Archaeology: “Collapse”: The Vikings, Part I
Reading assignment for next class: Diamond, “Part Two: Past Societies”: “Chapter 8: Norse Greenland’s End” (pp. 248-276) and “Chapter 9: Opposite Paths to Success” (pp. 277-308.

Apr. 17 Th Lessons from Archaeology: “Collapse”: The Vikings, Part II
Reading assignment for next class: Diamond, “Part Three: Modern Societies”: “Chapter 10: Malthus in Africa: Rwanda’s Genocide” (pp. 311-328) and “Chapter 11: One Island, Two Peoples, Two Histories: The Dominican Republic and Haiti” (pp. 329-357).

WEEK FOURTEEN

Apr. 22 T Lessons from Archaeology: “Collapse”: Modern Societies: Africa and the Caribbean
Reading assignment for next class: Diamond, “Part Three: Modern Societies”: “Chapter 12: China, Lurching Giant” (pp. 358-377) and “Chapter 13: ‘Mining’ Australia” (pp. 378-416.

Apr. 24 Th Lessons from Archaeology: “Collapse”: Modern Societies: Asia and the Pacific
Reading assignment for next class: Diamond, “Practical Lessons”: “Chapter 14: Why Do Some Societies Make Disastrous Decisions?” (pp. 419-440) and “Chapter 15: Big Businesses and the Environment: Different Conditions, Different Outcomes” (pp. 441-485).

WEEK FIFTEEN

(Apr. 28 M LAST DAY TO WITHDRAW FROM CLASS)

Apr. 29 T Lessons from Archaeology: “Collapse”: Practical Lessons: Societies, Businesses and the Environment
Reading assignment for next class: Diamond, “Practical Lessons”: “Chapter 16: The World as a Polder: What Does It All Mean to Us Today?” (pp. 486-525).

May 1 Th Lessons from Archaeology: “Collapse”: Practical Lessons: “What Does It All Mean to Us Today?”
RESEARCH PAPER #2 ON “COLLAPSE” DUE TODAY

WEEK SIXTEEN

May 6 T Fieldtrip to Montana Historical Society, Archaeological Collections, and State Historic Preservation Office

May 8 Th Guest Speaker; Final Exam Review

WEEK SEVENTEEN (LAST WEEK OF CLASS)

FINAL EXAM: TBA

"Life After People" -Future Archaeology

2008-01-22T11:28:00.000-08:00

There will be a repeat of "Life After People," a speculative future history of what life will be like on earth if people were no longer here. There is a lot of good material relating to archaeological thinking, especially site transformation processes. It will be on on the History Channel on Wednesday evening; see your local listings for times and channels (I think it is kind of early). I saw it last night...VERY thought provoking...worth your while.

I just watched this show last night on the History Channel. One of the most thought-provoking things I've seen in a long time. If you get a chance, watch it.

The Piegan Blackfeet and the Pishkun (Buffalo Jump)

2008-01-18T08:07:00.000-08:00

The Piegan Blackfeet (or Pikuni in their own language) of Montana were the southernmost branch of the Blackfeet Confederacy, which also included the Siksika (Blackfoot proper) of Saskatchewan and the Blood or Kainah of Alberta in Canada. They are linked with the Late Prehistoric archaeological culture called the Old Women's Tradition and probably also the even older Besant Culture.

The Blackfeet were of the Algonquian linguistic family, and were warlike toward most of their neighboring tribes, since they had horses for raiding and were supplied with guns and ammunition by their Canadian sources. Piegans also displayed hostility toward white explorers and traders. Several smallpox epidemics decimated their population, and their old way of life ended with the destruction of the buffalo herds on which they relied. Now they are gathered on reservations on both sides of the border.

The Helena Valley (aka Prickly Pear Valley) where I live was once part of the lands the Blackfeet hunted. They reportedly called this valley "Tomah" or "Tona" which meant "game pocket" or "game cache" as game animals like buffalo, elk, deer, and pronghorn antelope were always plentiful here. One Blackfeet man had a vision while camping here about the future and the coming of the white man. And we all grew up learning a story about the Sleeping Giant on the northern horizon...someday when the world is about to end, the Giant will rise from his earth-bed, shake the mountain crumbs away, and stride across the land. I heard this one when I was a boy in 5th grade here in Helena.

Origin of the Buffalo Jump and the Buffalo Dance

This traditional Blackfoot story of How the Buffalo Dance was given to the people mentions the "Buffalo Jump," or as the Blackfeet called it, the pishkun (PEESH-koon), one of the most important types of archaeological sites here in Montana. Such jumps have been used for over 5,000 years in this region. You can visit such jumps today in Montana at Wahkpa Chug'n near Havre, Madison Buffalo Jump near Three Forks, and the Ulm Pishkun (as of 2007, now called First People's Buffalo Jump) between Helena and Great Falls. One of the most amazing museums is not far across the U.S.-Canadian border in Alberta, an UNESCO World Heritage site called Head-Smashed-In. This last site is especially good for connecting Blackfoot history to the use of the Buffalo Jump, and explaining its importance.

VERSION I

How the Blackfoot got the Buffalo Jump (Piskun)

by Hugh Welch
Awa chopsi pono Ka me ta (Horse Crazy)

One day Napi was out on the Plains and became hungry and pleaded to the Great Spirit to help him and give him something to eat. The Great Spirit heard his prayers and said " Alright Napi, mound up the dirt as big as you can eat".

Napi started mounding up the dirt and the more he worked the hungrier he got, until he had a big mound and was tired out as he wasn't used to working so hard for something to eat, as the Creator usually fed him when he asked.

The Creator said " I see you have become greedy with me helping you too much so I will make the mound of dirt something you can eat, but you will have to learn to kill it", with that the Great Spirit turned the big mound of dirt into a Buffalo which charged Napi and he started running, more in fear of his life than thinking how to kill it, he ran across the plains, the Buffalo close behind him. Finally he saw a tree and thought if I can make it to the tree I can get away from this beast and then plan how to kill it.

As he neared the tree he saw a big branch sticking out, low enough for him to reach but high enough to get away from the Buffalo. He was running as hard as he could and the Buffalo was gaining on him, just as he reached the tree and swung up the Buffalo ran under him and disappeared. After he got over his fright and came down from the tree he found that the tree was on the edge of a cliff and the Buffalo has ran off it and was laying at the bottom.

The Great Spirit spoke to him and said "Now Napi your greed almost got you hurt but I will give you another chance, I will put Buffalo on the Plains if you share your kills with your brothers the meat eaters and your people". Which he did and showed the people how to use the Buffalo Jump. One is at Two Medicine River, another on Milk River as well as many others all over the Blackfoot Hunting Grounds.

------------

VERSION II

When the buffalo first came to be upon the land, they were not friendly to the people. When the hunters tried to coax them over the cliffs for the good of the villages, they were reluctant to offer themselves up. They did not relish being turned into blankets and dried flesh for winter rations. They did not want their hooves and horn to become tools and utensils nor did they welcome their sinew being used for sewing. "No, no," they said. We won't fall into your traps. And we will not fall for your tricks." So when the hunters guided them towards the abyss, they would always turn aside at the very last moment. With this lack of cooperation, it seemed the villagers would be hungry and cold and ragged all winter long.

Now one of the hunters' had a daughter who was very proud of her father's skill with the bow. During the fullness of summer, he always brought her the best of hides to dress, and she in turn would work the deerskins into the softest, whitest of garments for him to wear. Her own dresses were like the down of a snow goose, and the moccasins she made for the children and the grandmothers in the village were the most welcome of gifts.

But now with the hint of snow on the wind, and deer becoming more scarce in the willow breaks, she could see this reluctance on the part of the buffalo families could become a real problem.

Hunter's Daughter decided she would do something about it.

She went to the base of the cliff and looked up. She began to sing in a low, soft voice, "Oh, buffalo family, come down and visit me. If you come down and feed my relatives in a wedding feast, I will join your family as the bride of your strongest warrior."

She stopped and listened. She thought she heard the slight rumbling sound of thunder in the distance.

Again she sang, "Oh, buffalo family, come down and visit me. Feed my family in a wedding feast so that I may be a bride."

The thunder was much louder now. Suddenly the buffalo family began falling from the sky at her feet.

One very large bull landed on top of the others, and walked across the backs of his relatives to stand before Hunter's Daughter.

"I am here to claim you as my bride," said Large Buffalo.

"Oh, but now I am afraid to go with you," said Hunter's Daughter.

"Ah, but you must," said Large Buffalo, "For my people have come to provide your people with a wedding feast. As you can see, they have offered themselves up."

"Yes, but I must run and tell my relatives the good news," said Hunter's Daughter. "No," said Large Buffalo. No word need be sent. You are not getting away so easily."

And with that said, Large Buffalo lifted her between his horns and carried her off to his village in the rolling grass hills.

The next morning the whole village was out looking for Hunter's Daughter. When they found the mound of buffalo below the cliff, the father, who was in fact a fine tracker as well as a skilled hunter, looked at his daughter's footprints in the dust.

"She's gone off with a buffalo, he said. I shall follow them and bring her back."

So Hunter walked out upon the plains, with only his bow and arrows as companions. He walked and walked a great distance until he was so tired that he had to sit down to rest beside a buffalo wallow.

Along came Magpie and sat down beside him.

Hunter spoke to Magpie in a respectful tone, "O knowledgeable bird, has my daughter been stolen from me by a buffalo? Have you seen them? Can you tell me where they have gone?"

Magpie replied with understanding, "Yes, I have seen them pass this way. They are resting just over this hill."

"Well," said Hunter, would you kindly take my daughter a message for me? Will you tell her I am here just over the hill?"

So Magpie flew to where Large Buffalo lay asleep amidst his relatives in the dry prairie grass. He hopped over to where Hunter's Daughter was quilling moccasins, as she sat dutifully beside her sleeping husband. "Your father is waiting for you on the other side of the hill," whispered Magpie to the maiden.

"Oh, this is very dangerous," she told him. These buffalo are not friendly to us and they might try to hurt my father if he should come this way. Please tell him to wait for me and I will try to slip away to see him."

Just then her husband, Large Buffalo, awoke and took off his horn. "Go bring me a drink from the wallow just over this hill," said her husband.

So she took the horn in her hand and walked very casually over the hill.

Her father motioned silently for her to come with him, as he bent into a low crouch in the grass. "No," she whispered. The buffalo are angry with our people who have killed their people. They will run after us and trample us into the dirt. I will go back and see what I can do to soothe their feelings."

And so Hunter's daughter took the horn of water back to her husband who gave a loud snort when he took a drink. The snort turned into a bellow and all of the buffalo got up in alarm. They all put their tails in the air and danced a buffalo dance over the hill, trampling the poor man to pieces who was still waiting for his daughter near the buffalo wallow.

His daughter sat down on the edge of the wallow and broke into tears.

"Why are you crying?" said her buffalo husband.

"You have killed my father and I am a prisoner, besides," she sobbed.

"Well, what of my people?" her husband replied. We have given our children, our parents and some of our wives up to your relatives in exchange for your presence among us. A deal is a deal."

But after some consideration of her feelings, Large Buffalo knelt down beside her and said to her, "If you can bring your father back to life again, we will let him take you back home to your people."

So Hunter's Daughter started to sing a little song. "Magpie, Magpie help me find some piece of my father which I can mend back whole again."

Magpie appeared and sat down in front of her with his head cocked to the side.

"Magpie, Magpie, please see what you can find," she sang softly to the wind which bent the grasses slightly apart. Magpie cocked his head to the side and looked carefully within the layered folds of the grasses as the wind sighed again. Quickly he picked out a piece of her father that had been hidden there, a little bit of bone.

"That will be enough to do the trick," said Hunter's Daughter, as she put the bone on the ground and covered it with her blanket.

And then she started to sing a reviving song that had the power to bring injured people back to the land of the living. Quietly she sang the song that her grandmother had taught her. After a few melodious passages, there was a lump under the blanket. She and Magpie looked under the blanket and could see a man, but the man was not breathing. He lay cold as stone. So Hunter's Daughter continued to sing, a little softer, and a little softer, so as not to startle her father as he began to move. When he stood up, alive and strong, the buffalo people were amazed. They said to Hunter's Daughter, "Will you sing this song for us after every hunt? We will teach your people the buffalo dance, so that whenever you dance before the hunt, you will be assured a good result. Then you will sing this song for us, and we will all come back to live again."

The Old North Trail

2007-12-21T09:23:00.000-08:00

I noticed that the Sacred-Texts.com website now has the full text of Walter McLintock's The Old North Trail (1910) now online! This is a great read about the great prehistoric trail corridor called "The Old North Trail" leading from the Arctic North down to Mexico along the Continental Divide, which passes through Montana. Rather than one trail, it is actually a corridor, with at least two major tracks, one going through the foothills and the other along the edge of the open plains.

"There is a well known trail we call the Old North Trail. It runs north and south along the Rocky Mountains. No one knows how long it has been used by the Indians. My father told me it originated in the migration of a great tribe of Indians from the distant north to the south, and all the tribes have, ever since, continued to follow in their tracks. The Old North Trail is now becoming overgrown with moss and grass, but it was worn so deeply, by many generations of travellers, that the travois tracks and horse trail are still plainly visible.

"On Crow Lodge River, just across from our present camp, a lone pine tree once stood. It was a land-mark for people travelling north and south along the Old North Trail, because it stood upon the plain and could be seen from a long distance. Finally the Lone Tree fell, but two children took its place. They have grown large and now they mark the former course of the North Trail. The Indians still speak of the spot as the Lone Tree. In many places the white man's roads and towns have obliterated the Old Trail. It forked where the city of Calgary now stands. The right fork ran north into the Barren Lands as far as people live. The main trail ran south along the eastern side of the Rockies, at a uniform distance from the mountains, keeping clear of the forest, and outside of the foothills. It ran close to where the city of Helena now stands, and extended south into the country, inhabited by a people with dark skins, and long hair falling over their faces (Mexico). In former times, when the Indian tribes were at war, there was constant fighting along the North Trail. In those days, Indians, who wanted to travel in peace, avoided it and took to the forest. My father once told me of an expedition from the Blackfeet, that went south by the Old Trail, to visit the people with dark skins. Elk Tongue and his wife, Natoya, were of this expedition, also Arrow Top and Pemmican, who was a boy of twelve at that time. He died only a few years ago at the age of ninety-five. They were absent four years. It took them twelve moons of steady travelling to reach the country of the dark skinned people, and eighteen moons to come north again" (McLintock 1910:434-436).

I know some sections have been mapped and marked in Montana, especially up around Choteau and the Rocky Mountain Front country. And the archaeologists working for the Helena National Forest are reported to be familiar with portions of the trail. "The Bear's Tooth" near Helena is a landmark on the trail; it is better known today as the "nose" of "The Sleeping Giant" geographic feature visible from Helena.

Below are some sites mentioning the Old North Trail, and you can Google more:

http://www.browningmontana.com/trail.html
http://russell.visitmt.com/historictrails/oldnorthtrail.htm
http://www.lewis-clark.org/content/content-article.asp?ArticleID=2289
http://grahamchandler.ca/journal/2001/03/ancient-highway.html
http://forum.palanth.com/index.php?topic=923.msg2790

The Rosebud Battlefield Site

2007-12-16T06:44:00.000-08:00

Rosebud Battlefield

This 3,000-acre Eastern Montana rolling prairie park preserves the site of the June 17, 1876, battle between the Sioux and Cheyenne Indians and General Crook’s soldiers. The Northern Cheyenne from nearby Lame Deer view the Rosebud Battlefield as sacred ground and hold ceremonies at the site honoring the warriors and the soldiers who fought and died there. In addition to the historic battlefield site, there are many other archaeological remains there: a the Kobold family homestead site, a buffalo jump dating back to 3,000 B.C., petroglyphs (in the sandstone walls below the jump), tipi rings, eagle-catching pits, and rock cairns. The land became a state park in 1978.

A big issue at the Rosebud site is the threat of the battlefield's destruction because of potential coal mining:

When Rosebud Battlefield was established as a Montana state park in 1978, it fulfilled a 40-year-long dream of rancher Elmer E. “Slim” Kobold to protect this significant site. Today, that dream could be threatened by the prospect of coal bed methane development.

Kobold, originally from Oklahoma, homesteaded the historic battlefield and surrounding hills, bluffs, and grasslands in 1911. Over the years, he became fascinated with his property’s rich history and worked to preserve and protect the significant battlefield and Indian artifacts.
In addition to battle sites, rock cairns, petrified stumps, and tipi rings, the area contains a buffalo jump. Located near the park’s entrance, the jump’s use dates to 3,000 B.C. Archaeologists believe it had one of the highest densities of prehistoric cultural habitation of any buffalo jump in Montana.

The park has other values. For decades, U.S. military scholars have visited Rosebud to study the battle strategy used by both sides. And Native Americans, particularly the Northern Cheyenne, revere the area, performing ceremonies and making offerings to their forebears.

Kobold understood that these and other values made the battlefield worth protecting. When mining companies found a rich coal seam under Kobold’s property in the early 1970s, he began an intense letter-writing campaign and teamed up with FWP to get Rosebud Battlefield designated in the National Register of Historic Places. A few years later, with constant urging by the tough old cowboy, the Montana legislature agreed to preserve the site, appropriating money from the Coal Tax Fund to acquire a large portion of the battlefield.

Now a new type of development threatens to disrupt the historic site. Because FWP only owns the surface rights of the property, the battlefield could be developed for coal bed methane by private interests who own or lease mineral rights. Trucks, generators, compressor stations, pipelines, roads, noise, wastewater, and dust could envelop the historic battlefield.

Recently, FWP has been working to protect the historic battlefield and archaeological sites by meeting with various organizations such as the National Park Service, the Montana Preservation Alliance, and the mineral rights lesee.

A proposed management plan for historic Rosebud Battlefield State Park was drafted by Montana State Parks with help from consultants and an advisory committee. The proposed draft plan, which was open for public comments Oct. 11-Nov. 16, was located the FWP web page (www.fwp.mt.gov) as the Rosebud Battlefield Management Plan link.

Read more about the Rosebud Battlefield site at:
http://fwp.mt.gov/mtoutdoors/HTML/articles/2004/RosebudSP.htm)
http://fwp.mt.gov/lands/site_283981.aspx
http://www.homepages.dsu.edu/jankej/oldwest/rosebud.htm
http://americanindian.net/2003k.html
http://www.preservemontana.org/projects.html

Researchers find artifacts after Montana wildfire

2007-12-16T06:39:00.000-08:00

Researchers find artifacts after Montana wildfire
Missoula, Montana (AP) 11-07

Ammunition for firearms and a tool for scraping buffalo hides are among artifacts found by an archaeologist and a graduate student at the scene of a major wildfire near Seeley Lake, northeast of here.

The student, Anya Minetz, recently saw an oversize cartridge on ground blackened by the Jocko Lakes fire, which started in August and burned more than 36,000 acres. Minetz called for archaeologist C. Milo McLeod to take a look.

“That’s from a Spencer rifle,” said McLeod, who owns one of the Spencer guns, produced in the 1860s.

In an area just 70 feet long and 30 feet wide, McLeod and Minetz found 17 more cartridges, most with casings and rounds intact; an ax head inscribed with the name of the Douglas Axe Manufacturing Co. of Douglas, Mass., in business from 1836-1897; a pair of scissors or forceps; a whetstone; a bullet mold; and the 14-inch hide scraper.

McLeod works for the Forest Service and said that in more than 30 years of work on the Lolo National Forest, in which the Jocko Lakes fire burned, he has never found a site with so many artifacts related to the fur-trading era.

McLeod and Minetz, a University of Montana graduate student in forensic anthropology, noted the distribution of the artifacts, mapped and photographed them and completed a metal detector survey. Then they hauled the treasure to McLeod’s office at Fort Missoula.

“I believe we’ve recovered all the artifacts,” McLeod said.

He said it appears they were “just left” in the 19th century.

“In 1870, you don’t lose 18 unfired cartridges,” he said. “You don’t lose your ax, your bullet mold, your scissors, your hide scraper.”

McLeod and Minetz discovered artifacts in a likely camping stop – near a trail, on level ground, with water nearby. There was no evidence of a camp, however.

“We speculate that maybe a grizzly bear ran the guy off, killed him and ate him,” McLeod said.

Minetz researched “buffalo hide scraper” on the Internet and found a picture of one similar to that taken from the fire scene. The scraper pictured was produced by the Hudson’s Bay Co. in the 1800s. A Hudson’s Bay post operated in the Flathead Valley’s Fort Connah until 1871.

During November the artifacts went to the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes’ tribal preservation office in Pablo. Consultation with tribal officials is standard after an archaeological survey on traditional tribal homelands.

McLeod and tribal representatives talked, but the tribes issued no immediate statement about the artifacts.

“We have a process that we use,” said Francis Auld, a tribal preservation assistant. “There is a Salish-Pend d’Oreille elders advisory group, there is a Kootenai elders advisory group. When things like this come around we tend to take the story, or the theory, and intermingle it to see if anybody has any kind of connection that they can maybe recall in their family line, or in several family lines.”

McLeod said the artifacts that he and Minetz found are “pretty neat, but I don’t want people to go out and try to find stuff and dig it up.” Archaeological sites on federal land are protected by law.

Chapter One: I Become an Archaeologist

2007-11-29T08:34:00.000-08:00

I enjoy blogging and thought it would be cool to start a blog on Montana Archaeology. There's information about, here and there, but I want to try and pull something together to help people understand just what a wonderful thing archaeology is and how cool Montana is when it comes to archaeology.

I should tell you a little about myself, and my connections to Montana archaeology. I was raised in Helena, which is in the heart of Montana's mining country. When I was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, when we were out in the hills hunting or just looking around, there were lots of old miners' cabins and ghost towns, graveyards, heaps of rusting machinery, areas of torn up ground from placer mines, and tailings and mill structures. The hills were full of these old remains, and they stirred my imagination, wondering about all that had happened there, and about where the people had went.

I am also part Indian myself, and old man Eddie Barbeau down on Custer Avenue showed us how to peel tipi poles, tan buckskin, and set up tipis. We used to sit around, and he would tell us about the stone tipi rings around Helena, and about hunting buffalo. We would visit buffalo jumps and see artifacts and wonderful dioramas at the Montana Historical Society. I really miss those dioramas.

So between the mining landscape and the Indian traditions, I guess I never had a chance, but became fascinated by Montana's past, and the past in general. Some folks gravitate to history, and though I love books (ask my sagging shelves) my real love was for the actual places and "old junk" that lay out there, waiting to tell a story I was eager to learn to read.

To make a long story shorter, I ended up attending the University of Montana (after I graduated from Helena High in 1978) and majoring in Anthropology, with a minor in Native American Studies. In those days, Anthropology was still taught wholistically, and we had to learn all four subfields: cultural anthropology, archaeology, physical anthropology, and linguistics. I am something of an anachronism anymore, still oriented more holistically in my interests than a particular specialization such as faunal analysis or lithics.

Dr. Dee Taylor taught the "Archaeology of Montana" course at the time, and I enjoyed it a lot. I also took "Historic Sites Archaeology" from Dr. Carling Malouf. Both men are historic figures in the story of doing archaeology in Montana. They had lots of personal experiences to share with the classes. In the Historic Sites Archaeology class we went to Fort Fizzle; we actually did some test excavations at Fort Missoula and Fort Shaw. Dr. Tom Foor taught a class in anthropological statistics, and took us out to do some test pits, I think it was near a place called Owl Creek (maybe someone can correct me if I misremember that).

Well, after a period of being footloose, and introduced to "the life" by archaeo-classmate Dennis Pry I found myself following the archaeology trail as what is known as "a Shovel Bum" (aka in those less-than-PC days a "digro"). I worked for four years as a shovel monkey on CRM surveys and excavations for beans-and-bacon money through the states of Montana, California, Washington state, Maryland, Virginia, and North Dakota. The sites ranged from Archaic through the 1960s and every period of prehistoric and historic archaeology between. I was a CRM guy, and never worked on an academic site after the U of M days. Just an underpaid underclass, true to my roots :-)

I worked in Montana for Historical Research Associates (out of Missoula) and for Ethnoscience (the Deavers out of Billings). Sites in Montana I worked on included a survey in the Cabinet Mountains, a survey in Helena, an excavation near Bozeman, and monitoring in the Blackfoot River corridor.

Then in 1990, I snagged a job at the Helena National Forest (HNF) as a field archaeologist working for Gary Fairchild. I ended up that year getting a student internship position at the HNF, and if I would go back to college and get an M.A., I would get a job upon graduation. So from 1991-1995 I worked as an archaeologist for the HNF, mostly doing surveys and Section 106 work for proposed timber sales, mining operations, and land exchanges. It was a great job, and though the economy took a downturn and I didn't get a job when I graduated as was promised, there are no regrets and I count those years as some of the best of my life. The Helena area is full of excellent archaeological sites, both prehistoric and historic. I'll share some stories and sites later on.

After I got my M.A. in Anthropology from Iowa State University, where I took archaeology classes from Dr. David Gradwohl, Dr. Joseph Tiffany, and Dr. John Bower, I got intrigued with more about archaeology of the landscape, and got an M.L.A. in Landscape Architecture from Iowa State, under Robert Harvey and Tim Keller. Combining archaeology, anthropology, and historic and cultural landscapes was a good thing, and I started out by doing a landscape archaeology project at Gaines' Mill, a Civil War site in Virginia. Then I worked for the National Park Service as a historical landscape architect for four years, specializing in Native American landscapes and archaeological landscapes all over the southwest (I was stationed in Santa Fe) and then Alaska.

My last gig was in Hawai'i, for the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, where I headed up the division for Native Rights, Land and Culture, and helped advocate for the preservation of Hawaiian sites and burials for three years. I've had some stuff published too, including some stuff about archaeology and native peoples.

Now I am an artist and adjunct faculty at the University of Montana, College of Technology, in Helena. Next term I am going to teach not only painting (I taught drawing this term) but also a new course, Introduction to Archaeology. So this blog in some ways, is not only a reminiscence, but a way to order my thoughts about Montana archaeology in particular, and to put some stuff online for students to consider and learn from.

I have met some great people doing archaeology in Montana, and all over, and I hope they say hello sometime, maybe leave a note on this blog as a comment.