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...
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Big Timber Archaeological Field School, Summer 2008
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
Friday, March 14, 2008
Hotel Broadwater in Helena
It's all gone now, but I remember it still standing when I was a kid, on the west edge of town...
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Friday, February 22, 2008
Feb. 21: Understanding the Past / Cannibalism and Creationism
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.
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.
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.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Paper Style Guide Issue
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.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Feb. 19: Reconstructing the Past
Feb. 19: Reading assignment for today’s class: Ashmore and Sharer, Chapter 8: “Reconstructing the Past,” Pp. 179-211.
Learn more about this image at The Darl Living Surface: A Transitional Archaic Camp
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
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.
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.
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