Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
of the
Mediterranean World
Blog Archive
Volume 6
2015
Creative Commons
CC-By 4.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Volume 6
2015
Recommended Reading
Below is a sample of writing for the bloggy-blog this year to guide your reading
An Archaeology of Care ........................................................................................................... 164
Visions of Substance: 3D Imaging in Mediterranean Archaeology:
The Book .................................................................................................................................... 493
The War with the Sioux: Open Access Teaser ..................................................................... 178
Writing for a Non-Academic Audience is Hard ................................................................... 86
The War with the Sioux: The Book........................................................................................ 174
Sacred Places and Landscapes in the Early Christian World.............................................. 499
Mobilizing the Past Workshop Review, Part 1 ..................................................................... 434
Some thoughts on the Bakken Boom Exhibit at the Plains Art Museum in Fargo ....... 476
The Real History of Assessment ............................................................................................. 199
More Early Byzantine and Late Roman Cyprus ................................................................... 491
Responses to Writing for a Non-Academic Audience is Hard .......................................... 84
How to Attract New Audiophiles........................................................................................... 531
Carl Blegen in the Warm Greek Sun ...................................................................................... 410
Mobilizing the Past Workshop Review, Part 2 ..................................................................... 431
Always Touch the Art............................................................................................................... 347
Objects and Artifacts ................................................................................................................ 456
Changing Landscapes of Rural Cyprus .................................................................................. 311
Key Tech in an Archaeologists Tool Kit ............................................................................... 474
Teaching Tuesday: The Lecture Problem.............................................................................. 100
Bacon Mac and Cheese, Entitlement, and the End of the Universe................................. 114
The Long Dark Tunnel of Sabbatical .................................................................................... 525
Pierre MacKay ........................................................................................................................... 275
In Praise of Parking................................................................................................................... 338
Atari: Game Over: Movie Review .......................................................................................... 536
Some Thoughts on Archaeology Beyond Postmodernity .................................................. 194
Summer Reading List................................................................................................................ 336
News from The Digital Press at the University of North Dakota .................................... 232
Audiophiles, Sciences, and Democracy ................................................................................. 442
Byzantium and the Public Sphere ........................................................................................... 379
The Future of a More Public Byzantium ............................................................................... 350
Late Roman Pottery on Kythera and Middle Byzantine Pottery
from Thebes and Chalkis ......................................................................................................... 486
Early Byzantine Pottery from Kenchreai .............................................................................. 157
A Weekend Walking and Talking Man Camps ..................................................................... 417
Memory of Hittite Monuments in Asia Minor ..................................................................... 529
Toward an Ottoman Archaeology .......................................................................................... 231
Slow Archaeology and Local Context .................................................................................... 464
Objects, Clones, Context ......................................................................................................... 45
Defining an Early Christian Archaeology .............................................................................. 374
The Present State of my Punk Archaeology ......................................................................... 88
Alt-Ac in Archaeology .............................................................................................................. 108
iPadless Archaeology ................................................................................................................ 408
More on the throne of Agamemnon (or his basin). Heres the backstory in links from
Dimitri Nakassis: start here, then read this, and then this.
Congrats to all the good folk who earned NEH grants this year, but special congratulations
go to Andrew Reinhard at the American Numismatic Society,the folks at Open Context,
Emily Guerin writes about money based on her time in the Bakken.
North Dakota Quarterlys nominations for the Pushcart Prize: The Best of Small Presses.
And I cant tell you how excited I am about the Elwyn Robinson memoirs project.
What Im reading: Saskia Sassen, Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global
Economy. 2014.
What Im listening to: Frank Sinatra, A Jolly Christmas from Frank Sinatra; Nat King Cole,
The Christmas Album; Bing Crosby, Merry Christmas; and, of course, Various Artists, A Christmas
Gift to you from Phil Spector.
Waste
December 15, 2015
https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2015/12/15/waste/
Im totally enamored by the little series from Bloomsbury Press titled Object Lessons. The books
are small (and I have a thing for well done, small books). The feature eye-catching covers with
relatively simple graphic designs. The name of the series is printed at the top of each cover in all
caps, in a simple sans serif font with the word Object in white and Lessons in grey and no gap
between the words. The title of the individual books appears in a different sans-serif font, lower-case
letters below the graphic in bold white against the covers black background. The authors name is
below the title and shares the primary colors of the cover graphic.
Brian Thills book, Waste, is beautiful little essay on the role of waste in our lives. He documents
through vivid case studies some of the physical, digital, and chemical waste that we produce every
day and that infiltrates our lives. The chapter titled Million Year Panic caught my attention
because Im thinking a bit about a short chapter on the American West for our little book on the
Alamogordo Atari Expedition. Thill makes explicit the link between sites like the Waste Isolation
Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, New Mexico and the dump of Atari games in Alamogordo. (His
work echoes many of the sentiments in Lippards Undermining, which I discuss here).
Thill locates WIPP and the Atari dump at the intersection of our desperate realization that when
were gone, our waste may no longer have meaning. He recounts how the designers of the WIPP
facility solicited suggestions from around the world on how to mark this site as dangerous and toxic
for tens of millions of years. The result was the Expert Judgement on Markers to Deter Inadvertent
Human Intrusion into the WIPP (.pdf) which produced numerous recommendations on how to
mark out the site as deadly. Conversely, the excavation of the Atari games looked to recover our
wasted youth and to determine whether it still held meaning.
Both the WIPP and the Atari dump fall in part of the world which contemporary society has tended
to see as a marginal. In the last 70 years, we have dropped atomic bombs, buried radioactive
material, and dumped high tech waste in the deserts of the American West (not to mention mining,
syphoning of water, and selling off of land), and this activity has generally neglected the delicate
ecosystems and, more importantly, disregarded the rights of indigenous communities in this area. In
other words, the discarding of waste in the southwest, reflects not just increasingly outdated views
of the desert ecology, but also views of race and culture propelled forward by the seemingly
inexorable pace and priorities of capitalism.
same time, the recent growth of contract, salvage, and rescue archaeology has made the influence of
speed and capital on archaeological work particularly visible. While similar pressures have long
existed for academic archaeologists, the pressures of development and the efficient management of
heritage as a resources have provided ample reason for the enthusiastic adoption of digital tools and
practices. The goal of slow archaeology is, on the one hand, to recognize archaeological work and
the particular emphasis on efficiency, economy, and standardization in digital practices within the
larger history of scientific and industrial knowledge production. This chapter also seeks to carve out
space within the proliferating conversation about digital archaeology for practices and tools that
embrace the complexity of archaeological landscapes, trenches, and objects. In this way, slow
archaeology recognizes that the presentation and publication of archaeological tools and arguments
tends to simplify the impact of technologies and the often-messy relationship between evidence and
argument. In this way, slow archaeology finds common cause with Eric Kansas recent interest in
slow data, which recognizes and embraces the complex, dynamic, and profoundly human
character of archaeological datasets.
My position as a tenured, academic archeologist provides a distinct professional context for slow
archaeology. I recognize that my arguments for a slow archaeology come from a position of
privilege. I am an academic archaeologist who relies on his research for professional advancement,
but not professional survival. I have tenure, and as a result, I can be more deliberate in the race
against the clock to produce publications. I also have the good fortune to work on archaeological
projects with the manpower, time, and funding that align closely with our research objectives. These
luxuries have allowed us to consider a wide range of archaeological documentation processes
without particular concern for efficiency. We have deployed range of digital tools and practices from
the use of iPads and structure-from-motion (SfM) 3D imagine to now standard reliance on
differential GPS units, relational databases, and GIS. This article then is not the frustrated
expressions of a Luddite outsider, but an argument grounded in familiarity with digital field
practices.
More archaeogaming.
Keep an eye on North Dakota Quarterly next week (and every week).
Conversion by Twitter.
Bare shelves (and bare lives), but who has time to read when there are so many new books.
What Im reading: Jane Bennet, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Duke 2010.
10
11
I also need to unpack the term deskill a bit. I used this term in various versions of my paper to
discuss how technology can undermine the development of certain skills among field archaeologists
which archaeologists developed in the analogue realm, but nevertheless had important benefits to
the process of producing archaeological knowledge in the field. The most obvious example of is
illustrating a trench plan. In recent years, the advantages of using structure-from-motion to capture
3D images of the trench has replaced the painstaking and time consuming practice of illustration (in
fact, we experimented with this on my project in Cyprus). At its most basic, this practice involves
taking a series of photographs of the cleaned trench which are then analyzed by software to produce
a 3D image. If necessary, a plan can be made from this image. Traditionally, the task of preparing a
trench plan for an excavation context requires the trench supervisor to carefully scrutinize the
trench and to prepare an illustration that captures the relationships between various visible features.
This is a skill, developed at trench side and deeply embedded in the interpretative process of
archaeology, that the move to digital practices will erode. The argument that the use of new tools
will encourage the development of new skills is reasonable, but the case must be then made that
these new skills will benefit the field.
3. Position myself. Both reviewers called me out on my privileged position within academia. In the
first draft of this paper, I acknowledge that Im a white, male, tenured professor who does not feel
any unusual pressure to publish the result of my field work (although I do publish regularly and at
what I think to be reasonable standards). I also have had the good fortune of solid funding, staffing,
and expectations on my projects. I have only rarely felt pressure to work more efficiently in the field
or race to finish our work before the end of a season. This may mark a certain lack of ambition on
my part, but I also think that it reflects a deliberate approach to field work that makes the push for
ever greater levels of efficiency, rates speed, and quantity of data unnecessary to accomplish research
goals.
I obviously recognize the difference between my approach to archaeological work and that of folks
who work in the CRM industry or scholars who are working in more difficult, endangered, and
limited environments where political, economic, or even military pressures require rapid work to
document archaeological remains. Im aware that many academic archaeologists have to meet
publication expectations and there is pressure within the discipline to do more, publish more,
document more. In fact, Im broadly sympathetic with those who argue that nearly all archaeology is
salvage archaeology pushed forward by the need to harvest the remains of the past for academic
advancement, publications, heritage, or to clear the way for development. My call for a slow
archaeology is unlikely to serve as a break on these pressures and is a product of a particularly
privileged position both in relation to the past and in my discipline.
13
14
recognize the strategies used by these communities represent a kind of control over the processes
associated with the oil boom. Cities and counties have virtually no control over the extractive
process, but they do have control over the social impact of these processes.
Efforts to limit the extent of temporary housing is not just about making it harder for oil companies
and related industries to expand the number of workers in a community. While there are tax
implications associated with permanent housing either in apartments or houses, Id argue that this
isnt simply an economic decision on the part of these communities.
In the Bakken, man camps and workforce housing stand as a challenge to traditional notions of
domesticity. Traditional domestic space accommodates family life whereas temporary workforce
housing serves single individuals, typically men, who live in dormitory style rooms and dine in
communal space. Traditional domestic space is stable and permanent, whereas workforce housing
whether prefabricated and mobile man camps or RV parks are inherently mobile and temporary.
The investment in permanent housing recalls the investment in the traditional family and the
importance of property and fixity in both the myth of American life and in the economic and social
life of local communities. Finally, traditional domesticity continues to play a key role in the dominant
discourse of morality. The fixity of domestic life and the presence of the family reinforces
accountability in the context of traditional morality.
Managing workforce housing, then, presents an opportunity for local communities to exert control
in a situation that is largely dictated by the state and by transnational corporation. They do this by
appealing to traditional domesticity and the economic, social, and moral controls inherent in these
long-standing structures.
16
History Matters.
More and more heartbreaking stories about the refugee crisis in Greece.
Academia.edu is taking some heat lately. Heres a discussion on staying with academia.edu.
Heres a statement by Cals Office of Scholarly Communications.
The Mighty Capital Lodge near Tioga has closed. This was our base camp for quite a few
trips to the Bakken.
Rose quartz and serenity are the soothing Pantone colors of the year.
A nice little piece on Grado headphones. If youre looking for a Christmas gift for someone
who loves music, these are the way to go.
What Im reading: Jane Bennet, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Duke 2010.
What Im listening to: Paquito DRivera, Portraits of Cuba; Gloria Ann Taylor, Love is a
Hurtin Thing.
17
(a) grill; (b) cooler; (c) camp chairs; (d) propane tank; (e) table; (f) shipping pallet; (g) built platform.
18
19
For those of you unfamiliar with the book, it details the first human efforts to colonize Mars in the
early 21st century. The main characters are the First Hundred of permanent human residents of
Mars who established the first colony there, argued about the future of human habitation on the red
planet, and continued to shape Martian politics and policies once the planet became open to more
extensive immigration and exploitation. This drama is set against a well-researched and engaging
topographic and scientific backdrop which convincingly establishes the potential character of
Martian colonization (within the constraints of mid-1990s technological imagination. in other
words, very little internet, but rather extensive use of robots, artificial intelligences, and transnational
corporate influences). The book covers the first 20 years of life on Mars.
Reading Robinsons detailed descriptions of Mar got me thinking that his novel could represent a
nice venue to extend the idea of archaeogaming. Robinson take immense care in his description of
the Martian landscape. A number of the main characters spend weeks at a time traversing the
sparsely populated planet and describing both natural and man-made features on their trips.
Moreover, the 20 year span of life on Mars and the rapid development of technologies necessary to
establish sustainable and permanent settlement there left behind a significant quantity of objects.
Robinson clearly has archaeological sensitivities in his work. Certain objects appear periodically even
after they no longer feature in the plot of the book. For example, Sax Russells solar-powered
windmills (scattered across the planets surface in a failed attempt to increase surface
temperatures) continue to appear in the book long after their initial purpose (both in the plot line of
20
the book and in the Martian landscape) had lapsed. The first settlement on Mars, Underhill,
undergoes formation processes as larger settlements with more amenities arise across the planet. The
apartments that the First Hundred occupied at Underhill are turned over to storage and sections
of the settlement are repurposed as research, habitation, and industrial sites spread across the
Martian landscape.
Red Mars will undoubtedly resonate with folks in North Dakota as a major aspect of the plot
involves the exploitation of the planet by transnational companies who bring thousands of short
term workers to Mars. The living conditions for these workers are functional, but modest, and most
workers (at least initially) accept these conditions because their goal is to work hard, make money,
and return to an increasingly restive Earth with the additional security of wealth. At the same time,
there are those among the First Hundred who have grave reservations about those who are
exploiting the Martian environment and work the thwart efforts to turn Mars into a massive
industrial zone.
The idea of archaeogaming is that the objects and landscapes present in video games represent a way
to engage with challenging ideas in archaeological method, ethics, and practice. Documenting
fictional artifacts in a novel as detailed and panoramic as Red Mars is not substantively different
from exploring a fictional world of a film or video game. Whatever autonomy is lost because the
reader has to follow the authors narrative (rather than the relatively more user-centered experience
of a video game) is made in Robinsons use of subtle detail that presents an elaborate backdrop of
archaeological detail without quite allowing the reader to engage fully with objects or the landscape.
The elusiveness (and allusiveness) of Robinsons landscapes feels far more real than the detailed,
cartographic, and hyperreal landscapes of video games. This does not discount the potential of
archaeogaming, but perhaps expands its scope to include the textured landscapes of the science
fiction novel as the immersive realm of pixels.
Go read the book and mark the UND Writers Conference on your calendar.
21
22
3. Routine. The last nine weeks of the semester focus on each table writing its own chapter for an
imagined Western Civilization textbook. Every three weeks, the class goes through three steps to
produce a 3000 words chapter section: outline, rough draft (with peer review), final draft. This is a
comforting and productive routine for most of us who write for a living, but for students, in a class,
this routine is a system to be gamed. Clever groups immediately begin to figure out how much effort
to put into the various parts of the writing project to ensure the maximum feedback for the least
work. Undergirding this is the idea that assignments are not the successful completion of a task that
is fundamentally independent of the classroom experience, but rather what I want as the teacher.
In this scenario, the goal is to position the group to get as much information about the assignment
from me (or my teaching assistants) as possible because I am the ultimate arbiter of success (rather
than successfully completing a task independent of my assignment).
While I do everything that I can to discourage this behavior, it remains difficult to disabuse students
of the notion that the goal in the class is not to get a good grade (i.e. make me happy), but to learn a
skill. As long as the students imagine the class as a grade-getting game, they will look for ways to
subvert the system and any routine will do less to reinforce good habits and more to offer an
iterative game to overcome. The challenge, of course, becomes how to keep the assignments in the
class changing to keep students engaged, encourage attention to good practices, and to undermine
efforts to game the system, while reinforcing the idea that research and writing are practices best
learned and refined through repetition.
This is the challenge for next fall!
23
24
Finding ways to mediate between the specific and the global remains a key challenge for articulating
a political ecology that is simultaneously sensitive to the specific and generalizable to the global. My
effort at writing a tourist guide to the Bakken oil patch fits into this larger project of making a
distinctive landscape part of the universal, modern experience of tourism.
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
allowing future generations of North Dakotans to reflect on how certain events or encounters
transformed their ways of thinking or even their communities. For example, the recent tumult over
the new University of North Dakota nickname provides a fascinating perspective into the
relationship between UND stakeholders and Native communities, ideas of North Dakota identity,
and the politics of race in the state. Creating a digital application where members of the community
can contribute their reactions to this process, while it remains energized by emotions, polemic, and
conversation, presents an exciting way to document and capture the local history of the state at a
particular moment in time.
With these goals in mind, my proposed grant would encourage applications that (1) extend the reach
of traditional humanities programming, (2) focus on local concerns, issues, collections, and
conversations, and (3) feature robust data management plans to ensure that both the program and
conversations are preserved. Successful proposals must stimulate discussion, focus on local groups
or communities, and encourage and preserve dynamic and thought provoking engagement with the
humanities. Purely archival or access based initiatives will not be funded unless they foreground
dynamic opportunities for reflective and reflexive engagement with collections. Whenever possible
proposals should involve open source software and encourage free, open access materials.
In my formal proposal, Ill include case studies funded by other state humanities councils like
Washingtons, DC Digital Museum or Vermonts wonderfully simple, Civil War Book of Days serial
email.
The second proposed new grant program would focus on the North Dakota Humanities Councils
already successful GameChanger Series. One of the most exciting things about this series is how
effectively it stimulates discussion and brings together a diverse and dynamic group of speakers and
from the community to engage with the most pressing issues of the day. The first GameChanger
focused on conflict and culture in the Middle East, the second focused on the challenges and
opportunities of the digital world, and next years series will celebrate 100 years of the Pulitzer Prize.
The disappointing thing about these events is that the energy of the conversation tends to dissipate
rather quickly as the attention of the small NDHC staff ramps up for the next years event. As a
result, it is sometimes difficult to determine whether the game has, in fact, changed (or just the
playahs). The KeepChanging Grant Program would support programs and projects that continue
the momentum and themes of the GameChanger series in the three years following the event. Each
year at least three grants would be available with at least one grant set designated to support a
project related to each of the previous three years of the GameChanger. (Wow, thats hard to
articulate in a clear way!).
The goal of the KeepChanging program is to extend the impact of the GameChanger series without
taxing the small NDHC staff. It will also provide us with an informal measure of the impact of the
GameChanger in on the humanities in the state. Presumably more engaging events will spur ongoing
interest.
As per usual on the blog, Im interested in any and all feedback on these ideas. They are, as I said,
just proposals; just my thoughts, man right or wrong.
33
34
The spectacular array of exotic and imported cars on the roads of Buckhead and on Atlantas
highways reminded me that I truly live in Pontiac and Plymouth Country (TM) and created a
moving montage of social and economic display. While eating lunch at a little burger place, I
watched no fewer than three Bentleys roll by and was shocked to realize that Mercedes only sells SClass cars to Atlanta residents.
3. ASOR and CAARI and The Digital. There were sustained and productive conversations about
The Digital both on the ASOR committee on publications and at the board of trustees meeting of
CAARI (the Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute). The former is embracing the need
to at least experiment with open-access digital publishing and linked data and the latter is starting to
think more critically about its web site as more than just a billboard for the institutes existence. Im
increasingly optimistic that Pyla-Koutsopetria I: Archaeological Survey of an Ancient Coastal Town
will appear next year as a digital, fully linked, revised edition and Pyla-Koutsopetria II: Excavations
at an Ancient Coastal Town will be born as a linked digital book in 2017.
As for CAARI, theres much work to do, but weve made some progress. Moving the CAARI site
from a hand-coded page to a WordPress template would make updating the site easier and facilitate
links with social media. The conversations at the trustees meeting also suggested that people are
increasingly interested in using the website for something. It may be that the website emerges as a
place to solicit contributions or to market scholarship opportunities or even to publish old
photographs of Cyprus. Its clear that the board is not quite sure how to align the web with
CAARIs broader mission.
As I sat there listening to the conversation (and the many generational protests), I started to think
that CAARI could use the web to disseminate scholarship perhaps in conjunction with the reopening of the expanded library. A digital occasional paper series modeled on the ISAW Papers
series might anchor the CAARI web presence in a familiar medium scholarly publication, celebrate
the benefit of the new library by linking CAARI with academic production, and provide a new outlet
for publications on Cyprus now that the Report of the Department of Antiquities of Cyprus is on
sabbatical.
The key thing, to my mind, is to revamp the website with a strategy (and goals) in mind. We have
work to do!
4. Slow Archaeology. I was thrilled to hear the term slow archaeology appear in several papers at
ASOR and even more thrilled to realize that some of these mentions were not directed at my work
but indicative of parallel work with the same ideas. Eric Kansas work on slow data distinguishes
the deliberate and careful work of publishing, linking, and using published archaeological data from
the compliance based data dump and suggests that a slow approach to data publishing will both
yield far more important results and require a change in attitudes among archaeologists, institutions,
and funding agencies.
Independent of my work, mr Harmansah has explored the intersection of archaeology and
development, neoliberalism, and the modern academy to suggest that, today, almost all archaeology
is salvage archaeology pushed by an array of pressures inherent to late capitalism. As an antidote to
this trend, he has proposed approaches that embrace an intentional engagement with complex
landscapes including a kind of slow survey that attempts to resist practices associated with the
commodification of archaeological space, objects, and heritage in the name of documentation.
35
Im exited to explore more of his ideas with him and think there is real potential for a clearly-defined
slow archaeology to offer substantive critique to the discipline.
5. Objects and Enchantment. I participated in a panel on object biography where folks used the
word enchantment more than Ive ever encountered at an academic meeting. The papers were
good and generally well-received, although I detected a consistent skepticism that object biography
represents a productive way forward for understanding of the place of objects within the broader
archaeological project.
My paper was met with skepticism including a comment that my approach to archaeology (and
digital artifacts) would cause children to go running from the discipline whereas the opportunity to
handle an excavated object would lead to enchantment. This may be the case, although I suspect
children and students these days have a greater willingness to be enchanted by digital objects than
our generation does.
Despite that critique, my time at the ASOR annual meeting was enchanting, exhausting, and though
provoking. Im looking forward to next year and following up some of the conversations that I had
over the course of the meeting.
36
37
38
Photographer Kyle Cassidy who has worked with our team in the Bakken and has a contribution in
the volume offered several fantastic cover designs:
39
40
41
42
43
44
Delivered at the
Annual Meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research Atlanta, Georgia Thursday,
November 19, 2015
The idea of an object as a magnet is attractive. It evokes the idea of the object as a node in a
network of attractions and relations that draw together objects, associations, individuals, institutions,
meaning, and even events and time. In fact, some scholars have suggested that objects are more than
isolated nodes, but actually represent the network itself. In other words, the object does not attract
meaning to it, but is meaning itself. It may be that magnet and the effects of magnetism are
inseparable.
The idea of the object as magnet also got me thinking literally about magnetism and the creation of
digital objects (even if magnetic storage is giving way to solid-state technologies which are not a
magnetic medium). Instead of messy magnetic metaphors, my paper today will consider a wide range
of digital archaeological objects. This is particularly important both because digital objects have
come to play a central role in archaeological practice, and they challenge how we think about object
biography.
Digital objects are ubiquitous in archaeology today and archaeologists regularly produce thousands
of digital objects each season. Unlike excavated or collected artifacts which may only seem to
proliferate, derive some of their significance from being unique, and tend to remain close to their
archaeological provenance, most archaeologists take active steps to ensure that digital objects are
copied and distributed widely. In keeping with a sense of biography, we can call these copied and
distributed objects clones. These clones, while similar to point of being identical, nevertheless exist
in particular networks of technology, practice, and space.
From Artifact to Digital Object
uncovered or recovered, washed, identified, sorted, counted, recorded, and stored in trays or boxes,
dumped, or on rare intentionally destroyed. The archaeologists with whom Ive worked on Cyprus
refer to these most common artifacts as sherds (and it must be said with a dismissive sneer). In
Greece (and on my project), we refer to them problematically as context pottery. I suppose this
is meant to indicate that this pottery is so ordinary that it only offers context for the really important
stuff or perhaps it should be regarded contextually along with other features in the trench like
architecture or stratigraphy. As a survey archaeologist with a bit of a quantitative bent, I always felt
sorry for these sherds and most of my real archaeological work has focused on recovering these
objects from the enormous condescension of most archaeological practice.
In our work, these sherds tend to be the smallest and most granular objects recorded in
archaeological practice and the most common objects assigned archaeological significance. As an
aside, Ill overlook the work done to document the chemical make up of sherds which while
important remains quite rare in Mediterranean practice and is particularly unusual on a large scale. It
is interesting, however, to note that scientific study of artifact whether through thin sections, XRF,
or neutron activation, does recognize that archaeological objects exist on the molecular level. A
sherd, in this sense, is merely an assemblage of archaeological molecules, just as a deposit is an
assemblage of sherds. I dont have much familiarity with these practices, but I introduce them as a
little bit (see?) of critique on the idea that an object is a magnet. To my reading, this might imply an
unnecessary division between the object itself and meaning (that is attracted to it from elsewhere?).
It might be simpler to understand an object as only existing with meaning. Without meaning (or
relationships) objects may well exist, but not in a useful or recognizable way.
Whatever the specifics, any process used to document these sherds involves the creation of at
least one digital object. Our project at the site of Pyla-Koutsopetria, for example, recorded each
sherd first as a record on a sheet of paper and then in a relational database. At Polis-Chrysochous,
we skipped the paper phase and recorded directly into the laptop computer. The entry in the
database involves creating a record of the objects weight, color, and place in established or local
typologies. In some cases, this record is accompanied by another digital object, a photograph, and in
exceptional cases, we use a series of photographs to create a 3-D image of the artifact. The 3D
47
image is itself made up of a series of digital objects including photographs, a point cloud, a
wireframe, and a textured 3D object. Each these individual parts of the 3D image represent
individual digital objects that each have particular archaeological values.
At the end of the recording process, the archaeological artifacts go back into their trays or boxes, are
placed on shelves in massive storerooms, and return to relative obscurity. In all, an archaeologist
might spend 20 seconds handling, identifying, and recording a sherd on one of these trays. For the
sherd as an object, the process (and in many ways the utility of the object) is over, but for the digital
object that comes from this interaction, its usefulness has just begun.
Digital Object as Artifact
Over the course of my surveys, excavations, and study projects, we have produced tens of
thousands of these digital objects in relational database as well as digital photographs each inscribed
with vital metadata and assigned a file name meaningful in our recording system. This is standard
practice.
These digital objects have innumerable advantages over the fired clay objects. These digital objects
can be sorted instantly. They can be duplicated almost flawlessly. They can be transported over
national borders and appear in multiple places at the same time. They can be published on the web
and in books, and linked to from other books and sites to form new networks and relationships.
Finally, the conservation and storage of digital objects in the short term is relatively inexpensive
compared, at least, to the expenses and challenges associated with the so-called storage crisis in
archaeology. In so many practical ways, the digital object is more useful to the work of the
archaeologist than the excavated or collected object.
48
In conceptual ways, digital objects can be more useful as well. The digital world in which we work is
in some ways simpler than the messy world of field archaeology. The digital universe relies upon
ontologies that make at least some relationships and definitions explicit and it cuts through the
unsightly messiness associated with archaeological artifacts. In some ways, digital objects are the
most obvious manifestations of the tidy black boxes that form evidence for arguments. For a
digital object to have meaning, it requires a legible network of relationships that define not only how
a digital object is expressed, but what it expresses. Moreover, the network of useful relationships
that allow digital objects to represent archaeological knowledge tends to be visible especially in
contrast to cloudy network of associations generated by archaeological artifacts. The linked data
relationships follow defined pathways either within a data set (for example linking two similar
objects together within the same dataset) or between datasets (an artifact to a location in GIS for
example or two objects discovered at different locations).
Physical Digital Object Digital
49
objects rely upon more than merely bits and bytes to communicate meaning. They exist within a
networks of physical objects as well, and here they manifest a bit more of the messiness typically
experienced at the edge of the trowel or amidst the survey unit. Hard drives are every bit as hard (in
physical terms) as solid state drives are solid. The cloud may seem ethereal, but it too is made up of
routers, servers, storage, racks, chips, wires, and buildings. The devices we use to access our digital
objects are made of silicon, aluminum, rare-earth, and plastics and function best in enclosed spaces
with solid surfaces and comfortable chairs. Problems with the various material interfaces with digital
objects will, of course, compromise the utility of these objects for archaeological analysis.
The physical media upon which digital objects depend are a complex and vital component of the
material culture of archaeology. These archaeological objects which have quite literally a
magnetic relationship with objects produced in the field have only recently received significant
50
scrutiny as objects. The use of iPads in the field and their innovative, yet familiar, interface has
renewed conversation regarding the material form of digital recording devices. Archaeology of the
contemporary world and the allied field of media archaeology have likewise showed renewed interest
in material form of digital media. The most recent volume of the Journal of Contemporary
Archaeology explored these intersections in a most productive way. An NEH sponsored conference
titled Mobilizing the Past and sponsored by ASOR members at the from the Athienou
Archaeological Project encouraged critical reflection on the intersection of digital and material tools
used in archaeological field work.
Digital Objects as Magnets
The focus of todays panels was on objects as magnets. I have taken this a bit too literally in
reference to the myriad little magnetic charges that constitute so much of our digital world. At the
same time, I hope my paper brings to the fore some simple examples of how archaeological work
and archaeological artifacts depend upon digital objects. These digital objects have their own
biographies that require us to adjust our understanding of life to allow for frequent cloning, periodic
reincarnation, spontaneous bilocation, and, as with so many objects, lengthy periods of suspended
animation. Every archaeologist ought to fear the prospects of zombie media which lurches across
our screens in a semi-living states like so many Geocities webpages and Lotus123 spreadsheets.
Digital zombies reveal the risk of disrupting the social lives of our digital objects. Bereft of proper
hardware, software, and other technological infrastructures and protocols necessary to be useful for
contemporary inquiries, these half-dead zombie objects, reveal our dependence on various
economic, political, and institutional entities for our discipline to function.
Of course, not every digital object has equal value (so some are unlikely to return as zombies). And,
I suspect, we all know of digital objects that have died unmourned on a faulty hard drive, a
decommissioned server, or with the obsolesce of a particular application.
Despite the anonymous sacrifice of the forgotten digital object, their passing nevertheless disrupts
part of the network of relationships that connect our analysis to the archaeological artifact. This is
51
not a call to keep every related digital object alive on indefinite life support, but to recognize that for
every poor, marginalized, sherds, there is an equally vital digital object playing its part in our
discipline.
52
professional survival. I have tenure, and as a result, I do not need to race against the clock to
produce publications. I also have the good fortune to work on archaeological projects with the
manpower, time, and funding that align closely with our research objective giving us the luxury to
consider a wide range of archaeological documentation processes without particular concern for
efficiency. This has given us the opportunity to explore a range of digital tools and practices from
the use of iPads in the field to reliance on differential GPS units, 3D imaging technologies, relational
databases, and GIS. This article then is not the frustrated expressions of a Luddite, but an argument
grounded in familiarity with digital field practices.
Industrial History
Archaeology is a discipline steeped in industrial practices. From the earliest days of the discipline,
archaeologists drew upon industrial practices to improve the efficiency of moving large quantities of
earth from sites. The organization of the workforce along hierarchical lines further reflected both
industrial work-discipline as well as the influence of the military on archaeological practices. As one
reviewer observed Pitt Rivers and Wheeler both drew on their military experiences as much as
Schliemann drew on his experiences as an industrialist.
Of course, the industrial influences on archaeology go beyond simply the experiences of the earliest
excavators and intersect with the position of the archaeology as a modern academic discipline. The
modern academy reveals the profound influences of industrial principles of management and
organization. The desire to produce new research more efficiently and more quickly has led to
pressures on academic researchers to streamline their documentation practices in the field and to
emphasize their ability to collect data and produce results in a systematic and consistent way.
Data and Discourse
To suggest that industrial practices in archaeology or even the latest neoliberal iteration of the
academic industrial complex has driven a preoccupation with data collection in the field would be to
overlook the influence of New Archaeology. New Archaeology strengthened an explicit
commitment to using robust, often quantifiable, datasets to reconstruct ancient practices. The rise of
intensive pedestrian survey in the Mediterranean introduced rigorous data collection practices to
landscape archaeology in the Aegean. This marked a shift from practices grounded in less systematic
and often individual efforts to explore and document sites on a regional scale across Greece to a
more rigorous and eventually intensive method for documenting artifacts on the surface at a
increasingly high level of spatial resolution. At the same time, excavation practices in Mediterranean
shifted from traditional trench notebooks to various forms of context recording forms. A growing
commitment to not only stratigraphic excavation practices, but also Harris Matrices marked an
increased interest in defining depositional contexts at as high a resolution vertically as intensive
survey documents horizontally. Harris Matrices represent stratigraphic deposits in a formal and
generalized way and offer a tidy way to present the relationships between deposits now documented
at a highly granular level.
Archaeological publications, then, present the data produced through these systematic approaches to
field work and link them explicitly to archaeological conclusions. This clear link between
systematically produced archaeological data and conclusions is commendable and so consistently
presented as to be expected procedure for almost all archaeological publications.
54
Field Practice
The contexts offered by industrial practices in archaeology and the rise of New Archaeology
offers little room for a slow archaeology. The use of digital tools in the field streamlines the
movement of data from trench side to publication especially as the publication of data has slowly
become part of the expected routine of archaeological dissemination. My own publication of an
intensive survey on Cyprus grounded our arguments directly in a substantial body of published data
in keeping with archaeological conventions. Latour refers to the tidiness associated with the
publication of data and scientific arguments as black boxing which like the neatly arrange Harris
Matrix, occludes the distracting and messy details of the field or laboratory practices. One result of
black boxing in archaeology, is that it emphasized field practices that produce tidy data as a way of
demonstrating the efficient adherence to scientific methods (broadly construed). The tendency to
present neat, clearly defined, and often quantitative datasets in publications also serves to
demonstrate efficiency in field methods and procedures. In other words, the publication process
itself has led to the privileging of certain kinds of documentation processes in the field.
It is hardly surprising that scholarly attention has focused on the development of a new generation
of digital tools well-suited to collect the kind of data traditionally associated with published
archaeological results and ongoing methodological conversations. For example, the use of tablets to
collect information at trench side that efficiently populates and syncs with databases hosted on
secure servers emphasizes the collection of information that can easily be sorted, aggregated, and
projected spatially. The gains in efficiency associated with the trench side collection of data and its
aggregation and dissemination would seem to assume the kind of analysis that depends upon the reassembly of relatively granular data. In early 20th century excavations, by comparison, it would be
possible for a project director to document the excavation of an entire site in a single notebook. In
late 20th century excavations, each trench had a notebook. Today, a trench might have dozens (if
not more) context forms and hundreds of fields in a database.
My view of slow archaeology has consistently called for greater attention to practices that encourage
and document analysis at the trench side or amid the survey unit. To my mind, these practices focus
on the production of analyses that both resists efficient granularity and embraces integrative and
synthetic documentation of archaeological thought. This contrasts with at least the rhetoric of
archaeological data collection from the field that characterizes trench side and survey unit based
practices as documentation rather than analysis.
Critiques of slow archaeology have emphasized that their interest in collecting more granular data
from each trench does not exclude the recording of more traditional forms of less structured data. A
trench-side iPad is not just a window to a database, but also a digital notebook, a digital sketch pad,
and a tool that can even collect a new range of relatively unstructured and unconventional data from
audio recording to video. Indeed, there is little intrinsic in digital tools (except perhaps at the level of
the microprocessor) that requires us to collect archaeological data in a more granular way.
Moreover, some have criticized how I have characterized the deliberate and integrative approaches
associated with traditional archaeological practices as intentionally inefficient or privileging the
collection of less-structured data. In reality,the industrial and scientific influences on archaeology
pre-date by a over a century the widespread adoption of digital tools. As a result, practices that may
appear today as drawing on pre-industrial practices associated with craft production like manual
drafting of trench plans were, in their own time, regarded steeped in scientific and industrial rigor.
55
In early excavations the daily or regular trench dairy was not a synthetic alternative to the database,
but its direct predecessor. What I have characterized as trench side analysis was, in fact, efforts to
document the process of excavation at a level adequate for future publication.
Following on my misunderstanding of past archaeological practices, critics of slow archaeology have
suggested that streamlining data collection using digital tools actually holds forth the prospect of
allow more time in the field for reflective analysis. Technologies have increasingly freed excavators,
trench supervisors, survey team leaders, and field directors from the tedious routine of
documentation and provided them with time to reflect, analyze, and interpret ongoing field work.
The need and opportunity to do this in the field is less fundamental to archaeological work and
more a new critique of longstanding industrial practices in the discipline. Slow archaeology is not a
form of resistance to digital field practices, but at least a crucial byproduct, and perhaps its
inspiration.
Needless to say, these critique have given me pause. My arguments for slow archaeology have
focused on the intersection of technology and archaeological with the idea that the tools we use in
fieldwork shape the arguments that we make. While this may well be true, it is also possible that the
tools we chose, reflect our ideological, methodological, and disciplinary commitments. This line of
argument smacks a bit of a kind of idealism that has driven and justified the growing efficiency of
industrial practices throughout history, and while it is hard to deny that technology has improved the
quality of goods produced by the assembly line, it is more difficult to argue that industrial
technology has improved our quality of life.
Industry and science have exerted a pervasive and expansive influence both on contemporary
archaeological practice and the publication of archaeological arguments. Pressures to produce more,
in less time, and in a more transparent way has pushed archaeological practice to embrace digital
technologies as a tool document (or collect) archaeological data in a rigorous and efficient way. As a
tenured professor with little pressure to publish quickly and a critical appreciation of the limits and
potential of digital tools, it is relatively easy for me to consider the importance of reflexive practice,
to spend time on analysis in the field, and to challenge the value of digital recording techniques. My
projects enjoy robust digital infrastructures, skilled trench and field team supervisors, and colleagues
who are willing to embrace less conventional field practices as part of an effort to understand
landscapes and sites at the level of experience. Whether this more deliberate and slow approach to
field work manifests itself in our final publication remains to be seen.
56
A 3D plan of the theater (thats theatre from you commonwealth types) at Paphos.
Efforts to use digital technology (beep, boop, boop, boop) on the Herculaneum scrolls.
Humanities majors still earn more than people who dont got to college at all.
What Open Access publishing actually costs. More interesting stuff published during
University Press Week here and my thoughts over here.
What Im listening to: Ork Records: New York, New York; Allen Toussaint, Southern
Nights; Life, Love and Faith; (and the surprisingly good) Bright Mississippi.
57
What?
58
59
3. Dynamic. Anyone who has paid even a little attention to the publishing industry knows that it is
in a tremendous state of flux right now. Books, blogs, ebook, open access, open peer review, price
gouging, pirates, and print-on-demand services have transformed how we think about disseminating
content. Small presses have an advantage in that they can pivot quickly, experiment with new media
types and processes, and focus on media as much as delivery methods. This is especially the case
(see my point 1) as the tools for engaging the publishing industry have democratized over the past
two decades. It is now possible to produce high-quality, visually interesting, media on a laptop
computer, sell it without a storefront, market it over social-media, and disseminate it across multiple
platforms from a comfy chair in front of a fire.
4. Fun. As I have become more and more engaged in the world of academic publishing (as both a
producer and a publisher), Ive become more and more interested in the potential for academic
publishing to be fun. When I go to an academic conference or work on an archaeological field
project, I have fun. This doesnt mean that I dont take it seriously, but I find the interplay between
scholars, students, and ideas exciting and entertaining. I sometimes fear that the business side of
publishing with deadlines, formalities, and budgets robs the process of some of the joy
associated with moving interesting content to completed publication. I think small presses provide a
space to cultivate a shared sense of mission, energy, collegiality, and fun. The absence of institutional
structures allows small presses to develop the same energy as any number of zines, doomed record
labels, and academic projects. Theres something about the DIY spirit that makes any undertaking a
bit more of an adventure.
Do take some time this week to click over to your favorite University Press website, and please
check out our friends at the Institute for Regional Studies Press at North Dakota State University,
and be sure to go and download something for free from The Digital Press at the University of
North Dakota!
60
61
On day two, we were able to examine more closely material from the lowest levels of the landfill
which were primarily domestic in character. We used a 5-gallon bucket to sample loads removed
from the trench by the excavator and recorded our observations on a digital audio recorder. The
trash from these samples included well-preserved paper documents, Christmas decorations,
cardboard boxes, beer cans, magazines, lawn clippings, and diapers. These samples, however, were
neither large enough nor systematic enough to produce distinct observations on the character of the
Alamogordo landfill.
Finally, we recognized that not all of the assemblage present at the Alamogordo landfill was visible.
As we dug through the documents leading up to the 2014 dig, we came across the reports from air
and soil testing at the landfill. These tests demonstrated that the decomposition of organic material
and discharges from potentially toxic chemicals in the landfill produced measurable quantities of
various compounds. These compounds are not naturally occurring, but the direct result of human
discard patterns in the area.
62
As archaeologists, we typically regard the visible, material artifacts from a site as constituting the
sites assemblage. The more technologically and scientific of us might sample artifacts for residue or
do some thin sections or petrology of ceramic objects from a site, but I cant recall the chemical
compounds that constitute either objects or evidence for use being generalized on the scale of air
and soil testing at a landfill. The modern archaeological assemblage includes more than what we can
see.
63
The University of North Dakota and the Great War: The First North Dakota
Quarterly Reprint
November 10, 2015
https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2015/11/10/the-university-of-north-dakota-and-thegreat-war-the-first-north-dakota-quarterly-reprint/
Today drops the inaugural volume in North Dakota Quarterly Reprint Series. It is a collaboration
between NDQ and the Digital Press at the University of North Dakota. The goal of this series is to
bring some of the back catalogue of North Dakota Quarterly to public attention again and we
started with a series of articles that deal with the Great War in North Dakota and on UNDs
campus.
This reprint series had the added benefit of serving as a little design study as I continue to work on
my layout and editing skills. To that end, I used a recently reconstructed, digital version of The
Doves Type to add a bit period-appropriate gravitas to reprints. I also had to negotiate the absence
of a bold or italics for The Doves Type, through the use of a small-caps for titles (recognizing that
this is not a true small caps, but just the same upper-case letters in a smaller font).
(For those who dont know The Doves Type story, it was an Arts and Crafts typeface initially
designed for The Doves Press that was dumped unceremoniously in the Thames River after a
dispute between partners at the types foundry in 1916/1917. Heres a little video about the fonts
recovery. Note that the diver is wearing some kind of sweet diving bell helmet, and the recovery of
this font has an unmistakably archaeological vibe to it. We also thought it paralleled the recovery of
parts of NDQ from obscurity as well as the modernist vibe of the little magazine movement of
which NDQ was a part.)
I tried to keep the pages quite vertical with rather large margins to allow Doves Type some room to
stretch out and enough space to breath. Despite this attention to the font and the page, I still see
plenty of little infelicities that I need to create systems to eliminate in future efforts.
Its not entirely about design, of course. The articles in the volume are good especially Wesley
Johnsons 10,000+ word recollections of his time in the fields and trenches of France and Hazel
Nielsons experiences in France with a cadre of North Dakota nurses. The volume also documents
historian Orin G. Libbys flip-flop from being an opponent of the war to the chair of UNDs War
Committee. It is not difficult to see in his work the brewing controversy with UND President
Thomas Kane who Libby accuses of mismanaging the influenza outbreak on campus which resulted
in the death of several cadets. In any event, the entire volume makes for interesting reading and
brings to life the style, perspective, and spirit of UND in the era of the Great War.
Finally, Id be remiss if I didnt note that this is part of my larger (and growing) role as North
Dakota Quarterlys Digital Editor. My job at least as I see it is to expand NDQs presence on the
web and to enliven how people interact with this venerable landmark in North Dakotas cultural
landscape. So, in a very limited way, publishing this volume is designed to draw people to the NDQ
website and, perhaps more importantly, to get them to sign up for periodic emails from NDQ which
highlights new content, delivers some interesting and timely links, and allows us to spread the word
about the Quarterly to a new, online centered, audience. We have no plan to get away from print any
time soon (and I think well likely produce a print version of the University of North Dakota and the
Great War at some point.)
64
If you want to download a copy of the University of North Dakota and the Great War, go here for
the Digital Press or here for North Dakota Quarterly. And to get more stuff like this delivered right
to your email inbox, subscribe to NDQs email newsletter (tentatively called NDQ5 get it? A 5th
volume of a quarterly?) here.
65
When we arrived, a group of middle aged folks were walking out on the breakwater, despite the
blustering cold wind.
66
We got to the end of the breakwater and saw a ship in the distance. We asked the folks standing
there (explaining that we were from North Dakota where large things in the distance tend not to
move): is it worth standing out here in the cold to watch that ship come in. They said, without any
hesitation, YES.
So, we hung out and watched the ship come in. One of the old timers on the breakwater mentioned
that he sailed on the SS Arthur M. Anderson out of Two Harbors. In its day, the Arthur M.
67
Anderson was one of the largest ships on the lakes. She was never the Queen of the Lakes, but she
was famous for shadowing the Edmund Fitzgerald on that fateful night 40 years ago. I didnt ask if
the guy we met on the lake was on the Arthur M. Anderson that night.
We hung out and chatted with the folks there and watched the SS Edgar B. Speer approach. She
was, briefly, the Queen of the Lakes in 1980, and at 1000 feet, she is a massive ore ship. The folks
on the breakwater entertained our naive questions about how a ship this big would navigate between
the breakwater and the taconite piers. The maneuvering involved front thrusters and several
thousand horsepower.
They told us that this will be the last ore ship into Two Harbors. They stressed that it did not have
to be the last ship. The Soo Locks remained open until January 15, but it would be the last ship
because no one needs taconite (which is a kind of palletized iron ore) right now. The Edgar B. Speer
was heading to Gary, Indiana with its load.
We watched as she came into port. I cannot emphasize enough how large this ship was and narrow
the space was between the breakwater and the taconite piers.
68
After the ship made her way to the rusty piers where she would spend 12 hours being loaded with
taconite, we walked back along the breakwater. The clouds were low, the wind was cold, and we
were pretty quiet. We chatted about how cool it was that the folks at the end of the breakwater were
willing to share what they knew about this ship, how it would dock, and their own time on the lake.
At that moment, we understood why the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald was such a big deal.
69
Excavations at Pyla-Kokkinokremos on Cyprus. This site overlooks our site of PylaKoutsopetria and is a neighbor to our Hellenistic site of Pyla-Vigla.
A neuroscientist is pretty sure that the pyramids were built to store grain.
The dreaded NPR voice which is related (in some ways) to the Secret History of Podcasting.
RIP Edward Soja. I encountered the idea of third space and the work of Henri Lefebvre
through Sojas writings.
What Im listening to: Floating Points, Elaenia; Tapper Zukkie Man Ah Warrior.
70
First Snow
November 5, 2015
https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2015/11/05/first-snow-2/
The last seven years, Ive posted a photo of the first snow (or what I considered the first snow).
Here they are: 2014 (November 8), 2013 (Oct. 20), 2012 (Oct. 4), 2011 (Nov. 10), 2010 (Nov. 21),
2008 (Oct. 28), and in 2007 (Sept. 11).
Unfortunately, Im out of town, but a member of our household stood in for me and recorded the
first snow with scientific patience:
71
72
If you still cant get enough, check out this article on our work in the Bakken on Vice Motherboard.
It appeared, briefly, above the fold:
73
Of course, Ill be keeping my eye out for a dog with a rabid tooth while Im there.
74
that this pottery is so ordinary that it only offers context for the really important stuff or perhaps it
should be regarded contextually along with other features in the trench like the stratigraphy. As a
survey archaeologist with a bit of a quantitative bent, I always felt sorry for these sherds and most
of my real archaeological work has focused on recovering these objects from the enormous
condescension of most archaeological practice.
In our work, these sherds tend to be the smallest and most granular objects recorded in
archaeological practice and the most common objects assigned archaeological significance. As an
aside, Ill overlook the work done to document the chemical make up of sherds which while
important remains quite rare in Mediterranean practice and particularly unusual on a large scale. It is
interesting, however, to note that scientific study of artifact whether through thin sections, XRF, or
neutron activation, does recognize that archaeological objects exist on the molecular level. I dont
have much familiarity with these practices, but I introduce them as a little bit (see?) of critique on
the idea that an object is a magnet. To my reading, this might imply an unnecessary division between
the object itself and meaning (that is attracted to it from elsewhere?). It might be simpler to
understand an object as only existing with meaning. Without meaning (or relationships) objects may
well exist, but not in a useful or recognizable way.
Whatever the specifics, any process used to document these sherds involves the creation of at
least one digital object. Our project at the site of Pyla-Koutsopetria, for example, recorded each
sherd as a record first on a sheet of paper and then in a relational database. At Polis-Chrysochous,
we skipped the paper phase and recorded directly into the laptop computer. The entry in the
database involves creating a record of the objects weight, color, and place in established or local
typologies. In some cases, this record is accompanied by another digital object, a photograph, and in
exceptional cases, we use a series of photographs to create a 3-D structure from motion image of
the artifact that is itself made up of a series of digital objects including photographs, a point cloud, a
wireframe, and a textured 3D object. Each these individual parts of the 3D object represent stand
alone objects that each have particular archaeological values.
At the end of the recording process, the archaeological artifacts go back into their trays or boxes, are
placed on shelves in massive storerooms, and return to relative obscurity. In all, an archaeologist
might spend 20 seconds handling, identifying, and recording a sherd on one of these trays. For the
sherd, as object, the process (and in many ways the utility of the object) is over, but for the digital
object that comes from this interaction its usefulness has just begun.
Over the course of my surveys, excavations, and study projects, we have produced tens of
thousands of these digital objects in relational database as well as digital photographs each inscribed
with vital metadata and assigned a file name meaningful in our recording system. This is standard
practice.
These digital objects have innumerable advantages over the fired clay objects. These digital objects
can be sorted instantly. They can be duplicated almost flawlessly. They can be transported over
national borders and cloned so that they appear in multiple places at the same time. They can be
published on the web and in books, and linked to by other folks to form new networks and
relationships. Finally, the conservation and storage of digital objects in the short term is relatively
inexpensive compared, at least, to the expenses and challenges associated with the so-called storage
crisis in archaeology. In so many practical ways, the digital object is more useful to the work of the
archaeologist than the excavated or collected object.
76
In conceptual ways, digital objects are more useful as well. For example, the digital world in which
we work is so much simpler. It relies upon ontologies that make at least some relationships and
definitions explicit and it cuts through the unsightly messiness associated with archaeological
artifacts. In fact, for a digital object to have meaning, it depends upon a dense, but legible network
of relationships that define not only how a digital object is expressed, but what it expresses.
Moreover, the network of useful relationships between various digital artifacts tends to be more
visible as well. For example, in contrast to cloudy network of associations generated by an
archaeological artifact, the associations linked data relationships follow defined pathways either
within a data set (for example linking two similar objects together within the same dataset) or
between datasets (an artifact to a location in GIS for example or two objects discovered at different
locations).
Digital objects rely upon more than merely bits and bites to communicate meaning. They exist
within a networks of physical objects as well. Hard drives are every bit as hard (in physical terms) as
solid state drives are solid. The cloud may seem ethereal, but it too is made up of routers, servers,
storage, racks, chips, wires, and buildings. The devices we use to access our digital objects are made
of silicon, aluminum, rare-earth, and plastics and function best in enclosed spaces with solid surfaces
and comfortable chairs. Problems with the various material interfaces with digital objects will, of
course, compromise the utility of these objects for archaeological analysis.
At the same time, the physical media upon which digital objects depend represent a vital component
of the material culture of archaeology. These archaeological objects which have quite literally a
magnetic relationship with objects produced in the field have only recently received significant
scrutiny as objects. The use of iPads in the field and their innovative, yet familiar, interface has
renewed conversation regarding the material form of digital recording devices. Archaeology of the
contemporary world and the allied field of media archaeology have likewise showed renewed interest
in material form of digital media. The most recent volume of the Journal of Contemporary
Archaeology explored these intersections in a most productive way. An NEH sponsored conference
titled Mobilizing the Past and sponsored by ASOR members at the Atheinou Archaeological
Project encouraged critical reflection on the intersection of digital and material tools used in
archaeological field work.
The focus of todays panels was on objects as magnets. I have taken this a bit too literally in
reference to the myriad little magnetic charges that constitute so much of our digital world. At the
same time, I hope my paper brings to the fore some simple examples of how archaeological work
and archaeological artifacts depend upon digital objects. These digital objects have their own
biographies that require us to adjust our understanding of life to allow for frequent cloning, periodic
reincarnation, spontaneous bilocation, and, as with so many objects, lengthy periods of suspended
animation.
These objects have important social lives as well. They depend upon hardware, software, and a widerange of other technological infrastructures and protocols to be useful and understandable to each
other and to archaeologists. These objects, in turn, rely upon the support of economic relationships,
political and institutional structures, and ideological commitments to have value. Not every digital
object has equal value and we all know of digital objects that have died unmourned on a faulty hard
drive, a decommissioned server, or with the obsolesce of a particular application.
77
With the passing of a digital object, we lose part of the network of relationships that connect our
analysis with the archaeological artifact. This is not a call to keep every related digital object alive on
life support, but to recognize for objects like our poor, marginalized, sherds, the continued vitality of
the digital artifact is more important than baked clay.
78
79
80
3. Coherence. When I was in graduate school, Ohio State edited a series of modular document
readers for their American and European History survey course called Retrieving the American Past
and Exploring the European Past. I used these modules as a graduate teaching assistant and found
many of them to be well thought-out and useful in the classroom. The problem was that these
modules only occasionally overlapped neatly with the larger narrative in the classroom. As a result,
these modules felt isolated or methodological excursions that graduate students led in separate
discussion sessions.
A formal textbook has to offer some methodological or even topical coherence to make it useful
companion to a traditional history class. The goal is to locate the sweet spot for a text that makes it
useful to the most classes and scenarios while keeping it coherent and distinct enough to get the job
done over the course of a semester.
4. Dynamic. One of the advantages of a text that is digital is that it can engage the reader in ways
that traditional paper texts cannot. For example, it is possible to dig down through a digital textbook
to primary sources and it is possible to adjust the content of a digital textbook to correct errors,
adjust for new information, and to explore new areas of interest.
Of particular importance for historians is the ability of a digital text to allow a reader to drill down to
the primary and second sources and to establish relationships between arguments in a text and
additional information available elsewhere.
I suspect that an annual or at least regular versioning process will emerge to avoid having to make
constant changes to the text. Id also hope that users of the open version will make their work
available and this will influence regular changes to the official version of the text.
5. Stable. At the same time, our teaching habits often depend on incremental change through
multiple iterations of a class, and this relies on a certain degree of stability for a textbook. As great as
it would be to produce a new textbook every year, responding to new sources available online and
new approaches to problems, such a book would quickly become a frustration for faculty who rely
on textbook readings and assignments grounded in a consistent body of course material.
As much as the appeal of a dynamic and constantly adapting textbook is, a certain degree of stability
is necessary to make a book of maximum utility.
6. Open. Finally, it goes without saying that the idea digital text is open allowing a faculty member to
take whatever it is that we put out on the web and to adjust it to their needs. Ideally people can use a
stable version of our text perhaps one that gets regular official updates or they can download a
version that they can manipulate, adjust, change, tweak, and revise however they want under CC-By
license. Id like to make a version that is as unconstrained by formatting as possible so that users can
do whatever they want with the text. Id also like to foster a community of users who share their
insights and work on the text to make it a better volume for everyone.
Part of me sort of wished to make my textbook my NaNoWriMo project (even though its not a
novel), but Im afraid that other things have popped up in its place. But I do hope that I can get to
this project over the next 6 or 8 months. It would be great to trial a beta version of my new
textbook next fall!
81
The news of the Mycenaean warriors grave from Pylos has taken the world by storm and
gives us a feel for the sensation of Schliemanns discoveries at Troy. Heres the Cincinnati magazine
story. Here it is in the old grey lady.
Minoan DNA.
If you need more Mycenaeans and More Nakassis, check out his recent podcast
appearances.
Its never too late to stop worrying and learn to love archaeology!
The University of California System really knows how to celebrate Open Access week.
Catalogue bot!
An archive of cookbooks.
Guns on campus at UT. In North Dakota, this movement lost momentum when we asked
whether the legislature really wanted to encourage an army of armed liberals.
Im a pretty good Facebook troll, but not even in this guys league.
What Im reading: T. Gallant, The Edinburgh history of the Greeks, 1768 to 1913: the long
nineteenth century. Edinburgh 2015.
What Im listening to: Built to Spill, Theres Nothing Wrong with Love; Antonio Carlos
Jobim, Wave; Deerhunter, Fading Frontier.
82
83
who are expected to know legalese as part of their profession. Legalese is exactly the kind of poor
writing that people recognize in academic work: its full of jargon, unnecessarily opaque, and
stylistically turgid. In fact, it is so boring and dense that most of us do not read EULAs or other
legal statements that are directed to ordinary folks as an audience. Academics writing to other
academics get pilloried, but for some reason legalese gets a pass.
The reason for this is pretty simple. Over the past 60 years or so, academics have fought to maintain
their professional status whereas lawyers have not. Law has been seen as a profession since the turn
of the 20th century, whereas academic work in the humanities has often been seen as something that
anyone can do given the time, access, and resources. After all, anyone can write a history book
without any special training or qualifications, but to represent a client in court, one needs to pass the
bar, complete law school, and have a license. I think doctors and engineers and other professions
who also teach have received relatively less pressure to communicate to a general audience. We
respect the need for doctors to refer to that dangly thing in the back of my throat as a palatine
uvula even though I think most people would understand us without the technical jargon.
Just like doctors and lawyers, academics write in a way that is effective for communicating to other
academics. As Craig pointed out in the comments, this comes from both the socializing process of
graduate school where our writing is subjected to continuous critique in seminar classes and at the
hands of faculty and continues into our academic careers where our advancement is tied, at least in
part, to the success of our ideas among our professional colleagues. If we write in a way that is not
compelling even to our colleagues in our discipline, we will not get published, we will not advance
our ideas, and we will neglect our responsibility to our field.
So pushing academics to write for a general audience both overlooks the professional commitments
of accomplished, professional writers as well as the commitments of academics in the humanities.
Finally, good writing is a good thing, but the criteria for good writing and a general audience is pretty
vague. Things I find accessible and clear are opaque to my students. Disciplinary work that is
effective for me, is not nearly as accessible to scholars outside my discipline. In short, context is a
key aspect for understanding the success or failure of writing. A successful and effective academic
article must contribute to a debate, but this debate might be obscure to a non-academic audience.
This isnt to suggest that writing well doesnt exist in some kind of basic way, but the practice of
writing well depends on audience and context. What is good writing for one group is not good
writing for another. I think that many of the harshest critics of scholarly writing fall far outside its
intended audience. Criticism of academic writers for their style must be contextual.
In the end (after the finally), pushing academics to write for a broader audience will put the quality
and quantity of research at risk. As the academy does more to make professional, research scholars
(especially in the humanities) into teaching employees, I hope the public will recognize that
university and college teaching without research is not higher education at all. Teaching matters, the
public matters, and writing matters, but without the hard work of research, all of that is worth just a
little bit less.
85
86
I dont mean to say that its impossible for all academic writers to write in a way that is more
engaging for a non-academic audience, but I suspect that my experiences are not unusual among
academic authors.
In the meantime, you can read my latest efforts at trying to write non-academic prose here. Its the
revised version of my Wormholes and North Dakota Quarterly article that I originally posted
here. Its slated to appear in NDQ 80.4.
87
hyper-abundant landscape. In the Bakken I also came to recognize that the practice of archaeology
mattered to the communities and people who we were working to document. People in the Bakken
boom recognized that it was a historical moment for the region, and saw in our efforts to
understand and document it, affirmation that people cared about their experiences. This motivated
us to work toward publishing the results of our work in the Bakken in free and open access (as
much as this is possible) forms.
Finally, theres Atari. Not only do our efforts represent an effort to deal with hyper-abundance of
the modern world, but also the explicitly performative character of punk archaeological work. We
were simultaneously props for the films directors and researchers attempting to glean as much
archaeological information as possible from the experience. This dual role of archaeologist and
performer makes the performative element of our discipline explicit and situates our work both as
archaeology of the contemporary world and within the contemporary world.
Now to transform this into a breezy and entertaining PowerPointer
89
90
assessment represents a key manifestation of the tension between an administration probing the
limits of its authority and faculty autonomy.
2. Disciplinarity. The first three or four chapters in the book do little to recognize the significance of
disciplinary practice in student learning. Disciplines have long acknowledged that the vitality of their
fields of study depend upon continuous refinements in teaching and learning. These improvements
have tended to be incremental, embedded within disciplinary practices, and to draw upon
experiences across a wide range of campuses.
Unlike assessment, disciplinary discussions tend to be decentralized and grounded in craft
approaches to knowledge production. There is no doubt that conversations about teaching in the
disciplines generally lack the quantitative edge frequently embraced as the basis for evidencedriven improvements in student learning. At the same time, the failure to acknowledge the
presence of rich and ongoing disciplinary conversations about learning and teaching especially in a
book focused on making assessment data more useful on campus is significant.
If compliance culture bedevils the effective use of assessment data, it would perhaps behoove those
committed to campus wide assessment to expand the scope of assessment more fully to include
existing practices at the disciplinary level. Tapping these disciplinary conversation will be admittedly
difficult because they tend to be far more informal and irregular than structured campus-wide
assessment initiatives, but I suspect there would be great value to starting the assessment process
with the question: how do you improve teaching and learning in your discipline?
3. Research Design. One of the key problems with the vast bodies of campus wide assessment data
is that most of it is designed to track a rather elusive problem: how do we engooden learning in
higher education? With this or other similarly broad research questions largely driven by the need
to produce data for accreditation or other accountability programs it is hard to imagine their
immediate or regular utility at the level of a single class or even a departmental curriculum.
It seems to me that good research design is more focused in the questions that it asks and the data
that it produces. More focused research questions tend to involve more focused data collection
practices and do not typically require (or encourage) the kind of continuous data collection at the
core of most assessment strategies.
To be fair, University of North Dakota offers funding for focused assessment projects, but as far as
I can tell, this data is not recognized as part of the larger university assessment protocols. More
problematic still is that this data (or the analysis) is not particularly visible for use by the rest of the
faculty (although in some cases, specific faculty research is made available). We need a white paper
series that features specific research and makes data available for wider critique and use.
4. Where does this lead? My old friend David Pettegrew has a saying: Theres always more
archaeology. He usually pulls this out when Im ranting about the need to get back into the field
and collect more data. Davids quip is meant to remind me that collecting more data does not always
result in more knowledge. It also serves as a useful reminder that collecting data for the sake of
collecting data is not a very useful enterprise.
The broad idea of continuously assessment student learning is not bad, but the idea of continuous
improvement is difficult to sell in a culture where resources are increasingly scarce and diminishing
91
returns represent a real disincentive to ongoing research. Typical research design produces a result
and always more archaeology is a call to keep the goals of data collection in mind when doing
research. The ultimate goal of assessment may be continuous improvement, but this is hardly a
sustainable objective.
92
After the success of the Iliad, there will be a live reading of the Odyssey.
Lotsof talkabout active learning and the lecture (albeit earlier) on the web prompted by this
op-ed in the New York Times.
And if youre still not topped up on your interest in higher ed pedagogy, theres this.
Why havent I walked (and mapped) every block of Grand Forks? Why hasnt this
happened?
What Im reading: Alfredo Gonzlez Ruibal, Reclaiming Archaeology: Beyond the Tropes of
Modernism. Routledge 2013.
What Im listening to: Youth Lagoon, Savage Hills Ballroom; Beach House, Thank Your
Lucky Stars.
93
94
Adventures in Podcasting with a very, very special guest: Caraheard Season 2, Episode 3
October 22, 2015
https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2015/10/22/adventures-in-podcasting-with-a-veryvery-special-guest-caraheard-season-2-episode-3/
Richard and I were excited to get our old friend and regular listener Dimitri Nakassis on the
Caraheard podcast this past week. He was a good sport and talked with us for well over an hour
about his research and Late Bronze Age Greece.
Season 2, Episode 3: Richard and Bill talk with Dimitri Nakassis
We began by teasing Dimitri (and me) about some of our famous car failures, including this
epic accident (no one was hurt).
To really understand his work, check out his book: Individuals and Society in Mycenaean
Pylos (Brill 2013). Here is some really basic information on Linear B.
Dimitri mentions Richards paper at the Metron conference many years ago, heres a link to
it.
One of the places that this paper identified as a likely location for Mycenaean settlement is
the site of Korphos on the Saronic Gulf. It was published here (pdf).
If you want more Nakassis and dont feel like springing for the book, check out this
YouTube clip called, Rethinking the Mycenaean World, and this one, titled Cities and Thrones and
Powers: Rethinking the End of Mycenaean Civilization.
We mention Eric Clines recent book; it has a trailer. We also mention the work of Jared
Diamond.
We also mention the Patricia McAnany and Norm Yoffee book called Questioning Collapse
(2010) and Robin Osbornes book Greece in the Making 1200-479 BC (1996).
We discuss the artificial nature of the divide between the Mycenaean period (or the Late
Bronze Age) and the early Iron Age and refer to Sarah Morris and John Papadopoulos. This divide
is sometimes called the Greek Dark Ages. Heres what John Papadopoulos thinks of it and in this
article he says: What is a mirage is the Dark Age and the deliberate distance maintained between the
second millennium and the culture of classical Greece.
95
We talk briefly about INSTAP and the East Crete Study Center.
Finally, Dimitri talks about his work using RTI to document the Linear B tablets here.
96
Volume 73 1/2 to Hemingway. As far as I can tell NDQ has never combined volume numbers.
The closest weve ever come is in 1994-1995, when we combined years, but kept the same volume
(62). This knocked the volume and year numbers out of whack and was clearly not a tidy or
satisfactory solution to our problem.
The absence of a time-honored solution to this problem left us in a bit of jam. We had no real
precedent for skipping years or combining volumes, so those proved to be dead ends. And while we
could have followed the gradualist route of slowly combining issues, but the speed of change at
NDQ would likely lead us to confront the reality of Einsteins laws before we caught up. Plus, wed
have to find topics worthy of double issues but also to invest the effort to produce a double issue,
and this would risk putting us even further behind. In this hopeless situation, we returned to where
the problem started: theoretical physics.
Since the initial issue with time slowing down derived from the phenomenon of time dilation at high
speeds, we hoped that Einsteins general theory of relativity might also provide us with a solution. It
so happens that as physicists came to terms with Einsteins theories, they began to speculate on
phenomena like black and white holes. Both of these phenomena involve locations of very high
gravity surrounding very dense (and hence very small) non-rotating masses. From what we
understood, the high gravity of black holes distort timespace enough to allow for some basic time
travel. Time moves far more slowly for objects orbiting black holes than for those at a great
distance.
Objects sucked into a black hole would also experience timespace compression to a remarkable
degree. Einstein and other physicists, particularly Karl Schwartzchild, recognized that if black holes
were to exist and would ingest matter, then the matter ingested by a black hole could be ejected by
white holes. This provided the basis for the notion of wormholes which do more than distort
timespace, but actually punch a hole through two distinct location in timespace and allow matter to
pass from one place to another. Einstein and Nathan Rosen developed these ideas most fully and
they are sometimes called Einstein-Rosen Bridges in 1935. Some astronomers think that very small
wormholes probably existed at the Big Bang and might still exist. The work at the Large Hadron
Collider in Switzerland has sought to create these microscopic black holes, which, on the one hand,
could end the universe, and, on the other hand, might help us understand the origins of the
universe. Physicists have theorized that such wormholes could be created and held open with a
massive infusion of negative matter. It may be that the creation of these very small black holes, or
even wormholes, are useful to us because, we only need to travel a few years and the Quarterly is,
for now, quite small.
While it may seem a bit unorthodox for a journal dedicated to the public humanities to use a
wormhole to resolve the dating problem of their volumes, Id suggest that this is consistent with a
growing interest among scholars of the humanities to think about science as an approach to
traditional social, cultural, historical, and literary problems. I suspect that most humanities scholars
take their lead from such important cultural landmarks as Bill and Teds Excellent Adventure. This
imaginative documentary linked a scientifically advanced future to an equally sophisticated
understanding of the past. Despite its advanced science, the future of humanity needed Bill and Ted
to do well on a history presentation, and future generations did not hesitate to leverage time-space to
make this happen. In response to these remarkable revelations, scholars in the humanities have
gravitated to the works of Bruno Latour and Karen Barad. Barad and Latour, among many others,
have worked to unpack scientific thinking in ways that reveal the deep entanglement of objects,
98
institutions, people, and events. Science and the humanities draw upon the same imagination and
navigate similar institutional, economic, material, and historical limits to our work. Our idea of a
strict division between culture and nature has increasingly receded reminding us that we are part of
the natural world that our science describes. The inseparability of time, culture, space, society, and
matter in the world recognizes the potential for innumerable wormholes connecting even such
disparate places and times as the arts, humanities, science, engineering, and technology. These
wormholes exist despite the apparently dispersion of disciplines, institutions, and ways of thinking
into institutional silos with distinct histories and theoretical commitments.
The wormhole connecting Bill and Teds history presentation and the future is no more (or less)
absurd than the wormhole resolving the effect of temporal dilation in the sequence of NDQ
volumes or the entanglement of arts and sciences. We are increasingly coming to see the division
between the arts, humanities, and sciences as arbitrary and the mutual commitment to understanding
the universe is not the distinct domain of any particular set of approaches. At the same time, we
recognize that the worlds problems are as complex as they are pressing. From resolving a bit of lag
in the NDQ volume dates to ending the world at the Large Hadron Collider or resolving tension
between religious and secular views, the humanities and the sciences share a desire to use their
understand of the universe to create a better place. We hope that synchronizing the volume numbers
and dates of North Dakota Quarterly contributes in some small way to this common cause.
99
100
lab component of the class or through field practica or other explicitly hands-on and active learning
environments.
Most criticism of active-learning in the humanities stems (heh, heh) from our awareness that all of
what we do is active learning because the product of a history class is the production of history.
Worthens association of active learning with STEM is a bit of pettiness that derives from
educational politics rather than historical realities. It was a weak sortie in the STEM Wars.
2. This contributes to SOTL and Assessment. My skepticism concerning SOTL and assessment are
pretty well-known to anyone who reads this blog. I see both of those practices as components in a
gradual deskilling of academic faculty and the sure transition of faculty from professional experts to
employees. The production of increasingly generalized and non-disciplinary criteria for what we
teach and how we evaluate disciplinary practice is part of larger project to undermine the
professional standing of disciplinary practitioners and make university faculty into teachers rather
than scholars.
Articles like this do nothing to advance our cause. The historical foundations for Worthens
arguments were, as I noted, questionable, her evidence for the value of lectures was squishy and
insubstantial (at best), and the relationship between lectures and particular disciplinary skills was not
clear. If historians value lectures, we should value them not because they keep students off
Facebook or they teach students to listen carefully, but because lectures lead to the production of
good history. As soon as we claim magical powers for lectures, we put ourselves into the realm of
SOTL and assessment which privilege in most cases practices broadly foreign to history and the
humanities (typically, although not exclusively grounded in quantitative or systematic, qualitative
practices of the social sciences) and non-disciplinary learning outcomes (like being able to sit still
and listen, dammit).
We need to stop doing that. The value of history is in practice. We offer the students a way to
understand the past. Historians demand that students demonstrate their ability to understand the
past using historical methods in our classes. (And lecture may or may not be a valuable tool to that
end). Our big picture hope is that by teaching students to understand the past based on historical
methods that they become critical consumers and producers of culture.
3. Blame technology. It is clear that technologies has changed how students and historians engage
the classroom, interact with their peers, and produce knowledge. Worthen was silly about
technology throughout this article. Im sure her lectures are handwritten ensuring that she is better
able to recall fine details while she presents in front of the class room. Studies have shown that
writing lectures out by hand improves retention and memorizing a lecture would obviate the need
for a lectern in the classroom and open up time for Worthen to pace around, wave [her] arms, and
call out questions to which [she] expects an answer.
The issue is, of course, how do students use technology. The kind of one-sided and, frankly,
simplistic view of students and technology in the classroom does not suggest a venerable Luddism
from Worthen, but rather conforms to the stereotype of an out-of-touch humanities professor who
does not understand the way technology fits into the lives of students. Using technology to take
notes, to find sources, and to engage course material reflects a tremendous opportunity and
challenges the role of the lecture as source of information. Modeling historical thinking through
scholarly articles or even textbooks, and pushing students to construct their own arguments and
101
disseminate them digitally offers many more opportunities than developing among students the
patience to watch a flailing history professor perform a prepared script. I have no doubts that
Worthen understands technology, but her rhetorical position in this article does nothing to help the
humanities in either the STEM Wars or in the court of public opinion. The contest in most cases is
not between lectures and distraction, but between lectures and the remarkable wealth of material
available on the interwebs.
As I said at the start of this post, I lecture and I respect the place of lecture in the history of our
discipline and profession. Heck, I even enjoy listening to an engaging lecture by a peer. Justifying the
place of the lecture within our discipline deserves more than the sophistry presented in this article.
Im not sure that Im ready to present an argument for why preserving the lecture in history deserves
its place within the university classroom, but Worthen has offered some conceits that Ill certainly
avoid.
102
but showed the deliberate elaboration including teh reconstruction of an elaborate pediment. Finally,
the widespread practice of constructing elaborate fountains in Late Antiquity might reflect the
growing importance of local water sources in cities where seismic events had disrupted regional
systems of aqueducts that had historically provided water to these communities. As local fountains
became more important in providing water for the city, they attracted the attention of the civic elite
eager to present themselves as patrons of the community.
3. M.E. Hoskins Walbank, Inequality in Roman Corinth. Any time you see the name of one of the
long-time Corinth excavation members reviewing a work on Corinth you expect a show!
Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) there was very little show in Mary Walbanks review of S.J.
Friesen, S.A. James, and D. N, Schowalter edited volume, Corinth in Contrast: Studies in Inequality
(Brill 2014). The book was the third produced from a series of conferences that brought scholars of
the New Testament together with scholars of the Corinthian archaeology, and Walbanks review was
largely positive, praising both this work and the previous two volumes for contributing to our
understanding of the Roman period at this important site.
The only paper that she was rather critical of was by William Caraher (who is he?), but her critiques
were largely fair. As long-time readers of this blog know, my paper looked for evidence for
resistance in Late Roman Corinth and pushed the existing archaeological evidence beyond what it
probably could sustain. Walbank suggested that my efforts to draw on theory to fill in for absent
firm evidence was unsuccessful. She might be right, but the paper was fun to write and present
nonetheless.
So, go check out the most recent volumes of the Journal of Roman Archaeology, celebrate its punk
rock style, and enjoy the annual review of all things remarkable in Roman archaeology.
104
105
The work of the University of Sydney Archaeological Excavations at the Paphos Theatre.
A fancy gold wreath excavated near Soloi in Northern Cyprus. It always surprises me a little
that Archaeology Magazine will promote the results of excavations that many would consider illegal.
I recognize that its a complicated issue, and Im sure theyve given it careful thought.
Even when filtered for the Republican rhetoric, this is a remarkable achievement in
digitization.
What Im reading: Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the
Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Duke 2007.
What Im listening to: Ahmad Jamal, At the Pershing, but not for me. Ahmad Jamal,
Ahmads Blues.
106
107
Alt-Ac in Archaeology
October 14, 2015
https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2015/10/14/alt-ac-in-archaeology/
Go over and check out the newest issue of the Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and
Heritage Studies (JEMAHS) for their forum on alt-ac (alternate academic) careers (and you might
want to download it all now since I dont think itll be freely available forever). These are careers for
individuals who either shifted their attention from their graduate programs to other, typically related
careers, or received their Ph.D.s and either did not entire the academic job market or could not find
jobs. As the academic job market has become all the more constricted for Ph.D.s in the humanities,
alt-ac careers are becoming more common. This year is my first as our departments director of
graduate studies and Im paying a more attention to the job market as our Ph.D.s and M.A.s
graduate and find their way.
So after chewing on these articles for a bit, I had three thoughts
1. Ph.D. programs have to change. For a long time, Ive thought of Ph.D. programs (particularly in
history, but for archaeology too) as professional programs for historians and archaeologists. The
goal of a Ph.D. program is to prepare a historian for a rather narrow view of the academic job
market. This involves developing more sophisticated research methods, producing book length
arguments, managing long term projects, and balancing teaching and research responsibilities. I
contend that most Ph.D. programs continue to do a good job with these things.
It is another issue whether these things continue to be essential elements of professional
development in our discipline. For faculty who will teach more and research less, it seems reasonable
that we shift some emphasis toward not just teaching, but to integrating research and teaching in the
classroom. Id like to think that our D.A. program at UND which requires students to demonstrate a
broader chronological and topical foundation does a better job in preparing students for certain
types of teaching positions (and our almost perfect placement rate over the past decade would tend
reflect our confidence). In the D.A. program students are required to develop broad expertise in
both European and American history and teach under supervision both the Western (or World)
History survey course, the American history survey as well as to develop a more specialized course.
In place of a traditional dissertation, our D.A. candidates develop a research project that must
include a teaching component that explores how the candidate can integrate their research in either
teaching or public history environment.
2. Alt-Academia is a scary place. Reading the various contributions to this volume emphasized to me
how much the serene world of tenured academia relies upon a fragile world of alt-acedmic positions.
Sarah and Eric Kansas discussion of their situation as directors of the Alexandria Archive Institute
which supports the invaluable Open Access archaeological publishing platform made clear they their
position, both in financial terms and in terms of academic freedom is not as secure as a that of
faculty. Chuck Jones made clear that he made decisions to move because of the opportunity for
tenure.
Im incredibly lucky to have the security of a tenured position, but I can say with absolute
confidence that I am neither as good at my job as Chuck or the Kansas (Sarah and Eric, not the
state or the band), nor is what I do as important to the field. (And this observation applies,
undoubtedly, to many of the other scholars who shared their experiences in this volume, but I know
108
these three better than most of the others). The contributions in this volume made very clear how
much key aspects of our academic work are not afforded the same protections (and freedoms) that
tenured faculty have. This is hardly a shock as the number of adjuncts teaching continues to rise
nationwide and universities continue to erode tenure protections through appeals to economic
emergencies, personal conduct, and imagined institutional futures. It is something that should cause
us worry, though. Our opportunity to pursue independent research is only as good as its institutional
context. Libraries and digital repositories (as well as granting agencies, publishers, and other
institutions that support and shape academic work) require the same protections as tenured
researchers.
3. Disciplinary Deskilling. As I begin my term as director of graduate studies for our small graduate
program, I do worry about balancing the need to prepare our M.A., Ph.D., and D.A. students for
academic positions and alt-ac positions. On the one hand, I recognize that much of our traditional
academic training has some value to a candidate interested in alt-ac positions and our commitment
to professional education in our various disciplinary traditions has (often unintended) utility outside
our academic worlds.
On the other hand, I continue to worry that by looking to prepare our students for the potential of
alt-ac jobs, we run the risk of diluting our professional degree programs. For example, in discussions
of creating a Masters level public history track at UND, weve talked about requiring courses in
non-profit management, marketing, accounting, education, computer programing, web design, and
museum studies. These courses, of course, would introduce students to key skills vital to a career in
the world of public history. At the same time, requiring even a few of these classes will inevitably
squeeze out courses in disciplinary history.
As we think about what we can do to make the Ph.D. a more practical degree in recognition that
most of our Ph.D. students will not become tenured faculty, its hard to avoid the temptation to
start to shift what we emphasize in our Ph.D. programs to adapt to this reality. The problem is, of
course, that the alt-ac world is a much more diverse and dynamic place than academia and looking
to expand the foundation of Ph.D. education will always risk contracting the specialized,
professional training that remains the core of what a Ph.D. is. Were witnessing this on the
undergraduate level, albeit in a bit of a different context, where training in history has increasingly
taken a back seat to the development (and invariably assessment) of transferable skills. After all,
the opportunities in the field of history for a B.A. student are relatively few and history has long
established itself as useful training for a range of other kinds of work. The risk is, of course, if
history largely serves to train students to do things other than history, wouldnt it be more efficient,
affordable, and useful to just train students broadly to do this other kind of work? Why teach them
history as a way to develop skills rather than just training them in those skills? Because history is
interesting? Is the historical method and subject matter the spoonful of sugar (for the medicine of
workforce development)?
Im not sure that I know the answer to this question and how much any discipline should give in
their undergraduate or professional training to the realities of a changing workforce, institutional
cultures, and professional expectations. The careers of the people features in his volume of
JEMAHS offer some thought-provoking case studies that will continue to inform the conversation.
109
110
Fast feedback has often been limited to the use of clickers in the classroom or other rapid response
type devices or applications which allow for instantaneous feedback on questions asked during class
time. The downside these devices is that they usually limit student responses to short answers or
multiple-guess kinds of queries. Ive found that giving students quick feedback on longer, written
work this semester has produced much improved results.
3. Go fast to go slow. The reason why rapid responses to student written work has produced
improved results is that it has allowed us to keep the pace of work high in the class. I know that Ive
celebrated techniques associated with slow learning (and other forms of the slow movement) on this
blog, but, with the Scale-Up room pace is everything. The space of the room is incredibly distracting
to students, lectures are impossible, and its all I can do to keep the students settled and quiet for 10
minutes quizzes at the start of the class.
In this environment, variables in attention span, work speed, and comprehension make it vital to
keep the class moving. To do this, Ive increasingly broken down the work of writing (and writing
history, in particular) into smaller parts which take less time to understand and practice. Focusing on
specific aspects of historical work from writing a single sentence thesis, to constructing an outline
with primary source evidence and specific historical details, to learning when and how to cite
formally allows students to grasp and work through various parts of historical writing process
without being overwhelmed.
These opportunities for attention to detail even if they involve only 10 minutes of sustained
attention per class provide a chance for students to focus attention on many aspects of the writing
process that often get overlooked when students are confronted by the complexity of even short
writing assignments.
As I introduced these little changes, Ive thought a bit more carefully about what I want to
accomplish in my History 101 class. In fact, Im participating in a faculty reading seminar on a book
about assessment. At UND (and I assume elsewhere) were often confronted with the idea that the
actual goal of the class (i.e. writing a textbook) is somehow separate from what we hope the students
learn (i.e. a learning outcome). This division allows us to separate grading the assignment (the actual
goal) from assessing student learning (the real goal). History (and Im sure other fields as well) has
seen this division as a bit of a challenge. After all, our discipline has long valued the production of
historical knowledge more than the process itself. Our methodology is underdeveloped and we lack
much in the way of an ethical, practical, or even philosophical foundation. As disciplinary practice
confronts the ironic view of the modern academy (i.e. teaching history is really teaching something
else citizenship, critical thinking, reading and writing, et c.) we are constantly pushed to figure out
what our discipline REALLY does and to assess that. I find that more confounding than helpful.
After all, one thing that historians are good at is recognizing good history.
111
112
Some people have asked for more Eric Cline on this blog. So heres an hour long interview
with the author of the award-winning, best selling book 1177 BC.
Heres an interview with MacArthur Fellow Dimitri Nakassis who refers to Eric Cline.
Byzantine Crete.
Early Christian church near Larnaka on Cyprus. This is useful and interesting because the
Early Christian landscape of Larnaka bay is oddly under documented.
Electric Archaeology has enjoyed a bit of a redesign. In a recent post he talked about an
elegant solution to digital open research notebooks. My father worked on a related (but not really
open) problem and got a patent for it back in the day.
Other people have asked why we dont post more about Archaeogaming. So heres an
interview with Andrew Reinhard who heroically announced his retirement from Facebook this week.
Photogrammar from Yale is a pretty cool way to explore the content of the Library of
Congress archive. I want to do something similar for North Dakota Quarterly.
What Im reading: George Kuh, Using Evidence of Student Learning to Improve Higher
Education. 2015.
What Im listening to: Christian Scott, Anthem; Christian Scott, Stretch Music.
Its fall, and the flokati beckons with the scent of a thousand goats.
113
Bacon Mac and Cheese, Entitlement, and the End of the Universe
October 8, 2015
https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2015/10/08/bacon-mac-and-cheese-entitlement-andthe-end-of-the-universe/
Anyone who has been on the internet lately has new seen the crazy bacon-mac-and-cheese college
student video. When I first watched it, I was appalled, confused, delighted, and then sad before
being confused again. I thought that it must have been staged, then it couldnt have been staged. It
was simultaneously the worst thing and then the best thing. It might be the end of the universe, but
Im just not sure.
As one might expect, I wanted to drop everything and immediately work on a small edited volume
focused on this video. I even invited folks to contribute on the Twitters. No one has taken me up
on it which may be a good thing.
At the same time, I felt like I should share my thoughts on why this video is so great and terrible.
1. Entitlement. This is the easy explanation. The 19-year old student, whose name is Luke, felt like
he could just walk in there and get mac-and-cheese without even putting down his beer bottle. As an
example of student white, male, student entitlement or the entitlement of youth, this is worth of
outrage. After all, the internet outrage machine is not known for its subtlety and entitlement is low
hanging fruit.
2. Carnival. Before I admit to this video being an example of young white, male, college student
entitlement (which is almost certainly is in some ways), we should also consider how bizarre it is and
ponder the possibility that this even is a kind of ritualized inversion. If this student is entitled, which
he probably is, his entitlement did not succeed in getting him his mac-and-cheese. In fact, it seems
to have provided a moment of inverted social order where the lowly manager at the dining hall
who is there to serve the entitled, white, male, youth, refuses to serve the student, and becomes
belligerent. The manager hardly remains in his role of service employee (or does he?). The student,
on the other hand, has walked into a dining hall with an open beer. This is not only illegal, but
remarkably ill-advised (Im assuming that it violates the university alcohol policies). Now, its
possible that hes done this many times in the past and is appalled this time because he cant get his
mac-and-cheese, but the reaction of the crowd and the manager seems to indicate otherwise. The
main argument for why he cant get his mac-and-cheese is that hes been drinking.
In this context, there is a kind of ritual inversion. The entitled student who is in a position where
hes least able to enforce his rights to mac-and-cheese is confronted by the empowered employee
who refused to serve a student who is clearly not capable of serving himself. Strange days!
3. The Manager. The manager is the most bizarre figure in the entire video. On the one hand, we
can celebrate his unwillingness to bend when confronted with a drunk, belligerent, and hungry
student. He has policies and he is literally willing to go the floor to enforce them. He stands up to
abuse, keeps his composure, and only resorts to physical violence when he feels threatened.
At the same time, he is responsible for this scene escalating. First, he refused to give the student
mac-and-cheese which, we are led to assume, might immediately de-escalate the situation. Next, he
continues to engage the student. Anyone who has regular contact with students knows the two
114
email rule. Basically it states that if youre having an argument with a student (over email), it should
be limited to two emails. A third email will only result in escalation and will almost never produce a
mutually acceptable resolution to the conflict. (This is a version of the Mark Twains quip (who I
believe is quoting J-Zed in this instance): a wise man told me dont argue with fools because people
from a distance cant tell who is who.)
Finally, and he clearly recognized that the kid a 19 year old was intoxicated and walked into the
dining hall with an open bottle of beer. Ive been around college students to know that if a student
walks into a public space with an open bottle of beer, then opportunities for reasoned conversation
are likely to be very limited. Why this manager escalated this confrontation to physical violence after
he claims to have called the cops is beyond me (actually, its not, see below). It is interesting that the
manage may have bluffed and says that someone has been called at about the 1 minute mark of the
video and tells the student that he has 2 minutes before they arrive. The cops dont arrive until the
very end of the 9 minute video. At the same time, he keeps telling the student that he should just
leave. (In effect, run from the cops). There is clearly something more going on here, and I suspect it
speaks to the blurry lines between official justice (i.e. the police, the courts, and the laws) and
campus justice (i.e. administrative rulings, disciplinary boards, and policies). The first threat that the
manager issues was not jail, a fine, or even physical violence, but the threat of expulsion. Campus
has its own rules.
4. The Fight. Part of what is going on is that our carnival moment, the moment of ritual inversion
where the servers refuse to serve and the entitled do not get what they expect, breaks down the basic
set of social rules that dictate this kind of interaction. The Manager did not call the police, so the
student as much as he was functioning in a rational way at all recognized that he maybe could
still get his mac-and-cheese or it was at least possible for him to protect his role in the interaction.
When that reality became less and less possible, violence erupts and the student ends up being
pinned on the floor by a burly cook. The cook issued warning shots, though, yelling twice Dont
touch my boss. It would seem that the relationship between the manager and the cook involved a
remarkable degree of loyalty. If we consider the situation as having (a fraught and fragile) element of
carnival to it, then perhaps we can see a kind of class consciousness here erupting onto the scene.
The cook realizes that his boss is in danger, but doesnt see his boss. Instead he sees the limits of
their autonomy as service employees being overrun by this belligerent teen-ager. That might account
for why the manager or the cook continued to escalate the scenario while waiting on the police. This
was not a fight between the police and the student, or even civil society and the student, this was a
fight between those who serve and those who are served. With the fight we see the emergence of
class consciousness forged in the crucible of daily interactions with an entitled generation of white,
college, man-boys.
5. The Video. The arhythmic poetry (almost a dance) of the entire scene immediately made me
assume that this was an elaborate fake. It was something that a professor, someone like my clever
buddy Paul Worley, would produce for a class on performance, class consciousness, and colonial
engage (or something). (Worley once staged an mock confrontation during a research presentation
where students planted in the audience confronted a speaker (who was in on the act) during a
presentation to explore (among other things) the potential for shared authority between the audience
and the speaker. It was sweet).
115
The manager, the student, and the cook recognize that they are on video. In fact, at one point Luke
looks at the camera and says This is getting posted somewhere, and youre gonna look like a fuckin
tool. The manage responds Thats fine and both of them ham it up for a second for the camera.
For most of the engagement both parties know (as much as the student is capable of knowing in
his impaired state) that they are being filmed. To be completely fair, the manager and the student
had already appealed to the crowd a few seconds before by asking the crowd to support their
positions in the argument. Realizing that theyre being recorded, then, reifies their roles as
performers in the actual confrontation. Being filmed invariably limits the roles that these two
individuals can take. The rest of the video blurs the line between the actual confrontation and the
performance of the confrontation even after the exercised cook yells Shows over while pinning
the student to the floor. The audience is as much a part of this performance as the cook, the
manager, and the student. It is a show.
6. Community. Perhaps the performative aspect of the confrontation is what kept the audience
which appears to consist mainly of students off-camera from becoming involved. A couple
students attempt half-heartedly to convince Luke to leave and try to de-escalate the physical
confrontation, but their efforts are as weak as they are ineffective. If the cooks shout Dont touch
my boss, represents the moment class consciousness emerges, then the reluctance of other students
to become involved in the confrontation suggests that any unified understanding of entitlement is
not so clearly formed that it would motivate bystanders to defend a fellow entitled students rights.
Im not sure that this video makes clear a pervasive sense of entitlement toward which internet
commentators have directed their outrage. Or if there was a sense of entitlement, it was not strong
enough to motivate students to act to defend Lukes rights to mac-and-cheese.
On the other hand, the efforts by the audience to defuse the situation were weak. They watched, the
recorded, and they were clearly amused and shocked as things spiraled out of control, but they didnt
surge to the defense of the manager or grab their increasingly vulnerable bro and remove him
from the situation. This video is hardly an advertisement for bro culture.
7. The Police. Once the student is on the ground and the police intervene, then video gets even
more bizarre. The cop asks the student if the hand-cuffs are too tight and then unlocks and adjusts
the hand-cuffs. Clearly the cop knows that hes being filmed (or assumed it, as perhaps he should on
any college campus). This concern for the comfort of a belligerent, intoxicated, student is shocking
to the viewer. It both reinforces the sense that this student is a teenager and justice for those
struggling with adulthood should be gentler (unless, of course, youre black, then its swift and
violent). Even if we can argue that most of the video presents, at best, an ambiguous commentary
on student entitlement and privilege, the interaction with the cop certainly does. Until Luke spits on
the manager, who bizarrely was still standing by as if to ensure that the cop did his job, the cop was
firm, but polite. After the spit, the cop pushed the student roughly out the door.
The video is many more things, of course, and deserves a more thorough, theoretically informed,
and detailed consideration. It is also sad. The kid apparently was kicked out of the University of
Connecticut because of this (and perhaps other incidents). Apparently this was not the first time that
he behaved aggressively while drinking. There is every indication that these confrontations
represents bigger problems.
116
We dont know much about this student other than his arrest records and this video, and its easy to
judge him because many of us have seen similar confrontations fueled by alcohol and youth, and its
easy to reduce him to a type. I hope that he has a chance to sort himself out.
117
mobile workforce, supported by global infrastructure companies, changing notions of home, and the
highly integrated character of modern markets, has changed the landscape in which community
investment takes place. Conversations with hundreds of workers in the Bakken across a wide range
of housing demonstrate that these changes in the economy shape the attitudes of workers who have
come to the region. Many of these workers regard their time in North Dakota as temporary, have
homes, family, and strong social ties outside the region, and as the economy slowed, began to
formulate alternate strategies that took advantage of their mobility.
The voluntary mobility of the Bakken workforce requires new approaches for ensuring that shortterm economic development associated with an oil boom becomes sustained economic growth. It is
important to distinguish between the various kinds of work force housing in the Bakken and the
populations that these workforce housing options serve. Large crew camps provided by global
logistics companies or major employers in the oil industry cater to a workforce with high
expectations of mobility and highly-specialized skills tied directly to extractive industries. RV parks,
which also represent another form of short-term housing catering to another highly mobile
population, but often with weaker ties to the oil industry and more generic skill sets ranging from
pipeline work, commercial drivers licenses, to service industry commitments. This group is less
directly dependent on oil industry work, more likely to include family members, including children,
and perhaps more likely to remain in the community after the boom related industry departs. They,
however, are also most likely to require new training or to compete with already existing workforce
for jobs in the post-doom community.
The fundamental challenge facing North Dakota communities during the most recent Bakken oil
boom is how to provide suitable housing for rapidly changing workforce needs. The initial period of
the boom witnessed workers camped in public parks, back yards, and the infamous Walmart parking
lot. In response, the municipalities William and McKenzie Counties issued temporary conditional
use permits (or special use permits) for crew camps and RV parks. This served to ease the initial
shock of the boom by providing housing designed specifically to accommodate the short-term needs
of the extractive work and the mobile character of the workforce associated with this industry.
Housing in these camps ranged from the functional and comfortable in well-appointed crew camps
to the ad hoc and informal in the many RV parks across the region. As oil prices declined, the shortterm population housed in crew camps also declined as there was less need for specialized oil patch
workers during the labor-intensive process of drilling and fracking new wells. At the same time,
residents in the patch who had formerly lived in RV parks found it easier to move into more
permanent housing made available and more affordable by the increasing in housing and apartment
inventories. The key to understanding the trends in housing in the Bakken is to understand that
different populations have different housing needs and resources in the dynamic economic and
social world of the Bakken.
119
Adventure in Podcasting: Season 2, Episode: 2: Domestic Space and a Very Special Guest
October 6, 2015
https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2015/10/06/season-2-episode-2-domestic-space-anda-very-special-guest/
In the second episode of Season 2, Bill and Richard violate the spirit of Labor Day and get to work
on recording a podcast. Its okay, because our special guest is Bev, Bills mother-in-law. Since shes
from Australia, we can celebrate Labor Day in late winter, like they do in the southern hemisphere.
Our topic of discussion: the different houses we have lived in and how they shaped our daily lives
in North America, Australia, and Greece.
Season 2, Episode 2: Bill and Richard and a Very Special Guest talk about houses
Be sure to check out our sponsor this episode. Karl Jacob Skarsteins The War with the Sioux from
the Digital Press at the University of North Dakota.
The podcast begins with a discussion of Queensland, Australia, and in particular the Queenslander, a
house, traditionally built of timber, suitable for the hot climate of Australia. We drift into a
discussion of the American Ranch style house, with an oblique nod to the Four-square. Perhaps you
should buy a Field Guide to American Houses. You can find a typology on the web, of course.
Dont forget to learn about the Hills Hoist. And the awesome variety of Australian Pubs.
We referenced Greek Houses and Kostis Kourelis
Australian Place we reference: Queensland, Townsville, someplace called Beero. Townsville is also
home to these superheroes.
Its not Caraheard without a reference to mancamps in the Bakken, or their abandonment as the oil
boom turns down.
Toilet water does not drain counterclockwise in Australia. Quit asking.
120
121
The Quarterly has long stood as a proving ground for writers across the country and world as well as
across campus. The diversity of the Quarterly has long set it apart from the crowded field of literary
journals. Sepia toned prairie reveries shared pages with scientific writing, political commentary,
history, literature, and poetry.
Bill Caraher, who managed the release of NDQs digital archive, noted: It is important to stress
that NDQ is not a stodgy old academic journal. The back issues reveal the tremendous vitality of the
publication as a place for thoughtful comment on the history of the state, the university, and the
world. This represents an important resource for teachers, for faculty across the country, and for
mindful readers everywhere.
The Quarterly explores topics as wide as the prairie horizon with thousands of contributions
touching on issue as diverse as how best to care for states natural resources, the political and social
culture of the region, American Indian history and literature, the history of the university, its faculty,
and administrators, and the various ways that the world intersects with life in North Dakota.
The back volumes of the Quarterly were digitized as part of the larger Google Book project and are
made available through an agreement between the University and the HathiTrust which maintains
parts of the Google Books archive. The back issues can be accessed on the ndquarterly.org website
and can be downloaded and shared under open access license.
122
What is archaeology?
The Manar al-Athar Open Access Photo Archive,the Guggenheim makes 1600 works of
modern art available online, and you can download almost all of North Dakota Quarterly for free
from the HathiTrust (more on that soon!).
A free journal issue on cultural heritage in the digital age? Yes, please.
Some great press coverage for The Digital Presss translation of The War with the Sioux.
Congratulations to Steve Listopad (a student of mine this semester and faculty at VCSU) for
being honored at the Playboy Mansion.
Cocaine.
Stop Googling and Lets Talk (what about if I cant check Google?)
What Im reading: Manuel Delanda, A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and
Social Complexity. New York 2006.
123
124
wide web and developed more intricate and detailed arguments. As we will argue elsewhere in this
book, the presence of archaeologists at the dig represented an effort by the filmmakers to appeal to
standards of truth present in forums where conspiracy theories, myth-busting, and suppressed
evidence tend to provide significant fodder for debate. Ironically, parts of the excavation process at
the Alamogordo landfill appeared to drew upon practices spoofed by the director, Zak Penn, in an
earlier mockumentary, The Incident at Loch Ness. In this film, Penn casts himself as a bumbling
producer who seeks to add drama to an otherwise earnest documentary film directed by Werner
Herzog by staging the appearance of the Loch Ness Monster during the film. This fictional film
about a film played upon Herzogs reputation for an earnest lack of irony even in the face of
relentless absurdity (Cronin 2014). Our appeals to archaeological standards and efforts to document
the excavation and recovery of the Atari games formed a similarly earnest foil against the frantic
bustle of stage-managed days at the Alamogordo landfill. It was never clear where the film ended the
dirty work of production began. In other words, the presence of archaeologists at this project was
both the product of our role of archaeology in documentary film, as well as the discourse and media
in which conversations about the Atari dump took place.
Conclusion
Archaeology of the contemporary world brings to the fore the challenges of archaeology in the
contemporary world. As such, archaeology and archaeologists form part of a dynamic assemblage of
objects, ideas, practices, and media that shape our everyday and academic life. The excavation of
contemporary trash carries on the tradition of archaeological work that recognizes both discard
practices and discarded objects as important parts of human life. Archaeological mediation
represents just one method by which discarded things acquire new value and enter into new
relations and forms of circulation. By locating these objects in larger assemblages of practices,
individuals, and objects, archaeologists are able to trace the impact of things on how we engage the
world.
The use of archaeological methods to document the contemporary world is not without
complications derived from the interplay between modern objects and disciplinary, material, and
institutional limits. As we noted, the potential toxicity of the Alamogordo dump prompted the New
Mexico Environmental Department to limit the amount of time the trench was open. The instability
of the landfill itself, which is the product of both the objects in the fill and dumping practices
common at older and smaller landfills around the US, made entering the trench impossible. These
limitations, in turn, challenged traditional archaeological practice and required us to document the
excavations in unorthodox ways as will be more clear in subsequent chapters. Finally, the sheer
abundance of objects in a landfill made exhaustive recording impossible and even statistically
meaningful sampling a challenge. Archaeology of the contemporary world cannot escape or ignore
our profoundly entangled relationship with materials and objects.
The web of relations that made our archaeological work possible is not limited to institutions and
objects that intersected on a windy day at the Alamogordo landfill. In fact, objects at the center of
the excavation drew their significance from a expansive network of media encounters ranging from
the experience of playing the E.T. video game to the film that inspired the game, the internet forums
that incubated a provocative landscape of the American West, and the documentary filmmakers
themselves who sought to control the narrative of discovery and the process of work at the site.
Penns previous work ensured that any conscious efforts on our part to document the excavation
according to disciplinary standards ran the risk of making us the same straight-man dupes as played
126
by Herzog in the Incident of Loch Ness. Beyond the immediate opportunity provided by the
documentary film crew, the Alamogordo excavation relied upon the convergence of new and old
media far more than any dispassionate scholarly discourse (Jenkins 2008). The web of relations that
made the Atari games significant includes the physical character of the games themselves, the
experience of playing the games, the highly critical reception of the E.T. game when it was released,
the commitment of an online Atari fan base as well as views of the desert West as the realm of
conspiracies, aliens, and fantastic encounters at the margins of the American society. In the case of
the Alamogordo Atari Expedition, our work was deeply entangled in media which were
simultaneously the object of our archaeological documentation and a crucial element of the
assemblage in which our work took place.
127
same connected web of computers was also positioned to disseminate the documentary via
Microsofts X-Box 1 gaming and media platform. At the same time, we digging in the Alamogordo
desert in search of objects best known not for their physical form, but for what that form contained.
The recognition that archaeology and the media have deep interconnection has garnered recent
attention from scholars who have explored the relationship between various media, from
photography and drawing, to television and documentaries, and the objects of archaeological
investigation. There are also scholars, often from the fields cultural studies, who have offered a
broadly construed archaeological critique of media that ranges from the careful examination of
now outmoded or obsolete media to the considerations for how technology has shaped the
production and consumption of media over time. While practitioners of media archaeology have
been quick to distinguish what they do from disciplinary archaeological practice, the shared in the
relationships between objects and concepts like the assemblage has led to a growing convergence in
methods and arguments (Piccini 2015).
Raiford Guins Game After: A Cultural Study of Video Game Afterlife (2014) typifies the growing
convergence between media archaeology and disciplinary archaeological practice. Guins followed
the tracks of video games from objects of desire to obsolete, and typically disposable, commodities
and then back to being collectable items that often confound the efforts of conservators to keep
them operational. He emphasized the materiality of cabinet arcade games contributed significantly to
the experience of game play and argued that even the more modest and mass-produced console
video games for home use sought to blend the aesthetic of cabinet gaming with the character of
domestic space. The elaborate labels evoking the art on cabinet games and contrasted with the faux
woodgrain present on the classic Atari 2600 console designed to fit into the cosy paneled family
room with wood-paneled television.
For Guins, who was present at the Atari excavation, the excavating of the game cartridges was more
than just the exhuming of obsolete media on which a video game was inscribed, but the recovery of
part of the domestic gaming experience for those present. While the game cartridges recovered from
the landfill were, in some ways, the equivalent of ancient transport vessels which derive significance
largely because they reflect the trade in wine, olive oil, fish sauce, or some other typically liquid
commodity, they were also inseparable from process of domesticating the arcade experience and the
fabric of the late 20th century family room. The games were both the material trace the digital game,
but also part of the larger experience. This interpretation was seemingly sustained by the willingness
of hundreds of people to pay money for games that, as far as we know, do not work.
If the excavated games are fragments of both the experience of playing the game and represent the
digital game itself, our own work as archaeologists likewise operated at the intersection of
representation and practice. There is no doubt that our presence at the dig and the remarkable
access that we were allowed reflected our status as props in the documentary (for archaeology and
the media see Holtorf 2007; Clack and Brittain 2007). In many ways, Joe Lewandowski did more of
the archaeological heavy-lifting through his creative efforts to identify the general site of the Atari
dump and his appropriate use of bucket augur to locate the deposit of games itself. The Alamogordo
Atari Expedition team, in contrast, largely worked around the documentary film crews and general
media frenzy to document the excavation of the landfill and the context of the games themselves.
Our formal place within the film, particular Andrew Reinhard who embraced his role as the public
face of the archaeology team and its director, represented our role as archaeologists, which at times
had to skirt the frantic work of the documentary filmmakers to coordinate both the filming and the
public spectacle that surrounded the excavation of the games. Our credentials as archaeologists
129
legitimized the recovery of the games and gave us the access necessary to attempt archaeological
documentation.
130
commitments, economic forces, and even academic, interpretative paradigms. In other words,
objects exist and have meaning only as part of a larger network of relationships.
The greatest challenge facing archaeologists, however, is not finding ways to appreciate the
significance of objects in the contemporary world. After all, the fields ranging from material culture
studies, to history, architecture, anthropology, and design have all explored how we use objects and
buildings to produce meaning in the world. Archaeologists, for their part, have worked to consider
how to approach the study of contemporary objects with methods grounded in rigorous
archaeological practices. When objects are recovered from subsurface contexts, archaeologists can
fall back on archaeological practices and methods to document the significance of modern objects,
unfortunately, however, most modern objects do not derive from excavated contexts and do not
lend themselves to longstanding and common archaeological approaches. In most cases, archaeology
of the modern world does not involve documenting layers of historical deposition to produce a
stratified understanding of the past.
In the place of excavation and stratigraphy, archaeologists have come to deploy another common
archaeological term for their interrogation of the modern world: assemblage (Harrison 2011). For
archaeology, an assemblage represents a body of objects associated with a single archaeological
context. In excavation, assemblages are typically defined by chronology or a depositional event. In
other words, objects dating to a particular period constitute an assemblage from a site, or objects
found in the same deposit represent a bounded assemblage. In other forms of archaeology, such as
surface survey, assemblages can represent all the objects found on the surface over a set area and the
relationship between these objects constitutes a history of a region. In the modern world, a focus on
the assemblage allows archaeologists to emphasize the relationships between these objects and
individuals that interact to produce meaning. Exploring these relationships includes an expanded
awareness of the role of the archaeologist in the produces of analysis and description.
Archaeology of the contemporary world and historical archaeologist focusing on recent times has
also worked to emphasize methodological and procedural issues associated with the documentation
of recent objects. For example, the excavation of damaged vinyl long-playing records from the
commune famously associated with the Grateful Dead at Olompali encountered toxicity associated
with the fire that destroyed the site (Parkman 2014). This not only limited access to the actual
deposits associated with the finds, but efforts to decontaminate the records damaged the objects.
David Yoder commented on the hyper abundance of modern objects that can be formally
considered archaeological under federal archaeological policies has become a challenging obstacle
for archaeologists who often developed their collection and documentation methods in the context
of less materially abundant periods and groups (Yoder 2014). The abundance of modern material
has had an obvious impact on archaeologists involved in managing and maintaining cultural heritage
from the modern world (see Olsen and Ptursdttir 2013) as they work with communities struggling
to adjust their aesthetic values and historical narrative to accommodate objects associated with the
recent past. Sites like the Berkeley Pitt in Butte, Montana, which is a dramatic, toxic, and colorful
superfund site created from an abandoned open pit mine, push communities to reflect on how their
historic and archaeological landscapes fit into their future (LeCain 2009). Despite these challenges,
archaeologists have come to appreciate the ability of from the recent past to present insights into
production, consumption, and discard practices, the changing pace of life in the 20th and 21st
century, and the development of technology. Paul Graves-Brown documented a desk drawer full of
audio connectors that highlight how much simple tools have changed in the last three decades
132
(Graves-Brown 2014); Colleen Morgan and Sara Perry excavated an abandoned hard drive (Morgan
and Perry 2015).
133
134
intersection of several key issues relevant to recent interest in the archaeological engagement of the
contemporary world.
The Archaeology of Trash
Archaeologists have always been interested in trash. In fact, some scholars have recognized that
some of the earliest archaeological work focused on trash. Dietmar Schmidt, for example, argues
that preeminent German anthropologist Rudolf Virchows accidental discovery of rubbish pits in
Berlin represented a crucial moment in the understanding of archaeology as both a practice and
metaphor for modern social science (Schmidt 2001). In the late 1860s, Virchow thought he had
discovered the remains of an Iron Age pile dwelling in the middle of the modern city, but soon
realized that the deposit of bones, shells, and kitchen pots was discarded rubbish from the previous
century. Despite his disappointment, he documented the deposits carefully and presented a number
of papers arguing that this deposit of 18th century kitchen waste revealed a good bit about the
culinary habits of the German aristocracy and their predilection for oysters and mussels in particular.
When Virchow goes on later in the century to visit Heinrich Schleimanns dig at Troy he comments
on the discarded refuse. Moreover, Virchows work led to periodic investigations of modern sewers
and other nearly contemporary refuse deposits elsewhere in Europe. Schmidt suggests that
Virchows and others interest in the mundane trash rather than simply the glorious inspired Freuds
use of the archaeological metaphor to characterize his exploration of the human consciousness.
Even without such grandiose claims, excavators have invariably recognized the value of middens,
rubbish pits, and other deposits of discarded objects. These deposits speak to both the material
assemblages associated with every day life as well as discard practices and attitudes toward what is
valuable and what is not. Bill Rathje in the early 1970s recognized the value of applying
archaeological attention to discard practices and garbage to the modern world (Rathje 1992).
Rathjes work focused initially on contemporary household trash from the city of Tuscon, Arizona.
The trash was sorted carefully by volunteers and recorded to present a profile of consumption and
discard practices for a cross section of an American city. By the end of the project Rathje had
expanded his work to excavating and taking cores from landfills, and this work linked the life of a
single household to the more complex system of waste management.
Rathjes Garbage Project spurred a growing interest in the nature of trash in modern society.
Michael Tompsons Rubbish Theory (Thompson 1979) offered a theoretical point of departure for
the movement of objects from houseful use and value to rubbish and, at times, their return to value.
Thompson argued that objects circulate through various economic, social, and cultural contexts
which assign or rob the object of value. Contemporary scholars might dispute Thompsons tendency
to separate an object from an external context and prefer to understand objects in a network or web
of relationships with other things, people, and ideas, but his idea that objects have little in the way of
intrinsic or material value allows us to use the study of trash a venue for the larger study of society as
a dynamic force.
More recent work on our interaction with trash continues to make visible the complex way in which
we engage with discard as a practice and discarded objects as thing.
135
136
Some more love for the Athienou Archaeology Project on the ASOR blog.
What Im reading: Chris Fowler, The Emergent Past: A relationist, realist archaeology of
Early Bronze Age mortuary practices. Oxford 2013.
What Im listening to: Ryan Adams, 1989 (but read this review here to see how haters
gonna hate); Teen Men, Teen Men.
137
Always vigilant.
138
139
giving to the poor and to the church as part of a larger route to salvation. Changing Christian
attitudes toward giving opened new ways for church builders to fund their buildings and freed them
from existing networks of aristocratic wealth which often proved an obstacle to the centralizing
tendency of the organized church.
There is evidence from the Adriatic coast and from Greece of rather small donations (<1 solidus) to
the decoration of churches. This would have been within the budget of people of middling means in
the Late Roman world. The tendency for these small donations to appear in groups in a building
suggests that the church was recruiting groups of these donors. The appearance of anonymous
donors of small amounts hints that the motive for giving was less about developing civic prestige
and more about seeking divine rewards.
3. Christianization vs. Monumentalization. Finally, I have come to wonder more and more whether
looking at the Early Christian churches of the Peloponnesus has less to do with Christianization and
more to do with the monumentalization process. While I recognize that building monumental
architecture was closely tied to the spread of Christianity from the 4th on, I also wonder whether
our linking of these two processes together obscure the real reason for the appearance of so many
large buildings in Greece in the later 5th and 6th centuries. The 5th and 6th centuries were wracked
by Christological debates that fractured Christian communities throughout the Mediterranean, but
particularly in Greece where imperial and ecclesiastical policies were often at odds with each other.
Investment in monumental architecture, in this scenario, had less to do with the spread of
Christianity, and more to do with the development of competition between groups within
Christianity who had access to resources to make their claims in the Greek landscape. The
proliferation of churches around cities like Corinth need not represent the expansion of the
Christian community in this place, but rather may represent the appearance of groups with
competing claims around this important city. This would help explain the multiple baptisteries, the
multiple synthrona, and the subtle, but obvious differences in architecture and decoration in these
buildings.
Finally, Sweetman and I would both have great little books on the Early Christian architecture and
Christianization of Greece:
Hers would include her 2013 article, and the two articles she published this year (in the ABSA (pdf)
and the AJA).
Mine is sketched out here.
Its a good time to be an Early Christian basilica in Greece!
141
human actors and object interact. This expansive view of assemblages which include both objects
and human actors both echoes Latours view that objects can object to ill-fitting interpretative
schema, and by extension that objects have agency in complex relational networks. Much of the
work in this section focuses on the animist ontologies that structure the relationship between
objects, landscapes, and practices and open up new ways to understand the production of objects
and monuments. Joshua Pollards contribution considers the dense network of processes that
emerged through the construction of stone and earthen monuments in Avebury in the U.K. and in
Polynesia. Sarah E. Baires and colleagues explored the web of movement that shaped both the
encounters with and the production of monuments among the Woodlands groups in North
America. Chris Fowlers important contribution emphasizes the role of time in how we understand
the relationships throughout assemblages. Events are objects within assemblages that play a role in
producing meaning. Fowler makes a key point: social change does not impact the assemblage but
emerges from changing relationships between objects.
The final section of the book considers the role of representation in an archaeology that engages
ontological questions in a serious way. These contributions share the previous sections interest in
production. For example, Ing Marie Back Danielsson considers the practices used to produce and
then to discard Iron Age Scandinavia gold-foil images rather than simply considering their
representation, and Frederik Fahlanders careful reading of coastal rock art in Bronze Age Sweden
demonstrates how various phases of inscription relate to one another bringing time, expression, and
materiality into the production of an assemblage. Andrew Conchrane likewise demonstrates a
sensitivity to time in his study of abstract imagery in the Neolithic passage times of Fourknocks,
Ireland which endured both remodeling and archaeological interventions. Sara Perrys narrative
history of the building of models and dioramas by the Institute of Archaeology at University
College, London and the role that these objects played in developing observational literacy among
archaeologists as well as revenue for the Institute.
The final contribution to the book comes from Gavin Lucas whose work on time, materiality, and
archaeological methods looms large in recent reconsiderations of the archaeological practice. Lucas
approaches the ontological turn through a consideration of the ontological purification that has
traditionally divided reality into humans or things. Returning to the main focus of the book, Lucas
argues that for archaeology to do more than simply reify this division, and other dependent divisions
like that between nature and culture, archaeologists must find new ways of understanding the dense
relational network that include a diverse range of objects. This shift not only marks archaeologys
ongoing move toward the kind of Latourian natural science considered by Martin, but also reflects a
growing awareness of our own networked world.
143
144
It is perhaps not a coincidence, of course, that the rise in intensive pedestrian survey as a respects
and widely deployed method for constructing past landscapes is particular committed to the
assemblage as the unit of analysis.
3. The contemporary world. As with so many current (productive and otherwise) theoretical
complications, the point of origin for this convergence of media archaeology and archaeology of the
media is in the archaeology of the contemporary world. In fact, the archaeology of the contemporary
world and prehistoric archaeology appear right now to be the major engines for changing
archaeological methods as well as the destruction of disciplinary boundaries. These sub-fields have
cultivated the growing interest in agency, assemblage, and materials which have positioned
archaeology as more than simply a useful set of tools for understanding the past and located the
discipline as an immediately useful way to approaching material culture in every day life.
As I have noted on this blog, the expanded understanding of agency that recognizes the deeply
embedded set of relationships that shape our actions include both human and non-human agents.
This speaks both to our growing sense of powerlessness in the world and the growing recognition
that technologies increasingly serve to mediate, shape, and limit human interaction. As we interact
regularly with a growing web of objects and media, the boundary between responsibility (and, to use
a political watchword, accountability) and agency becomes increasingly blurred. While this does not
mean to suggest that people in earlier times did not encounter a similarly entangled existence in their
engagement with objects and non-human agents, I would contend that the positing of a post-human
world is something that is more obvious in contemporary society. The need to engage with a range
of both proximate and distant materials, objects, and agents has made more clear that agency alone
is not what makes us human.
Finally, Id be remiss if I didnt point out that Andrew Reinhard has a contribution on the
Alamogordo Atari Expedition in this volume. With each passing publication his ability to tell the
story of the Atari Expedition becomes more refined and interesting. Go and check it out.
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
The Near Eastern Archaeologys Special Issue: The Cultural Heritage Crisis in the Middle
East is now Open Access. Thanks ASOR!
The Sounds of Angels Singing with Sharon Gerstel and Amy Papalexandrou.
More from Rebecca Sweetman on Early Christian architecture in Greece. This time, it is in
the American Journal of Archaeology including the first citation to my blog in that journal! Thanks
Rebecca!
The design for St. Nicholass Greek Orthodox church at Ground Zero in New York. Quite
an upgrade.
Maybe the earliest born person ever filmed: a 114 year old Greek grandmother weaving.
Check out Dallas DeForests irregularly updated blog (Im not judging) for some rebetika.
Two nice Springsteen covers: Shawn Colvin, Tougher than the Rest; Low, Im on Fire.
Congratulations to the fine folks at Pleiades (its maptastic!) for earning a major grant from
the NEH!
The history of closed colleges (or at least colleges with significant name changes).
What Im reading: Jonathan Crary, 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep. (Verso
2013) pdf here.
What Im listening to: Keith Richards, Crosseyed Heart; Low, Ones and Sixes.
153
154
but as the product of a global Greece permeated with Eastern and Western influences that stretch
from the capital to the Scholasticism of France and the Low Countries. William of Moerbeke
experience as Archbishop and recognition of the local community offered the key opportunity of
this expression of a global Greece to emerge.
When set against recent events, Sanders positive reading of this church and its patron takes on a
slight shadow. While there is no doubt that the Corinthia and Argolid have long been engaged in
global networks, at the same time, the role of powerful extra-regional forces like those that brought
William of Moerbeke to the Peloponnesus have typically resulted in the loss of some local political,
economic, and social autonomy. This neednt always be the case. After all, Guy Sanders is the
director of a foreign excavation in Greece, but maintains a close relationship with the community in
Corinth, lives in the village, and has advocated for, celebrated, and recognized many of the positive
things about Greek society. At the same time, any reading of the assemblage from William of
Moerbekes church today must remind the viewer of the more negative impacts of direct foreign
involvement in the region.
When recognized as part of the modern landscapes, the church continues to ask provocative and
compelling questions of the viewer.
156
157
I was pleased to see some Late Roman 1 amphora in the assemblage as well as some other Eastern
Mediterranean types reinforcing the connectedness of this site to larger Mediterranean trading
patterns. I always feel bad that there is no Late Roman D ware (or the fineware formerly known
as Cypriot Red Slip) at these sites, because I regard it as a fine and serviceable fineware that did not
see as much circulation outside of the immediate neighborhood of Cyprus as Id like. Aside for my
sentimental feelings toward an obscure Late Roman fineware, this short publication presents enough
to contribute meaningfully to the larger conversation about exchange in the Eastern Mediterranean.
This site complements the recent short publication by Paul Reynolds and Evangelos Pavlidis on an
assemblage of amphora and fineware from the Bishops House at Nikopolis. This site produced a
substantial group of nearly complete LR1 and LR2 amphora (which accounted for over 40% of the
total amphora at the site) and Samian amphora (which accounted for a third of the amphora at the
site). It also featured a significant quantity of late 6th to early 7th century African Red Slip to the
exclusion of almost any other kind of fineware. The presence of LR1 amphora indicate that the site
had contact with the Eastern Mediterranean despite its western facing orientation, but this did not
result in the importation of fineware like the very common Phocaean ware present at Kenchreai.
Reynolds and Pavlidis observe that the absence of Phocaean ware and the preponderance of Samian
amphora make the assemblage at this site is different from that observed at Butrint (to the north) or
Corinth. This suggests the presence of multilayered distribution models for fineware and
amphora.
The variation between the assemblages present at these sites make them useful points of comparison
for the diversity of assemblages present on the island of Cyprus. On Cyprus, sites that are less than
20 km apart can produce very different assemblages of fineware and storage and transport vessels
during Late Antiquity. Whether this represents multilayered distribution models offering different
degrees of access or simply differences in taste across a region remains an open question.
158
159
160
Like our work at Chelmis, Nicks team complemented their interviews with archaeological
documentation of the small settlement which consisted of the homes of the resident couple and on
of their sons, a cheese making shed, pens for animals, and, of course, a cistern as well as a church.
An abandoned cistern served as a dump for discarded household material and equipment.
Our site at Chelmis shared certain characteristics with the settlement on Dokos. It clearly flourished
in the period after the World War II as both a pastoral settlement and the site of agriculture with
olives and grain being harvested by the same families whose sheep and goats grazed in the area.
Moreover, despite the relatively marginal appearance and location of these sites, it is clear that they
were deeply embedded in larger networks of travel and exchange. As the work in the nearby
Southern Argolid has shown, the changing relationship of Greece with both Mediterranean and
European markets had as much to do with the shifting strategies of settlement and creative
opportunities to exploit even isolated landscapes for their value to nearby, regional, and even global
markets.
161
Sebastian Heath and company on Early Byzantine pottery from Kenchreai, in brilliant, open
access.
A long feature on Pamela Gabers work at Idalion in the Cyprus Mail. Its odd that the Mail
could assert the most depressing part of Pamela Gabers story is perhaps that an American
shouldve spent her life uncovering Cypriot treasures to the general indifference of actual Cypriots,
while at the same time overlooking the important Cypriot excavations at Idalion.
Digging at Dreamers Bay. This site is the closest parallel to the site of Pyla-Koutsopetria on
Cyprus.
The newest issue of the Journal of Contemporary Archaeology is also nearly all open access.
Groovy.
The most recent special issue of the Near Eastern Archaeology on the Cultural Heritage
Crisis in the Middle East is not open access.
The mighty team of women who spelunked and excavated a new species of human.
This site solves The New Yorker Problem. And the art of omission and why you hate the
new Google logo.
Breaking Madden 3.
What Im listening to: Empress of, Me; Lou Barlow, Brace the Wave.
163
An Archaeology of Care
September 10, 2015
https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2015/09/10/an-archaeology-of-care/
Like many archaeologists, Ive been horrified and outraged by the events in Syria over the past
month. I find it much harder to understand the logic behind dying for an archaeological site
(although I suppose in my most heroic moments I can understand it), than to grasp ISIS relentless
desire for media attention and access to the outrage amplifier of the internet. At the same time, I
cannot find fault with the archaeologists, scholars, and members of the media who have expressed
their horror at the destruction at sites like Palmyra and have used this horror to publicize the larger
catastrophe that the ISIS represents for both the people and the archaeology of both the Middle
East and the world.
My greatest concern throughout the continuous outpouring of outrage and horror regarding the
destruction of archaeological sites is that there has been so little effort by archaeologists to see their
discipline as a way to understand more fully the human cost of the destabilized Syria. I was particular
moved this weekend by a short article which asks Syrian refugees to show whats in their bags.
This article is meant to be a provocative play on similar stories run on tech websites where overprivilege techsters show off the tools of their trade. Its a clever idea. In fact, Richard Rothaus and I
picked up on it last year and did a podcast on the gear in Richards bag and truck. The American
Schools of Oriental Research has also done a similar thing. I think we got the idea for our podcast
from their series.
Reading the short article on the contents of refugees bags made me wonder whether archaeology
has a greater role to play in the current conflict and refugee crisis. Over the last decade,
archaeologists have become more and more attuned to the archaeology of our contemporary world.
This work has expanded our view of homelessness, poverty, consumerism, contemporary race, class
conflicts, and many other aspects of the modern world (including punk rock music). My own work
has used archaeology to engage seriously the issues of workforce housing and industrial landscapes
in the Bakken oil patch of North Dakota.
The ongoing refugee crisis offers another important opportunity for archaeologists to document the
human condition. That the crisis is playing out partly in Greece, a place with more archaeologists
(both foreign and local) per square kilometer than almost anywhere in the world, amplifies the
potential of this opportunity. An archaeology of the refugee crisis could help us recognize what
these displaced people value when theyre forced to leave their homes, what they look for and need
during their arduous journeys, and how they arrange their lives when thrust into the unfamiliar (and
usually under-resourced) conditions in a foreign place. Archaeological inventories, plans, and
descriptions of refugee camps, places of transit, and personal goods could also help local
communities accommodate and understand the influx of temporary residents. Archaeology can both
protect the distant past and contribute to a more sophisticated understanding of the current human
crisis.
One of the lessons that Ive learned from working with Richard Rothaus and Bret Weber in the
Bakken is that our work as archaeologists is more than systematically documenting and
understanding material culture. In a recent podcast, Richard described this as the archaeology of
care in a podcast last spring and made it even more human and evident in his contribution to our
164
Punk Archaeology volume (download the entire volume here for free or just grab his contribution
here).
Our work in the field demonstrates a kind of care for the communities in which we work. Our
conversations in the field, attention to detail, and willingness to take seriously the everyday life of
individuals and communities creates a connection between the wider world (which we represent,
oddly enough) and their very personal experiences. I recognize that archaeology is not the only field
that can do this. Indeed, entire disciplines focus specifically on linking the individual to a larger
context.
Archaeology, however, carries with it two additional benefits. First, we focus on the relationship
between objects and people. As if our imagination was not enough, the little essay on the bags of
refugees demonstrates that displaced people carry with them more than just the practical needs for
survival, but also objects that link them to their homes. We care about this connection between an
individual and an object. Its what we do.
Archaeology also carries with it the burden and benefit of its past as a discipline. When an
archaeologist turns their focus to a monument, a landscape, or an object, the world recognizes that
thing as important. In fact, ISIS relies on this disciplinary recognition of artifacts and monuments
(through museums, archaeological parks, et c.) to direct their attacks on civilization. When
archaeologists and historians focus on the everyday life of particular communities and individuals,
they place these individuals and communities into a larger historical and archaeological narrative. In
other words, we show them that they matter. The contents of the their bags, the arrangement of
their camps, the difficult choices about what to bring and what to leave behind is significant to the
history of the world and carries equal weight in our eyes to the monuments targeted by ISIS or the
Taliban. Ive experienced the impact of this realization on people living in workforce housing in the
Bakken. Our very presence reinforces the idea that their experiences and lives are important.
As archaeologists express outrage and deep sadness over the destruction of the regions (and the
worlds) archaeological heritage, we work to ensure that future generations can witness the history of
these regions and celebrate meaningful and tangible narratives of their past. At the end of the day,
however, these sites will survive. The history of careful documentation, the durability of the
materials, the expansiveness of the monumental material culture, and the hard work of outraged and
dedicated archaeologists will ensure that these sites will continue to form visible monuments to the
regions past. Evidence for the difficult recent circumstances will be both wiped away and, where
appropriate, commemorated in the fabric of these long-lived places in the landscape. I am confident
of it.
What Im more concerned about, however, is the more subtle, ephemeral, and elusive histories,
artifacts, and sites of the refugee experience. Documenting and understanding the experiences of
refugee might seem like a fairly low priority when temples at Palmyra are being bulldozed, but Id
like to suggest that it might be a higher priority to the discipline, to the communities housing the
refugee, and to the people forced from their homes in these desperate times.
165
Of course, reflections on the death (and rebirth) of the Atari game does push us to ask questions
about the original birth of the Atari game. (Heres Ill channel my inner Andrew Reinhard): Was the
game born when the coder, the famous Howard Scott Warshaw, created the code that made
particular pixels respond to our commands on the screen. Was the game born when this code was
imprinted on a silicon chip, or this chip was embedded in a plastic case, labeled with a graphic label,
or placed in a box? Was it born when the game arrived at the point-of-sale, entered circulation, or
was plugged into an Atari console?
But the life of an Atari game is more complex. Before these discarded games died, they were
cloned digitally. (In fact, we could argue that these games originated as clones of the code that
Warshaw composed and the plastic cases and graphic art that Atari designed.) The life of these
games bifurcated, however, as the code itself lived on to appear in java-based emulations on the
interwebs or in other forms ported to newer technology. This is not to suggest that the code was
immutable and that every instance of the code was identical to the one before. Every time a piece of
code is run, it runs a bit differently (mostly on a level thats imperceptible to the end user), and as
code outlives the hardware on which it was designed to run, it picks up artifacts of efforts to keep it
alive.
The plastic, silicon, and paper bits of the games may appear to have a more linear trajectory. Unlike
vintage video game cabinets (which our collaborator Raiford Guins explored in the life-history
equivalent of retirement and nursing homes) which get restored and refinished and enjoyed as long
as outdated parts can be found to keep them going, plastic game cases, paper labels, and chipped
and battered silicon rarely see such care. Conservation is possible on these games, but for those
excavated from the Alamogordo dump, the dirt, cracks, and torn paper forms a history of their
posthumous burial. Preservation of these objects as Atari relics or zombies requires attending to
evidence for their discard, decay, and exhumation. So like the cloned code that lives on in new,
different circumstances, the exhumed games carry forward the history of their afterlife in very
physical ways.
The history of a complex, manufactured, object like an Atari game no matter what its history
reveals the limitations of the notion of life history for an object. Pinpointing the moment of birth
and death are impossible when objects have the meandering, reduplicated, and intermittent
existences like those of these Atari games. Many archaeological artifacts die, are born again, and are
cloned over the course of their history.
Of course, most archaeological objects live this kind of diffuse existence. They exist simultaneously
as physical artifacts and as database objects, as illustrations, and photographs. These objects
clones, copies or whatever go on to live complex lives as they appear in print, online, and linger
on hard drives, web servers, and tapes. Without their relationship to excavated objects they can lose
value quickly and without the proper tools to view, collate, and preserve them, they can all but
vanish. Excavated artifacts can likewise vanish into the darkness of private collections, the abyss of
the pottery dump, or the tray of context pottery. Mundane commodities like Atari games can
vanish into landfills and only a infected few become zombie games and return to haunt the world of
the living.
167
168
asks about telekinesis at the Game Changer. While I smart alecked around, Richard sung the praises
the NDHCs magazine On Second Thought which is not available online here.
I then regale our listeners with my summers field work at Polis-Chrysochous on Cyprus and with
the Western Argolid Regional Project. Richard asks about field work efficiency and refers to a blog
post on efficiency and field team size that I floated at the end of exhausting, but tremendously
rewarding WARP season. We also talked a bit about slow archaeology.
We finally talked a bit about our work on the North Dakota Man Camp Project, and we talked
about our outreach work with the North Dakota Humanities Council funded, Man Camp
Dialogues.
169
170
Theres a new video book trailer for Eric Clines sensational 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization
Collapsed. Or you can listen to him give a talk at the Oriental Institute.
Blue pigment!
Im almost certain that I want to get a shipping container for my backyard writing room,
guest house, hacienda (and, yes, I know that Im using that word wrong, but its what I call it).
A little Delawareana for your morning: Salesianums legendary football coach Dim Montero
and the saving the old house at Bombay Hook.
Video killed the radio star (or ball point pens killed the calligraphy star).
For those of you who still like science, a new blog: Noticing.
What Im listening to: Freddie Hubbard, Straight Life; All Dogs, Kicking Every Day.
171
172
173
The Digital Press at the University of North Dakota is excited to announce the publication of the
first English translation of Karl Jakob Skarsteins The War with the Sioux: Norwegians against
Indians 1862-1863. Associate Professor of Norwegian Melissa Gjellstad and UND alumna Danielle
Mead Skjelver translated the text and Dr. Richard Rothaus and Dakota Goodhouse provided new
introductory material.
174
Skjelver noted that I first encountered Skarsteins riveting narrative on the US-Dakota War in
2007. I had never read anything like it. Translating this work was fascinating and rewarding because
of the books unique focus on a specific immigrant population, and because Skarstein admirably
attempts to get at the action and emotion of the many sides of this conflict.
Skarsteins narrative focuses on the Dakota War of 1862-1864 which stands as one of the most
overlooked conflicts in American History. Contemporary with the American Civil War, the Dakota
War featured significant fighting, tactical brilliance, and strategic savvy set in the open landscape of
the Northern Plains in Minnesota and North Dakota.
Karl Jakob Starsteins The War with the Sioux tells the story of the Norwegian immigrants,
American soldiers, and Lakota and Dakota Indians as they sought to protect their ways of life.
Skarstein drew upon largely untapped Norwegian-language sources for life on the Northern Plains
during these tumultuous years.
Prof. Gjellstad remarked The American experience of Norwegian immigrants has been a red thread
that has woven through my scholarship and teaching in Scandinavian studies. It began early in my
childhood, growing up in rural North Dakota, and has spun into rich, new connections thanks to the
collaborations of fellow scholars from the Northern Plains as we worked to bring Skarsteins volume
to an American audience.
The translation of the book was funded by the Norwegian governments NORLA: Norwegian
Literature Abroad program and is available as a free download or as a paper book on Amazon.
The Digital Press at the University of North Dakota is a creative reimagining of the traditional
university press. It publishes innovative and timely works in archaeology and on topics intersecting
with life in North Dakota and the Northern Plains.
To get the book go here.
175
movies and events, and enforcing decorum. Finally, both private and public venues have standards
and expectations ranging from noise restrictions to discretionary judgements regarding what is
appropriate at a given site. Freedom of speech is always situational.
The Empire Theater is in a uniquely privileged position in downtown Grand Forks. They have a
productive and meaningful partnership with the University of North Dakota as host of its art
collection and that relationship is proudly advertised on its walls. Associating the venue with the
University, even if this is just relationship of convenience, gives the Empire prestige and authority
and this extends to speakers in its venue. It may not be Carnegie Hall, but events hosted at the
Empire gain legitimacy and prestige from the venue. Moreover, the Empire represents a meaningful
anchor of the downtown hosting entertainment, civic events, and celebrations throughout the year.
It is very much part of our local civic fabric and has contributed to recent downtown renaissance.
The Empire occupies a position of authority through its associations with both the University and
the downtown community.
With this position of authority come certain responsibilities. I can perhaps forgive the decision to
host Dakdok one time. While Dakdok does not obscure his mission, it may be too much expect an
institution like the Empire which hosts hundreds of events a year, to vet every speaker carefully.
To host Dakdok a second time, however, is simply inexcusable. Granting Dakdok the legitimacy of a
prestigious venue contributes to his authority and the legitimacy of his message. This is clearly not
the intent of the Empires board or management, because by authorizing his message, they are
authorizing a message that hinders communication between Christians and Muslims in Grand Forks.
The Empire must hold itself to a higher standard and recognize that hosting a speaker like Dakdok
undermines the efforts of many in Grand Forks to make lives better for the Muslim minority.
In fact, by allowing a speaker into our town bent on depicting a group within our community in a
misleading way, the Empire is hindering opportunities for open dialogue between Muslims and
Christians. They are not promoting freedom of speech in this situation, but making it more difficult
for members of our community to speak freely and honestly. The Empire is helping to silence
members of our community by contributing the prestige of their venue to a speaker who
misrepresents the message of both Christianity and Islam.
The Empire must recognize its position in the community and use the prestige associated with their
venue in a more responsible way. If it cannot do this alone, then those institutions that have
partnered with the Empire must encourage and support the Empire as they try to do better or divest
themselves of this partnership. It is not acceptable for the name of the University of North Dakota
to be associated with a venue in which Dakdok is speaking. It is not acceptable for a venue that
serves as a cultural anchor of our downtown and our community to lend its reputation to a speaker
like Dakdok.
177
178
When the book is ready, Ill update its page on The Digital Presss website, push out a press release,
and, of course, blog something here.
179
(To be clear, universities also are great incubators for projects like The Digital Press because they
pay my salary, provide infrastructural support like server space, computers, office space, et c.
and, in good ways, help manage funds and generate publicity. These things are great when a project
is starting, but the burdens associated with these advantages run the risk of stifling growth.)
Im hoping to use the recent small grant to find viable and sustainable work arounds for some of
these issues. My hope is that the grant will help me to start to develop three streams of funding
which can work around various limitations at the modern university. Maybe.
1. Crowd Funding. Crowd funding is clearly a useful way to fund and publicize publications. By preselling your product, you have the funds upfront and this can serve as a kind of venture capital for a
particular project. Moreover, if funding goals are set appropriately, the income from a crowd funded
campaign can build re-usable infrastructure as long as project goals are met. Finally, crowd funded
projects can put us in direct contact with people who are most interested in our product.
As far as I know there has never been a successful crowd funding campaign at the University of
North Dakota, and it is unclear how and whether funds from a Kickstarter could move into a
university account. At the same time, it seems useful to use crowd funding as one stream of revenue
for a particular project rather than the sine qua non for an undertaking. After all, an author or editor
is not likely to decide whether to pursue or finish a project based on the whims of the crowd and
there is always the risk that a crowdfunded project will fail.
It is tempting to imagine a Kickstarter for North Dakota Quarterly because it might serve as an
exciting way to general publicity for a particular side project, because we have a built in base of
supporters, because we have some stable support from the University. It would free us to innovate
without burdening the existing staff with added responsibilities.
2. Corporate Partners. The Digital Press has a series of books focused on the history of North
Dakota and its various communities and a few little projects in the hopper that will or could cater
to a popular audience. For example, our neighborhood history series uses microhistories of Grand
Forks neighborhoods to celebrate the diversity and history of our small town. We also have been
thinking about a smaller series of very short guides that would lead readers on interesting
engagements with the local landscapes (e.g. 20 Beers in Grand Forks: A Guide to Local Watering
Holes or Grand Forks Vanished Past: A Guide to Destroyed Buildings.)
While well have to think hard about whether we want to embrace a playfully popular series of
books, theres no doubt that this could draw some interest from corporate partners. Corporate
sponsor money has the advantage of being somewhat more flexible for internal use, but also having
strings attached. A good partner, who understands the Presss mission can be a tremendous help,
but there will always be that little feeling that weve sold out.
3. Grants. The final source of income for these digital ventures are grants. The funding that I
received from UND is to help me find non-governmental grants to support our projects. Some of
our local projects, for example, could find support from grants that focus on community
development. We funded a recent translation project with a grant from an agency that funds the
translation of Norwegian literature.
181
The challenge with grants is that they tend to be focused on a specific projects. These projects might
be a single publication say of reprints from North Dakota Quarterly or or a larger digital
archiving projects like subventing the publication of a digital site for the North Dakota Man Camp
Project. It is tricky, albeit possible, to use grants to build infrastructure, but this typically involves
creative grant writing.
Many grants designed to support the digital humanities, for example, are geared to large-scale
projects of archiving or publication or depend on more substantial infrastructure support than we
have available at UND.
At the same time, I am optimistic that my cooperative model of academic publishing might be a
hook that I can use to attract support from a granting agency. Perhaps a kind of intellectual
infrastructure including workflow, innovative approaches to marketing and distribution, and
cooperative understanding might be enough to attract support from external grant money.
Wish me luck as I go forward into these new ventures and be sure to check out The Digital Press
and North Dakota Quarterly.
182
NYUs Institute for the Study of the Ancient World helps out the American University of
Iraq Sulaimani.
We should add that table to this list of places where we dont want to sit.
One-star Yelp! reviews of national parks. We need to do this for Greek archaeological sites,
except that I want to write the reviews!
This is what happens when you give someone something for nothing.
Probably the most important immigrant from the Planet Lovetron. RIP Daryl Dawkins. This
is the best, and maybe only way to celebrate his NBA career. Cheeks to Jones to Dawkins!
What Im listening to: Neil Young, Everybody Knows This is Nowhere; Neil Young, After
the Gold Rush; Neil Young, On the Beach.
Milo is recovering from his cough and ear infections, but he wanted to make sure everyone knew
that being a sick, 2-year-old, yellow dog is not easy.
183
184
Working Space
August 27, 2015
https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2015/08/27/working-space/
One of the challenges this semester is figuring out where Im going to work. While on sabbatical, I
worked quite comfortably from home both in my home office, on the dining room table, and in the
kitchen with my main hub of operations in my home office.
Prior to that I worked mostly in my office on campus. Last year, however, that office was occupied
by my replacement. So now, Im at a loss.
My current plan is to work five days a week at home and two days a week in my office. I want to
keep my campus office as tidy as possible this year so that it can serve as a bit of an escape from the
chaotic space of my home office.
Lots of goings on this time of year both on campus, at home, and in our community. My short post
today is giving me some time to get a few things sorted out before blasting over to Bismarck for a
meeting.
185
186
social and new media length articles. I wish we could have coordinated a downloadable copy of this
issue that would include pages that fit perfectly on a smart-phone sized screen.
Richard Rothaus and I have begun to talk about Season 2 of our Caraheard Podcast. One of the
great experiments in podcasting that I witnessed first hand was Brett Ommen and Joel Jonientzs
Professor Footnote podcast which combined narrative, academic commentary, and footnotes
forcing us to engage with the potential of a hybridized media.
Paper is not just paper, digital is not just digital. The standards, conventions, and expectations of
each media have reduced concepts like the digital to the verge of being meaningless (or being so
generic to communicate nothing about the publication) after all, almost all media these days
spends time in the analogue and digital realm.
4/5. Slow Publishing and Dismantling the Academys fetish for single authorship.
I love this, even though I find the concept of slow publishing a bit terrifying. In fact, my press was
built on the idea of streamlining the interval from concept to page and from blog post to book, but
the idea of slow publishing has lingered in the back of my head (as more than just a way to describe
certain projects with certain collaborators). In fact, when the press started, Joel Jonientz and I
discussed an imprint that would focus on reprinting public domain works with great attention to
detail layout, fonts, illustrations, paper, and binding. These works were more than just premium
print products, but were aesthetic statements as well designed to evoke the art of the book. The
content would be sourced from the public domain removing any urgency to move work to print. Id
like to revive this project with the right collaborators at some point, but for now slow publishing is
something I admire, but dont support.
In fact, the cooperative character of The Digital Press is antithetical to some of the core ideas of the
larger slow movement. For example, slow movement has a clear relationship to craft production
which emphasized the specialized skill of the craftperson. My press, in contrast, asks contributors to
take an active role in the production of their books. The Press provides a template and a framework
for publication and a bit of technical expertise, but operates with the understanding that the
specialized skill of publishing and editing, which has preserved a division of labor that supports
commercial interests as well as the need to profit from books.
Beyond the Digital Presss model, I cant imagine really publishing anything as a single author again
in my career. First, I dont need to. Im tenured, Im productive, and if my university wont promote
me for only publishing co-authored works, then I dont really care to be promoted (but I think they
will promote me, so thats not really an issue). Second, while I tend to write, a lot, I never write in a
vacuum. Almost everything I do has a collaborative element, and (channeling my inner Latour) I
cant think of any idea that Ive ever had that doesnt represent simply a node in a more extensive
network of conversations, concepts, and relationships. That these relationships are not represented
in authorship standards is, a best, a bit dishonest, and at worst, exploitative.
7. A publication is not simply a closed or bounded object or commodity. It lives on and proceeds
into an uncertain world.
Another great observation. As the Digital Press develops (or maybe within NDQ (?)), Id love to
create an environment that encourages our work to be remixed, expanded, developed, rejiggered,
187
and demolished. I get that not every publication and every author will allow this kind of approach,
but as I write this Im listening to covers of Phosphorescents Song for Zula (its a pop song
and Ive loved Ryan Adams long standing practice of covering songs). This is common practice in
music. Whatever you think of these songs, the covers give the original new life, they have a life of
their own, and they make explicit the potential for a work of art or a publication to become
something new and to develop a new network of relationships and meanings. By recognizing a
publication as less of an act of freezing an object and more about setting an idea or a text free, we
can create an environment where the object can move into new positions, develop new meanings,
and continue to grow.
188
The best seminar rooms provided access to basic reference works, maps, and specialized works of
history to help the students understand ofttimes difficult documents.
BEEP
Slide 6:
The goal of the seminar was collaborative, active learning in the service of history.
BEEP
Slide 7:
The seminar arrived at the University of North Dakota in the early 20th century at the hands of
renown historian Orin G. Orangey Libby.
BEEP
Slide 8:
He had learned history through seminars at the University of Wisconsin under the guidance of
Frederick The Frontier Jackson Turner.
BEEP
Slide 9:
At UND, the seminar thrived and produced the first generation of historians of the state of North
Dakota.
BEEP
Slide 10:
While it was mainly designed to educate graduate students in history, it was quickly adapted to other
history classes.
BEEP
Slide 11:
As the university grew and history attracted more and more students, the seminar became difficult
to maintain, because it was such a hands-on learning experience.
BEEP
Slide 12:
190
With the rapid growth in university enrollments both at UND and around the country, new
methods for teaching students history emerged.
BEEP
Slide 13:
These methods sought to refocus student attention from hands-on learning from primary source
documents and specialized libraries to building massive factual repositories in their heads.
BEEP
Slide 14:
The best way to give a large number of students the tools necessary to think about history without
giving them access to primary sources was to fill their brain with raw material for history: names,
dates, places, battles, dynasties, and countries.
BEEP
Slide 15:
This could be done at an impressive scale and this led to the famous lecture bowl style history
classrooms filled with bored students.
BEEP
Slide 16:
This method created the impression of knowledge students could recite the names and dates of
important people and events without the substance derived from working together to read primary
source documents.
BEEP
Slide 17:
The professor went from being an experience guide and resource who led students through the
difficult work of reading primary sources, to a fact dispensing machine tasked with filling brains with
the most important bits of knowledge.
BEEP
Slide 18:
191
Needless to say, this system sucked for both the professor who became Ben Steins character in
Ferris Buellers Day Off and for students who began the annual tradition of claiming theyre not
good at remembering dates.
BEEP
Slide 19:
It also led to the rapid growth of the textbook industry which sought to make it easier for students
to learn names and dates while at the same time presented a watered down version of historical
analysis. Unfortunately, showing someone how to tie a knot is not the best way to teach someone to
do it.
BEEP
Slide 20:
Textbooks are expensive and usually make money for big corporations.
BEEP
Slide 21:
The Scale-Up room is a modified return to the seminar system.
BEEP
Slide 22:
Each table will function like a small seminar in which participants will work together to produce
historical analysis.
BEEP
Slide 23:
Instead of the specialized libraries, we will use the internets and the resources available through
UNDs library.
BEEP
Slide 24:
Instead of buying an expensive textbook, well make our own textbooks.
BEEP
Slide 25:
192
Instead of memorizing a bunch of names and dates, well actually learn how to write history.
193
the conceptual and abstract world of culture and the natural world of objects, social sciences not
only rendered objects passive, but also departed from the practices fundamental to scientific work.
When Latour famously claims that we have never been modern he refers directly to the
premodern failure to separate the cultural from the natural that persists in modern science. The
difference between modern science and its premodern predecessor for Latour is simply the vast
scale and number of observations possible in modern science, but not in the basic operation. The
myth of a modernity made up of passive objects understood only through universal theories applies
only in the social sciences which, then, falsely grant their work authority through appeals to the
scientific method. So far, this is great stuff. Anyone interested in how and why Latour constructed
his symmetrical view of scientific knowledge production should spend a day reading the first 100
pages or so of this book.
In the second 100 pages or so witness the application of these theories to two archaeological data
sets: burials in the Wessex culture of Early Bronze Age England and in North American Hopewell
Indians. Both of these contexts have certain controversies or inconsistencies in the material
culture that defy traditional efforts at analysis. For Martin, controversies (which is a Latourian
term) appear in archaeology when objects resist being reduced to patterns established by existing
systems of explanation or, in the case of the social sciences, structures.
This part of the book was less convincing in large part because, as Martin admitted, there was no
room really to develop the observations and objects that he intended to present as case-studies for
applying Latour to archaeology. As a result, Martin does very little with the process of archaeology
and more with the objects themselves and their archaeological context. The main point that he
attempts to make is that the entire context for archaeological objects must be considered by the
Latourian archaeologist: not just typology or sub-groups of artifacts selected according to preexisting notions of kinship, ethnicity, or social structure. Order comes to these assemblages not
through an existing theory but through statistical combinations which produce patterns that suggest
social, political, and economic relationships. As he presents this in practice, there is little new here or
exciting. Archaeologists are always looking for new ways to understand objects and assemblages and
while we often approach sites with preconceived ideas of the processes that create artifact
assemblages, I question whether we are as enslaved to cultural explanations as Martin supposes.
What I will admit, however, is that we tend to see objects and relationships as the object of study
and very much separate from the tools, people, and organization of archaeological work. Martins
book replicates this separation by presenting the archaeological material with very little commentary
on how it was produced. As a result, objects associated with the archaeological method were not
given space to object to the arguments and relationships formed by the artifactual assemblage.
This is consistent with the arbitrary break between the publication of scientific knowledge and the
methods used to produce it, but this arbitrary split does little to break down the division between
nature and culture that Latour and Martin regard as so problematic for social scientific knowledge. If
the books goal was to produce a genuinely Latourian approach to archaeological knowledge
production, then Martin needed to unpack both the social and the physical objects in archaeology.
Objects in archaeology fit into both ancient (or, in Martins terms original) context which reflect
their production, their distribution, and their use in a primary context, but also through their place in
the context of archaeological practice. For objects to object to archaeological interpretation they
have to intersect with the work of archaeological practice in a meaningful way.
195
What is required to produce a Latourian archaeology, then, is not just a published study of an
archaeological assemblage (which suggests Latourian practice, but does not really demonstrate it),
but a new ethnography of archaeological work.
196
Andrew Reinhards Archaeogaming and the court of public opinion. Some interesting ideas
about what archaeology is.
An older post, but a good one: the Ottoman phase of the Tower of the Winds in Athens.
If you have a moment, go check out North Dakota Quarterlys new website, and hit the
Want More? button to add yourself to our email list. We wont pummel you with email, but I
promise itll be worth your while.
Palo Altos endangered trailer park and the last flophouse in the Bowery.
What Im listening to: David Cloud, Today is the Day that They Take Me Away; Jason Isbell,
Something More Than Free.
197
198
199
colleagues present their research. Clearly, these methods are untenable and would have resulted in
the end of any possible understanding of the past.
Instead, thanks to the assessocrats, historians at UND created classes focusing on the craft of
history which emphasized the production of history over the rote memorization of names and dates.
Faculty reinforced and expanded the skills learned in this class throughout the curriculum. The
assessocrats insisted that this culminate in a capstone course which provided undergraduates with a
chance to demonstrate their mastery of these skills. Without the guiding hand of the assessocracy, it
is not an exaggeration to claim that history as a discipline would have ended with the last historian
blandly intoning one final lecture (perhaps on the Battle of Hastings) to an empty classroom.
Prof. Hawthorne modestly overlooked the long tradition of assessocratic guidance and influence at
the university level. Without directors of assessment, associate VPs of tabulation, and offices of
assessment and evaluation, the modern university would be mired in an endless loop lectures,
textbooks, and almost empty classrooms.
~
We should not be naive. Hawthornes oversimplified claims that before assessments professors
professed stiff-legged behind the podium reading from a textbook, is not just an
oversimplification. She has overwritten a long, disciplinary history of teaching and learning and
replaced it with an administrative myth. In this myth, assessment and the crusading administrators
who implemented these techniques created a 21st century university that was responsive to student
needs and prepared to lead the world in facing new challenges, new opportunities, and, perhaps
most importantly, new opportunities for economic gain. This narrative is not only insulting
(especially considering the long tradition of fields like history in pioneering active learning), but
also an obvious ploy to undermine disciplinary practices in favor of centralized administrative
control.
More frustratingly, her article attacked the most vulnerable fields at the modern university. She does
not use as an example the professional disciplines which starting with law, medicine, and education
developed their own accreditation bodies that stipulate assessment practices. These professions and
disciplines have sufficient authority to push back against the growing power of the university
administration. In contrast, the national and international professional organizations for the
disciplines in the humanities have embraced a diversity of practices, methods, and goals, and do not
have accreditation standards which can stand up against the university administration. As a result, it
is easy to pick on these disciplines despite their role as pioneers in learning by doing practices that
the assessocracy has only recently sought to generalized across the entire university.
Recent objections to assessment from these fields is not resistance to learning-centered or studentcentered teaching. Most university disciplines have long judged their success or failure in the
classroom. In fact, goal of teaching in the modern university has always been to produce
practitioners of the discipline. The success of teaching history is easily assessed by evaluating the
quality of historical work produced by our students. As professional historians of some standing in
our discipline, we are uniquely qualified to determine whether, in Hawthornes words, we are
producing students who can do history.
200
Id contend that most objections to assessment come from the idea that the central administration
discovered assessment techniques, according to Hawthornes article, sometime in the late-1990s and
must now share them with hopelessly out of touch (and possibly lazy) faculty who had never
considered learning outcomes as worth exploring.
I recognize, of course, that the university of the late-20th and early-21st century is a very different,
more diverse, and more complex place than it was a century or so earlier. The competition for
faculty time and energy is higher, the range of disciplines, methods, and best practices is greater, and
the student body more diverse. In fact, Id accept the need for the dedicated administrators and staff
who do their part to lift the burden of bureaucratic responsibility from faculty, navigate the
Byzantine policies of federal and state oversight, ensure the physical (and digital) infrastructure
functions optimally, and maintain the outward face of the university through marketing, design, and
accessibility.
At the same time, the rise of this administration in its glorious complexity has clearly contributed to
a sense of alienation among both students and faculty, and I suspect that this, more than anything,
has led to a loss of purpose, a growing skepticism toward administrative initiatives, and perhaps even
a certain resigned complacency. Moreover, Id suggest that the rise of the administrative
assessocracy has only compounded this alienation. Hawthornes willingness to overwrite the long
history of discipline-specific teaching practices is typical, and will not help encourage faculty
accountability in the classroom. Hinting that without assessment faculty would revert to professing
on a pine box or teaching from a textbook does not suggest that the assessocracy respects
disciplinary practice or even understands the critique. It creates a barrier between the assessocracy,
the administration, and faculty that will not be easily breached. Centralizing assessment will continue
to generate faculty resistance and rhetorically weak efforts to dismiss it will lead to greater alienation.
On this blog, I have argued numerous times that students are capable of genuine resistance in the
classroom. Failure to follow directions, read the syllabus, complete assignments to spec or on time,
or be engaged in the classroom is not a student problem, but a teacher problem. As teachers we
have to first respect these forms of resistance before we can address them. Resistance to assessment
is not a faculty problem that can be solved by rewriting history or offering patronizing views of
faculty motives. Its a structural problem with the modern university, and it deserve to be taken far
more seriously that Prof. Hawthorne did in yesterdays Chronicle.
201
My contribution to the Save NDQ project focuses on helping the journal find its way in the digital
world. In fact, Im giving a little presentation on a few possible digital initiatives. As per my usual
practice, Im going to use my blog to get my thoughts together.
1. Digital Legacy. One of the first things that NDQ must address is its legacy. NDQ has over 400
issues and thousands of pages of content and almost none of this is available online (other than the
first 20 or so issues digitized as part of the Google Books project) even now that our issues are born
digital.
As part of bringing NDQs legacy to the digital era, we are going to start a series of thematic reprints
of public domain content and make them available on both paper and in digital forms (in
collaboration The Digital Press at the University of North Dakota!). In other words, were going to
use digital media to organize and celebrate the legacy of NDQ in new ways.
For issues that remain under copyright, were in a unique bind. Because NDQ published for year
without author contracts, and the most recent author contracts limited the republication of
individual submissions to NDQ, we are going to have problems producing thematic reprints for
volumes still under copyright. My gut feeling is that for articles published before 1950, we might be
safe doing some thematic reprints, but for more recent content, we probably need to simply release
digital copies of the entire volumes.
We will also contact Jstor to see if they are interested in distributing NDQ, but we might also look
to other online depositories to ensure that digital NDQ circulates as widely as possible.
2. Beyond Paper. As readers of this blog know, Im always willing to experiment with the newest in
new media (well, not the newest, but once it becomes a bit tired, Im all in!). I even joined Ello. Part
of what we need to do with NDQ is to bolster its presence online through the new media. We
will unveil a new website in the coming weeks, and, hopefully, this allows us to engage with timely
matters in a more efficient way.
202
Were also in the exploration stages of a series of Podcasts, an Instagram account, and even some
low-key (gasp) e-marketing (like a regular email newsletter or even a subscription drive?).
At times, NDQ feels like it exists in a sepia-toned bubble, but, in fact, the Quarterly serves as a filter.
We get hundreds of submissions for each volume, and we publish only the most interesting and
exciting each quarter. This filtering function is all the more important in the 21st century, where the
abundance of new and traditional media choices for the educated reader is almost overwhelming.
And we think that our editors, readers, and supporters could collaborate in filtering the the wild
world of the web. So, Id like to introduce a quarterly NDQ list of the best things to read both on
the web and on paper. I know there is a good bit of competition in this field, but I also know that
our contributors, readers, friends, and colleagues are a formidable filter. I think a quarterly email
with our favorite reads could become a complement to the print version of the Quarterly. We also
think that this is a great way to build bridges between the various quality publications both online
and in print that our editors, contributors, and subscribers enjoy.
Podcasts offer another way to expand the audience for NDQ. Reading is great, but the amount of
hours in a day never allow for as much time for thought-provoking engagement with quality media
as anyone would like. I am always surprised by the number of folks I know who listen regularly to
podcasts. If journals like NDQ, were the quality popular media of their day, then perhaps podcasts
fill that gap now?
Instagram, Vine, and Snapchat (!?). I mean, seriously? Do these media have potential? Poems on
Snapchat? Cover art on Instagram? I dont even know what we could do with Vine, but these lightweight media options exist and are popular and have a tremendous reach. Theyre ripe for
experiment.
3. Transmedia. As much as I can imagine NDQ using new media to extend its reach, I can also
imagine us engaging new media in different, critical ways. For example, Id love to see NDQ offer a
critical take on music. Fortunately, YouTube, Vimeo, and streaming services like Spotify make it
easy to integrate music and text online.
My colleague Sharon Carson, also on the editorial board at NDQ, is committed to renewing the
genre of book review, I wonder if complementing that should be an effort to revitalize the genre of
music review?
Even the most rudimentary blog platform now allows for us to integrate video and and photography
and take the genre of review from a cross media exercise to a transmedia encounter where art,
music, video, and text share the same space and blur the line between viewer, listener, and reader.
4. Paper. All this is not to marginalize the tradition of paper publication at NDQ. In fact, by
exploring digital media while remaining committed to paper, we recognize the unique character of
paper, printing, layout, fonts, and all the other craft elements of traditional publication that our
growing addiction to web reading and digital publication has gradually eroded. By crossing media
boundaries, we are compelled to consider more carefully what makes print unique and to celebrate
it.
203
204
205
206
Chris Roosevelt, Brandon Olson and co. publish the most downloaded article in Journal of
Field Archaeology history. I credit all the attentionfrom bloggers.
A strange little article on Andrew Reinhard, video games, and punk archaeology.
If you care about the internets, install Ghostery on all your browsers.
The unfortunate lower case a in Alphabets logo (the new Google conglomerate).
For my audiophile friends: Oppo + Tidal Streaming seems like a cant miss.
207
What Im reading: Andrew M. Martin, Archaeology Beyond Postmodernity: A Science of the
Social. Altamira 2013.
What Im listening to: Tame Impala, Currents; Mac Demarco, Another One.
208
209
210
211
On the other hand, the use of the tourist guide as a way to present the the dynamic world of the
Bakken has obvious, if superficial, limits. The tourist guide freezes the Bakken in time. A book
cannot represent thoroughly the dynamic character of the changing Bakken landscape. Because of
this shortcoming, we have taken the liberty of recording as contemporary various sites observed
over multiple trips to the Bakken. This is consistent with our interest in using the tourist guide as a
way to document the landscape and history of the 21st century Bakken oil boom. The composite
landscape presented in this guide includes ephemera that are unlikely to persist longer than the
decade or will almost certainly be hidden as part of a efforts to return the region to a romanticized
vision of a pre-boom state or as different economic priorities reshape the landscape. Our tourist
guide draws attention to workforce housing sites, fragile roadside memorials, oil wells destined to be
drained and capped, and bustling businesses poised to follow the crowds of workers to the next
boom site.
There are several themes that run through this tourist guide. We sought to describe movement of
people and resources throughout the oil patch by highlighting infrastructure ranging from truck
stops to pipeline hubs. We set movement in the Bakken against sites of both very recent and more
distant historical significance to the industrial past of region with particular attention to the history
of extractive industries. Through The Guide, we have directed visitors to the Bakken to the sites of
recent environmental catastrophes and point out a few of the prominent accident sites that
communities and loved ones have commemorated through the patch. Finally, we have attempted to
leaven the guide with some of the individuals we have met throughout our research in the oil patch.
We have, as much as possible, avoided direct criticism of the oil industry, communities, or, in most
cases, the mass media, but at times a thorough consideration of the Bakken as a living landscape
makes this unavoidable.
This preface and the final chapter of the guide provide a framework for reading the guide as a piece
of scholarship. We hope that the guide stands alone as a piece of engaging and useful writing
without the academic apparatus.
The guide would not be possible without the assistance of a vast number of individuals. Richard
Rothaus accompanied us on most of our trips to the Bakken, encouraged our work, read drafts of
the guide, and provided a running and mostly welcomed commentary on the Bakken. Aaron Barth,
Kostis Kourelis, Bob Caulkins, Carenlee Barkdull, John Holmgren, Kyle Cassidy, and Ryan Stander
are members of the North Dakota Man Camp Project and knowingly or not supported the
development of this guide. Journalists covering the Bakken offered helpful insights throughout our
work with special thanks going to Amy Dalrymple and Emily Guerin, and photographers Andy
Cullen and Chad Ziemendorf. Finally, this guide would not have been possible without the
willingness of the residents of the Bakken, various municipal officials, employees of Bakken
business, and other busy people who decided to take a few minutes (and sometimes more) to talk
with us about their experiences, their landscapes, and their history. Without their help this guide
would not be possible. Any shortcomings of the guide are our responsibilities alone.
213
manuscripts in various states of completeness. All this should be doable over the next 24 to 36
months.
4. Give Back. A few of my colleagues have begun to stress the importance of giving back to our
field. I have to admit that I had allowed myself to believe the old adage Those who cant, help
others who can, but some of the people who talked to me about doing more to give back to junior
scholars were not in the category of those who cant; in fact, they were among the most
competent and dynamic scholars in my little world.
So, this past year I put more energy into giving back. I peer reviewed a half dozen article length
manuscripts and two book length manuscripts. I stepped up my service to the discipline by
accepting positions on committees that support organizations that made a difference to my career.
Finally, I started The Digital Press as a way both to promote and publish some of my own little side
projects, but more importantly, to offer a venue for other scholars.
5. Run. I am pretty old now, and I started to really feel it when in the field. Over the past 12 months
I began to do something systematically about my profound lack of fitness. So for the first time in my
life, I ran (err jogged errr shuffled?) for close to 12 months. My weekly mileage varied a good
bit as I ramped up and down how much and what kind of running I did, but it was consistently over
10 miles per week.
I think that this focus on fitness got me about a week or 10 days more energy in the field in Greece
this season. I ran out of gas about midway through week 4 of a 6 week season, but the remarkable
thing was that toward the end of week 6, I got a second wind.
This year Im going to try to keep at it and work out consistently despite the added structure of
teaching and on campus work. Well see if I can stick it out, but I hope last year build some good
habits!
215
216
I have this feeling and hope that this form of the information economy is doomed to fail as funding
cuts to libraries, universities, and stagnant faculty salaries make it increasingly difficult to pay for
access to academic publications. A growing black market fueled by services like academia.edu,
institutional repositories, and social media ensures that free offprints of publications circulate
rampantly. Finally, more and more scholars are inclined to take on part of the burden of publishing
themselves either through accepting greater editorial responsibilities or refusing to work with
publications that limit the distribution of their material. The technical point of entry for becoming
involved in publishing is lower, and the collegial spirit that fuels new, cooperative publishing
ventures runs explicitly counter to publishing models that seek to produce profit through efficiency.
An email from an editor requesting a peer review is a small thing, to be sure, but it reminds the peer
reviewer that scholarly publishing remains a personal, collaborative enterprise. Its absence does just
the opposite: it emphasizes the drive for efficiency and the push to profit from academic labor.
217
Use of drones (aka droughns) to document endangered archaeological sites (including some
very recent ones) in the UK.
What will happen to a North Dakota man camp that is closed and in too much debt to
reopen?
Poo is people.
Three days left for Peter the Slug. Go on and make this happen!
What Im listening to: Neil Young, Live at the Cellar Door; Neil Young, Live at Massey Hall
1971.
218
219
5. Locals. Another critique of the manuscript from the series editor is my use of the term local. He
suggested that the term could be read as part of a false dichotomy between local/newcomer with the
implication being that the local was somehow in a superior position of authority, knowledge,
understanding, or even entitlement. By using this term, I am reinforcing this division between
longterm and short-term residents. Of course, identifying someone as a local could also locate
their knowledge in a subordinate position to the knowledge of the tourist (or author!), and reinforce
the idea that local knowledge is somehow inferior to universal knowledge. Finding an alternative
to the term local throughout will be a good opportunity to think critically about how the guide
treats the people of the Bakken.
6. Locating and Theorizing. Right now the final section of the guide is basically a short academic
article on the use of tourism and tourist guides as a way to view historic and archaeological
landscapes. It interweaves recent developments in industrial archaeology, tourism studies, and
critiques of landscapes into a justification for using this approach to understand, critique, and
document the Bakken. It is written for an academic audience, but my series editor thinks that I
should make this section more accessible to non-academic readers. I agree, more or less, considering
the tone of the book, but Im a bit terrified by the prospects of revising this section. Ill take a stab at
it and see how accessible I can make my work and leave it to discretion of the series editor and my
peer reviewers to determine whether Ive gone far enough to making this section more engaging and
understandable.
7. Prefacing. Finally, the book needs a preface that sets the readers expectation for the volume and
helps the reader recognize how the volume is organized and argued. This should be a fun
221
opportunity to articulate the myriad of small editorial decisions that Ive made throughout and lead a
tourist, historian, and reader through the books different registers.
I only wish I had more time to spend with this project but if I want it to appear before the
memory of the heady days of the Bakken Boom have faded, I need to get it to the publisher now!
222
Teaching Tuesday
August 4, 2015
https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2015/08/04/teaching-tuesday/
Im back to teaching in the fall and am looking forward to getting back into the classroom. Im
teaching a section of History 101 at night in a Scale-Up classroom and a history of our introductory
methods class for graduate students, History 501. Both classes involve a bit more preparation than
Ive given them so far, so I thought a teaching Tuesday post might motivate me to start to get my
act together with only a few weeks remaining before the start of the semester.
To avoid being overwhelmed, Im targeting one specific issue in each class:
1. New Class, New Priorities. The main goal of History 501 is to introduce graduate students to the
methods and techniques of graduate level research in history. The course was installed about 5 years
ago in an effort to level the playing field among graduate students by offering a bit of remediation
for students who hadnt developed strong research skills in their undergraduate programs or had
taken time off between their undergraduate degree and graduate school. The course also provides
students with an opportunity to meet the faculty in the department and have them present their
specialities over the course of a couple of classes during the semester. This means the students have
a basic understanding of oral history, quantitative history, labor history, intellectual history, material
culture, digital history, and so on.
The course, in other words, provides a bunch of details ranging from basic research tips to short,
but nuanced introductions to larger research methods. Finding a way to organize priorities in a class
like will be a challenge because the class will have to be a bit of everything for everyone.
2. Balancing Group Work and Individual Performance. The challenge in my History 101 class is a
bit more basic. As I have blogged about extensively, the class is built to run in a Scale-Up classroom.
Our Scale-Up room offer 20 round tables for 9 students each. This makes the room ideal for group
projects and collaborative problem solving and not particularly suitable for individual work or
lectures.
History classes have traditionally focused on lecture and individual work, and introductory level
courses even more so. Over the last few years, Ive created an introductory history class that focuses
on collaboration to teach writing, argument, and the basic narrative of the past. The class writes its
own history textbook over the course of the semester with each table providing a single module on
the Greek, Roman, and Medieval world. Student engagement is generally high and the product is
decent.
The biggest complaint from students is that the effort across the teams is uneven with stronger
students doing more than their share and weaker students loitering around the margins. While the
complaining is annoying (albeit pleasantly naive about asymmetrical distribution of work in the real
world), I have come to recognize that I can do more to motive the more marginal students to
engage in the process. So, this semester, I need to figure out ways to devote at least 40% of the class
to individual effort in the service of the 60% of the class that is given over to group work.
The last two times that Ive taught the class, Ive given 20% over to daily assignments these range
from short take home assignments to in-class group work. These were largely designed to keep
223
students honest in class by offering immediate rewards and consequences for various in class
assignments. The first time I taught the class, I had a midterm exam after the first third of the class
designed around basic historical argument skills. I wasnt entirely pleased with the results of that,
however. I was also tempted to assign a short paper and make it due sometime during the first third
of the class. Two short papers, each worth 10%, would also be an appealing way to include some
individual accountability in the course.
The goal of these short papers will be demonstrate that skills refined through group work actually
emerge in individual assignments and to promote ongoing engagement and collaboration in the
course.
More soon as I think through these classes over the course of the next few weeks!
224
The larger crew camps likewise seem empty. We stayed at a camp where we once had to book a
room weeks in advance and navigate a packed dining room for a table. On this visit, our team was
probably the only group staying in the camp.
225
The most dramatic example of camp abandonment was the 500+ bed American Lodge outside of
Watford City. The camp was closed and abandoned after the city cut its power and water.
Subsequently, it appears that the camp had bilked investors out of over $60 million dollars in a kind
of ponzi scheme. The size and obvious reality of the camp made it clear that project did not begin as
a ponzi scheme, but succumbed, in part, to the declining need for workforce housing in general.
2. Man Camp Dialogues. Our man camp dialogues have come at a pivotal time in workforce housing
in the Bakken, and our effort to hold one in a workforce housing site was pretty unsuccessful. The
declining number of people living in temporary workforce housing sites has made our dialogues as
much a historical reflection as a way to address ongoing concerns.
For the first time in our experiences in the Bakken, a camp refused to allow us to document life at
their facility. This camp had also turned down our request to host a man camp dialogue. The camp
stands near Williston in Williams County, and recent ordinances appear designed to curtail the future
of work force housing. So it seems likely that the owners or management of the camp felt any
research on their facility was unlikely to benefit the camp in the short or medium term.
3. Watford City to Killdeer. The Tourist Guide to the Bakken Oil Patch is very nearly complete and
the manuscript is almost ready to go to the publisher for review. I took notes on the route from
Watford City to Killdeer and Dickinson and this will allow me to include this meaningful diversion
to the main course of the Tourist Guide. The forest of drill rigs sitting in storage at Dickinson forms
a useful concluding scene to my guides itinerary.
226
In addition to the addition coverage of the guide, the editor in the series that has requested my
manuscript suggested that I include a few more people in the guide, so I am going through the
routes and making an effort to add some flesh-and-blood to the routes.
4. Memorial Landscapes. I also plan to add something to the Tourist Guide on the memorial
landscape of the Bakken. Through out the region, small, typically road-side memorials have
appeared to mark the location of fatal accidents. While these are common throughout the US, they
take on a particular poignancy in the Bakken where they often feature in critiques of the oil patch
and the changes that they have brought to the local communities.
There are a few of these memorials that are well-maintained and prominent on the Bakken byways
and I plan to include them in the Tourist Guide as well as a few of the lesser known memorials that
dot the back roads of the region.
227
228
229
230
231
232
I just received some very early galley proofs for the book, and were almost there.
233
The interior of the book will need a bit more work, but the editing and layout is almost done. The
font, while elegant, is too big, and after some deliberation, I think our readers would prefer the page
numbers closer to the outside margins of the pages.
I also spent some time this weekend doing a preliminary editing run on a North Dakota Quarterly
reprint that brings together contributions on World War I. I think it would be great to publish this
collection on Veterans Day.
So stay tuned to this page over the next few weeks for the latest news on The Digital Press at the
University of North Dakota!
234
235
What Im listening to: The Wave Pictures, Long Black Cars and Great Big Flamingo Burning
Moon.
236
Convergence
July 23, 2015
https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2015/07/23/convergence/
My research interests are scattered. They range from workforce housing in the Bakken to intensive
pedestrian survey and the archaeology of Late Roman and Early Byzantine Cyprus. On the one
hand, this is exciting because I rarely get bored. On the other hand, I feel like I rarely have an
exhaustive grasp of any one issue before having to shift my attention to something more pressing.
Every now and then, this diversity of research interests demonstrates a bit of convergence. I know
that I shouldnt get too excited about this; after all, despite my efforts to focus broadly, I know that I
tend to have particular ways of thinking that inexorably draw my projects into convergence.
Yesterday, I was working to revise the most recent draft of my slow archaeology paper. Its slow
going (see what I did there?) in part because I took about three months away from the article in the
middle of making revisions and, in part, because Im trying to wrangle a diverse set of ideas and
ranging from field practice to the role of place in producing archaeological knowledge. While I was
trying to bring these ideas to order, I kept thinking about a paper that Im scheduled to give the
American School of Oriental Research conference this fall on object biography.
In that paper, I hope to argue that the idea of object biography, if left focused on physical, material
objects reflects only awkwardly contemporary archaeological practice. In fact, the physical
engagement with artifacts even particularly precious or aesthetically attractive good things is
rather fleeting in comparison to the time spent with various digital objects related to these physical
objects through various processes of mediation. As Chris Witmore and other have pointed out, the
process of mediation or translation from one state to the next preserves (at best) a relationship
between the physical artifact and the digital (lets say) artifact, but we should not confuse this
relationship with a form of crass equivalency. The digital artifact is an artifact in its own right with
its own history and its own interpretative potential. Digital objects form the basis for most
archaeological analysis because they are easily manipulable, portable, and storable. At the same time,
we recognize that these objects are only as useful as their relationship to the physical world.
My ASOR paper will then develop the idea of cloning and reflect on our ability to produce both
increasingly accurate models of the physical world (but these models, like a clone or a twin, will not
share the same biography as the physical objects,) and our ability to make exact (at least in a relative
way) copies of digital objects. Like digital copies of physical objects, however, even these digital
copies are subject to different life histories and uses.
I got pretty excited yesterday afternoon when I realized that these thoughts tie into my ideas of slow
archaeology. As field practices have become more efficient (and more limited in terms of time and
money), we have come to rely more and more heavily on digital objects for analysis. In other words,
our digital clones of the physical world provide a mediated view of the physical world and form the
basis for much of our analysis of the physical world. Savvy archaeologists, of course, recognize this
and celebrate the digital clones less for their accuracy and more for their utility. At the same time,
the pull of the physical world remains strong in archaeology and the pious hope that accuracy in our
reconstructions can somehow replace the encounter with artifacts, places, and contexts.
237
My slow archaeology article takes this argument and goes off the rails with it. I hint that our
growing interest in efficiency in the field, producing highly accurate digital copies of archaeological
contexts, and data driven models of archaeological analysis is a response to the frustrated tension
between issues of provenience, national claims to archaeological patrimony, and increasing limits
on time in the field. In effect, producing digital models of the archaeological world is both good
archaeology and an extension of colonial practices intent on appropriating the the global past into a
master, scientific, universal (i.e. Western) narrative. By privileging digital data as the basis for
archaeological analysis, pushing to make it freely available, and celebrating its increased accuracy and
utility, we are contributing to centuries old negotiation between local and global knowledge.
238
5. Images, Rights, and Plans. One of the challenges of this kind of production is that there are some
restrictive rules in place about using images of monuments in Greece and wed have to reproduce
plans which can be a time-consuming and frustrating project. It would be appealing to imagine ways
that use the huge quantity of digital sources to supplement our book, but it is probably not useful to
expect students to have constant internet connections while in Greece. Connectivity issues could
make it more difficult to produce an interactive map that would provide directions to particular sites
(although our students and staff this year almost all had phones with good internet connections).
Aside from the technical aspects of this kind of project, the intellectual challenge is very appealing to
me. Im not sure that I have time to do it properly, but I might have a collaborator who has both
some time and expertise. For now, Ill tuck this into my idea box and well see where it goes over the
next year or so
240
Now that Im home, people are naturally curious about what life was like in Greece during the most
recent crisis. For obvious reasons, they expect me to have insights into the fiscal and political culture
of Greece. As someone who has lived in Greece, I can offer some very superficial insights and recite
the same difficult story about cost of austerity, the fear of economic instability, and the resilience of
everyday life.
As a historian, however, Im frankly at a loss. My dedication to the material, political, and religious
culture of premodern Greece has equipped me with very few tools to understand the particular
complexities of the global economy and the current situation in Greek and European political life.
In fact, even specialists in these matters have struggled to see or understand the situation clearly
through the rancorous and dissimulating political rhetoric.
At the same time, the media has continued to evoke Greeces ancient past to add a bit of national
color to a story that has played out on a global scale over the last decade. Ive blogged about this
already, and noted that this lazy lede and headline writing does little more than evoke a watereddown version of the same Classicizing fantasies that contributed to the creation of the Greek state in
the 19th century. Recently, observers of the crisis have begun to critique this practice, and a few
241
authors have swapped Classical allusions for those of Byzantium. We can maybe thank Patrick Leigh
Fermors well-known distinction between the Hellenic and Romaic (i.e. Byzantine) for that. While
this distinction offers a framework for Fermor to narrative a rich and sweeping narrative of the
Greek landscape, Ive found that it offers little in terms of real explanatory value. We should
probably prefer an approach like Tom Gallants recent contribution to Chronos magazine which
looks to the relatively recent legacy of Greek-German relations.
Where does that leave the historian of Ancient and Medieval Greece? It is inevitable that well be
asked our opinions on the recent events and expected to be able to offer some kind of deeper
understanding of the situation (owing more to our expertise in, say, the Early Christian architecture
of the Peloponnesus as much as our time in the country). At the same time, were all aware (pdf) of
the tragicomic bizarreness that can result when scholars of antiquity wade into contemporary
geopolitics. It is humbling to admit that our specific expertise is irrelevant for understanding the
current crisis, but it is our obligation to avoid the frankly ahistorical conceit of conflating (our
knowledge) of the ancient and modern worlds. At moments of particular frustration, my inability to
deploy two decades of historical understanding of Greece to explain or understand the current
situation has made me despair the value of the humanities. At the same time, I hope that my
background in the humanities has made it possible to recognize and appreciate in a critical way the
limits to what we know no matter how frustrating that may be.
242
It was fun to think about this book while I worked away on the landscape of the Western Argolid
with the Western Argolid Regional Project. My job on the project was relatively unspecific, but I
spent most of my field days walking our survey with one of our talented graduate students team
leaders and dividing it into units to be walked by one of our 5 or 6 field teams. On an average day,
we walked 5-7 miles through olive, orange, and apricot groves, up and down terrace walls, and
through dense patches of maquis. As Ive noted on this blog before, it was hard work, but at the end
of the season, I felt like I had a much more thorough understanding of the landscape than was
possible from viewing the splendid World View 3 satellite images on my laptop.
This got me thinking about how important having the right tools for my job is. The right tools were
not important in the abstract way that having the right software for my laptop made a job easier, but
in a genuinely physical way. For example, having the right pants for hiking around the Greek
countryside prevented my legs from being cut to shreds by the thorny vegetation of the
Mediterranean. Over the past four or five years, Ive discovered the value of long-sleeve work shirts
243
to protect my arms from sun, thorns, and insects. Boots are another matter entirely. This summer, I
wore a pair of decent (and rather expensive) boots that barely stood up to my day-to-day. They were
rugged enough to not disintegrate, but they did not provide enough cushioned to protect my feet
from the daily pounding.
The right pants, shirts, and (probably the wrong) boots did remind me that there were physical
realities to archaeological work that directly related to the kind of data that we collected from the
field. I realize that other academic scholars confront these kinds of realities daily whether they
relate to the access hours of an archive or the maintenance of a fussy instrument in lab. At the same
time, I wonder whether the relationship between our research and our bodies in archaeology (and
this is true of all of the field disciplines) anchors our thinking in the same landscape (and perhaps
even a shared physical reality) as the people whom we study.
244
archaeological evidence as a particularly fragile and limited resource. As a result, good archaeologists
engage in excavation and field practices in a deliberate, careful, and systematic way and remain aware
that their research goals represent a point in an ongoing conversation about the meaning of the past.
Since archaeological evidence is to some extent limited, archaeologists constantly seek to avoid a
tragedy of the commons by balancing the arrogant view that ones work will produce the final
word on a subject against practices that serve primarily as an apologia for the destructive character
of excavation. If the balance tips too far in either direction, archaeological practices diminish the
ethical justification for the discipline.
The Roosevelt et al. article steers well clear of these two potential pitfalls (as does most
archaeological work). They demonstrate that their sophisticated, integrated, digital approach to field
recording can document excavation both in a more detailed way and with greater efficiency. The
authors do not, however, explain how their post-stratigraphic (to use my term) approach actually
results in new archaeological knowledge.
My name was invoked by the authors as someone who has argued that a greater focus on
archaeological efficiency through digital tools runs the risk of de-skilling archaeologists. I have
argued in various places that traditional archaeological practices (which rely on older forms of
technology) like writing in trench notebooks longhand, drawing individual contexts, and separating
extraneous details from relevant evidence at trench side, locates the primary space of archaeological
interpretation at the edge of the trowel, trench, or context. In other words, the act of excavation is
not destruction, but the production of archaeological knowledge, and while I admit to the need for
intermediate steps that document the way in which the archaeologist produced this knowledge, the
ultimate goal is always the archaeological argument. Trench side documentation is an extension of
argument making.
Ive tended to privilege practices that slow the process of documentation on the trench side and
foreground deliberate, embodied knowledge grounded in practices like manual illustration and longhand written, narrative style notebooks. My argument for the superiority of these practices has less
to do with the results that they produce, which the last fifty or even 100 years of scholarship amply
demonstrates, than the pitfalls that they avoid. For example, calls to excavate more efficiently and to
produce more robust datasets redouble the pressure on archaeologists to publish not just their data
(although thats good), but also their analysis. Storerooms full of unpublished material are salutary
reminders that digging more does not necessary result in the production of more disciplinary
knowledge, and with increased efficiency comes the increased temptation to dig more.
Likewise, I remain skeptical of claims that more efficient documentation opens up time and
opportunities for more reflective engagement with the archaeological process. One of the great
claims of modern industrial life is that machines would make possible more leisure time for
creativity, recreation, and family life. Any growth in leisure time over the past two centuries,
however, owes more to the push back against the relentless pursuit of efficiency by labor critics and
unions than any moderation on the part of industrial class. If archaeologists continue to occupy the
rhetorical position that excavation is destruction, increased efficiency, detail, and documentation will
persist as ethical imperatives that are difficult to dislodge in the name of trench-side analysis. I dont
doubt that it is possible to use technology to allow more opportunities to reflect, analyze, and
interpret, but considering the tradition of technological innovation in modern, industrial societies, I
think it is reasonable to expect that digital innovators demonstrate the interpretative gains from the
use of technology.
246
I will continue to fret about the de-skilling of the archaeological workforce through practices that
fragment the experience of field walking or excavating. The kind of embodied knowledge typical of
pre-industrial craft production produced individuals who have command over most aspects of their
work. Archaeology, of course, is a modern science and over the past century has sought ways to
regiment knowledge production as a way of improving consistency, efficiency, and results. At the
same time, archaeologists have clung fiercely to the idea of craft knowledge. Some excavators,
illustrators, and even field walkers are better than others and, as a result, no amount of
standardization in practice will achieve perfect consistency in data production. As workflows
fragment, however, and narrative notebooks give way to standardized forms, context sheets, digital
models, and other regularized expression of trench-side or survey unit knowledge, the significance
of this embodied knowledge recedes into the background. Foregrounded, instead, is the
systematized regularity of digital data which de-authorizes, overwrites, and black boxes the
complexities of excavation and survey. The idea that digital technologies do less to deskill
archaeologists and more to produce archaeologists as skilled, digital practitioners is similar to the
claim that 19th century craft workers simply developed the new skills necessary to thrive on the
assembly line. Archaeological skills are grounded in archaeology, not the attendant technologies
relevant (or even vital) to the field. (And this comes not from someone who fancies himself a
craftsman-archaeologist, but from someone intensely aware of the gap between the kind of
knowledge that I posses as a manager of digital workflows and data and people with patiently
acquired field knowledge.)
Finally, I continue to be disturbed by the tensions between spatial locus of archaeological work (and
the imperative that our field continues to embrace that some forms of archaeology objects, sites, et
c. remain local), and the displacement that occurs with digital recording of archaeological contexts.
By recording spaces, objects, and deposits in such detail that archaeologists can remove these
digital surrogates from the limits of the archaeological site, we begin to test the concept that that
archaeological work is fundamentally local. While were not yet to the point where entire sites can be
reconstructed in computer labs and 3D clones of objects studied, this is now within the realm of
possibility. Soon, the only limit on our ability to transport highly accurate digital versions of artifacts
and archaeological sites around the world will be our willingness to do so.
So, articles like Roosevelt et al.s tend to leave me a bit cold even if their willingness to share their
innovation and work flows are commendable. Maybe Id find their descriptions more compelling if
they demonstrated how the increased resolution, efficiency, and technologies advanced the particular
arguments that they sought to make about the history of the site or address particular nuances
present in their projects research questions. Or maybe Im just a cranky, old archaeologist who
would prefer to dance with the devil he knows than to take on a new partner.
247
Peter was one of the guys who inspired me to start The Digital Press at the University of North
Dakota and is doing all he can to prove that persistent little slugs can find unique ways to compete
in a world increasingly dominated by big corporations built for predictable performances and
prodigious profits. Peters slug, like Peter, the man, does things his own way and figures out how to
compete and innovate. That alone makes him deserving of your support. So go now and give his
hard, innovative work a bit of support.
Making Peter and his slugs work all the sweater is his decision to take on the parasitic practices of
profitable publishing by developing his own creative material, producing high quality products, and
building a community willing to support his efforts. Creative work is never free, but this does not
mean we have to embrace practices associated with traditional publishing to ensure that authors,
artists, and editors receive compensation for their work. Peters use of Kickstarter is one approach
to this challenge. Hes making the book available for free, but offering some elegant bonuses for his
supporters.
So, lets give a big cheer for both the slug and Peters relentless creativity! And go drop a few dollars
to support this project even if you dont love the slug or have kids. Support the idea and the
approach and the willingness to try a new, better way.
248
More Maps
July 14, 2015
https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2015/07/14/more-maps/
One of the exciting challenges that I face at the end of every season on the Western Argolid
Regional Project is producing maps. The goal of the maps is usually to communicate some basic
information: number of units, artifact density, or the location of particularly important artifact
clusters.
Sometimes, however, we need to produce maps that allow for more complicated kinds of analysis.
This analysis typically involves looking at several variables on a map simultaneously. At this point, I
generally make a mess of things.
Heres our basic survey map:
Then I outline in red some units that are interesting to me. In this case, theyre interesting because
they are in the highest quartile of density per particular visibility. In the case below it is 10%-20%
visibility.
249
Then I decide to add pink and purple outlines for units that are in the top two quartiles for 30%50% visibility:
250
By then the map is getting a bit cluttered, but it contains a bunch of useful information.
251
Efficiency
July 8, 2015
https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2015/07/08/efficiency/
Since were all about efficiency and archaeological Taylorism here on the Western Argolid Regional
Project, I decided to run some numbers, out of curiosity more than anything.
The primary productive unit of the survey is the five member field team. It consists of a team leader
and four field walkers. They walk an average of slightly over 100 units per day with occasional
outings in the mid-100s. We run 5 field teams a day since one team is in the pottery storerooms. It
takes field teams about 7 minutes to walk the average unit with some units taking as much as 7 or 8
times that long (and others taking almost no time). Most teams start their first unit a little after 7 am
and finish their last unit around 12:45 pm. So our field day runs for about 6 hours (to simplify). The
teams walk for about 2 hours, 15 minutes per day (or about a third of the time their in the field).
The rest of the day is devoted to filling out forms and traipsing from one unit to the next. Lest this
makes our field walkers sound lazy, I should point out that, over the course of our field season field,
walkers walked over 1000 km (that over 600 miles for Americans). Theres no lack of energy and
commitment on the part of our field walkers!
What I discovered is that the average field team used only 3 walkers for field walking. In fact, the
average number of walkers per field was almost exactly 3 (the mode was also 3). This got me
thinking that, next year, we should take our 6 field teams of 4 field walkers and divide them into 8
field teams with 3 field walkers. This would have the clear advantage of putting 7 field teams into the
field daily (with one team heading to the pottery storerooms each day), and this should increase the
number of units walked per day by about 40%.
When I pitched this to a few team leaders, they responded that the teams often used the fourth field
walker to help record information when not walking units. If resulted in an increase in efficiency, we
should see that 3 walker units are completed more quickly than 4 walker units. The numbers,
however, dont bear this out. Both 3 and 4 walker units get done in about 9 minutes despite 4 walker
252
units being generally longer (by around 25 meters) than 3 walker units. So, there doesnt seem on
the face of it to be any real efficiency gained by 3 walker teams. (I do know that some field teams
operated at below full strength, but even when I did some rough work to control for this, it didnt
seem to impact the overall numbers very much).
There is one hitch: Around 65% of our units used fewer than 4 walkers, but about 20% units used 4
walkers exactly. But this, I think, is an artifact of our units being mapped to accommodate 4 walker
teams. This might account for why units with more than 4 walkers (but less than 9) average about 11
minutes which is a substantial increase over those with 3 or 4. This is the result of teams having to
double walk the unit; that is: walkers having to walk the unit once and then again. Curiously, the 11
minute average is not twice the time taken to walk a unit where every walker walks only once. This is
probably because we tended to make larger units from areas where the fields are disturbed and
unlikely to produce much pottery. While I havent run the numbers recently, historically our ceramic
densities decline as unit size increases. So, I suspect one thing that might happen if we shrink our
field teams is that wed shirt our unit size to accommodate the smaller teams. So well do more units,
but maybe not survey more ground.
Of course, to make this all work, we have to find two more excellent team leaders to complement
our fine group of six. Moreover, wed have less margin of error for individual teams. This year we
lost a few field walkers each week to ailments ranging from dehydration to sea urchin attacks. Teams
dropping to two walkers would struggle to be flexible enough to walk large units and would
probably suffer just walking average sized units.
Embiggening the number of teams (by debigulating the number of walkers) might also lead us to
increase the number of cars and would almost certainly require us to increase the number of devices
assigned to team (cameras, GPS units, Sharpies, et c.). But as a good buddy once quipped, if you
cant afford to do maximum archaeology, perhaps you should just stay in the library.
253
Notebooks
July 7, 2015
https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2015/07/07/notebooks/
Its the last week here on the Western Argolid Regional Project, so things are getting hectic. In fact,
during our weekly project meeting on Sunday, I asked our student field walkers to increase their
pace just a bit so we can wrap up the last few areas left to survey. To do this, I made an appeal to
our field teams to leverage every last bit of efficiency gained over our six week field season.
At the same time, I enjoyed reading Allison Mickels recent contribution to the Journal of Field
Archaeology (40.3 (20150) titled Reasons for Redundancy in Reflexivity: The Role of Diaries in
Archaeological Epistemology. She argues for the continued value of traditional archaeological
notebooks after studying their use at the site of atalhyk. As most projects have move toward
either digital or paper recording forms, they have tended to abandon traditional trench notebooks
were seen a crude tool for recording the strictly organized, empirical recording at trench side. Mickel
evokes Latour to understand this trend in archaeological recording: As the processes of knowledge
production in archaeology became increasingly black-boxed (Latour 1987), the inscriptive devices
employed in archaeological fieldwork became increasingly structured and resistant to discussing
changing interpretations over time, social dynamics, or emotive reasoning.
She demonstrated that the notebooks maintained at atalhyk interwove verbatim repetition from
other forms of archaeological recording (like context sheets) with distinct reflections and arguments.
In many cases the added value to these notebooks involved making clear the complex process of
producing archaeological observations. In other words, the unstructured space of the notebooks
captures the indeterminacy of archaeological knowledge in a way that more rigid forms of
documentation explicitly seeks to occlude.
This ties to matters of efficiency because redundant data collection is generally regarded as a waste
of time especially for projects working on limited schedules, with limited funding, or with permit
restrictions. Mickels article, however, suggests that enduring the redundancy even the verbatim
redundancy of notebook recording reinforces the clear link between the messy space of actual
archaeological work and the tidy boxes of archaeological recording forms.
254
We target sites for revisit in three ways. First, our field teams can tick a check box and provide a
brief explanation for why a particular unit is worth revisiting. Our ceramicists, Scott Gallimore and
Sarah James, can also identify units as being interesting, important, or confusing and consequently
worth revisiting. Finally, we can analyze data through our GIS and databases that target units with
certain characteristics (such as low visibility with either high densities or diverse assemblages). Our
revisit lists generated by team leader and ceramicists are not fortified by statistics, but generated
through careful observations and total situational awareness. These units represent the slow
archaeology approach to landscape and artifact analysis.
So far, it has been heartening to recognize that the lists of revisit units curated by our team leaders
and ceramicists are remarkably consistent with the units generated from my analysis of our various
databases. In fact, combining the curated list of unit with list of units generated through our analysis
of GIS tend to complement each other by expanding the potential target units for revisit. As we
255
nuance the criteria for revisit a bit over the next week, Im sure that well discover some
counterintuitive units that will serve as tests of our archaeological instincts. For now, though, well
proceed into the final week of the season with just a bit of confidence that our experiences in the
field and at the pottery tables reflects the complexity of our study area.
256
257
258
The results, however, suggest otherwise. Students take this opportunity to resist data entry as a basal
assault on their humanity. Their actions argue against reducing the work of archaeologists, past
humans, and the complexities of nature to a set of limited data is profoundly dehumanizing. Our
students are committed to demolishing the straight forward data entry process by entering nonsense
data. They take pleasure in robbing the computer, database, and even data structure of agency by
showing the powerlessness of these tools in the face of human ingenuity. They remind the rest of
the project to slow down and appreciate the gentle sounds of olive trees in the wind, the rich taste of
Greek coffee, and the crunch of plowed fields beneath our feet.
So, I wanted to take this blog post to thank our students for showing us that no matter how
efficient, well-designed, carefully-constructed, and time-tested archaeological data structures are,
they will always fail in the face of student ingenuity. Humans will never be data.
All the fears that our education system is turning our students into cogs fit only to power the
dehumanizing machine of industrial capitalism may well be overstated. There is something in the
human condition that persists into the early college years that we cannot break even by subjecting
students to the most mundane tasks designed to wear down their resistance to tedium. The will to
resist continues and manifests itself in simple, every day forms that we are only too quick to read as
sloppiness, laziness, or incompetence. To misappropriate slightly a quote from the great James C.
Scott:
One day you will be called upon to break a big law in the name of justice and rationality.
Everything will depend on it. You have to be ready. How are you going to prepare for that day when
it really matters? You have to stay in shape so that when the big day comes you will be ready.
What you need is anarchist calisthenics. Every day or so break some trivial law that makes no
sense, even if its only jaywalking. Use your own head to judge whether a law is just or reasonable.
That way, youll keep trim; and when the big day comes, youll be ready.
259
Origins
June 25, 2015
https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2015/06/25/origins/
This week, we made a quick trip to the village of Frousiouna in the far western Argolid. Throughout
the first part of the 20th century, some of the residents of this village would make their way toward
the Argive plain to winter their flocks. The village of Frousiouna was the origin of the small hamlet
in our survey area.
Archaeologists are often interested in origins whether these are the origins of particular kinds of
material culture or groups of people. The Western Argolid Regional Project has as one of its main
research focuses is movement through our survey area and the transhumant pastoralists from
Frousiouna are part of that history.
260
The well-watered mountain village with impressive two-storey homes is far cry from the rocky fields
and simple long houses of their winter settlement in our survey area.
261
262
influence largely by the scatter of material associated with the immediate vicinity of the house. This
approach will not represent the reality on the ground in the most effective way.
If we attempt to isolate the artifact scatters associated with the houses in the area by excluding them
from larger survey units or make them the center of small units focused on the artifact scatters, we
have introduced a rather unconventional method to the area and risk producing data that is not
necessarily consistent with the data that weve collected from elsewhere in the survey area.
We are stuck between the rock of needing to manage modern abundance and the hard place of
treating all material from our survey area with a consistent method.
2. Architecture. We also need to think about how we are going to document the houses at the site.
The houses preserve hints of a wide range of archaeological processes, modifications, and uses.
David Pettegrew and I considered many of these same issues in our work to document the site of
Lakka Skoutara in the southeastern Corinthia. Itll be a great opportunity to encourage students to
look closely at a building in the landscape and to consider how material transitions from its primary
context to an archaeological context. At the same time, well need to provide some consistent
guidance to ensure that the students, team leaders, and directors document the buildings in a
consistent way while also being able to describe each building with as much detail and nuance as
possible.
We need to figure out whether it is worth doing some illustrations of the houses or should we rely
on photographs to capture details that might elude textual descriptions. I generally favor taking the
time to illustrate the houses because it forces the documenter to slow down and notice small details
that might not appear as clearly through the photographers view finder. At the same time, there will
be a need for efficiency so we will almost certainly have to document the houses in as efficient way
as possible.
3. Features. The final issue is that houses stand in relation to other features and these clusters of
features need to be identified and documented. Like documenting architecture, we need to decide
263
whether to produce illustrations that capture significant detail, rely on textual descriptions, or create
a set of maps that emphasize particular spatial relationships.
We need to proceed efficiently and capture data at a scale that is relevant for the kinds of arguments
that we intend to make. In an ideal world, we could collect all the data, we fortunately occupy a
world where all the data is not a realistic or helpful goal.
264
Despite that, I mapped (thats not me; actually I wander around offering astute commentary and our
amazing team of graduate students map).
265
266
The highlight of the week was a sudden rain shower on Thursday that imparted olive trees with a
golden-green glow. I tried (rather unsuccessfully) to photograph it.
267
I also had the good luck of discovering a spectacular modern trash dump in a ravine that was later
cut by an erosional event. The trash dated to the late 1990s or early 2000s. The dating was done by
Machal Gradoz, our project soccer expert (as well as a fine archaeologist) who identified an image of
David Beckham on a Pepsi can and dated the uniform, basic information on the can, and hair to the
turn of the century.
268
The dump was stratified indicating more than one depositional event. The size of the dump,
however, suggests that it probably did not represent the primary dump of a village, but was perhaps
the dump for one of the small communities in the area. The location of the dump on both sides of
the ravine indicates that the dump was cut by the ravine.
269
270
had two flat tires on the same car. Clearly, the car is less than impressed with our interest in
completing field work. Or maybe the car is on my side and keeping me from completely collapsing
under the grind of field work.
272
Fragments of a Conclusion
June 16, 2015
https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2015/06/16/fragments-of-a-conclusion/
This past week, Ive been twisting and tweaking an article documenting our work at the Alamogordo
Atari Excavation. The article was primarily authored by Andrew Reinhard and represents a formal,
(we hope) publishable report on our work over a few days in Alamogordo at what was probably the
most publicized excavation of 2014.
Heres a fragment of my revised conclusion. Since Im not sure whether itll appear in the article, Im
posting it here with very little comment:
(Also this is what happens when you try to write during a field season):
Atari Archaeology Conclusions
Archaeology of the contemporary world has often relied on special pleading to justify its practices,
methods, and relevance. The excavation of Atari games in the Alamogordo desert is no exception to
this tendency. The hyper-abundance of modern material has led to challenges in managing and
documenting artifacts. The potentially toxic character of assemblages extracted from landfills,
disaster sites, and industrial contexts require specialized handling skills that are rarely possessed by
archaeologists and rules and regulations that may not be suited to traditional forms of archaeological
investigation. As a result, the documentation of modern period assemblages often requires special
accommodations. In the New Mexico desert, we were not able to enter the trench, manually
excavate, or handle large quantities of material for extended periods.
As in both contract and academic archaeology, time represents a key limiting factor in the methods
employed in the field. Generally speaking, ethical responsibilities serve as a counterweight to time
pressures with archaeologists seeking to collect as much information as time pressures will allow. In
the archaeology of the contemporary would, however, our ethical obligations are complicated by the
uncertain status of material present in the Alamogordo landfill. If this material is genuinely
archaeological, it is only because we documented it according to archaeological field procedures.
According to most standards in our discipline and common sense, household and corporate discard
do not and should not automatically command the levels of ethical care as objects and contexts of
greater antiquity. Many of the challenges facing archaeologists of the contemporary world go well
beyond procedures established to ensure the careful documentation of fragile or scarce
archaeological resources.
Finally, the Atari excavations presented a unique opportunity for archaeologists to inform,
document, and, in subtle ways, subvert the narrative produced by a media company. The goal of this
report was to provide a more typical professionalized narrative of the Atari excavation. The
documentary film, Atari: Game Over featured only about 10 minutes of footage on the excavation
itself. This article expands and reframes these scenes with additional information collected through
our participation in the production. While the story we tell does not contradict that told in the
documentary, it does reveal that the halting flow of information between the production team and
archaeologist limited genuine collaboration during the hectic two days of field work. At the same
time, the production company supported various requests by the archaeologist that did not
contribute directly to their production goals. We were able to cross the safety cordon to document
273
the excavators progress, were given space to document buckets of trash from the landfill, and given
brief time to sort and study the Atari cartridges. These opportunities made this article possible and
demonstrate that potential of collaboration between media companies and archaeologists moving
forward.
274
Pierre MacKay
June 15, 2015
https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2015/06/15/pierre-mackay/
I was saddened to hear this morning that Pierre MacKay passed away over the weekend. I didnt
know Pierre well, but was fortunate enough to spend a year with him in 2001/2002 at the American
School of Classical Studies in Athens.
During that time, I was putting the final touches on an article documenting a series of fortifications
on Mt. Oneion in the Corinthia. The latest were Venetian. Pierre had been working on the
fortification of the Venetian town of Negroponte (now Chalkis) on Euboea. He was only too happy
to discuss Venetian fortification strategies with me as well as any other topic of post-ancient Greece.
The highlight of that year was a trip to the city of Chalkis by train and then touring the course of
Venetian fortifications of that city. The catch is that the fortifications were destroyed in the 19th
century, but Pierre managed to make the course of the fortifications as vivid as if the walls were still
standing. We had a long discussion of the church of Ayia Paraskevi which was a Frankish period
church built on Early Christian foundations. His willingness to discuss Frankish, Venetian, and
earlier material with us during the trip to Chalkis, and throughout my year at the American School,
was a model of scholarly generosity.
From my perspective (and many others) his knowledge of Venetian and Ottoman Greece was
virtually limitless, and he combined it with a deep and sophisticated understanding of the Classical
world. His sensitivity to the long history of Greece is something that I admired and, in my own way,
aspire too (although without his staggering knowledge of languages from Medieval Venetian to
Ottoman Turkish).
275
276
277
278
More crenelation!
279
Speed
June 11, 2015
https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2015/06/11/speed/
One of the more interesting trends emerging so far during the Western Argolid Regional Project
season is competition among field teams. At the end of each field day, I typically ask team leaders
how many units they have walked. This seemingly benign question helps us measure our progress
through the survey area and gauge how much mapping is necessary to keep ahead of the survey
teams. A quick tally of the number of units walked lets me begin to plan the next day as soon as the
previous field day is over.
Generally our 5 field teams walk between 15 and 20 units and around 90 total. Each unit is around
3000 sq m. so we walk about 1.3 and 1.5 sq. km per week. The number of units we walk depend
considerably on the character of the terrain, the size of the units, and the density of artifacts,
vegetation, and other distractions to artifact recovery. The size of our field teams is four plus a team
leader, but this week we lost a few field walkers to dehydration and bumps and bruises. So a team
down a walker will move a bit more slowly than one at full strength especially if the units are slightly
larger than average. Historically, field teams walk about 4 units per hour over a 6 hour field day with
a couple of breaks for water, znacks (snacks), and transit to and from the field site.
Teams generally develop a routine where one walker writes tags, one takes a center GPS point, one
walker helps with forms, one takes photographs et c. This streamlines the bookkeeping and data
recording aspects of intensive pedestrian survey and as the season progresses, small efficiencies
occur based on familiarity with the process as much as anything. As the process become more
efficient, we usually have to nudge the team leaders to slow things down just a bit to ensure that the
teams recognize where they are in the survey area, fill out forms properly, and actually, you know,
enjoy the process. Since our project runs as a field school, we see very little benefit to an overly
mechanical process that makes our field walkers (and team leaders) into field walking robots (beep,
boop, boop, beep, boop).
280
One thing that I did not anticipate this summer is that teams would start to compete with each other
to walk the most units per day. Its hard not to like the harmless morale boost that comes with
walking the most units or besting a team nearby is fun. Moreover, we recognize the field walking
particularly in challenging topography which is difficult to grasp as a coherent space can be boring
and seem pointless. The assembly line was soul crushing in part because of the repetitive character
of the work and, in part, because the repetition could obscure the role an individual played in the
works final result. Unit counts keep the field day interesting.
At the same time, weve starting wonder whether there are some less than desirable byproducts of
this competition. For example, we dont want the push to walk more to exhaust field teams more
quickly and to contribute to the attrition of team members. We also dont want to compromise our
data collection for some good-natured fun. Finally, we dont want teams who walk more challenging
areas to feel like their contributions are less significant because they didnt walk enough units. The
last thing we want is sad field walkers.
281
The Trash
June 10, 2015
https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2015/06/10/the-trash/
Ive been thinking a good bit more about trash this summer and had the chance to check out two
interesting assemblages of modern trash in the Argolid in our first week of field work.
The first was at a crossing of the Inachos River in our 2014 survey area. The scatter of modern trash
extends in a 8 m x 60 m strip down the center of the now-dry Inachos River parallel to a seasonal
road along the river bed.
The trash consisted of a combination of building debris and modern household trash.
282
The most interesting concentration was a dump of school books perhaps deposited at the end of
that academic year.
There was the typical clusters of water bottles as well as clothing, household furnishings, and
detritus from agricultural work.
The other dump that caught my attention this week was around the small church of Ag.
Panteliemon.
283
The church is probably Early Modern and has a fantastic scatter of broken tile associated with a reroofing project over the last few decades. The modern tiles on the church feature a 5-digit Greek
phone number of the kiln placing the manufacture of the tiles prior to the change in the Greek
phone numbers to 9 and then 10 digits.
The tile scatter on the north side was complemented by a scatter of tile and plastic bottles that
probably once contained oil left at the church for lamps. Clean up at the church involved dumping
the used plastic containers over the side of the little paved area.
284
This parallels a little study that David Pettegrew, Tim Gregory, and I did a few years back (I
summarize some of this project here) where we documented the artifact scatter around Byzantine
churches on the island of Kythera. We discovered that the vicinity of churches produced more fine
wares than elsewhere in the landscape. This is hardly remarkable, but perhaps the modern practices
of trash disposal provide insights into the historical distribution of artifacts.
285
The Fleas
June 9, 2015
https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2015/06/09/the-fleas/
The photo below might look like an ordinary enough farm house. In fact, the house and its
neighboring farm yard are filled with FLEAS.
For those of us who visited this interesting, multiphase building this morning, the fleas were more
than a passing curiosity, but a profound annoyance.
We got covered in fleas. They got on our pants, on our shoes, on our shirts, then into our shirts,
shoes, and pants. This situation quickly devolved into panic. First we tried to get the fleas off of our
body in the field around the house. Then we realized that this was where the fleas were coming from
and jumped in the car and raced off. But then we had fleas in the car and on our bodies. So we
stopped at a nearby rural church and commenced a more thorough inspection and flea removal
operation. Then we headed to our storeroom/laboratory for a quick vacuuming of our body and
then the car keeping a safe distance from Holly Dog, the project directors beloved pooch.
The clothes went into the wash and I took a hot soapy shower and so far, aside from a few flea
bites, we seem to have survived the flea attack no worse for wear.
The worst part now is the fantom fleas that continue to jump around my body, inflicting imagined
bites.
286
Oversleeping
June 5, 2015
https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2015/06/05/oversleeping/
This morning I woke up twice. Once at 4:45 am and once at 7:00 am. At 4:45 am I checked my
phone and noticed that I had about 30 more minutes to sleep and resolved to lying still in bed
between sleep and wakefulness until my alarm sounded.
At 7:00 am I awoke with a start. We leave for the field at 6:30 am and today was only the second full
field day for the Western Argolid Regional Projects 2015 field season. When I realized I was late, I
panicked, put on my field clothes and rushed to the door of my room. My half-groggy mind
imagined that somehow people might be waiting or that I could catch a ride with the last car or that
maybe just maybe my phone was showing the wrong time.
Unfortunately, I was greeted by an empty parking lot and a light drizzle that slowly turned into the
kind of depressing rain that appears during emotionally demanding scenes in 1980s movies. For the
first time in my life, I had missed field work because I had overslept.
Apparently, the project director rang my doorbell and tried to rouse me to no avail. There was some
other chaos as teams tried to organize themselves on the second day. And the teams headed out to
the field just slightly behind schedule.
I was left behind to stew in the realization that our project was sound enough to survive a little
chaos and my august role of Assistant to the Directors was probably less than completely vital on
most field days. So, I decided to spend the rest of my unexpected morning off reading about the
Frankish, Venetian, and Ottoman Argolid in preparation for our first round of field trips to Argos
and Lerna.
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
archaeological context (that is the context in which an object functions after it has passed from its
systemic context). Almost as soon as the object emerges from the trench or the survey unit, it
encounters other objects and other forms of agency that extend from the field walker or excavator
to the various components of a digital camera, image processing programs, databases, the clustered
existence of the web, and the old pulped-tree paper of final publication. During this time, the object
itself is transformed, copied, we might even say cloned to facilitate insertion into an ever
expanding web of new agents. At some point in this process the idea of an object biography takes
on a tinge of science fiction as copies of the object circulate widely without any visible impact on the
object itself. The ease with which this process takes place calls to question the continued utility of
the biographic metaphor in our increasingly digital world.
More on this paper over the next few months as I refine my ideas and take more time to
comprehend the key scholarship on this topic!
296
Weve had a few days of afternoon rain leaving the fields of the area heavy with sticky mud.
The landscape, however, remains as striking as always with the wet winter leaving fields filled with
green weeds.
It wouldnt be intensive pedestrian survey if we didnt spend a good bit of time hunched over our
maps and pointing.
297
The use of an old rail car as a agricultural shed provides a nice example of some of things that I
discussed in post earlier in the week.
One last tube-photo showing the village of Schinochori and a small outlying settlement (a kalyvi).
298
299
I suspect that the difficulties dealing with the modern landscape also speaks to more complex
challenges involving how we understand modern artifact distribution in the countryside where most
modern survey projects are based. Modern material represents both very familiar practices
typically those associated with opportunistic discard of unneeded objects and practices that are
rather unfamiliar to archaeologists who are not well versed in modern, sometimes ad hoc, use of
modern material in contemporary Mediterranean agricultural practices. For example, last year, I took
numerous photographs of modified plastic water bottles hung from trees throughout the Argolid
and the ingenious use of beer cans in modified irrigation systems.
300
Our familiarity with the primary use of objects and simple discard practices has perhaps made it
easier to overlook creative examples of reuse in the countryside. Modern objects have become so
specialized, so disposable, and so common that we have to train our eyes to see them and our
archaeological awareness to consider the range of uses possible in the countryside.
301
On the ride to the airport, though, my colleagues Brandon Olson and Dallas Deforest reminisced
about old airports and their distinct character: the old Athens airport with its flippy list of arrivals
and departures, the old Larnaka airport where you disembarked onto the tarmac with its distinct
smell of the sea and jet fuel, and the chaotic nature of regional airports in Turkey. Maybe the deplacing of airports is a more recent phenomenon for many places in the world than Aughas
recognized.
Of course the airport in Cyprus has the added complication of being a product of the conflict that
has seen the northern part of the island being governed by an unrecognized state. Prior to the
invasion of 1974, the airport for the island was in Nicosia. It now stands in the UN controlled
demilitarized zone. Few places on earth more poignantly reflect the character of late modern
political space than these extranational zones which linger at the margins of formal political
jurisdictions. At the same time, the old Nicosia airport has become a very local symbol of the
islands complicated last. It is simultaneously non-place and an highly nuanced political symbol.
I think my flight is starting to board now, but I wanted to write down a few thoughts (on my iPhone
no less) while they were fresh in my mind. My next post will be from Greece!
302
303
But, we end on very positive notes about how there is a generation that very much wants to bring
renewal to the Northern Plains and North Dakota. When people want to stay, and there are no jobs,
they will create them. We also discuss Toms work in building German-Russian heritage tourism,
and Richard opines that it is an idea that is just the right amount of crazy. We actually have a really
vigorous discussion of this topic about 40 minutes in, to make up for the egg-headed beginning of
our discussion.
During editing Richard noted he really, really needs to work harder at creating context.
Theres an easter egg at the end of the podcast.
Some links:
Take the time to read Bills blog post about our adventures in podcasting:
https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2015/04/29/some-notes-on-recording-a-podcast/
Read William Cronons The Trouble with Wilderness, or Getting Back to the Wrong Nature.
Walter Prescott Webbs The Great Plains: A Study in Institutions and Environment (1931).
Want to know more about the history of history in North Dakota? Read Bills History at the
University of North Dakota 1885-1970. Robinson is mention about 150 times.
Ski Pulks !
304
Oh no, North Dakota couldnt possibly afford a new Governors Mansion.
Richard references The High Line, but doesnt (of course) explain.
Enjoy the fabulous Isern TripAdvisor Reviews! I dont dine out on the plains without
checking here.
And for those who are wondering, the Mighty Milo is doing just fine this summer except that he
decided to eat a bunch of pebbles which gave him a wicked tummy ache!
305
306
4. Wall atop Walls. One of the coolest things about our corner of the Polis site is that it features
walls atop wall over a span of nearly 1000 years. The basic grid plan of the area was probably
established by the Hellenistic period and it persisted into Late Antiquity and probably beyond. As a
result, the area of our current work has massive evidence for the reuse of architecture throughout.
While the use of spolia is fairly well studied for monumental architecture like fortification walls and
churches, it is not as considered in its most banal and practical form. Our area provides a window
into the everyday life of an ordinary neighborhood at Polis on Cyprus. The reuse of blocks, the
cuts, fills, and reconstructions, and the collapses and debris are all preserved as the fabric of the
areas history.
3. Zombies and Ceramics. This summer, Ive had the distinct pleasure of working alongside an
expert on Roman and Late Roman ceramics and zombies: R. Scott Moore.
Ive begun to prepare a treatment for a small-budget film that features Scott Moore as the only man
who can save humanity from the onslaught of zombies propagated through contact with Late
Roman ceramics. The first zombie, of course, was John Hayes whose work defined the field of
ceramics in Late Antiquity. The disease soon spread to a group of scholars desperately trying to
understand how to use his volume on the Roman ceramics from the site of Paphos. Others are
stricken working their way through his volume on the Roman and Late Roman fine wares from the
Agora or material from Sarahane in Istanbul. Graduate students are particularly susceptible, but the
cursed virus slowly begins to take down all the ceramicists in the Mediterranean, then excavators,
then site directors, and finally tourists.
Only Scott Moore remains immune. No one knows why or how, but what is more important is that
he is the only person who can read Late Roman pottery without becoming a zombie.
307
308
This little guy provides evidence for garden gnomes in the 6th century A.D.
309
310
311
312
313
Do I look like a cat to you, boy? Am I jumpin around all nimbly bimbly from tree to tree?
314
315
316
317
318
Archaeology of Home
May 6, 2015
https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2015/05/06/archaeology-of-home/
As Ive just arrived on Cyprus, Im thinking about home.
This last week, I had the pleasure of giving a short tour of our 19th century home to a group of
graduate students in my colleagues, Cindy Prescott, material culture seminar. I took a little time to
prepare a list of things that Id talk about when taking students through an actual house.
obscured the discontinuous construction of a small garage in the back of the house. In fact, we can
argue that the garage has three clear phases: original garage, a small extension, which was then
(maybe in the 1950s) covered with asbestos siding.
3. Type Fossils. In archaeology were always looking for type fossils that can give us absolute-ish
dates to the relative phases preserved in stratigraphy. In my house, we noticed an iron, in-grain, facepinched, cut nail that provided a date for the only major edition to the houses basic shape. These
nails usually date to the late 19th century and probably date the edition to the first decade and a half
of the homes life and is probably contemporary with the arrival of indoor plumbing.
4. Social History. In America, houses are getting bigger and rooms are getting bigger. These facts
obviously relate to the history of the home as a place for family relations. Our late 19th century
home continues to show evidence of small rooms, for example, despite the decision in the 1950s to
remove the wall between the front parlor and the formal dining room. These small rooms reflected
the divisions between the space for formal display and places for domestic work. As that division
broke down and social roles changes, spaces in the house changed and are clearly visible in the
architecture. While our house will never have a great room, there was clearly an interest in creating
a more open living space and less an interest in formal, functional divisions.
We also got excited to discover that the garage was extended, probably in the 1950s when cars got
bigger, but not enough to accommodate the larger cars of the 1960s and 1970s. At some point in the
1970s an additional two car garage was built, and amusingly enough it has proven too small for my
10 year old pick em up truck. So as houses have gotten bigger so have cars.
5. Excavations. All this has made me more and more interested in conducting a small scale
excavation in my backyard. The house sits at the cusp of a number of developments historically in
the southern part of downtown Grand Forks ranging from plumbing to construction practices. As
Ive said, the excavation will be remove the remains of a sand box from the backyard, but if Im
going to dig that out, I might as well go a bit deeper just to see if we can find any cultural deposits
that shed light on the history of the house.
Before we do that though, I want to go through the excavation reports from after the 1997 flood in
Grand Forks. Apparently, there is a wealth of grey paper reports on excavations in Grand Forks.
Without having seen them, I have this naive optimism that they could be the basis for a little article
on the archaeology of a modern small town.
320
If youre in North Dakota, I would also urge you to check out Micah Blooms exhibit titled Codex at
the North Dakota Museum of Art (and more here). Without giving too much away, the exhibit is a
collection of books collected after the Souris River flood that ravaged Minot, North Dakota in 2011.
Bloom has arranged with archaeological precision. The exhibit calls on us to question the nature of
books as objects by looking at them in a range of contexts from a clinical lab-like installation to a
book cemetery. The answers that the exhibit provides are not neat and tidy, but range from the
sentimental absurdity of the book cemetery to overly detached and clinical space of the laboratory.
The death of books is strangely moving, but also reassuring. The disappearance of the codex, like
the scroll before it, will not mark the end of civilization.
321
Dont get me wrong, I love books. In fact, I love books enough to have spent most of my adult life
reading them, writing them, and most recently publishing them. At the same time, I can relate to
Blooms ambivalence toward books as objects. As we barrel through the so-called Digital Age,
people have begun to see books as endangered objects and begun to venerate them not only as a
convenient form for the transmission of knowledge, but as sacred objects whose very physicality
(touch, smell, and even sound) infuses them special authority.
322
Some of the ideas explored in Blooms exhibit parallel those that Richard Rothaus and I discussed in
our podcast last month in the context of looting and destruction of antiquities in Syria. The sight of
destroyed antiquities rouses even the most clinical archaeologist from their well-ordered laboratory
and forces them to engage with objects on an emotional level.
The conversation about the future of the library has caused a similar kind of emotional response
from faculty, students, and the administration. Our library, like the books destroyed by the Souris
River flood, is an ambivalent place. It is not strong enough (in the humanities at least) to be a
research library, but is too large and too traditional to be seen as simply an undergraduate library.
Moreover, the library is dated. It has the stuffiness of a traditional research library and lacks the
amenities common to most campus main libraries. We dont have a coffee shop, climbing wall,
many group study spaces, or the laid back environment that has transformed libraries into the new
student union. Our library wants desperately to be a serious place set apart from the frivolous needs
of the ephemeral undergraduate student, but this seriousness is a front largely designed to encourage
students, faculty, and visitors to take knowledge seriously.
323
The Might Chester Fritz should not try to hard to be a serious place. It is not a research library, but
it has value for campus as a place to gather and as a source of access to a world knowledge set apart
not by its appearance in sacred codices, but by copyright restrictions, hyper-abundance, and complex
search algorithms. The library of the 21st century (which is still the future here in North Dakota) will
encourage students and faculty to wrest knowledge from this complex network of sources, combine
it in new ways, and break old limits on how knowledge containers are used, disseminated, and
preserved.
In short, the library of the future has to be a place of PLAY. It must be a place where students and
faculty feel comfortable transgressing the staid mores and serious comportment of traditional
knowledge preservation and dissemination. If that means that the old, solid walls of the library must
give way to campus wide access or that shelves of scarcely read volumes must give way to
collaborative study areas, climbing walls, and coffee shops, then back up the moving trucks, applaud
the contractors, and contact Micah Bloom to document and study the remains of Library As Book
House.
324
Some Blegen.
From the ASOR blog: a popular summary of recent work at Caesarea Maritima.
Digital History: A digital history project on the oral history of a lost African-American
neighborhood in Richmond, Virginia.
The story of the North Pacific Railroad car in the gravel quarry in Montraill County.
Whats this?
What Im reading: Steve Martens and and Ronald Ramsay, Buildings of North Dakota.
University of Virginia Press, Charlottesville, Virginia 2015.
325
326
Richard explains his technique to label photos with a white board, and Bill asks a critical question.
Bill discusses the importance of tags and how to get them right.
Richard mocks North American archaeologists
Bill and Richard discuss why notebooks and pencils.
Soil Knife, and the less useful obnoxious Ka-Bar.
Richard shares a grave desecration anecdote. Bonus: A Local Mecca For Research tells about
those crazy days of Mille Lacs research.
Bill discusses why Richard really should carry pin flags.
Panty wipes, horsey tape, super glue, aspirin, steroids and first aid kits for real archaeologists.
Umbrellas!
Compass clinometers.
Bill points out the black turtleneck principle (no, not that black turtleneck).
We discuss that archaeology of field vehicles and what archaeologists leave behind.
Richard and Bill tell the secret tales of abusing the generosity of the OSU Isthmia excavation
vehicles, and learning how to be self-sufficient archaeological grownups.
Bill explains how city design impacts the location of bus stations and hotels through amusing stories.
Bill and Richard talk about how travel difficulties and how they make partnerships strained.
Driving through fires!
Secrets of owning a vehicle as a foreigner immersed in a Byzantine bureaucracy.With actual lead
seals!
Bribes?
Toward the end we tell THE CARBURETOR STORY and THE STOLEN BACKPACK stories.
They are epic.
Dimitri Nakassis on wandering and why he likes archaeology.
We conclude discussing why real archaeologists drive manly trucks.
****************************************************
Episode Postscript: Richard had an on-air epiphany when he realizes he did something terrible to
Bill, and that event hardly registered in his memory. Listen to get the story, but here is some
additional information Paige Rothaus provides: The event occurred the year the Gypsies asked us
how to use a passport to get to America. That means this was the year Richard was doing a great
deal of work at Lechaion and he befriended the young men at the Gypsy camp so that he could
leave his equipment around and not have it disappear. By the way, Romani is a better term than
Gypsies, but no one understands what you are saying if you use Romani.)
*****************************************************
The opening track on the podcast is 80-Rs Pacific Rim.You can listen to it in its entirely here.
*****************************************************
328
329
The front of the OSU Isthmia van, with a very young Bill Caraher and backpack (which probably he
doesnt have anymore [Bill note: actually thats the replacement backpack, which I do still use!]), and
David Pettegrew with backpack (and very handy belly pouch) and, um, a fine staff member.
The back of the OSU Isthmia Van, with Richard Rothaus and Carol Stein planning some awesome
discovery. Also notice the tool belt. For many years I was a tool belt and canteen guy. That
works when you have minions to carry things for you. Richard once left his pack on the wrong side
of a mountain and everyone got an extra 2 hrs in the van to remedy the error. After that, a minion
was assigned to always know where Richards bag is.
330
The OSU Van with Sam Fee, Nathan Meyer, Dan Pullen, and, um, a fine staff member. This is after
the van caught on fire. Again. A Call for help if this van bursts into flame sticker has just been
attached.
331
The Grey Escort! With Tom Tartaron, who apparently just spray painted [] on a
rock. is one the many Greek political parties.
The OSU van with Ed Reinhardt, um, a fine McMaster Student, Amber Demorett, Lee Anderson,
Ben Rothaus and Richard Rothaus. We are tieing metal tubes onto the van so Dr. Reinhardt can do
vibracoring in one of the Korinthian marshes.
332
Oh no! Greece is on fire and Richard needs to get to the airport, or ice cream, or something.
Richard s Truck
[Not visible]
Bills Truck
333
334
One challenge with using guests is that Richard and I both have pretty decent recording set ups, but
our guests may not. Moreover, Richard and I both have worked out how to record both sides of the
conversation and to split the conversation to improve recording quality. So bringing guests and
recording remotely onto the show will push us to manage sound quality and levels from a range of
locations, technologies, and participants.
4. Format. One of the most consistent comments made by listeners is that our podcast is too long
and too unstructured. Thats fine with us.
The goal of our podcast is to capture the informal academic conversations that have such an
important impact of the more formal disciplinary knowledge. This means our chats will be rambling
and our arguments such as they are anecdotal. If people find it too tedious and unstructured for
their tastes, thats fine; they can read our articles or read the blog). Well be satisfied with a smaller
audience who enjoys the more unstructured engagement on archaeological topics.
A few podcasters whom I enjoy have made similar argument about podcasts and noted that they are
only popular among a small, but typically committed audience. Because podcasts involve a greater
commitment of time on the part of the listener and because it is difficult to break them into bite-size
fragments for circulation or occasional consumption, podcasts will always be a kind of acquired
taste. It is telling, for example, that podcasts rarely go viral.
5. Endings and Beginnings. So Richard has become our typical sign lede for each podcast
although were excited to introduce a new introduction prepared by Richard this week!
Endings, on the other hand, are trickier. Sometimes, Richard and I seem to agree that the
conversation has reached a useful end. Other times, I feel like weve wrested the good from a chat
and want to wrap up and Richard has just one more thing and Im sure Richard has felt the same
way. Since we usually record from different locations, and we dont have a backchannel throughout
the podcast, we have to rely on a shared sense of timing. I expect well get better at this with time,
but for now, wrapping up a podcast remains a challenging thing to do.
For all the readers of this blog who have become listeners of the podcast, thanks!!
335
336
Rebecca J. Sweetman, The Mosaics of Modern Crete: Art, Archaeology, and Social Change.
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2013.
Jonathan Conant, Staying Roman: Conquest and Identity in Africa and the Mediterranean, 439-700.
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2012.
For Flights and Fun
(My wife got me a Kindle Paperwhite for my birthday so I can read a bit more comfortably on
flights and in poorly lit Cypriot and Greek hotel rooms!)
Werner Herzog and Paul Cronin, Werner Herzog: A Guide for the Perplexed. Faber and Faber,
London 2014.
Neal Stephenson, The Seveneves: A Novel. William Morrow, New York 2015.
Thomas Pynchon, The Bleeding Edge. The Penguin Press, New York 2013.
Paul Kastenellos, Antonina: A Byzantine Slut. Apuleius Books, Garrison, NY 2012.
Poetry
(Follow the link!)
James Bradley Wells, Kazantzakis Guide to Greece.
337
In Praise of Parking
April 27, 2015
https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2015/04/27/in-praise-of-parking/
Over the last few years, parking problems have plagued my home town of Grand Forks. The most
recent uproar has focused on demolishing a blighted building and a few homes to provide additional
parking for the local high school, but the problem with parking is larger than this one case. Any
discussion of the new library is dominated by conversations about parking. So, over the weekend I
sought to put parking in a historical and practical perspective in a letter to the editor. As per usual,
my letter to the editor soon was too long to publish in the local paper, so I thought I might include
it all here.
Having traveled extensively in the region and nationally, I can say with confidence that downtown
Grand Forks is on the verge of what many call the Yogi Bera Paradox (or the Yogi Beradox for
short): downtown is so crowded that nobody goes there any more. Just this last week, my wife and
had to walk almost three blocks in the blustering spring wind to get to dinner at a local restaurant.
By the time we arrived at our destination we looked like figures in Arthur Rothsteins famous dust
bowl photographs. For a town looking to the future, we can do better.
urban cores and boldly carved out new suburbs, strip malls, and office complexes with ample
parking for all Americans who could afford it. For many, the tragedy of WWII and the absence of
convenient parking in European cities were closely related phenomena, and these shaped the postwar American landscape.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that the Cold War was won in parking lots. While Soviet
Russians literally shuffled through the bleak winter of communist rule with only rare opportunities
to putter about in pathetic Lada crapwagons looking for parking outside shops with empty shelves,
Americans owned the roads in state-of-the-art vehicles the proudly carried us from our attached
garages to the parking lots of abundant suburban shops, sports stadia, and big box stores. Parking
lots stood proudly at the center of our national consciousness. The Pentagon, for example, stood as
much as monument for American freedom and national power as a monument for convenient
parking and access. The Pentagons parking lots connected the center of the military-industrial
complex to the sprawling suburbs of Northern Virginia that Andrew Friedman has termed
Americas covert capital. It is hardly a surprise that the famous Vietnam Era protests at the
Pentagon took place in the well-known mall entrance parking lot. During the Cold War, parking
lots were quite literally the theater of both power and protest.
For those of us who came of age during the Cold War in suburban comfort, parking lots were places
of wonder. Empty on weekends, parking lots easily became athletic fields for football and basketball
and playground for our bikes and skateboarding exhibitions. The tension between the marginal
locations of parking lots and their central utility made them places for teenagers and young adults to
socialize in unstructured ways after school or on weekends. This traditional of tailgating in parking
lots before the big game or before a major concert embraced the liminal status of the parking lot as a
place where society could tolerate slight transgressions. Teenagers indulged in underage drinking,
experimented with the ole wacky weed, and canoodled under the dim lights of parking lots across
the US. Younger kids could only be fascinated by the archaeological remains left strewn about in the
parking lots which became provenience for our collections of bottle caps, beer cans, crack vials,
hypodermic needles, and loose change. As we became adults, parking lots offered a chance to
display our victories in the contests of capitalism. The bigger, newer, fancier car, the best parking
spot, and the overflowing trunk of gifts at the holiday season are hallmarks of the American
experience.
Returning to Grand Forks, it is clear that the city must invest in downtown parking not just for
convenience, but as a bulwark protecting the American way of life. I can easily identify several lots
downtown which could serve this purpose. The blighted, empty lot at Demers and 4th street seems
ripe for conversion to street level parking. Further east, the strange bandstand and stylized paddle
wheel in the park at the corner of Demers and 3rd st. could also serve as street level parking when
not in use for other events. The bizarre and tragic little Cream of Wheat park with its dilapidated
clock and neglected landscaping could also become urban parking and combined with the blighted
lot to its southeast. Without much effort a collection of parking lots developed from blighted,
neglected, or underutilized areas of downtown could quickly be arranged to serve as a core of an
interconnected parking network serving the entire community and setting the central business
district apart from outlying residential areas.
339
A quick glance at a Google Earth map reveals a half-dozen under-utilized and blighted spaces for
parking in Grand Forks.
A more ambitious city administration could recognize that the words park and parking share a
similar root and have a special place within the history of urban development. I can imagine an
interconnected network of parking lots would forming a parking belt around the city that
represents an updating of the venerable, but outmoded green belts of early modern cities. Prior to
the widespread adoption of motor cars, European cities frequently had green belts surrounding
their urban core. Some have observed that these green belts have roots in Biblical town plans:
the Lord said to Moses, Command the Israelites to give the Levites towns to live in from the
inheritance the Israelites will possess. And give them pasturelands around the towns. The
pasturelands around the towns that you give the Levites will extend out fifteen hundred feet from
the town wall. (Numbers 25:1-2, 4). In more modern times, such belts served both practical and
ideological purposes. They functioned to protect housing values in the city by limiting sprawl, to
provide places for recreation, and to control the flow of traffic into and out of the urban core. In the
21st century city, this parking belt would provide practical access to parking for visitors to
downtown, it would allow for more ambitious and higher density development of the urban core,
and it would provide places for American capitalist expression and unstructured recreation.
Moreover, in an era where American cities are under constant threat of terrorist attacks, the parking
belt could also serve as a place for first responders to gather in the event of attack as well as a
defensive cordon around the city.
Grand Forks would do well to consider Gods command to Moses in their contemporary planning,
the practical necessity for parking in a 21st century context, as well as the historical role that parking
has played in making this country great. The construction of a continuous parking belt around
Grand Forks would almost certainly become a source of pride for the community and an
opportunity to embrace the important role that parking has played in making us Americans.
340
ANZAC Day
April 24, 2015
https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2015/04/24/anzac-day/
Today (in Australia and New Zealand, and tomorrow in the US and Europe) is the 100th
anniversary of the ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Corp) landing at Gallipoli in 1915
with the goal of capturing Constantinople from the Ottoman Empire. The Gallipoli campaign
proved to be as bloody as any in the Great War with forces from Australia and New Zealand losing
over 10,000 men. More than that, however, the troops from Australia and New Zealand brought to
their respective homelands a sense of national pride as the Knights of Gallipoli won widespread
admiration. British journalist Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett famously remarked:
There has been no finer feat in this war than this sudden landing in the dark and storming the
heights, and, above all, holding on while the reinforcements were landing. These raw colonial troops,
in these desperate hours, proved worthy to fight side by side with the heroes of Mons, the Aisne,
Ypres and Neuve Chapelle.
Reports like this reached Australia and New Zealand by the end of April (heres a editorial printed in
the Sydney Morning Herald from April 30, 1915) and from 1916, April 25th was commemorated in
Australia and New Zealand as ANZAC day.
us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours You, the mothers who sent their sons
from faraway countries, wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in
peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.
My Australian wife and I usually listen to one of various versions of Eric Bogles insanely depressing
And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda which must rank among the most powerful anti-war songs
of the Vietnam Era. I prefer the Pogues version:
The young people ask what are they marching for, and I ask myself the same question
342
343
In constrast, the second book from the press, Visions of Substance: 3D Imaging in Mediterranean
Archaeology. (2015) has about 100 downloads over the past 100 days and 1200 views on Scrbd. The
webpage has been viewed about 270 times. My hope is that this book becomes a bit more popular in
the fall when it could be a useful, accessible, (and free) addition to a Mediterranean archaeology
class.
Overall, Im pleased with the performance of the first two books from The Digital Press! If you
havent checked either book out, please do!
344
345
In many ways, Ive tried to carry on his perspectives in the development of our Digital Press at the
University of North Dakota. Ive taken to calling it a cooperative publisher which breaks down the
barriers between the author, the editor, and publisher. Rather than the author standing apart as
content creator and the rest of the publishing process being regarded as subordinate (and maybe
even a bit subservient) to the process of authoring content. This not only reinforces a social division
between the intellectual work of writing and the (traditionally) manual work of layout and
typesetting, but also supports a system that uses this increasingly outmoded division to limit the
circulation of intellectual work and to extract value from its production. This is not to say that
traditional publishers and editors do not add value to scholarly work, but rather to ask whether this
division of academic labor is worth the cost.
Joel saw collaboration as a continuum of practices rather than a division. As a result, the value of
collaboration was not generated by those who engaged in one part of the process negotiating their
cut of the final results from the those who engaged in another part. Collaboration obligates and
entitles every participant (and certainly someone as skilled and assertive as Joel) to both their share
and to the final product. This, of course, requires a tremendous amount of trust and a willingness
compromise. I hope that I can continue to develop the willingness to trust my collaborators and to
find ways to compromise for the greater good.
346
A year ago tonight my friend Joel Jonientz suddenly died. Over the past year, Ive had plenty of
opportunities to think about the mark that he made on our community, friends, and my life.
At his memorial service, his colleague Lucy Ganje made a stack of letter press cards that read: He
Loved a Bad Plan. This is absolutely true, and was a common, endearing, and supportive (in a
backhanded kind of way) remark that he made often enough during the 5 years or so that I knew
him.
But one story he told has stuck with me even more than his love for a bad plan. A few times, Joel
told me about his habit of touching works of art. Apparently, he would go into museums and wait
347
for an opportune moment to go up to paintings and touch them. At first, he argued that as an artist,
he was interested in encountering the artists technique in a firsthand, tactile, haptic way. But in a
few conversations, he told me that he just enjoyed that immediate encounter with art.
As you might imagine, I was equal parts horrified and jealous of his willingness to make physical
contact with objects in a museum. As an archaeologist, Ive been schooled to understand that even
prolonged looking at certain works of art will lead to their rapid demise. Photographs are almost
always forbidden (and photographs of people posing with objects threaten the very soul of the
artifact).
This is a photo by my buddy Tim Pasch which I have ruthlessly cropped. The hand is Joels
daughter who is being held up by his son, Oskar, to touch his mural in downtown Grand Forks.
Tim recorded a great version of The Grateful Deads Ripple to memorialize Joel.
The more I thought about his habit, however, the more I think I understood what it meant. Joel was
willing to try his hand at nearly anything. He was first-and-foremost an artist, but he also developed
a video game, he co-produced a podcast, he was planning to score a space opera, he rebuilt my
porch, he co-founded an academic press, he worked with Mayan children to produce animation, he
co-founded an arts and culture conference, directed the Working Group in Digital and New
Media, he wrote academic papers on the history of animation, he actively sought out collaboration,
and he still had time to be a good friend, a good father, and supportive member of the community.
In short, Joel made sure that he touched as much art as possible in his life. In a world where we
regularly encounter people who are too busy or really working on saying no, Joel was actively
touching the art.
People who read this blog know that making time to collaborate is is a bit of a pet cause of mine. I
suspect that I got some of these ideas from hanging out with Joel for a few years. Heres a tribute
that our friend Brett Ommen produced for Joel based on their work together on Professor Footnote
and some conversations that Brett, Michael Wittgraf, and I had shortly after Joels passing:
Joel Jonientz Tribute by Brett Ommen
So, as a little tribute to my late friend, I invite everyone to touch the art. Go and check out Joels
blog, go and watch one of his insane little videos, go and listen to one of his podcasts, or go and
348
leave some flowers by his mural in downtown Grand Forks (but if you do that, be sure to touch
it!). Or listen to his laugh.
Or, go and download a copy of Punk Archaeology, which he designed and laid out, and we
dedicated to his memory. (Or go buy one here if you want to touch it.)
Or at least read his chapter from Punk Archaeology: View this document on Scribd
Its funny, the month Joel died I had learned that Paul Worley was going to leave town to take a job
elsewhere; Brett Ommen had decided to resign his position at the University and put his house on
the market. I was worried that Joel would go on sabbatical and leave me stranded by myself in
Grand Forks. The reality was much worse.
349
350
3. Digital Centers and Byzantine Studies. One of the points that Jim Skedros brought up during our
lunchtime panel is that there is no single outlet serving to make Byzantine Studies accessible to the
general public. Instead, our field relies on personal blogs and a diverse set of institutions like
Dumbarton Oaks, the Metropolitan Museum, BSANA and the Mary Jaharis Center to provide
support for the study of Byzantium rather than a central institution like the Archaeological Institute
of America or even the American Schools of Oriental Research. Considering the small number of
scholars working in this field and its trans and interdisciplinary nature, it is particularly difficult that
our energies and output are scattered over so many disparate institutions.
I wonder whether one of the institutions committed to the health of Byzantine studies should
convene a conference that discusses ways to open the field of Byzantine studies to the wider
academic and popular world. The goals of such a gathering would be to establish guidelines and
support for a Byzantine outreach page with a dedicated (if not full time) editor, regularly updated
content, and a system for driving traffic, dissemination in various (print?) formats, and archiving.
These efforts require institutional support and by in even if it does not extend to any substantial
financial investment. Having a single destination for outreach within academia and beyond would
benefit the various stakeholders and perhaps even create a place for scholarly communication on
various Byzantine issues and forge a stronger sense of community between various institutions.
4. Theory and Practice. Finally, I detected a certain aversion to theorizing Byzantine studies both
from the students in the panel and the participants in the lunchtime roundtable. I think our aversion
to theory contributes to the struggle to connect the world of Byzantine scholarship to the larger
project of the humanities or even Mediterranean history. Theoretical terms for whatever their
benefit in interpreting and analyzing evidence from the past, provides a venue for engaging scholars
working with similar approaches in other periods and fields.
Engaging the popular media and the general public will also require some theoretical savvy on the
part of scholars of Byzantium. As the Middle East is going through a particularly dynamic and
unsettled period, Byzantinists must be particularly sensitive to any effort to lend a historical
perspective to events in this region without awareness of Orientalism, post colonial perspectives,
and various models for articulating past perspectives to present events. The graduate students and
panelists surely have the knowledge and understanding to make Byzantium relevant to a wider
audience, but showing their framework more explicitly will make Byzantium a more active
participant in producing useful pasts.
5. The Chapel. Finally, no post on Byzantium would be complete with a photo of a church. In this
case, it is the chapel on the Hellenic Holy Cross campus that is modeled (loosely) after the church of
the Holy Apostles in the Athenian Agora. According to Kostis Kourelis, the church was designed by
Stuart Thompson who had quite a few other high-profile commissions in both Greece and America.
351
352
A long article in Archaeology on the excavations at Gournia on Crete (my third favorite
Mediterranean island).
A New York Times article about an illegal excavation in Lecce, Italy has captured the worlds
attention.
An interview with Gavin Lucas and Victor Buchli on the origins of archaeology of the
contemporary world.
Every ring-tab beer can might now be an antiquity (well, not really). I expect a vigorous and
illegal trade in this artifacts to begin.
Another review of Atari: Game Over and an interview with Jim Heller, the mastermind of
the Atari dump.
If you dont understand kerning, you cant be President. Biden presents particular kerning
issues, but easy to meme.
DANGER ZONE.
What Im listening to: Some local music: Mandalynne Panic, I Sense Harm.
353
Adventures in Podcasting 8
April 16, 2015
https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2015/04/16/meatspace-season-1-episode-8/
This week, Richard and Bill welcomed their first guest into the studio: Andrew Reinhard. We
convinced Andrew to talk to us about his research on Archaeogaming which is the archaeology in
and of video games. We became particularly interested in his assertion that meatspace is no
different than the virtual space of games. This, as you might guess, triggered some vigorous
discussion that eventually devolved into Bill citing Pierre Bourdieu and railing against capitalism,
Richard interviewing his 8-year-old son and comparing capitalism and video games to religion, and
the homunculus who operates Andrews flesh robot almost leaping out of his head. Needless to say,
a good time was had by all.
Caraheard Season 1, Episode 8: Richard and Bill chat with Andrew Reinhard about Archaeogaming
The opening and closing track on the podcast is 80-Rs Pacific Rim. You can listen to it in its
entirely here.
Meatspace is a thing.
Over 19 million people have bought the PC version of Minecraft which is apparently Minecraft:
Savior of Education and Marginalized Kids, according to the Fargo Forum.
There are only three characters you need to know about in Minecraft:
Steve your default character
354
Read a bit about Herobrine. Then read a bit more. This seems to be the ur-CreepyPasta.
Good lord, do you live in a box? Learn about CreepyPasta.
And, well, we only briefly touch on him, but Slender Man is mixed up in the this a bit he is the
inspiration for the Endermen. You should probably be aware of the tragic, bizarre and sad, Slender
Man stabbing perpetrated by two 12 year old girls in Wisconsin.
A super-brief explanation of why Minecraft is so popular at Kotaku.
Richards son Matt reminded him that his prattle about Minecraft needs to be informed by an
appreciation of DWARF FORTRESS. Fair enough. Richard, a historian, responds ZORK a
version of which he played on the mainframe at CampVandyland a million years ago. But Richard
also concedes that Zork is not the same.
We dont recommend going down this rabbit hole, but here are approximately 2,880,000 videos
about Herobrine on YouTube. (For perspective, Richards count is 19, Bills is 18, and Dionysuss is
41,800).
********************
Mancamp Moment of the Week: ManCamps in Grand Forks, North Dakota! It wont be different
in the sense that every type of workforce housing that exists in the world exists in Williston.
355
A Review of Butrint 4
April 15, 2015
https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2015/04/15/a-review-of-butrint-4/
Yesterday, I reviewed some of the larger projects that Im working on and emphasized that I didnt
really need to finish all of them to feel accomplished on sabbatical. There are a handful of projects
with pressing deadlines (or long overdue deadlines) that had to happen before I left.
For example, I am the author for the Working Group in Digital and New Medias section of the
SOAR survey. This is dreadful, bureaucratized, drivel, but it has to happen before I leave for the
Eastern Mediterranean.
I have also agreed to turn my paper on slow archaeology for the publication of the Mobilizing the
Past conference and this paper is due August 15 thanks to some impossibly ambitious deadlines set
by the publisher.
Id like to have a book laid out by then so my authors could review galley proofs at their leisure over
the summer. Im not too optimistic about that (too many moving parts), but it is possible (if just
barely).
Finally, I had a very overdue book review of I. L. Hansen; R. Hodges; S. Leppard eds., Butrint 4:
The Archaeologies and Histories of an Ionian Town. (Oxbow 2013) that was sitting almost
complete on my computers hard drive. I first posted my thoughts on this volume here back in
August of 2013 (yikes!), but now can offer my completed review:
View this document on Scribd
356
So, Ive learned five lessons and these largely echo the lessons that I learned (and tried to avoid) last
time I took a year of leave. I guess Im incapable of learning.
1. Time, time, time. Over the last 80 days, I diligently used Nick Feltrons Reporter app on my
mobile phone to document what I did with my days. Reporter asked me approximately 4 times a day
(a mode of 5) what I was doing. I would then answer a simple survey that would provide data for
analysis.
The most simple question it asks is whether Im working or not. I answered yes 64% of the time.
Since I generally was awake at least 14 hours a day (conservatively), I reckon I was working about 8
hours a day, maybe a bit more. That means that I worked around 60 hours per week.
2. Write, write, write. Of that 60 hours per week, I wrote about 65% of the time. I spent the rest of
the time editing, reading, and in meetings which all account for over 5% of my work time. In
hindsight, I probably spent too much time writing and not enough time reading (6.6% of my
working time) especially as I look at a stack of unread books for the summer field season, but it was
a conscious decision to get as much writing done as possible and load up my folders full of written
text for the long, dark time between the end of this sabbatical and the next.
3. Alone, so alone. I was alone 60% of the time this year, and 32% of the time I was with my wife.
That leaves 8% of my time with other people. While Im not particularly bothered by being alone, I
did come to find it a bit oppressive. I suspect the main reason that I was alone so often is that I
rarely left the house. I spent 80% of my time in my house and 37% of that time in my home office
(29% downstairs in our family room and 12% in the kitchen or workout room). This coincides well
with my leisure time activities. 34% of my leisure time was spent eating or drinking primarily in the
evening in the kitchen and another 30% of my leisure was spent watching television. 16% of my
357
time was spent on walks either in the workout room on the treadmill or with the mighty Milo-dog. I
counted time with Milo as being alone.
4. Preloading my next two years. I promised myself that I would get things done over sabbatical, but
I did not promise that Id finish things. I was really hard to move a number of projects along
without wrapping any of them up (well, except this one). I think I succeeded in keeping my eyes on
my next couple of years when Ill return to teaching full time (or at least university life full time!),
and setting up a slate of projects that I can finish while occupied by other responsibilities.
a. Learning Layout. I spent a good bit time over sabbatical learning how to layout books using
Adobe InDesign. I was able to work on some manuscripts without interruption and learn techniques
to streamline the production of books. This will allow me to keep my little press moving forward
next year.
b. Digital and Analogue for PKAP. I made steady progress working on preparing a digital copy of
PKAP I and am working on getting support from ASOR. We also made a good start on finishing
the work with PKAP II. We will need to do some data normalizing over the next 6 months and
some editing and revising on the manuscript, but much of it is complete.
c. Man Camp Projects. Several significant parts of the North Dakota Man Camp Project have
moved forward including an edited volume with Kyle Conway, a book proposal for the Tourist
Guide to the Bakken Oil Patch, a roughed out edited version of our interviews (Voices of the
Bakken), some outreach, and an almost completed manuscript for submission to Historical
Archaeology (or someplace similar). All of these projects will require attention in the fall, but most
of them have significant momentum.
d. Polis-Chrysochous. Unfortunately, my work at Polis-Chrysochous became the awkward step-child
of my scholarly attention. I did not move it forward as much as I would have liked this year, but I
did get some preliminary commitments to publishing both the notebook data and the finds data in
358
digital forms. Plus, we have a manuscript for an article that is in pretty decent shape (I think) and
will help us guide our 3-week summer study season and will set up some work for next year.
5. Service. As an academic, I tend to be pretty self-involved. My projects trump almost everything
else in terms of setting priorities and absorbing energy. Over sabbatical, however, I allowed myself a
bit more mission creep. I committed myself to several new, and hopefully productive, service
projects that range from stepping up my commitment to institutions that mean something to my
various communities like the American Schools of Oriental Research and the North Dakota
Humanities Council and taking on some new responsibilities with North Dakota Quarterly and
(pending a vote) the Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute. A colleague of mine here
at the University of North Dakota and I discussed how rewarding it has been to work within our
scholarly communities in ways that advanced the work of others as well as our own. I took that
conversation to heart and want to continue to seek out opportunities to build communities with
shared academic interests and goals.
359
Articulating Atari
April 13, 2015
https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2015/04/13/articulating-atari/
This week, Andrew Reinhard, Richard Rothaus, and I met for a day to discuss a publication plan for
the Atari Excavation project. While we all agreed that there is enough intellectual substance from
this experience to warrant an edited volume, we also thought that the best way forward was to
produce a traditional archaeological report which could provide a basic description of our work and
an introduction to the challenges that we faced working on a rather unusual salvage excavation.
The main point of this article, it seems to me, is that the archaeology of the contemporary world
represents an awkward challenge to traditional archaeological methods and methodologies. As a
result, it provides us with a chance to explore the border between real and fake archaeology and
consider practices and questions that frame authentic archaeological engagements with the world.
1. Excavation. As an academic archaeologist, Im used to being very involved in the excavation
process. While it is not uncommon for a project to use a bulldozer to remove the top levels of
sediment or surface debris from a site, generally we break ground, by hand, starting with the plow
zone. At the Atari dig, all of the excavation was done by a huge excavator. Making matters worse,
the landfill was remarkably unstable making it dangerous the approach the sides of the trench and
impossible to enter the trench. This made first hand observation of the stratigraphy difficult.
2. Stratigraphy. Fortunately, the stratigraphy of the site was rather simple. The excavated area was a
trench cut into the desert which was then filled with a three levels of trash and two levels of soil.
The levels were very obvious from the material in the excavators bucket and in the scarp when it
was possible to approach and photograph the trench.
The deposit reflected 5 distinct depositional events with the earliest being the deposit of Atari games
spread across the lowest level of the trench. Subsequent deposits involved two dumps of household
trash both covered with top soil. Unlike excavations of pre-modern sites, our stratigraphic
observations could be confirmed by first hand observation of the deposits themselves. The previous
operator of the landfill confirmed the levels of trash and topsoil and photographs existed for the
dump of Atari games.
3. Artifacts. The goal of our dig was to confirm the presence of the Atari deposit and to sample the
content of this deposit. We were aware from the start that the games would attract interest from
collectors and museums. In fact, members of the team had contact with museums prior to the start
of excavation and we prepared collections for the city of Alamogordo, which owned the games, for
distribution to cultural institutions with an eye toward preserving representative and meaningful
assemblages.
At the same time, we knew that the city and the local historical society would sells some of the
games on Ebay to raise money for the community and to offset costs of storing and inventorying
the games. We caught some flack in social media circles for participating in a project where we knew
that some of the artifacts collected would be sold. To be honest, Im still a bit ambivalent about this,
but only because considering the role of real archaeology in fortifying the market of excavated
objects is tricky business when the artifacts do not qualify under any existing law as protected. You
can buy a used Atari game on Ebay without as far as I am concerned ethical compromise.
360
Moreover, objects of greater significance and older vintage discovered in other archaeological
contexts from farmers fields to suburban garages regularly circulate in the market without much
protest from the archaeological community. As an archaeology of the contemporary world develops
over time, archaeologists who participate in this kind of research must come to a more clear
understanding of how their work influences the market for the goods that they study. As for the
Atari Excavation, Ill stand by my earlier argument that the games gained value as much because of
the media frenzy around the documentary film as our work as archaeologists.
4. Time, Toxicity, and the Media. Our time at the site was extremely limited and in this way our
work paralleled the experience of salvage archaeology projects that operate in conjunction with
contractors working on a deadline. Likewise, the media company had budgetary limits and deadlines.
Moreover, landfills are toxic and opening a landfill involves a certain amount of environmental risks.
As a result, it is never wise to leave a landfill open for longer than necessary. These variable
constrained our access to the site and the scope of the excavation.
During our time in the field, these limits were frustrating. We would have liked to have greater
access to the trench, to material removed from the trench (other than the games), and have
witnessed a more deliberate pace of excavation. After reflecting more, however, I am not as
convinced that a slower pace or more extended time on site would have produced more knowledge.
The limited complexity of the stratigraphy, the instability of the trench itself, and the very clear goals
of the excavation would not have rewarded a significant greater time (and risks) spent with the
trench open.
5. Authenticity. The issues summarized in the points above play a key role in determining whether
our engagement with this project had archaeological authenticity. All archaeology involves
compromises dictated by the environment, political, social, and economic circumstances, and
research questions, but archaeologists tend to instinctively recognize authentic archaeological
research. The growing interest in archaeology of the contemporary world, however, complicates this
as archaeologists have come to recognize all contexts as potentially archaeological and all artifacts as
potential objects of study. The abundance of contexts and material encountered in every day life
requires both tremendously flexible methods as well as a willingness to filter objects and practices
that do not advance a clear research question.
In some ways, archaeology of the contemporary world has the potential to sketch out the limits of
archaeological practice and disciplinary knowledge. Ive received some negative reaction from
archaeologists to both the North Dakota Man Camp Project and the Atari excavation. While some
of it is typical disciplinary sniping, other critiques at least feel more substantial and complex. Our
hope with this article is to attempt to respond and to anticipate some of the critique of what remains
a very new approach to archaeology.
361
Today will be more proceed at a somewhat less frantic pace and feature some time to work on a
publication plan for the results of the Atari dig and to record a podcast focusing on Archaeogaming.
In the meantime, Ill offer a modest list of quick hits and varia for your weekend reading pleasure:
RIP Richie Benaud. I came to cricket rather recently, but Im glad that I had a chance to
experience the legendary Richie Benaud.
Ottoman Athens.
Minimalist Istanbul.
More cowbell.
362
Some thoughts on looting in Honduras, and this is a good example of what happens when
you become unhinged about ISIS looting.
What Im reading: D. M. Wrobel and P.T. Long eds. Seeing and Being Seen: Tourism in the
American West. Lawrence, Kansas 2001.
363
Weeks of Wonder
April 8, 2015
https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2015/04/08/weeks-of-wonder/
If youre a big Bill Caraher fan (and if you read this blog then Im assuming that you find me vaguely
amusing or, at very least, share some of my interests), then there is plenty to keep you entertained
this week.
Tomorrow, as you probably know, is the 7th annual Cyprus Research Fund lecture. Itll feature
Andrew Reinhard, Raiford Guins, Richard Rothaus, and Bret Weber and well talk about the
excavation of Atari games in Alamogordo, New Mexico last year, have a viewing of the documentary
Atari: Game Over, and discuss the archaeology of the contemporary western United States more
broadly. Festivities start at 3:30 with some vintage Atari games set up to be played. To get an idea of
the kind of thing thatll likely come up check out Andrews blog, Raifords blog (especially note his
time spent as a research fellow at the Strong Museum of Play in Rochester!), and Richards blog.
If you cant make it to the event, do not fear! You can watch the documentary for free here (or get it
on The Netflix) and then watch our round table event starting around 5 pm for free on our live
stream here.
For a preview of our discussions check out the most recent Caraheard podcasts here.
If you cant make the Cyprus Research Fund lecture, maybe you can hang out with some of the
North Dakota Man Camp Project in Ellendale next weekend?
The great folks with the Man Camp Dialogues, The Institute for Heritage Renewal, and The
Ellendale Historic Opera House, and the North Dakota Humanities Council sponsored our event
on Friday. If the last opportunity to present our work in a free-flowing dialogue is any indication,
this will be a rewarding evening for everyone involved.
364
If youre not that into the archaeology of the contemporary world and arent based in North Dakota
(which I suppose is possible), you can check out a different version of my dog-and-pony show at the
Mary Jaharis Center at the Hellenic College Holy Cross in Brookline, Massachusetts on April 18th
where I will attend their annual Graduate Student Conference on Byzantine Studies and participate
on a panel with some real luminaries in our field to discuss Byzantium in the Public Sphere. Ive
already blogged a bit about this last week.
So, if Im a bit scarce on the ole blog here for the next couple days, I hope youll understand!
365
366
Caraheard Season 1, Episode 7: Richard and Bill talk about history, archaeology, and the public
But, first, Bill and Richard discuss historians who have become concerned that they have lost their
public, and how public activities and outreach, like a crazed dig in Alamogordo, NM might address
that issue. We also discuss whether the Archaeology of the Recent Past is an outreach gimmick, or
whether it is something that is helping the science of archaeology grow. For our jumping off point,
we discuss/attack/mock a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education: Thomas Bender,
How Historians Lost Their Public.
Bill makes the case that specialized studies full of technical language are appropriate, and that calls to
be less-specialized can be condescending, and lead to dumbing down the discipline. He points out
that specialization is good in cancer doctors, but somehow bad in historians, and that makes no
sense. Being accessible doesnt produce new knowledge, Bill notes, technical and specialized writing
does. Richard sort of agrees, but argues that there is plenty of room and opportunity for historians
to break out of their uber-specialized cubbyholes if they want, and if they dont want, they shouldnt
complain. The public arent crying out for more historians to engage them, as they have so much to
watch and read from other sources, says Richard. Rather an insecurity within historical communities
generates these cries. Bill notes that there is also real push back from funding agencies about
outreach, and that is cause for concern. We seem to end up agreeing that there is a need and room
for general practitioners of history and specialists in history, and perhaps there is no crisis at all. Bill,
however, suggests that he sometimes expects people to pay attention to him, while Richard is
resigned to never being heard.
Richard admits that he started working on the archaeology of the contemporary world because he
thought it would be easy (for outreach and students), but he has since been converted to thinking
that it actual has significant contributions to the field. Bill discusses ways archaeology of the recent
past has been done and applied to actually make the world a better place right now, especially studies
of trash. Bill questions whether outreach via the recent past is useful, or is it so bizarre, like digging
up Atari cartridges, that it is just a novelty and actually diminishing rather than enhancing dialogue
with the public. Richard and Bill discuss how such projects can wind up with other professionals not
taking the work seriously. Richard talks about some work that has been done on the archaeology of
fraternities, and how the The Lost Boys of Zeta Psi is so very relevant right now. Richard claims that
winners try to solve problems through outreach rather than trying to be a policy wonk. Bill talks
about how non-exotic archaeology can be effective help produce responsible citizens. We digress
into a brief discussion of the potential iconography and archaeology of UND Fighting S___x Ice
Dragons (?) logos and paraphernalia. We close by referencing Andrew Reinhards bleeding-edge
venture into Archaeogaming.
The Links to things we talk about:
That obscure website where you can buy HISTORY books Amazon.com.
Charles Beard, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States (for FREE).
Stacy Camps Teaching With Trash: Archaeological Insights on University Waste Management.
Rathje and Murray, Rubbish!: The Archaeology of Garbage.
Here is some coverage of the director of the NEH calling for that agency to become more focused
on humanities for the public good.
367
Laurie Wilkie, The Lost Boys of Zeta Psi: A Historical Archology of Masculinity at a University
Fraternity.(Be sure to enjoy the hilariously nitpicky Amazon review, from (surprise!) a member of
the fraternity from 50 years ago).
National Science Foundation grants being questioned, as covered by scientists and a non-scientist.
Get your no longer Fighting S____x, not yet Ice Dragons (?) UND wear and paraphenalia at the
Sioux Shop.
A handy bibliography of Contemporary Archaeology.
Black-Haired Irishmen quit being racist.
Big Canine Teeth really, quit being racist.
Andrew Reinhards IMDB Page.
368
369
and safe. Our childhood experiences are valid and linger just below the overburdened and neurotic
world of the adulthood.
Finally, this brings us to Archer. Ive started watching the first four or five season of the T.V. show
called Archer. I think it probably dances the line between being a legitimate hit and having a cult
following. The 30-minute, animated TV show centers on the antics of Archer, a secret agent for the
free-lance intelligence firm called ISIS run by his overbearing mother. Archer is a handsome former
college lacrosse player who drinks, parties, and shoots his way out of innumerable jams. While at
times crass, cavalier, and irresponsible, Archer is perpetually innocent. He lacks any clear moral
compass (unlike his beautiful and perpetually conflicted ex-girlfriend Lana), but also lacks any clear
guile. He is honest and literal to a fault. In fact, he represents the American middle and upper-class
male as the perpetual innocent. Archer is the same person who remains fascinated with Atari and, as
the shows frequently flashbacks make clear, continues to struggle to overcome and understand his
own emotionally empty childhood.
Archer resonates with a generation of American males who are looking for a way to stay innocent in
a world that seems impossibly complex. Tourism, nostalgia for our kitsch-inflected childhood, and a
TV show staring a child-man who always makes the right decisions because he is capable of any
moral reasoning, all reflect strategies to organize our past and our present in a comprehensible,
authentic, and un-ironic way.
For more on this check out my Tourist Guide to the Bakken Oil Patch and come and see a showing
of Atari: Game Over with a panel discussion and vintage Atari games starting at 3:30 on Thursday at
the Gorecki Center on the lovely campus of the University of North Dakota.
370
371
Well, one thing could be more (if not more cool) is this little interview that Richard Rothaus and I
produced for the American Schools of Oriental Research blog and podcast series:
"Interview with the Author: Pyla-Koutsopetria I," Featuring William Caraher
So, the flurry of activity probably accounts for the dearth of quick hits and varia, but hopefully it will
be enough to satisfy my loyal readers until Monday morning.
Using drones to document looting in Jordan.
A nice summary of significant issues related to the dating of Jesuss crucifixion. (H/t to
Sebastian Heath)
Ive been studying videos like this to help with the presentation of our next PKAP methods
paper.
Material masculinity: We started packing up. Bedding, clothes, protein powders, dumbbells,
and whatever else we had accumulated. None of us are good at goodbyes, so when we were done we
just drove off.
What Im reading: C.P. Jones, Between Pagan and Christian. Oxford 2014.
373
2. Early Christian Landscapes. As with most archaeology of antiquity, evidence for individual
practice tends to be difficult to disentangle from the incremental process of site formation. While
landscapes are no less susceptible to site formation processes, it becomes easier to recognize
patterns of activity across a larger sample and at a larger scale. In this context, the location of Early
Christian churches might indicate patterns associated with creating a Christian landscape. The
location of Christian cemeteries is another potential influence on production of a distinctly Christian
landscape. Archaeological practices designed to consider specific questions related to the creation of
Christian space on a regional scale could bring attention to the intersection of specifically Christian
landmarks and spaces otherwise regarded as secular.
3. Objects of Faith. Finally, what does it mean to recognize an object or landscape as Christian? As
any number of scholars have noted, Early Christianity was not a monolithic institution, community,
or mode of expression. There were multiple often competing Christianities. Moreover, being
Christian did not exclude one from also being involved in traditional practices of the community,
including sometimes those with competing religious claims. In this context, it would appear quite
difficult to associate an object with a community outside of the narrowly defined role of religious
practice, ritual, and associated spaces. On the other hand, if Christianity is a totalizing discourse,
as Averill Cameron proposed many years ago, then perhaps the function of objects and spaces in
everyday life would take on a Christian meaning. Understanding the meaning of these practices in an
archaeological contexts transforms the material culture of Roman and Late Roman world into
objects, buildings, and places of faith even if the explicit link between Christian practice and
meaning is lost. In this context, much like the context for understanding Christian art proposed by
Robin Jensen, the reading of practice in the archaeological record can almost always exist within a
Christian discourse.
375
376
So I got to thinking about my press and dynamic books. I know this is old turf for people thinking
about the future of the book, but I have a current project at my press that will initially have only a
very limited circulation. Bret Weber and I have been working to layout a collection of interview
transcription from our work on the North Dakota Man Camp Project, which the Digital Press at the
University of North Dakota will publish. The book is tentatively titled: Voices of the Bakken, and
some time soon Ill produce a snazzy cover for it (soon as in, um, today; see below).
There are two issues. First is that we need to sort out the organization of the interviews and decide
whether we might obscure the identities of some of our informants (although we dont have to
according to our IRB paperwork) or contextualize certain aspects of our interviews more
thoroughly.
Second, we are in the process of developing online digital content for this project. Since our dataset
is relatively large, well likely publish parts of it over time rather than all at once. So the book will
continue to accrue online content as we make more available. At present, though the book is in a
private alpha which will probably expand to a private beta before being made available as a public
beta sometime before the end of the year. The public version will then get a version number 1.0 that
will be updated over time. The book then becomes an entity undergoing continuous development,
377
like a piece of software, until it is formally retired. The final publication of the book, then, is the end
of its existence as a living document rather than the start.
Im not saying that this will be the cover, but Im also not saying it wont be the cover. (Note the
Gill Sans for the cover. I really, really wanted to use Cooper Black which to me invoked the 1930s
and industry, but it was just too heavy to use in this mock-up.)
378
have truly embraced the potential of social and new media although a few of the blogs feature
videos from time to time.
There are a few exceptions. For example, there is Lars Brownworths 12 Rulers of Byzantium which
started as a podcast and has expanded into a media empire featuring videos and a book. The Cry for
Byzantium Twitter feed of Alexius I Comnenus pushes Byzantium into the social media sphere. The
/r/Byzantine page on Reddit appears to be thriving.
The typical Byzantine Blogger, however, is pretty textual with the occasional image of a domed
church or a map. There are, of course, a few panoramic views of Byzantine churches and a
mishmash of mostly outdated efforts to create interactive maps of Constantinople or whatever.
Generally speaking, scholars of Byzantium have stayed on the sideline of recent trends to create a
more dynamic web. These kinds of projects require significant funding and, perhaps more
importantly, a clearly-defined audience.
2. Byzantine Archaeology as World Archaeology. I need to work this into a fuller post at some point
in the near future, but one observation that my buddy Kostis Kourelis made a few years back is that
a meaningful subset of Byzantine archaeologists also do archaeology in their local communities.
What brought this to mind was David Pettegrews recent work on mapping 19th century Harrisburg,
Pennsylvania and the Greek community there. Kostis has been involved in my North Dakota Man
Camp Project and various initiatives in Lancaster, Pennsylvania where he teaches. The willingness of
archaeologists of the Byzantine world to engage in the archaeology of their local communities hints
that Byzantinists are not as disengaged as our scholarly output might suggest. In fact, it suggests that
some of the trends in Byzantine archaeology resonate with issues prevalent in world archaeology.
For a discipline that almost takes a perverse pride in its idiosyncratic conventions, this is a significant
revelation and offers hope for Byzantinists everywhere that our skills and professional interests can
have a direct impact on local communities in North America.
3. Mash-Up and Convergence. Finally, Ive been thinking a bit about how our scholarly production
books and articles rarely extend beyond their academic audiences and rarely enjoy lives outside
of their final, published copies. The divergence between academic works and popular books could
not be more stark as influential popular books often feed a growing participatory community
engaged in fan fiction, form the basis for transmedia productions like films and video games, and
spawn communities of commentators and critics. George R.R. Martins mostly-depraved Game of
Thrones series of books and TV series is just the most recent and perhaps most visible example.
As Byzantinists contemplate engaging the public sphere more fully, it might behoove us to consider
the changing the changing state of popular media. How do we ensure that our books and articles
become living, media entities that go beyond their utility to a small group of scholars? Do we push
to make our work available in open access? Do we work harder to contribute to linked-data
practices? How does our work interact or intersect with the larger media universe?
To my mind, this is not simply about making our work known to more people, but making it more
accessible to audiences who think about media in new and more dynamic ways. Books and articles
are more than just forms of scholarly communication or instruments designed to get tenure, but
simply aspects of an increasingly dynamic media universe that extends beyond the life of a
publication, its physical or digital form, and goals of the academic author. How can Byzantine
studies engage this world?
380
ELPH135, which is discontinued and sells for less than $90 on Amazon. Its nowhere near as good
as the Panasonic, but its small, cheap, and good enough for a backup camera.
4. Microphone. With my career as a podcaster slowly gaining momentum, I need a small, decent
USB microphone. Suggestions? For our podcasts, Ive used a Blue Yeti, but this is a heavy
microphone and I need to save some weight for, you know, three months of clothing.
5. Music. Living away from home for this long of a time is hard on me for a range of reasons (wife,
dog, house, other responsibilities), but part of the thing that makes it hard is that I go from being
alone most of the time to being surrounding by people most of the time. My escape is listening to
music. To facilitate this, I have seriously upgraded my mobile music kit. First, I got a pair of new
Audeze EL-8, closed back headphones and a little bird has hinted that Ill get a new ALO Rx MK3
B+ amplifier which appears to be getting phased out of the ALO line-up and is now available at
steeply discounted prices from their warehouse page. The amp is probably overkill for the EL-8s,
but I suspect even in single-ended mode (balanced cables are not yet available for the EL-8s) itll
provide a bit more oomph for the relatively efficient EL-8s as well as the option to move to a
balanced set up in the future.
6. Books. Usually I make a request for summer reading recommendations, but this summer, it looks
like the American Journal of Archaeology has that all sorted out for me. Im going to be working on
a review article featuring several new books on the archaeology of the contemporary world and the
growing interest in materiality among archaeologists. That being said, Ill need to track down a few
recreational books to read this summer, preferably with spaceships in them.
382
Fictional and Real Artifacts at the National Geographic Society in Washington, D.C.
Some anxiety, but no real slow down for Bakken communities, and housing in Watford City.
Anyone who has taught in college knows that engagement only matters to administrators
and assessocrats.
NASCAR archaeology.
Late Addition: The Teletubbies in Black and White with a Joy Division Soundtrack.
Tasmanian whisky cleans up at the World Whisky Awards. Ive tried Sullivans Cove Double
Cask, and its well worth the difficulty of getting it.
What Im listening to: Courtney Barnett, Sometimes I Sit and Think and Sometimes I Just
Sit; Big Jon Atkinson, Boogie With You Baby.
383
384
385
So, Im advertising Jamess poetry book here for a few reasons. First, the book is about Greece and
is due to appear on July 15th. While I complained that this publication date made it impossible for
me to take the book to Greece and read it after a long day in the field, James assured me that the
best time for reading this book is in the late summer as I reminisce (fondly at that point) about my
times in Greece while sitting on my front porch ignoring the start of the semester.
Some of the poems came from his time at the American School of Classical Studies when we had
neighboring rooms in the annex. He introduced me to performance theory and Erving Goffman
and Richard Bauman, and patiently (tried to) explain to me how their ideas could expand my reading
of Pierre Bourdieu and Anthony Giddens. To this day, I have never felt smarter (and more humble)
than when I was sitting at Kolonaki Square with James on a Sunday morning, drinking coffee,
talking about our work.
I can clearly recall his excitement when he returned from Crete having seen Katzantzakiss tomb in
Heraklion. So while Im just making my way through a generously-offer (ok, I begged) manuscript
now, I can already hear certain rhythms in his poetry that remind me of my time in Athens over a
decade ago, and the list of sites evokes will only be more meaningful to people who endured the
famous American School Regular Program. The American School should certainly pre-order a copy
and add it to their collection of work produced under their auspices.
Finally, the book is being published by a small, but award winning press in Georgetown, Kentucky:
Finish Line Press. They are counting on a certain number of pre-orders before theyll begin
production. While this might horrify those of us used to working with larger commercial ventures or
subsidized academic, university presses, these kinds of strategies are what small presses need to do
to make ends meet. What I like about this system, though, is that it makes buying this book less of a
straight commercial transaction (I want, so I buy) and more of a decision about whether one thinks
this kind of thing should exist.
Here is some of the poetry:
I do not have the tonguefeel for nomenclature.
Names of things are the second fork beside
a dinner plate. I never know just what
to say if checkerspots, coppers, elfins, azures,
metalmarks light upon salvia, lavender blossoms,
coneflower, or coreopsis. If cedar waxwing
or purple finch complains when I compete
with them and pick serviceberries, I do not know
the words to mark the surprise of its being the case
that these creatures heckle me so. Nomenclature clouds
me over, but the panorama of wing
possesses me. A skybound gods same unsayable
hemline trailing down the aisle of times
386
387
presents his more authentic translation of the Quran and compares it unfavorably apparently
almost at random to passages in the Christian Bible. Whatever one things about Christian-Muslim
relations, Dakdok provides very little substance and considerable fuel to already enflamed audience
who fear the imminent arrival of ISIS type militants, Sharia law, and anti-Christian pogroms in their
small town.
His reputation proceeds him, of course, and in many communities he struggles to find a venue to
spout his venom. This has apparently allowed him to play the victim and to demonstrate the urgency
of his message. The grand plot against God-fearing Christians is already well underway, because his
truth is being suppressed. As a few of my colleagues pointed out, this kind of rabble rousing has a
long history in American political life where conspiracies, secret knowledge, identity politics, and
playing the victim often combine to fuel the fires of hatred.
In light of this situation, I expressed disappointment that the Empire Arts Center (our local early
20th century movie house turned to an arts center) agreed to host a speaker like Dakdok and
suggested to some colleagues that the Empire Arts Center might no longer be a great venue for, say,
a lecture series organized by the International Studies program to explore ideas of global diversity.
Two things made our conversation all the more emphatic. First was a confused Op-Ed piece in the
Grand Forks Herald which somehow celebrated the Empire Arts Center for allowing hate speech in
its venue as an important opportunity for the community to consider Dakdoks views as a valid
contribution to a global conversation on religious difference. Second, with the appearance of some
anti-immigrant graffiti directed at Somali immigrants in town, the Herald cautioned us from jumping
to conclusions and claiming that our community has a race problem. Ironically, if the views
expressed appeared in a venue like the Empire rather than on the wall of a local strip mall, then,
according to the Herald we should celebrate the vitality of civic conversation: Some claim
Dakdoks speech was beyond the pale. But a big reason for the United States world leadership and
enormous strength is the fact that we trust debate not repression to resolve political quarrels.
The upshot of our conversations is a meeting with the folks at the Empire, mediated and facilitated
by a city council member and some fine folks at the University of North Dakota. We do not want to
damage the Empire as a civic institution because its a great venue, a good partner, and an asset to
the community, but we do want to make sure that we expect more them. Its not that were angry,
were just very disappointed.
One good thing to come out of all this is that I discovered calling Usama Dakdok, Evan Dakdok is
pretty fun (for me). Its a mash-up of Dakdok with the drug-addled lead singer of the Lemonheads,
Evan Dando. Evan Dakdok is the frontman of a band called the Lemonskinheads. So thats fun.
389
Adventures in Podcasting 6
March 24, 2015
https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2015/03/24/adventures-in-podcasting-6/
Were rolling out Episode 6 in our first season of Caraheard a bit early this week because our
unofficial, non-sponsor The University of North Dakota Writers Conference, begins tomorrow at
10 am.
Richards show notes have been putting mine to shame so I need to step it up today. In this weeks
episode we discuss the storage crisis in archaeology prompted by a recent forum in the Journal of
Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies. I start with the observation that
everything is getting bigger and expanding (as Woody Allen once observed, the universe is
expanding) except archaeological storage. In fact, companies like Amazon have multiple warehouses
ranked among the largest buildings in the world and theyre patrolled by ROBOTS. Richard returns
us to archaeology and contextualizes the storage crisis within larger issues of archaeological method
(including storing artifacts in plastic bags purchased from a guy who sells pomegranate seeds).
Richard and then Bill, finally, get to the point that storage crisis is a proxy (war?) for larger issues
within the discipline, before returning the discussion to the reality that modern consumer culture is
rapidly becoming part of that archaeological record. So maybe, the archaeological universe is
expanding.
Enjoy this weeks podcast, check us out on iTunes, and feel free to drop us a line in the comments
here, over at Caraheard.com, or via email. Let us know how wrong we are, what would make
listening to our podcast better, or anything else!
Caraheard Season 1, Episode 6: Richard and Bill talk about the storage crisis in archaeology
Some things we mention during the podcast:
First, the Morag Kersell et al. forum in the JEMAHS is here, and my blogged response is here.
The famous (and lets hope ironic or at very least post-ironic) Lansing Community College job ad is
here.
The Tragedy of the Commons.
I could not find a link to Richards flocks of hypersexualized rabbits, but Im sort of fine with that.
Richards dissertation.
R. Scott Moores dissertation on the pottery dump at Isthmia.
Heres a brief biography of Paul Clement who was the director of the UCLA excavations at Isthmia.
Heres a discussion of the Fountain of the Lamps.
Heres an example of what can be done with material in storerooms excavated many years ago at
Polis-Chrysochous.
I think weve linked to Corinth excavations before, but here is a link again.
Heres David Yoders article in Advances in Archaeological Practice titled Interpreing the 50 Year
Rule: How a Simple Phrase Leads to a Complex Problem.
Finally, if you want to buy a genuine American antiquity, you can go shop here.
390
Call for Papers: The Bakken Goes Bust? New Research on Communities, Challenges, and
Culture in the Bakken Oil Patch
March 23, 2015
https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2015/03/23/5099/
Over the past month, Ive been working with Kyle Conway and Carenlee Barkdull to organize a
conference on new research, challenges, and culture in the Bakken oil patch. We are particularly
interested in research that considers how the patch is adapting to the current decline in oil prices,
production, and activity in the Bakken, but we also recognize the the current bust might not be a
permanent state so we are equally interested in works that considers changes in the Bakken related
to any number of political, social, and economic issues.
Some of our motivation comes from the time that Kyle and I have spent editing the Bakken Goes
Boom volume. The papers in this volume are, in general, fine and sophisticated, but are also a bit
preliminary. We recognize that we only captured a sliver of the important research taking place in
the Bakken and, in many cases, on the the preliminary results of this work.
So the Digital Press has teamed up with the College of Nursing and Professional Disciplines to hold
a one-day conference on Friday October 30th at the University of North Dakota. We hope to be
able to run a couple of formal paper sessions and a couple of workshop sessions where people from
the arts, humanities, and social sciences discuss their work and the work presented in the formal
papers. We plan to have a
Heres the call for papers. Abstracts are due July 1. Contact me for more details.
The Bakken Goes Bust?
New Research on Communities, Challenges, and Culture in the Bakken Oil Patch
For most of the past decade, the Bakken oil boom has generated unprecedented economic growth,
population increases, and industrialization in western North Dakota. For much of this time,
researchers in North Dakota and surrounding states have worked to understand the impact of the
Bakken Boom on the state, the participants in the new economic growth, and long-standing
communities in the affected regions. The rapid changes in region, the difficulties acquiring reliable
data, and the myriad of interrelated challenges and opportunities facing the Bakken region have
spurred creative projects and research initiatives prompted by wide range of challenging questions
concerning the impact of the boom.
The Bakken Goes Bust? conference invites abstracts for contributions (<250 words) from scholars
involved in all area of social science and humanities research, teaching, and creative work that
explore the challenges associated with the Bakken oil boom. While this conference encourages
submissions on any recent Bakken research, we are particularly interested in research and creative
activities that embrace the spatial turn in the humanities and social sciences, considers the rhetoric
of boom (and bust), examines the impact of social or new media on communities, situates the
Bakken boom in a national or global context, or explores issues of crime, discrimination, and social
justice in the patch.
The one-day conference will feature formal papers as well as interactive workshop sessions over the
course of a single day. A public event in downtown Grand Forks will offer a critical capstone to the
391
days events and provide an opportunity for socializing and outreach. The one-day conference will
be held at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, ND on Friday, October 30th. Abstracts
are due by July 1.
The Digital Press at the University of North Dakota has expressed interest in publishing the
proceedings of the conference as a companion volume to their Bakken Goes Boom book slated to
appear in the fall of 2015.
Part of the fun of this conference is that were working with almost no budget so were approaching
it punk rock style. In other words, were not going worry about whether every participant has a
awesome UND branded folder and note pad. Were not going to get anxious about whether every
stakeholder has embossed invitations. We want to have actual conversations about the art, culture,
and social world of the Bakken rather than to use this event to showcase how much UND cares
about some imaginary place or problem or thing. We just want to do it. To show how punk rock I
am, I did ignored the Oxford comma in the poster. And, I made the poster myself. Yeah!
392
So we need a poster in black-and-white with a type-o that we can staple to bulletin boards across
campus.
393
It seems as though the looted antiquities from Apamea in Syria were not going to support
ISIS.
Along similar lines, there was something crazy about this National Geographic video on the
destruction of antiquities by ISIS.
Here is a satellite image showing the spread of nighttime darkness in Syria. What they need is
flaring!
Photos of Pompeii.
Eric Cline generously answered almost all the questions sent his way on his Ask Me
Anything at Reddit.
Maps of World War I in Ottoman Lands. (Save this to review next month.)
Heres a little interview that I did on the Slow issue of North Dakota Quarterly.
Median salaries for professors at various ranks at various kinds of 4 year schools.
Punk games.
A cool map that shows the decline of well starts since the price of oil has dropped.
What Im reading: J. Skarstein, The War with the Sioux. Trans. by M. Gjellstad and D.
Skjelver. Forthcoming.
What Im listening to: Courtney Barnett, A Sea of Split Peas; Matthew E. White, Fresh
Blood; Glen Hansard, It Was Triumph We Once Proposed.
394
395
we rest.
396
Adventures in Podcasting 5
March 19, 2015
https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2015/03/19/adventures-in-podcasting-5/
This episode of Caraheard contains an interview about Bills new book (to minute 56), and some
particularly brilliant discussion of archaeologists and our perverse relationship with the media
(minute 56 and after). If you are super pressed for time, buy the book and listen to the media
portion (says Richard Bill may disagree).
Caraheard Season 1, Episode 5: Richard and Bill talk about archaeologists and the media
Leave a comment at 14:02
Richard interviews Bill about the new book: W. Caraher, R.S. Moore, and D.K. Pettegrew, with
contributions from M. Andrioti, P.N. Kardulias, D. Nakassis, and B. Olson., Pyla-Koutsopetria I:
Archaeological Survey of an Ancient Coastal Town, American Schools of Oriental Research
Archaeological Reports 21, Boston, MA, 2015. This part of Caraheard will also appear as part of the
American Schools of Oriental Research Podcast.
Pyla-Koutsopetria I presents the results of an intensive pedestrian survey documenting the
diachronic history of a 100 ha microregion along the southern coast of Cyprus. Located around 10
km from the ancient city of Kition, the ancient coastal settlements of the Koutsopetria mircoregion
featured an Iron Age sanctuary, a Classical settlement, a Hellenistic fortification, a Late Roman
town, and a Venetian-Ottoman coastal battery situated adjacent to a now infilled, natural harbor on
Larnaka Bay. This publication integrates a comprehensive treatment of methods with a discussion of
artifact distribution, a thorough catalogue of finds, and a diachronic history to shed light on one of
the few undeveloped stretches of the Cypriot coast.
During our discussion, Bill exaggerates the excruciating boredom of the first few chapters, while
Richard points out that there are pictures and even the names of the cannon-fodder field walkers.
Richard also manages to mispronounce almost everyones name, including, shockingly, P. Nick
Kardulias name. P. Nick Kardulias, the man who took a soft, weak, ignorant, and insufferably
Richard under his wing and taught him to be the ultimate field archaeologist. The man who taught
Richard that if you want to stack you coins by size, ignore the mockers and do it. Well, done
Richard.
Bill answers some questions that are the heart of the ASOR interview:
What got you interested in becoming an archaeologist?
Of all the places you could have worked, why Cyprus? And why Pyla-Koutsopetria?
How did you choose the area to survey, and how large is the area youre surveying?
Who works/worked on the survey?
What kind of technology did you use to aid you in this survey?
How long does surveying a square take? How many squares did you survey?
What kinds of remains are you finding/did you find at PKAP?
How long does it take to analyze artifacts you find?
397
What is the significance of these remains? (And more crudely) Why should people care about your
finds?
What can one look forward to when reading this book, and are there any special features?
If the area was such an active trade spot, why is it no longer?
After the book interview, Richard and Bill talk for awhile about archaeology and the media. We
discuss how we love to complain about simple errors, how archaeology benefits from coverage, the
medias love of archaeological hype, and how the weird reactions reveal the insecurities of
archaeologists.
Some Links!
We talk a bit about the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project and also the Eastern Korinthia
Archaeological Survey. And also the Rough Cilicia Archaeological Survey.
The ManCamp Dialogues (Killdeer, ND) Frenzy:
KXNET
Bismarck Tribune
Dickinson Press
Billings Gazette
Richard gets the lead on the Sunday best quote page at Bismarck Tribune Figure it out,
future generations, figure it out!
398
Seventh Annual Cyprus Research Fund Lecture: Andrew Reinhard and Raiford Guins on
Digging E.T.
March 18, 2015
https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2015/03/18/seventh-annual-cyprus-research-fundlecture-andrew-reinhard-and-raiford-guins-on-digging-e-t/
Im super happy to announce the seventh annual Cyprus Research Fund Lecture. This year, well be
joined by Andrew Reinhard of the American Numismatic Society, in person, and Raiford Guins of
University of Stony Brook, online, as well as Richard Rothaus (NDUS) and Bret Weber (UND,
Social Work) to view and discuss the documentary Atari: Game Over. A showing of the film and a
round table discussion will occur from 4-6 pm on April 9 at the Gorecki Alumni Center on the
beautiful campus of the University of North Dakota. As per usual, the event will be streamed to a
global audience.
But wait, theres more! The good folks in the Working Group for Digital and New Media are
coordinating a legacy media exhibit where well have a working Atari 2600 and Atari 5200 that
folks to come by and play. Well even have at least one game hooked to an old school CRT
television.
This years talk is pretty exciting because well go beyond the standard format of lecturer at the
podium and bring something interactive to the event. It will also be the first Cyprus Research Fund
talk that will specifically deal with work in which I was involved (although David Pettegrews talk
from 2010 included some nice photos of me in Greece!). As readers of this blog know, I participated
in the Alamogordo Atari Expedition which Andrew Reinhard coordinated and directed. We wrote
up some of our observations in an article for Ian Bogosts Technology page at The Atlantic, and
Andrew Reinhard has been on a global speaking tour.
This will be the first time that the academic archaeology team has come back together to reflect on
the documentary (which I review here) and the idea of excavating a fragment of our recent past.
Weve chatted informally across social and new media platforms and periodically in person, but we
havent had a chance to sit down together and think critically about what we experienced. I hope
that this will be the first of a few chances to do that and to make our thinking together as public as
possible so that the community can feel involved in understanding the significance of their own
past.
Mark you calendars now!
399
400
think that my guide is a respectable imitation of such tourist staples as the Blue Guide or Baedekers.
At the same time, my reading of a few of the classic Federal Writers Project accounts of western
North Dakota, eastern Montana, and elsewhere gave me another point of reference for my project.
Considering the literary luminaries who wrote for that program (and, significantly, my addiction to
adverbs in particular), I can only say that I tried to writing in their spirit.
Writing about tourism, however, was clearly a bridge too far. First off, the amount of literature on
tourism is staggering (scholars of tourism need tenure too, it would appear), and even such marginal
practices as dark tourism, toxic tourism, and poorism (the organized touring of poor and
disadvantaged communities). Next, the conceptual frameworks for tourism are wide-ranging from
the structuralism of Dean Maccannell to the post-modern critiques offered by John Urry and Tim
Edensor. Some of this stuff is pretty straight forward, but I feel like using tourist studies to
understand landscapes (and how we in the modern world construct landscapes) in a critical way will
be a massive challenge. Not only has modern tourism (whether industrial, toxic, eco, or otherwise)
played a role in how we see modern landscapes, but it has also contributed to issues of heritage,
archaeology (of the modern world), and conservation practices. It is pretty clear that Im out of my
depth here.
3. The American West. In my first year at UND, a bunch of us met with our dean of arts and
sciences at the time. As per usual, there was a low grade panic about lack of current funds, lack of
future funding, and the impossibility of compensating for previous lack of funds. When the dean
asked us about our research plans for the next half decade, I muttered something about needing a
local project that is relatively more insulated from financial vagaries of both local and federal
funding agencies. While Ive been lucky enough to keep funding for my foreign projects going, Ive
also worked to develop some very basic scholarly understanding of the American West and North
Dakota history. Id say that I have an advanced undergraduate knowledge of these fields.
For the Tourist Guide, Ive had to bolster this a bit more by expanding my reading into the history
of extractive industries in the West and their ambivalent relationships with communities dependent
on these industries and struggling with costs of this kind of development once the extractive
processes stop being fiscally viable. Some communities recognize the extractive industries as part of
their history and seek to celebrate this heritage. Others have seen extractive industries as a kind of
cautionary tale that requires constant revision to reinforce the critical links between industry,
settlement, and the environment. This tensions can produce stories that are neither mutually
exclusive nor overly complex, but this requires attention to nuance and narrative grounded in a
sweeping understanding of Western and environmental history. Telling one story or the other is a far
more simple task (and one that Im probably more qualified to undertake) than trying to tell both at
the same time.
So, I head to Cyprus in about 6 weeks and then I have another month or so when I get home
(interrupted by family visits and another field work trip to the Bakken) to get my feet under me on
these issues. Seems like this will probably be another one of those shaky sabbatical projects that
lingers around my productive world like a bad smell
402
Storage Wars
March 16, 2015
https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2015/03/16/storage-wars/
If you have an hour, go and check out the recent forum on the storage crisis in archaeology in the
awkwardly named Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies. Morag Kersel offers
a nice essay framing the storage crisis in Eastern Mediterranean archaeology, and argued for reexploring the potential of long term loans as a way to alleviate some storage pressure by distributing
significant artifacts or those under study to other institutions. Her argument is that while there are
some absolute limits to amount of material that can be stored, most of the current storage crisis
revolves around social, political, and economic realities that result in unequal access to storage
facilities and technology.
If foreign projects had to make provisions for storage and curation of artifacts prior to excavating,
some of the burden for storage and curation of artifacts would shift from the host country to the
guest excavators. Unfortunately, aside from a very few major excavations, the relationship between
excavator and host country remains far stronger than between the excavators institution and the
host country. Because excavators change schools, depart projects, and even die, sustainable funding
can never be tied exclusively to a project or individual. In fact, Ive worked on a large and relatively
well-funded foreign expedition supported by a school with the resources to provide sustaining funds
for an artifact storeroom containing material under study. When the project director retired, funding
to sustain the project began to decline, and we have recently learned that it will be discontinued
entirely leaving the storage of the artifacts under study in limbo. While I dont understand the
politics behind the decision to cut funding to the project, I suspect it was not being guided by a clear
sense of archaeological ethics and responsibility to the scholars, host country, or objects involved.
At the same time, I recognize that few academic institutions are likely to commit to funding for
storage of artifacts in a foreign country indefinitely, and any expectation that they might do so
probably represents a fundamental misunderstanding of how global higher education works.
Even if we understand that changing the fundamental structure of higher education funding is
beyond our grasp, I do think that it is possible to change some of the expectations within our
discipline, or at least recognize that the storage wars are partly a problem situated at the very core of
the discipline. So while there is not an immediately available solution to the storage problem within
the grasp of the archaeology, there are ways that we can ameliorate the issues related to storage
moving forward. And some of the steps that we can take to ameliorate future storage problems will
also allow us to think critically about the structure of the discipline today.
1. Recognizing the Tragedy of the Commons. One of the key issues facing academic archaeologists
today is the pressure to develop our own projects particularly excavations to both train students
and to elevate the profile of our institutions and write large national grants. Much of the pressure
archaeologists feel, however, is from within the discipline. While Kersel and company locate the
pressure to excavate as inherent in the discipline of archaeology, I think that this obscures the real
source of pressure to do field work.
So junior scholars desperate for jobs and tenure develop projects that produces material that
contributes directly to the storage problem. The discipline could, just as easily, put pressure on these
vulnerable junior scholars to study material excavated from projects years ago that languishes,
orphaned in overstuffed storerooms. While subjecting artifacts to careful study does not necessarily
403
obviate the need to store them for future generations (and in some cases knowing what is in a
storeroom makes the decision to store or display an artifact even more complex), it does ensure that
artifacts could be moved into more compact and less accessible storage.
Convincing the senior members of the discipline to encourage junior scholars to study material
excavated years before deserves study before new material is excavated or collected is a difficult task.
It involves recognizing that earlier excavations even those conducted in unorthodox or less than
optimal ways produced information that is deserving of study even for faculty at elite universities
who have the resources to fund continued excavation. In fact, researchers at these universities must
take the lead.
2. Survey and Sampling. Its not just excavation that produces material exacerbating storage issues.
Intensive pedestrian survey has become even more intensive over the past decade and has tended
toward even more robust sampling methods. At the same time, intensive survey has two advantages.
First, our (and I consider myself a survey archaeologist first and foremost) collection strategies are
grounding in sampling. In other words, the quantity of material we produce whether for storage or
for study in the field, is dependent, in part, on the sampling strategies that we use. Excavators are
more or less stuck with whatever artifacts come our of trench. Once excavated, artifacts cannot be
either left in place or returned to their original archaeological context. In other words, the context of
these sherds has been irrevocably altered putting some pressure on the archaeologist to save as
much as possible to ensure that as much information could be recovered as possible from the
trench. In short, there is a greater ethical imperative to save artifacts from an excavation than from a
survey where artifacts left un-sampled remain in an archaeological context that existed prior to the
intervention of the archaeologist.
Second, several authors identified the possibility of returning artifacts to the field after study (socalled catch-and-release methods of artifact collection). Intensive survey has used these practices
for years and projects like the Eastern Korinthia Archaeological Survey (EKAS) were able to
generate significant data from assemblages collected, analyzed, and left in the field with only a very
small subset of diagnostic material returned for long-term storage. Artifacts collected during
intensive survey are often very clean compared to excavated ceramics and, at the same time,
undiagnostic pottery from survey has less potential for analysis than undiagnostic pottery from
excavated contexts. Whereas the association between undiagnostic material (coarse ware sherds, for
example) and more diagnostic types of material from excavations can lead to our identification of
certain plain pottery types through their consistent association with stratigraphy and other artifacts,
the absence of stratigraphic control in intensive survey makes it nearly impossible to seriate and
identify undiagnostic material from surface contexts. As a result, undiagnostic pottery from surveys
tend to have less potential to generate future archaeological knowledge. So if in-field analysis of
pottery is combined with responsible sampling practices, we not only leave behind in the field an
assemblage that can be revisited by future archaeologists, but we also limit the quantity of material
entering long-term storage.
3. Remote Sensing and Low Impact Archaeology. Finally, the last forty years have seen a flourishing
of remote sensing and non-destructivey practices in archaeology. Projects that lack funding or
infrastructure for the sustainable storage of artifacts can nevertheless make an impact by using a
combination of surface survey and remote sensing. A shift within the discipline toward more
sustainable archaeological practices and away from the big dig model of field work has benefits
that go beyond just mitigating the storage crisis. First, as funding in the humanities becomes more
404
challenging to get, keep, and develop, remote sensing practices and small scale surveys offer ways to
collect meaningful assemblages of data without the added expense of physical expropriation,
conservation, curation, and storage. Moreover, remote sensing practices leverage technological
innovations that ally archaeology with their cousins in the STEM disciplines. Archaeology will never
be a STEM discipline (and keeping our feet set in the humanities has real value), but, at the same
time, encouraging more sustained interest in technologically mediated field practices allows the
discipline to draw on funding traditionally reserved for STEM programs. Finally, a greater
commitment to remote sensing allows for more targeted excavations when those kinds of
interventions are necessary. By limiting how much archaeologists need to expose to answer research
questions, we can limit the amount of material that enters into over-burdened storage networks.
It would be naive to suggest that intensive survey, remote sensing, and a renewed attention to
excavated but unstudied material will solve the storage problem. Salvage excavations, ongoing
excavations and surveys, and orphaned material will continue to tax existing storage infrastructures.
In a perfect world, the foreign universities that encouraged and supported excavation would step up
with funding to help ameliorate problems in host countries (as well as at home), but this kind of
responsible action seems beyond the scope of most institutions. At the same time, the discipline of
archaeology should be capable of responding to the challenges facing the practical realities of
producing disciplinary knowledge. This will involve a critical look at existing academic expectations
as well as support for new ways of producing archaeological knowledge.
405
Lots of articles on the antiquities situation in Syria. I wonder how much of the recent
handwringing about antiquities reflects a sense of helplessness among the global middle class when
confronted with something as difficult to understand as ISIS (which is to take nothing away from
the genuineness of the sentiments expressed)?
Others feel differently (scroll down to read James Cumos strange little letter to the New
York Times.)
Plundering by satellite.
Slow Reading.
The closing of Sweet Briar college is very sad for all involved. I did not realize that Ralph
Adams Cram designed many of the key buildings on campus. I wonder if the campus needs an
intensive pedestrian survey to document its material history before being transformed?
Some more media coverage of our work in the Bakken oil patch.
A predictable review of the NYTs profile of Kevin Carey and his book The End of College.
What Im listening to: Donald Byrd, Chant; Donald Byrd, At the Half Note Cafe.
406
407
iPadless Archaeology
March 12, 2015
https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2015/03/12/ipadless-archaeology/
With this weeks introduction of the Apple Watch and the proliferation of wearable technologies
across the Android and Apple ecosystem, many archaeologists are celebrating the start of the
iPadless era. Archaeologists have long recognized the limitations of collecting survey and excavation
data in the field with an iPad, but the alternatives seemed either counterintuitive (for example, a
return to paper) or prohibitive (developing bespoke robots to conduct excavations). The greatest
difficulty being that the iPad was a completely separate piece of technology from the archaeologist
resulting in a series of movement and actions that were inefficient and emphasized the division
between the body of the archaeologist and the tools required to record archaeological interventions.
So, at the dawn of the iPadless age in archaeology, I offer a few observations.
1. The Fragile Tool. Any archaeologist who has used a portable, tablet computer in the field has had
the experience of dropping the device in a trench, feeling it slip from his or her hands into a roaring
rapid, or leaving it on the top of a field vehicle before leaving the field. The results of these events
almost always result in a destroyed device, the loss of data, and the reduction of the field teams
capacity to record information on a daily basis. Despite the more substantial form factor, iPads
proved susceptible to many of the same issues that plagued the use of notebooks or paper recording
forms. Because they were separable from the archaeologists body, they could easily be separated
resulting in the loss of data and equipment.
2. A Digital Tool in an Analogue Form. Imagine if the first iPod was the same size as a Sony
Walkman or a portable record playing device. The adoption of a familiar form may have overcome
some initial resistance to adoption, but ultimately limited the potential of the device. The standard
size of the iPad is essential similar to large-form paper notebook or a sheet of paper. This results in
the archaeologist engaging the device much like a piece of paper or notebook. It becomes a tablet on
which archaeologists inscribe observations, details, and images. In effect, the form of the iPad
reinforces that it is a replacement for paper, and accordingly it takes on very similar roles in an
archaeologists hands.
3. The Haptic Turn. Wearable technologies like the Apple Watch and Google Glass meld
technologies with the archaeologist bodies establishing a platform for archaeological recording that
does not involve the manipulation of a separate tool (whether it be a notebook, iPad, or, say, digital
camera). Not only is the movement necessary to engage with a camera or a tablet inefficient costing
a team hundreds, if not thousands of minutes over the course of a field project, but it divides the
task of excavating from the task of recording. As a result, data is lost in the movement from
excavating to recording because the goal of excavation (as we all know) is to collect data from the
excavation, not to collect data produced by the recording process. By dividing our work into
excavating and recording, we create an artificial barrier between our haptic experience as
archaeologists and the data we collect. As long as our recording methods are technologically and
physically separate from our work as excavators data will be lost in translation.
4. The Body. Apple Watch and Google Glass do not offer right now an immediate solution to the
translation of haptic encounters into data for analysis, but they do establish a platform as these
devices are aligned closely with the human body and have the ability to record what the body
408
encounters. For example, the Apple Watch has sensors designed to record movement as subtle as
changes in heartbeat in the wearer, and while it lacks its own GPS array, it communicates with a
phone or other device (securely tethered to an archaeologists body) to record the location of the
archaeologist. Combining location or position aware technologies and motion sensors, we are not
far from being able to recognize the difference between gentle troweling and going at a level of fill
with the big pick. If we introduce a device capable of capturing video at the eye level of the
archaeologist (like Google Glass), we may no longer need to separate the process of excavating from
that of recording. The very body of the archaeologist in all its subtlety and embodied knowledge
becomes a data collecting array.
5. The Cyborg. Wearables are the first step toward the creation of the archaeological cyborg in
which the biological advantages of the human body are seamlessly melded with the technology. The
excavation process and documentation processes will merge to ensure the collection of the mythical
pure data directly from the edge of the trowel, the archaeologists gaze, or the subtle movements
of the archaeologists body. The division between tools and the archaeologist will increasingly blur as
the goal of collecting every possible bit of data from the destructive process of excavation will be
within sight (and movement) of the field. The only limits, of course, is our ability to perceive the
data that our movements produce, but with technology will only enhance these things. Through ever
closer integration with technology, the archaeologist becomes an extension of the disciplinary
imperative to collect data.
As the destruction of antiquities and even ancient sites continues in the Middle East, archaeologists
feel increasingly pressure to ensure that every possible bit of data from a trench, survey, artifact, or
site is collected and preserved. While it might be impossible to protect every artifact (both ancient
and archaeological) during the excavation process, it is increasingly possible to gather incredibly high
resolution datasets that allow for the computer mediated reconstruction of archaeological reality.
Soon, the destruction of antiquities by such extreme groups as ISIS will be mourned no more than
corrupted sector on a hard drive completely backed up into the cloud.
The iPad, like the notebook or the paper form, was a momentary, if profoundly flawed, convenience
in the inexorable movement toward total data. The iPad era will be remembered with the same
affection that those misguided souls feel for paper notebooks, vacuum tube amplifiers, or fountain
pens.
409
increasingly concerned with both the structure of a proper marriage and the problems with
asymmetrical power relationships between students and faculty, Pounder presents the Blegens and
the Hills in a disarmingly innocent way.
E. French is the daughter of Blegens close friend and collaborator, Alan J.B. Wace, and offers some
personal memories of her encounters with Carl in their family home. Her contribution is one of the
few that capture some of Blegens puckish side as she described him and her father racing a train to
get the best hotel rooms at Mycenae ahead of some German colleagues. Apparently the Govs as
they affectionately called each other in their correspondence, were known for naughty boy
behavior as young archaeologists in Greece, but beyond the tale of their daring train chase, little of
that comes through in this volume.
This is a subtle book which I suspect was intentional. There is no indication that Blegen revealed
himself easily to the contributors choosing instead to allow his prodigious professional
accomplishments be his legacy. His humor comes across through calling Alan Wace, gov in his
correspondence, and his tendency to call academic works in progress a bilge. (One wonders how
many contemporary archaeologists would refer to their lifes work in such informal terms!). His
modern sensibilities come through in his unusual personal life and faint references to his interaction
with the famous Greek modernists collectively known as the Generation of the Thirties. It would
have been useful to understand how these interactions influenced Blegens own artistic sensibilities
including his literary output which he presented at the Literary Club in Cincinnati. Finally, I wish the
volume talked more about Blegens intellectual legacy through his students and colleagues. His life in
the field spanned such a crucial period for the development of Mediterranean archaeology that I
really wanted a more formal accounting of his intellectual, practical, and academic influences. But, in
the end, I suppose that many of these explicit statements of Blegens place in archaeological history
can be safely left understated much like the man himself.
One last thing, the color photo of Blegen by Manuel Litran on page 188 is remarkable. In particular,
it draws attention to Blegens eyes. There is something about the eyes of an archaeologist that
reflects the visuality of our field. Ive often thought that a photographic exhibit of archaeologists
eyes would be a compelling thing. This photo would certainly have an important place in that
collection, and that image as well as those painted throughout this book makes it a worthwhile
addition to any library.
411
At the same time, there has been far less concern expressed publicly about the relationship between
environmental risks and the Bakken workforce (outside of justifiable concerns about injuries and
deaths associated with the difficult and dangerous work on oil rigs). In general, toxic tourism
demonstrates that proximity of toxic producers to homes and communities. In the Bakken, the
blurring of the line between domestic space and the space of work in the Bakken likely exposes
members of the workforce to toxic environments physically as well as socially as the well-maintained
distinction between the messy work necessary to make the modern world and the domestic enclave
collapses.
412
Another aspect of toxic tourism in the Bakken is the legacy of earlier booms in the region. While we
have not done anything to systematically document the remains of earlier booms, this trip we
decided to stop and check out an abandoned well site Berge-FLB 24 which was spudded in 1981 and
is now plugged and inactive, but still stands just off US Route 85 in the Rawson oil field. Many of
the pumps and tanks from the 1980s oil boom have been removed for reuse or sold as scrap, but a
few still dot the landscape as haunting reminders of one potential future.
413
5. Man Camps and the Media. One of the boons of the Man Camp Dialogues has been a media
attention. We appeared on the front page of the Bismarck Tribune and in the Dickinson Press, on
several news broadcasts, and have continued to receive press inquiries. The genuine interest is
gratifying, but its been a bit of a challenge to explain to the media the scope and character of our
work. There seems to be a consistent interest in quantitative data: How many people live in
workforce housing? Has this increased or decreased?
These are legitimate questions, of course, and speak to both the concern for a workforce who is
often left to live in sub-standard conditions as well as an effort to find data that speaks to the
economy health of the oil patch and the North Dakota economy. Our work, however, focuses on
qualitative data which provides our project with a more complex narrative than the quantitative
arguments that the media expects. To be clear, this is not to suggest that quantitative data cant
reveal complex and nuanced stories, but the basic information that the media has tended to lead
with is not what our project has collected. In most cases, media members have been incredibly
patient with us and let us tell our story with all of its indeterminacy and ambiguity. For our part, we
keep trying to find new ways to explain what it is that were doing and what weve learned, and
keeping it focused enough to appear in a <1000 newspaper article or a <5 minute soundbite.
414
6. Man Camp Dialogues. Lately, Richard Rothaus and I have talked a bit about an archaeology of
care (listen to Richard muse about it in our podcast a couple of weeks ago). An archaeology of care
involves our being present and listening and observing which communicates to communities an
interest in their lives and their challenges and offers them a kind of affirmation that their experiences
are worthy of study and remembering.
415
Our engagement with members of the Killdeer community was particularly rewarding as the
community was willing to share their impressions of life as neighbors to workforce housing sites.
The most interesting comments involved dismay that some communities have resisted the
construction of workforce housing in their midst and genuine questions why this might be the case.
A few talked about the challenges faced at schools which have to constantly adapt to the ebb and
flow of students who follow their parents to the Bakken. Others offered some challenges to our
argument for the possibility of workforce housing sites becoming new, long-term settlements in the
Bakken observing that conditional zoning laws will make it difficult for these communities to persist
after the boom abates. The willingness of this community to discuss openly the opportunities and
challenges that they face during the Bakken Boom revealed a sensitive, intelligent, and sophisticated
approach to understanding the workforce housing situation. More than that, they ran strongly
counter to the oft-repeated stereotype of North Dakota communities being hostile, unwelcoming, or
even distrustful of the influx of outsiders arrived to work long hours in the oil patch.
416
I think I can summarize a good bit of my trip to the Bakken over six points. The first three, Ill offer
today and the last three, Ill offer up tomorrow:
1. Less Optimism. I traveled the man camps without our oral historian/ethnography Bret Weber
this weekend so I didnt do formal interviews (I do not have people skills, and Bret usually deals
with people so that the archaeologists dont have to.) But I did chat with folks as I wandered the
man camps, and the former optimism about the boom has certainly diminished some. A few folks
told me that they werent sure what the summer would be like, when production and construction
projects have traditionally increased, and others said, frankly, that there were planning to head home
and the boom was over. One guy even admitted to being trapped in the Bakken as his house was
rented out until the end of the summer and he could no longer get enough hours to earn enough
money to make it worth his while to stay in the Bakken.
2. More Development. For some reason this past visit to the Bakken, I was struck by the expansive
character of development in Watford City and the plans for growth in Killdeer. In our first trip out
to the patch, Bret and I mused about the two edge sword of the rapid development of permanent
housing in the Bakken. On the one hand, getting your workforce out of temporary housing increases
the chance that high-(economic)-value, community minded families stay in oil patch towns even
after the oil runs out. On the other hand, it puts long-standing and often-conservative communities
on the hook for costly expansions to local infrastructure. Its interesting to observe how quickly the
economic realities of the boom can change and how temporary workforce housing may still
represent the most dynamic and flexible way to keep pace with the challenges of the boom.
417
418
Second, most RV parks remove abandoned RVs from their lots and dump them at the margins of
the park to make the lot available for the next resident. More frequently, it would appear, that
previous residents pulled their RVs out of their lots and moved on leaving behind various things.
The most common evidence for a recently departed RV is the tell-tale outline of insulation and
skirting left embedded in the ice around a unit. Extension cords buried in ice, sewage and water
419
hoses, and household trash strewn about typically indicates a recently departed unit. In some cases,
stack of insulation, shipping pallets, and other pieces of scrap, broken or difficult to recycle things
litter the ground. When considerable insulation is left behind, it suggest that the residents departed
the Bakken for warmer climes.
420
Third, in many of the better maintained RV parks, clean and tidy lots stood alongside abandoned
RVs and lots showing signs of recent abandonment. The objects left behind were either removed
from the RV park entirely, dumped around the edges for the part for reuse, or scavenged from the
site and reused. While I was documenting several abandoned trailers, a resident at the park was
collecting some material for shelves from a small pile scrap wood neatly stacked at the end of a
vacated lot. The same resident told me that he was going to stack some scavenged insulation and
plywood back on an existing pile of wood at another vacant lot so he didnt lose his deposit. Clearly,
abandonment practices demonstrate a number of strategies from the outwardly profligate
abandonment of an RV and its contents to the incredibly tactical practices of daily reuse.
421
422
WikiLeaks, Text, and Archaeology: The Case of the Schyen Incantation Bowls.
On our podcast yesterday, we discussed a recent article in Atlantic Monthly called What
ISIS Really Wants. Heres a thoughtful response.
This is what happens if you ask for corrections to a story that are designed to obfuscate the
real damage done by oil and gas producers in North Dakota.
That cool, but cut, solo by George Harrison from Here Comes the Sun.
What Im listening to: Phosphorescent, Live at the Music Hall; The Wave Pictures, If You
Leave it Alone.
423
Susie told me that Im part wolf. Why are you saying otherwise?
424
425
Note 1: Herrgotts Aunt is worth quoting: President Bush made a comment a week ago, and he
said, bring it on. They brought it on and now my nephew is dead.
Note 2: I didnt meet Col. Mansoor when we overlapped at the massive OSU. I met him while
working on a battlefield study of New Ulm, MN, his home town. If you dont think the world is
ruled by serendipity and The Ohio State University, you are mistaken. And we are fine with that.
Note 3: It looks like the Washington Post ran the Wax Museum Story on 8 July 2003, but Im not
100% sure.
427
Associate Dr. Richard M. Rothaus; Co-Primary Investigator William Caraher and Emily Guerin,
Inside Energys North Dakota reporter.
The North Dakota Man Camp Project has reached the point in development when it is ready to
engage in conversations to generate more questions and more insights, said Public Forum Project
Leader Tom Isern. We encourage the voices of those directly living the history of the Boom.
Everyone is welcome to contribute.
Man camp research shows similarities to towns and states historical agricultural and settlement
patterns Rothaus and Caraher have been touring man camps and documenting observations about
the camps environments. Some of their findings have been surprising, considering the often
underpopulated and underserved areas where the man camps are built.
Overall, they are pretty clean, said Rothaus. Not as clean as I would keep my yard, and there are
a few bad neighbors who are terrible slobs, but the camps are as clean as one can expect from
people working long hours with irregular services. The big camps, like Capital Lodge, are spotless.
Many man camps resemble other, if less temporary, communities in North Dakota. I think people
will be surprised to think about how temporary workforce housing sites are similar to small towns,
suburban subdivisions or even small cities that dot the landscape both here in North Dakota and
across the United States, said Caraher. The immediate impression of workforce housing might be
different, but once we peel back some stereotypes and look at what folks are really trying to do in
these settlements, well begin to see that things are more similar than different.
The Bakken Boom may encompass the largest and most dramatic industrial oil and gas activity that
many North Dakotans have witnessed and lived through. But, said researchers, crew camps have
always played a role in settling and developing the country, especially in the 19th-century American
West.
The continued development of this practice into the 21st century is hardly surprising as remote
locations like the sparsely settled counties of western North Dakota continue to pose logistical and
economic challenges for resource extraction, said documents generated by The Man Camp Project.
Clustered outside or around the fringes of the longstanding towns in the area, the temporary
settlements represent the practical needs of an itinerant workforce.
Boom not easy for anyone; public forum welcomes all Bakken voices Although Caraher and
Rothaus are quick to say their research doesnt provide answers, one thing they found is certain:
Along with great prosperity and opportunity, the Bakken Boom has also created human hardship
and societal challenges.
We all are living in a world thrust upon us, said Rothaus. Residents have an oil boom to contend
with, whether they want it or not. Oil workers, driven by economic necessity, have descended upon
a place they didnt know existed and struggle with the boom as well. Opinions about the boom vary
widely, but what we do share is the life experience of crowded stores, high prices, traffic and lots
and lots of people coming and going. Few would choose to do it this way, but we are all here
anyway.
429
Generating new avenues of research and helping people make informed decisions about the boom
in general and man camps specifically is the point of the March 8 public forum in Killdeer.
Our research was never meant to be the source of singular authority on workforce housing, but
part of the conversation, said Caraher. Wed like as many people in that conversation as possible!
Bill Flaget, president of the Dunn County Historical Society, agrees: This is an important
opportunity for Dunn County residents to learn about and comment on the effects that man camps
are having on their communities, he said. We are proud to work with the North Dakota
Humanities Council to bring this event to Dunn County.
This event is hosted by the Dunn County Historical Society and funded by the North Dakota
Humanities Council. It is free and open to the public. Refreshments served. To learn more:
http://heritagerenewal.org/mancamps/dialogues.htm and
https://www.facebook.com/events/335047293367044
430
In the second part of my two part review of the conference, I thought I would touch on some of my
key concerns as we continue to explore the potential of digital archaeology. Most of my critiques are
not focused on particular papers, but on the overall direction of digital archaeology as a form of
critical practice in the discipline. As they say, great conferences leave you with more questions than
answers, and I hope my comments below reflect this
1. Slow Archaeology. I tried to open a space for some critical engagement with my paper on Slow
Archaeology, but I fear that I mostly confused things. One benefit of having a blog is that I can
take a moment to clarify a few points. First, I was less concerned with the speed of archaeology than
my paper may have suggested. By invoking slow I attempting to shift the focus to the context of
archaeological practice and to interrogate the relationship between how we do things and why we do
things. So for me, slow meant critical practice which often, but not always takes more time.
Next, I tried to refer to the emphasis on the local in the slow movement. When we talk about slow
food, for example, were as likely to discuss the origins of the food as how long it takes to prepare it.
Slow food, despite its critical and practical limits, represents local cuisine, prepared with a sensitivity
to its economic, social, historical, and political context. By slow, I meant to shift our attention to the
entire processes of archaeology rather than just its convenience or efficiency. Finally, I made an
entirely unsuccessful effort to suggest that our investment in digital surrogates does have an effect
on the ancient objects that we study. To put it another way, we have opened a digital divide in our
discipline as we spend more and more time with digital objects standing in for physical objects and
contexts.
2. Its a Mac World. It was pretty remarkable to see the preponderance of Apple gear at this
conference. IPads remain the preferred tablet in the field and FileMaker Pro seems to have ousted
Microsoft Access as the relational database of choice among archaeologys digital elite. This got me
thinking about how much the tools that we use and our relationship to particular manufacturers
shapes our approaches.
431
3. The Digital Divide. At the very end of the conversation several of us bantered a bit about the cost
of digital archaeology. One speaker suggested that digital tools should cost around 10% of the total
budget of a project; another suggested that if I project couldnt afford iPads, maybe they shouldnt
be excavating; and another person noted the trend of B.Y.O.T. (bring your own technology). I
recognized that it was the end of a long and intense day, but nothing revealed more about the role of
digital practices in archaeology than the very evident divide between projects who prioritize
investment and development of digital tools and those that do not. This seems to have manifest
itself not so much in the use of digital tools per se, but in whether we take the time to articulate the
significance of these tools in our archaeological workflow.
4. The Politics, Products, and Policies. I was a bit disappointed that there wasnt more discussion of
the rapidly evolving policies in host countries regarding the digital output of archaeological projects.
As several of our presenters pointed out, in passing, many indigenous communities, local
governments, and government agencies lack the infrastructure to access and manipulate the most
robust and complex archaeological datasets. Moreover, as digital surrogates of sites and objects
become more complex and precise (for lack of better terms), archaeologists are increasingly able to
take highly accurate copies of buildings and objects abroad for study in a way that they could never
manage with physical artifacts. I was curious to understand more about how these trends might
effect the politics of a archaeological work and our responsibilities to local communities, host
countries, and our discipline.
5. Context is Everything. I was really excited about the range of digital tools and practices on display
the conference. The best papers clearly demonstrated how digital practices solved particular
problems real problems that existed in traditional field practices. The most obvious problems
were the most simple: the fragility of paper documents, difficulties accessing dispersed character of
archaeological field archives, or inconsistencies of traditional data collection. Less obvious at the
conference were examples of digital tools solving the interpretive problems at the core of
archaeological practice. I found myself asking (in my own head mostly because people got pretty
sick of hearing me talk), how did these digital tools help you to understand the past better? Eric
Poehlers paper came close to this, for example, when he showed how a suite of digital tools
revealed the presence of a polygonal structure in the middle of Pompeiis famed Quadraporticus.
Many of the other papers, however, seem to have started with the less focused issue of whether it
was possible to do archaeology better. As I mentioned yesterday, I left the conference feeling like it
was possible to do archaeology differently, but without understanding the particularities of each
project, I struggled to understand how digital tool engoodened our field practice. Without taking
anything away from the fun and utility of experimenting and play in an archaeological context,
context remains everything even in the realm of digital solutions. Greater efficiency is not an
archaeological problem.
6. What is Data? This simple question led my back to work of the R.G. Collingwood. Whatever his
limitations are, he makes a simple point: for the historian and archaeologists, evidence (or data)
never exists on its own, but must be data or evidence for something. In Collingwoods mind,
evidence or data must provide a way to answers a question.
Now I recognize that archaeologists have an obligation to do more than dig a hole in whatever way
is most efficient in order to find an answer to a question. Much of the methodological turn in the
discipline has emphasized the need to answer questions responsibly and to strike the balance
between the destructive character of archaeological practice and the need to collect evidence for
432
particular questions. At times, however, archaeologists have confused the importance of data
collecting with the importance of question answering. If our goal as archaeologists is to collect all
possible information from a trench in the confidence that we can reconstruct the relationship
between all objects (natural and man made) displaced by our excavation, were bound to be
disappointed. In fact, Mediterranean survey archaeologists have long been accused of
Mediterranean Myopia in which the intensity of data collection impairs our ability to answer
questions on a regional scale.
I left the conference wondering whether the digital turn in Mediterranean archaeology could
continue to exaggerate these problems as improvements in efficiency and accuracy are relatively lowhanging fruit in comparison to difficult task of wresting meaning from the data collected. Our goal
as archaeologists is not to reconstruct the entire ancient world or even the processes that created an
archaeological deposit, but to answer particular and specific questions relevant to our modern
condition. Archaeological excavation is destructive and all recording practices fragment a unified
whole. Archaeologists reconstruct this fragmented whole not as it once was in the ground or in the
past, but as it has meaning to us as an answer to a particular question.
433
Since my notes and comments on the conference are pretty expansive, I think Ill break it into two
posts. The first group of observations today are the positive things that I learned at the conference.
The observations tomorrow will be a bit more probing and critical, but nevertheless a positive
outcome from the conference:
1. Collegiality. The level of collegiality at this event was remarkable. There was a genuine effort to
make the various projects, programs, and approaches presented talk to one another. Folks even
made a genuine effort to bring my (perhaps overstated) luddite critique into the fold and to engage
seriously the ideas and issues that I was attempting to explore. In fact, outbursts of apologizing
punctuated the event as scholars let their passion for various approaches and platforms slide toward
critique, but these apologies were never really necessary. It is clear that that an overwhelming sense
of respect and academic humility permeates the entire digital archaeology community.
2. Paper is technology. This was a key refrain that echoed through many of the papers. The
technology of paper notebooks and recording forms shaped the social structure of archaeology and
the structure of the information collected at trench side. Digital tools offer new models for both
archaeological organization and new methods of information collection. Our generation of
archaeologists will be the last to remember (or continue to use) paper to collect information in the
field at any significant scale and the kind of information that archaeologists collect, analyze, and
archive will start to diversify digitally mediated 3D models, video, mass photography, and
illustrations become the norm. John Wallrodts key note set the stage for this conversation and
presenters used it as a constant point of reference.
3. Archaeology and Design. Chris Motz presented one of my favorite papers at the conference. One
of the most obvious things that a guy like Motz brought to infield data recording was a sense of
design. His elegant forms on the iPad led the archaeologist through the process of constructing an
comprehensive and consistent infield dataset. For example, filling in the digital recording form
434
produced an illustration of the physical tag that the archaeologist would copy onto the paper tag
attached to the artifact bag. This simple tag design then continued through the entire digital
workflow integrating the digital and physical records of field work. Likewise, consistent icons,
colors, and other visual cues provide structure for the recording workflow and, presumably,
improved the efficiency by visually demonstrating the relationship between certain data sets.
4. Bringing Data in the Field. A few of the papers discussed the intriguing potential of bringing both
project data as well as secondary publications into the field. I could immediately appreciate the
advantage of having the full data set of a project in the field at our finger tips especially in dynamic
visual forms could provide field teams with valuable information that would lead to better decision
making. More than that, it offers the possibility of overlaying earlier views of the landscape, site, or
trench to complicate (in a productive way) what the archaeologists sees.
5. Publication Options. Presentation by Eric Kansa of Open Context, Michael Ashley of Mukurtu,
and Shawn Ross of FAIMS demonstrated the publication of archaeological data is keeping up with
our ability to generate it. FAIMS and Mukurtu, in particular, demonstrate how publication can exist
as part of the same workflow as data generation in the field. It seems clear to me that a major fork in
digital archaeology involves an integrated workflow from trench side to data publication within a
robust (and dynamic) application.
6. Bespoke. By the end of Saturday, the word bespoke was being used to describe both applications
and particular data structures made within those applications. The era of standardized data models is
well and truly over and digital archaeologists have come to recognize that no matter how similar two
data sets appear, comparing them in the most productive way remains a process best accomplished
within the infinitely flexible context of the human mind. What digital archaeology can do, however,
is to demonstrate relationship between data sets and assist in hypothesis building. The messy act of
comparison as a step toward understanding remains a human endeavor.
7. Data and Efficiency. It was unsurprising that so many projects discussed how digital tools
improved the accuracy and efficiency of data collection in the field. Indeed, some of the papers
presented some outstanding of examples of streamlined recording and John Wallrodts keynote
imagined a new, digitally mediate, structure of field work that would perhaps be more at home in
CRM environment than an academic project. Despite such assertions of efficiency and the commonsense appearance of improved workflow, there were almost no arguments that used evidence from
actual field practice to show how great an improvement digital archaeology actually managed.
Informal conversations at the event made clear that such data likely exists, but none of the
presenters deployed it during their at the conference.
More tomorrow as I need to scurry off and catch up on my day job
435
Adventures in Podcasting 3
February 26, 2015
https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2015/02/26/adventures-in-podcasting-3/
Richard and I have released our third podcast this morning. If youve missed the first two go here
and enjoy and check out the show notes here.
This one was edited by Richard and is probably our best so far. We talk about abandonment in the
Bakken, the speed of modern society, and whether academia funding models can keep up with the
rapidly changing modern world.
Caraheard Season 1, Episode 3: Richard and Bill talk about Bakken abandonment and speed in
academia
Richard also prepared extensive show notes:
Season 1, Episode 3 brings you:
A question from a listener! Richard talks more about how to document structures using HD
video.
Man Camps are emptying? Is the boom over? (No). Is the bust here? (No). What do we
learn from the abandonment of some camps.
How to be a capitalist spend all your extra money on chasing earthquakes or audiophilic
delights.
Faculty now have to work for a living this has changed things.
Richard says tenure is crippling, says age-discrimination may be real, and suggest faculty
may be bored (as the listeners may be with this section).
What does moving out mean in a Man Camp what did Richard see in his last visit?
Interviewing Man Campers, finding the edge, and abusing graduate student Aaron Barth.
Man Camp Talk at Killdeer (not Dunn Center like we said): 8 March 2015, Killdeer, High
Plains Cultural Center
The History of Presence, why we are welcomed when we pry into Man Campers lives and
how our Man Camp project (and similar projects) help people in unexpected ways.
For your viewing pleasure, here is some of the high definition video from the Fox Run RV
Park, Williston, N.D.: Fox Run High Def Video Transect
One benefit of viewing this in YouTube is you can enjoy the slider effect. Once the video has
loaded, you can drag the video backward-and-forward to find the structure you want to see.
YouTube, understandably gives you a low resolution preview as you slide. So download the actual
video file (compressed, so imagine higher resolution). If you load the file into your favorite media
player, you will notice you dont get a preview (or a good preview) as you slide back and forth. What
436
you need to use is a video editor to see the slide in all its glory. Windows users, get Window Movie
Maker. Mac users, find the equivalent.
An evocative and manipulative video of an abandoned trailer: ND ManCamp Winter
The Alec Soth video that defines your emotions with music and annoys Richard: Sweet Crude Man
Camp
from Little Brown Mushroom
An earthquake photo from Glck, Turkey
437
Finally, were thinking a bit about branding and now have a snazzy Caraheard website, and are
beginning to think about how best to disseminate these podcasts moving forward. Any opinions or
advice would be great!
438
439
440
441
the media especially when were asked to make changes to our lifestyles to accommodate the newest
scientific finding. To put it personally, I want people to be REALLY sure about climate change
before I give up my Ford F-150.
Most of the time, those of us not steeped in the most recent scientific research have to make
decisions based on a certain amount of faith in the scientific processes. In a recent series of blog
posts (part 1, part 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, part 3, part 4) on expertise over at Parttime Audiophile, Scot Hull
ruminated on how difficult it was to understand expertise and to identify experts among audiophiles.
Hull finished his impressive series of essays with the conclusion that most audiophiles rely on
aesthetic judgements to declare a product good or bad. At the same time, he concedes that
there is a science to audio, and good and bad equipment does related to good or bad
engineering practices. And, often times, the good or bad engineering and good or bad scientific
measurements coincide with the aesthetic judgement of reviewers. This is not always the case, of
course. Poorly engineered gear is rather less likely to sound good than good sounding gear is to be a
paradigm of rigorous engineering.
The ambiguous reality at the intersection of measurement, engineering, and aesthetics is hardly
satisfying to those of us whose very concept of society is grounded in the authority of science to
help us make important social, political, and economic judgements. After all, how is it possible for
us to trust science in some vitally important areas of our life and ignore it in others?
The result of this kind of ambiguity is predictable. People get angry, and on the internet this anger
often quickly escalates to irrational fury. This is typically most visible among audiophiles when
debating high resolution audio, the value of cables or various room correcting devices. On the one
side of the conversation are those who often argue using engineering and science that high
resolution audio, $2000 speaker cables, or various acoustic gewgaws do nothing to improve our
sound quality and our listening experiences. On the other side of the debate, are people who insist
on the greatest high resolution standard, wire their systems with cables the size of my wrists, and can
understand (frankly) the latest digital room correction technologies. Both sides claim science
supports their perspectives and the other side is selling unscientific snake oil.
The arguments are generally dull. And, if these arguments remained confined to audiophile forums
and ended with both sides dismissing the other as fools, we might simply overlook them.
Recently, however, these arguments usually escalate to something more when the internal wrangling
of audiophiles becomes public fare. Audiophiles are attacked as arrogant elitists who lord their tastes
over the common man. It is not enough to attack their taste, however. For justice to prevail,
ordinary folks must demolish the foundation of their tastes and disclose that the emperor is, indeed,
naked. The goal of these attacks is to eliminate the basis for a perceived audiophile elitism and
return the listening world to a kind of equality where democratic opinions can thrive. No longer will
some arrogant audiophile lord the supposed superiority of his or her system over iPods, phones, or
other affordable media players. Taking down some audiophile conceit is a win for democracy!
Why are audiophiles, in particular, the object of such scorn? On the one hand, I have detected some
of the same anger directed against athletes who swear by gear, supplements, or training techniques
of dubious scientific value. On the other hand, we dont usually see folks arguing that their 1992
Honda Civic is every bit as good as a 2015 Ferrari FXX-K. I suspect the distain shown audiophiles,
in particular, comes from three things.
443
First off, audiophiles are a minority and have perpetuated a steep learning curve to participate in
audiophile conversations. As I have argued elsewhere, most of this the language used in the
audiophile media is specialized and as a result, exclusionary. Most people do not have access to
audiophile quality components: there are relatively few high-end audio stores in the U.S. and the
brands associated with the hobby are unfamiliar. Our encounter with the hobby and high-resolution
sound is typically through the media. In other words, for most of us, encountering high-end audio is
not a first hand experience (and this includes many audiophiles!), but encountered through other
folks descriptions of how gear sounds. Some audiophiles can compare these descriptions to their
own authentic experiences, but this requires that one has heard a good bit of gear and understands
the language used to describe various kinds of gear. As I have argued elsewhere, the language of the
audiophile media represents formidable barrier dividing the world into into those who get it an those
who dont.
Second, the defining quality of audiophile equipment is the experience that its provides. Since in
most communities, it remains challenging to find high end audiophile systems much less listen to
it over a sustained period of time people are fundamentally unfamiliar with the experience of high
performance audio. Of course, people are generally unfamiliar with the experience of high
performance cars as well, but cars and other luxury commodities that offer rarified experiences have
more accessible aesthetic qualities. Cars are highly visible design studies and a series of numbers
(quarter-mile times, 0-60 times, skid pad figures, or even lap times) represent more accessible
surrogates for automotive performance. So folks will argue over whether a Porsche or a Ferrari is a
better car, but they rarely argue about the fundamental validity of the criteria used to compare them.
They have different styles that might appeal to different tastes, but their performance figures can be
readily compared.
Finally, audiophile stereo equipment is not only discussed in exclusionary language and difficult to
access and experience (even through available surrogates) but it also tends to be expensive.
Audiophile gear smacks of economic elitism and nothing disrupts the placid life of contemporary
democracy like visible symbols of economic inequality.
This short column argued that some the anger present in audiophile forums derives from the
uneven distribution of scientific knowledge among audiophiles. Like the anger directed at folks who
who do not vaccinate, who deny climate change, who believe in so-called evolution, or who insist
the gravity does not effect them, most people lack the training in science and engineering to
challenge the scientific claims made by audiophiles and their opponents. This is profoundly
undemocratic. Its simply unfair that everyones opinion and methods for understanding the world
are not equally valid.
Anger toward audiophiles often comes from practices used by those in the hobby to distinguish
those inside the hobby from those outside the hobby. Particular language, access to the experience
of high end equipment, and, of course, economic privilege likewise appear to undermine the
universal experience of music.
So next time we read an irate comment on an audiophile blog or read about a scientistic A/B test
that proves your favorite cable, component, or format is really no better than than listening to the
neighbors internet radio through a closed window, take a moment to remember that most people
are not arguing about sound, engineering, or technologies. Theyre arguing for freedom.
444
445
3D Athena Nike!
I am shocked that the Bible Lands Museum could be at the center of controversy.
On a similar note, Zane Lowe is leaving the BBC for Apple, which will not necessarily help
the situation noted here.
What Im reading: Timothy LeCain, Mass Destruction: The Men and Giant Mines that
Wired America and Scarred the Planet. Rutgers University Press 2009.
What Im listening to: Father John Misty, I Love You, Honeybear; Phosphorescent, Live at
the Music Hall.
446
Is it playtime, NOW?
Whats up?
447
record next weeks podcast on Saturday, and Ill finally make my way back to the Bakken the first
week of March with the hope that I can manage a couple of days of field work.
3. Slow. This past week, North Dakota Quarterly volume 80, number 2 came out. I co-edited this
volume with Rebecca Rozelle-Stone and its dedicated to exploring the slow movement. Ive posted
on this rather extensively over the past year or so, so I wont go into great detail, but there are
compelling essays on the slow teaching movement, the slow church, and ways to simplify life to gain
better focus on things that matter.
Id urge anyone who is interested to subscribe to the Quarterly here or drop me a line and Ill send
along my slow archaeology contribution.
449
450
associated with longstanding disciplinary practices as well as the New Archaeology in the 1970s
represents an effort to distinguish the tool used to document modernity from our deep disciplinary
commitments to archaeology as a modern discourse.
452
As I played with this a bit more, Ive come up with three things that I want to do:
1. Find Interesting Content. The great thing about the little magazine tradition is that it provided
folks with a platform for sustained comment on events of their time. The sometimes motley group
453
of faculty who had come to UND and the Red River Valley were not timid in expressing their views
of the world and their institution. As a result, the comments offered in the early issues of NDQ have
a tendency to be both sweeping in perspective and historically relevant
2. Design. I am not a graphic designer. In fact, Im not even very good at using Illustrator, InDesign,
or Photoshop, but I recognize the value in todays hyper-visual culture to making an attractive
product. The original layout and design of the NDQ is staid and simple, so I tried to maintain the
spirit of that practice. I reset the text in Doves Type to add some craft like flair to it. I also tried to
make the cover more graphically inviting (and used official colors of the University of North Dakota
on the NDQ logo to emphasize the immediate relevance of this issue to the University).
3. Add Context. For the two offprints that I have prepared recently, Ive added a short introduction
exploring the context for a particular offprint. This not only allows the reader to understand some of
the language and ideas that might seem out of date and impolitic, but also reinforce the relevance of
a particular piece for our contemporary world.
So, here is my second reprint. It is an article from NDQ 7.4 (1917) by John Morris Gillette titled:
The University in the Service of Society : View this document on Scribd
Ive also started working on a larger reprint project that will bring together ten articles on The Great
War from the 1916, 1919, and 1920 volumes of NDQ. My romantic goal is to drop this content
next November 11th (Veterans Day), but I get impatient!
Heres my tentative table of contents:
I. Introduction
1. One Hundred Years of Peace (NDQ 6)
O. G. Libby,
Professor of History
University of North Dakota
2. The Background of the Great War (NDQ 8)
O. G. Libby
Professor of History
University of North Dakota
3. The Universities and the War (NDQ 8)
George R. Davis
Assistant Professor of Sociology,
University of North Dakota
II. The University of North Dakota and the War
4. Medical Students and the Draft (NDQ 8)
H.E. French
Professor of Anatomy and Dean of the School of Medicine
University of North Dakota
5. War Experiences of a University Student as a Doughboy (NDQ 10)
454
Wesley R. Johnson
6. An Alumnus of the University Who Did Not Get Across (NDQ 10)
William H. Greenleaf
Secretary Alumni Association
University of North Dakota
7. Experiences of a University Woman Over There (NDQ 10)
Hazel B. Nielson
8. The Work of Institutions of Higher Education (NDQ 10)
Orin G. Libby
Professor of History
University of North Dakota
III. Afterward
9. The University and National Progress (NDQ 9)
Bartholomew John Spence
Professor of Physics
University of North Dakota
10. After the War What? (NDQ 8)
Hugh E. Willis
Professor of Law
University of North Dakota
If you want to encounter the horror of The Great War first hand (actually, the horror of any war),
read over the in memoriam for students and alumni of UND.
455
complicates the notion of a single archaeological object. The elusive character of digital objects
provides a convenient point of departure for interrogating the dynamic role of the artifact within our
discipline.
Readers of this blog know that Ive been fooling around with objects and artifacts for the last couple
years. Some of this has come from my interest in slow archaeology which focuses on the
relationship between archaeologists and their various objects of study. Some of my interest has
come through punk archaeology which, among many other things, seeks to defamiliarize the viewer
from their modern material world. And, finally, some of this comes from my interest in digital
practices in archaeology which have the potential as this very recent article makes clear to disrupt
how we think about the physicality of archaeological artifacts.
In fact, my paper seeks to challenge the view that physical artifacts matter in 21st century
archaeology. Almost any practicing archaeologist recognizes that most of our time is not spent
fondling tenderly some ancient object, but pouring over digitized, aggregated, and pixelated data. As
a result, the fundamental experience of archaeological discovery has moved from the trench side or
survey unit to the laboratory, library, or office. This is not suggest that we dont need ancient
artifacts to do our work, but rather to point out that any search for agency in the networks of
meaning that link archaeologists (or the general public) to artifacts should focus as much on the
media through which artifacts acquire meaning as the physical reality of the artifact themselves. By
focusing on the media through which artifacts manifest themselves in archaeological work, we can
bring new attention to the objects that make archaeological knowledge possible. Frequently, the
objects that produce archaeological knowledge are computers and various portable, data collectors
(cameras, GPS units, 3D scanners) that serve to articulate ancient artifacts in various contexts
meaningful to the archaeologists gaze.
457
Before moving onto our weekend reading, a couple of advertisements for myself. First, Visions of
Substance: 3D Imaging in Mediterranean Archaeology is now available at the low, low price of
$17.95. Theres almost no reason not to buy it now (unless you already have it for free). Yesterday,
Richard Rothaus and I released our second podcast in our ongoing adventures in podcasting.
The prodding of an ancient coin collector who compared the AIA to ISIS yielded this
response. The internets can be a cruel place, but considering the amount of revenue that ISIS is
generating from that guys hobby, I think his critic was probably meant ironically.
Even the Neolithics loved hugs. (Sensitive Neolithic thugs, yall need hugs.)
I met Karen Kopacz last night at the Plains Art Museum. Her project seemed pretty
cool. Heres a link to her blog.
Expensive vase donated to UND. If I found something like that, Id auction it off and
donate the proceeds to the St. Louis AIA society.
One of my favorite little brands, Schiit Audio, has been documenting the story of company
on a head-fi thread. Heres what they say about dealing with Amazon. (By the way, people who click
on this link might be interested to know that theyre selling some b stock and close-outs on
their site (scroll down to the bottom of the product list). This company never has sales, so if youre
looking to get into the reasonably priced world of high end audio, this may be the way to do it.)
458
What Im listening to: Chick Corea, Trilogy; Viet Cong, Viet Cong.
459
Adventures in Podcasting 2
February 12, 2015
https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2015/02/12/adventures-in-podcasting-2/
Richard Rothaus and I got a nice trickle of positive feedback on our first podcast, so we decided to
do another.
As youll hear, were still trying to get the medium sorted out and things like pushing the record
button seem to demand a kind of attention to detail that is pretty hard to muster (sometimes), but
we somehow managed to produce another episode of the Caraheard podcast.
This episode was prompted by a tweet made by Scott Moore in his guise as the official
@MobileArc15 Mobilizing the Past for a Digital Future Conference tweeter.
Caraheard Season 1, Episode 2: Richard and Bill talk about archaeological technologies
We have a few little show notes today to enhance your listening:
For a bit more on the Dycam Digital Camera go here.
Heres a link to the Brandon Olson, Jody Gordon, Curtis Runnels, and Steve Chomyszak article in
the Journal of Lithic Technology 39 (2014) on 3D-printed lithic reproductions. For a shorter, free
summary of this article, download our short edited book: Visions of Substance: 3D Imaging in
Mediterranean Archaeology.
For some information on XRF go here.
And for some details on the famous Orb Drive, read this.
460
Lives, Land, and Labor in Bakken at the Plains Art Museum in Fargo
February 12, 2015
https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2015/02/12/lives-land-and-labor-in-bakken-at-theplains-art-museum-in-fargo/
If youre down in Fargo this evening and want to step out, check out the IdeaExchange program on
Lives, Land, and Labor in the Bakken at the Plains Art Museum. To register, go here.
This program is in conjunction with their ongoing Bakken Boom! exhibit which Ive blogged about
here.
461
462
The biggest reason that it is my favorite paperless archaeology application is that Microsoft Word
had become more and more painful for me to use. I did not like long documents, I found the menus
distracting and unintuitive. It was unstable (at least on the Mac). And I found it fugly.
The downsides of using Scrivener are familiar to anyone active in the digital world. It does not save
to an archival format, it is a commercial application, and is not quite smoothly compatible with many
mainstream citation software (like, for example, Zotero). It does not easily support file sharing
between collaborators which is probably its most substantial draw back. It really is a solo writing
application. Finally, Scrivener is not the place to do final formatting for a manuscript. When youre
done your Scrivener project, you export it as an .rtf file and open it in Word, hold your nose, and
finish the formatting there.
The general public tends to understand archaeology as simply fieldwork and paperless archaeology
sometimes tends to be limited to integrating digital tools into work at trench side or in the survey
unit. In reality, these trench side tools are just one stage in a larger digital ecosystem that begins with
data collection and ends with the publication of analysis and the publishing and archiving of data.
Scrivener is my favorite application in that process.
463
The second part of the paper argues that we have come to rely on an increasingly complex digital
ecosystem to pull these fragments of archaeological information back together. This is a shorter
section that suggests archaeologists have gone ahead with data collection methods in the field
without necessarily thinking about how the results of this work will be published or archived. My
easy case study is the rapid expansion of 3D imaging technologies which capture in highly accurate
and efficient ways spatial relationships in the field, but so far have no become commonplace in
archaeological publications and require careful consideration for archiving.
464
This sets up my final part of the paper, which I reproduce here because it is more speculative and
unconventional:
The final part of my paper today is the most speculative and perhaps the most unconventional. I
want to appeal to arguments made for the relationship between time and space in a digital world. So
far Ive argued that digital methods are part of a larger trend to seek efficiency and speed by parsing
tasks more finely. These practices have gone a long way to solve the practical problems associated
with limits in time, funding, expertise, and workforce and reflects century-long trends in industry,
academia, and even archaeological methodologies. At the same time, the ways in which we have
implemented digital tools in archaeology has complicated our efforts to reconstructing the
archaeological context of our excavations (or survey units) and ultimately the past. Id like to try to
argue or at very least suggest that the quest for efficiency (and speed) has had a concomitant
effect on how we understand archaeological context and space.
To make this argument, I appeal to work of geographers like David Harvey (pdf) who describe a
phenomenon called time-space- compression. For Harvey, the increase in speed has resulted in
the annihilation of space by time. Ill apply his complex arguments in a rather loose way to
archaeology, but I think we can mostly agree that one of the ways in which digital practices have
increased the efficiency of field work is by moving the place of analysis from the side of the trench
to the storeroom, the laboratory, the library or the faculty office. Field work becomes focused on
data collection, primarily, and the understanding of those data collected can take place not only at
another time, but most often, in another place.
To do this, we have become increasingly attached to digital surrogates (to use Adam Rabinowitzs
term) for archaeological artifacts. I use the term artifact quite broadly here to include both traditional
artifacts, like pot sherds, statue fragments, and architecture, and evidence for archaeological
relationships, like stratigraphy, soil descriptions, and other environmental data recorded over the
course of an excavation or survey. With the most recent advances in easy, cost effective, and
efficient 3D scanning as the organizers of this conference have helped to develop, it becomes
possible to transport a 3D model of an object back to their home institutions on a laptop computer.
Databases, scans of notebooks, photographs, and other digital records enable archaeologists to
reconstruct an artifacts archaeological context thousands of miles from the present location of the
physical object and even further from its origin (and I uses this word advisedly).
465
It would seem that the higher the resolution of our documentation, the greater the boon to the
archaeologist. To be clear, like most people in this room, I have found myself in my office cursing
some overlooked or misremembered detail invisible in photographs, descriptions, and even 3D
models. These moments of cursing, however, never fails to remind me that the original context of
the object matters, or, to evoke a slightly different discourse, provenience has value. Looted objects
are less valuable because the act of looting has rendered them out of place. Moreover, most people
in this room would agree that calls for the repatriation of artifacts whatever the modern political
context for such gestures is important because it enables us to understand the connection between
objects and their broader context. To bring all remaining fragments of the Parthenon Marbles
together within view of the Athenian Acropolis represents an effort to restore the building, its
sculptures, and Classical Athens to some kind of recognizable whole. Digital surrogates, plaster
casts, and scale models simply do not suffice.
This being said, I obviously recognize that excavation involves some kind of displacement. We
replace this displacement of soil and objects by establishing an archaeological context. This
archaeological context, however, has traditionally had a physical connection with the location of
excavation or survey. We tend to localize these archaeological contexts by connecting sites to
museums, artifacts to storerooms, and ensuring that appropriate archaeological authorities have final
reports, copies of notebooks, and even subsequent publications. Lectures, site tours, and other kinds
of outreach are becoming more and more common even at as site as visually unremarkable as ours
at Pyla-Koutsopetria. Like widely supported calls for repatriation, something about archaeology
remains unmistakably local.
This returns me, of course, to the larger lessons of slow archaeology. Because slow archaeology
resists the fragmentation of archaeological information for the sake of efficiency, it encourages us to
take the time to understand archaeological contexts in their entirety. This breaks down the boundary
between context (either geographic, archaeological, cultural, political, economic, spatial) and
archaeological object. It produces an archaeological that is more consistent with our current
archaeological ethics.
466
467
All my readers should subscribe (today!) to the North Dakota Quarterly. It has only as much to do
with North Dakota as you want and the fiction, essays, and poetry are absolutely first rate. Go here
to subscribe.
I think it looks pretty good considering I have no graphic design, print making, or type setting
experience:
View this document on Scribd
468
This is a nice overview of the dust up between the Archaeological Institute of America and
the St. Louis Society of the AIA.
This is an interesting find around the church of Ayia Thekla in southeastern Cyprus not far
from Pyla-Koutsopetria.
If you havent already, please go and listen the podcast that Richard Rothaus and I produced.
Some more on the fragments of Sappho and their strange and unfortunate history.
This is a nice piece on the complex relationships between diplomacy and antiquities.
Antarctic archaeology.
Heres a little follow up to my review piece of the Bakken Boom! exhibit in Fargo.
This comparison of Neil Youngs Pono and the iPhone is the worst.
What Im reading: Ctlin Pavel, Describing and Interpreting the Past: European and
American approaches to the written record of the excavation. Bucureti : Editura Universitii din
Bucureti, 2010.
What Im listening to: Half Japanese, Volume 2: 1987-1989 (Music to Strip by, Charmed
Life, The Band That Would Be King); Natalie Prass, Natalie Prass; The JBs, We are the J.B.s.
469
470
471
The book is good, in part, for the expected reasons. The contributors have firm grasp of significant
theoretical developments ranging from recent work on memory to agency theory, Heidegger, and
symmetrical approaches to things, but this is to be expected for a work like this. The contributors
also demonstrate a willingness to nudge the boundaries of the discipline. They document their
recently deceased fathers house, a German POW camp in northern Norway, urban graffiti, and
other sites that barely register in our personal awareness, much less disciplinary knowledge, as places
of interest. In the pages of a journal traditionally dedicated to Classical and Mediterranean
archaeology, this book will stand out as a curiosity probing the edges of disciplinary ways of
knowing and most of our (and here, Ill admit to my traditional training) theoretical envelopes. For
example, there was a chapter on the ethical treatment of objects that I had to skip over for the time
being. I was impossible to read and process on a short flight.
What struck me more about this book was the intensely evocative the images that the authors
conjured in their articles. Timothy J. LeCains work on the Berkeley Pit in Butte, MT is a great
example. He begins with a flock of snow geese that had strayed from their migratory course and
made the fateful decision to alight in the toxic waters of the Berkeley Pit (which apparently has the
Ph value of battery acid). Needless to say, the birds did not survive their miscalculation, but their
mistake lingered in the background of the entire article and drew me to consider long afterlife of
extractive industries, objects, and landscapes, which was perhaps less profound than impactful.
Elsewhere authors revealed the worlds of urban explorers, drifter, and children and considered the
capacity of marginal(ly familiar?) landscapes to provide meaningful places of social interaction,
economic development, and even personal growth (in the case of children and play). The vivid
images are both familiar and striking owing as much to the language and photographs of the authors
as the subjects themselves.
This got me wondering why this kind of magic seems (to me) so absent from Classical and
Mediterranean archaeology. This is not to say that my colleagues in the discipline cannot turn a fine
phrase, take an evocative photograph, and provide a moving narration, but, in general, our work
feels stuck in some kind of mid-20th century (charitably) scientistic discourse. My recently published
472
473
As I pondered this question and shot off a gut-feeling response: GIS. A few people tweeted back to
agree and some suggested other things: relational databases, statistical packages (SPSS), et c. Its hard
to disagree that these are important things for a budding (or experienced) archaeologist to know.
Archaeology programs, even in the most traditional areas of archaeology, are gradually ramping up
their offerings in both of these areas. Moreover, these areas are interrelated as they involve
understanding how data structures work with GIS simply being a database with a spatial component,
and most statistical programs being only as good as the data that goes into them.
At the same, I began to think about how working with data in archaeology has changed over the
past decade or so. The mastery of standard database applications (like Filemaker or Access) and GIS
(ArcGIS) remains useful, but is also barely enough to manage an archaeological workflow of any
complexity. Today, in field recording often leverages different technologies than the project uses to
process and analyze the data. Maps produced in GIS almost always derive from data collected using
a Total Station or, more frequently, a differential GPS unit. These data collectors each have their
own idiosyncrasies in both software and hardware. The growing interest in 3D imaging involves an
understanding both how to manipulate point clouds, wireframes, and photographic textures in
applications designed for the production of 3D images and how to integrate this data within existing
digital workflows. Publishing data either as part of a larger analysis or as a stand alone dataset
requires another set of skills as moving data collected in the field and analyzed by proprietary
software to an open format remains more complicated than necessary and still requires an
understanding of the digital ecosystem in a way that mastery of a single piece of software does not.
All of this is to say that our concept of a digital tool or a digital tool kit feels more and more
outdated. What archaeologists need today can no longer be limited to the concept of a tool (any
more than a carpenter can work with a single or even just a single set of tools), but involves a wide
ranging understanding of the archaeological data ecosystem that begins with trench or survey unit
scale data collection and extends to the publication and preservation of data.
Over the last six month, Ive read and reviewed a number of articles focusing on digital applications
in archaeology. One thing that has consistently alarmed me is that the authors fail to consider the
474
place of the new technology within existing digital ecosystems in practice or the discipline more
broadly. In other words, our view of digital archaeology should change from an appreciation of
individual tools to one focused on ecosystems. The former emphasizes the utility of a particular
application for a particular task or problem, while the latter prioritizes the place of any particular
application or process within a larger digital workflow that starts with trench side practices and
culminates in archival datasets.
Go and follow @mobilearc15 for more discussions like this and use the #mobilearc hashtag to
contribute both to the discussion and to the conference.
475
Some thoughts on the Bakken Boom Exhibit at the Plains Art Museum in Fargo
February 2, 2015
https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2015/02/02/some-thoughts-on-the-bakken-boomexhibit-at-the-plains-art-museum-in-fargo/
This weekend, I was able to hang out in the Bakken Boom exhibit down at the Plains Museum of
Art in Fargo. It took up the top two galleries in the Plains and featured over 20 artists from around
the U.S. I was fortunate enough to know a few of the artists whose work was on display making the
show a bit more intimate than an ordinary visit to a gallery. In particular, I was excited to see one
of Joel Jonientzs last works Chrie, tu vois quelque chose de nouveau ici? We also had a chance
to check out contributions by Kyle Cassidy and John Holmgren who are both collaborators in the
North Dakota Man Camp Project. My buddy Ryan Stander, who is now a professor of photography
at Minot State, also had some fascinating contributions to the exhibition including a visually
arresting print of the fire ball that emanated from the tanker train derailment outside of Casselton,
ND.
476
Rather than review the show, Id rather just encourage you to go and check it out, and offer a few
observations.
1. The Real and Documentary. One of my favorite things about the show is that is messed with our
collective view of what was real and what was documentary in the Bakken. Several documentary
photographers were represented including a series of Alec Soths photographs made famous by his
New York Times Magazine spread in 2013. The juxtaposition of these well-framed photographs
with the numerous mixed media pieces in the exhibit made them seem somehow detached, abstract
in their own way, and perhaps even a bit inauthentic. While most of approach critically the tradition
of literalism and even objectivity that frame the unwavering gaze of the camera, it was still quite
shocking to feel so jaundiced and skeptical about the photographic images in he show. I couldnt
quite figure out whether it was the complexity of the mixed media pieces that made them feel more
authentic and real, or whether I was lured into overlooking the complexity of the photographs by
the stares of the subjects.
2. Anxiety. The anxiety of the exhibit was palpable. I thought the frenetic character of many of the
mixed-media pieces created a kind of vibrating filter through which made the Bakken appear
constantly shaking, out of focus, and contingent. A video installation from the artist collective
Road to Williston provides a great example of this feeling some of which comes through just by
watching the video at their Vimeo site. Ryan Standers massive, fragmented print of the Casselton,
ND explosion, titled Missing Information likewise provided a feeling of angst as the flames billow
skyward over a series of panels leaving the viewer to search for its origins in the obscured tank cars
at the lower left. The archaeologically arranged discarded objects in Jess Christys Through the
Window designed to document her life as a single woman, living in Minot on the edge of the patch.
Her installation left me feeling particularly anxious as it communicated some of the impact of the oil
boom at a personal level.
477
3. Alternate Perspectives. One thing that was missing from the exhibit were perspectives that
considered the possible benefits of the oil boom in the Bakken. The images used frequently seem to
overlook (or maybe occlude?) the pre-Boom residents of the Bakken and to locate the Bakken boom
against the backdrop of a depersonalized pastoral landscape. (There were two pronounced
exceptions to this, Joel Jonientz piece and Sarah Christiansens haunting Skogens Bedroom
Window, Cartwright, ND, May 2013). The photographs from Wayne Gundersons Road
Conditions: Faces from the Patch blurs the line between locals and New North Dakotans,
without much explicit social comment. Lucinda Cobleys Last Tree and Molly McLains Gold
Boom/Critical Habitat strike ecological notes, that while obviously relevant, side step the trickier
question what and whose environment we should preserve.
478
I hope this critique doesnt make me sound like an advocate of big oil or an apologist for the
environmental, human, and social cost of extractive industries in the Bakken, but the potential for
positive outcomes does exist. The challenge, of course, is that these positive outcomes need to be
imagined. The contributors to this show demonstrate that the Bakken Boom has stimulated our
collective imagination is dramatic and exciting ways, I only wish that the show had reflected more
broadly on the stakeholders, possibilities, and future of the boom.
479
It is a little more expensive than I would have liked at $24.00, but still within the acceptable range
for academic books. Its in color.
480
And, while Id love for some folks to buy paper copies of the book and get them into their libraries.
Everyone can always enjoy the free, digital version.
481
482
factual information wrong. Thats why in real life, we revise, rewrite, revise, and rewrite, until we not
only get our facts right, but also get them organized in a useful way.
3. Less time. I spend a good bit of time marking up student papers. In general, I spend more time on
papers from students who require some remediation. To put it simply, a C paper requires a good
bit more time and energy than an A paper. Asking students to submit drafts means that I see far
more C papers than A papers over the course of a semester as first drafts of papers are almost
always less perfect than final drafts. (And, yes, there are exceptions to this in upper level and
graduate classes where truly exceptional students will push us to reassess how we understand our
field, but, in my experiences, this is the exception rather than the rule.)
Every semester at the university, Ive found myself with less and less time dedicated exclusively to
teaching. As my experience at the university increases, Im asked to take on more service
responsibilities, my research responsibilities continue to grow, and Im inexorably drawn to new
adventures. My teaching, in the meantime, holds station, and I feel more and more pressure to move
through stacks of drafts and make meaningful comments. Id never say that my standards have
slipped since my first semester teaching, but as my assignments have come increasingly to emphasize
the time consuming reality of managing process, Ive felt the time crunch.
When pressed for time, most faculty give the student the benefit of the doubt. When scrutinizing a
final draft of a paper and trying to determine whether it is an C or a B, if we feel the ticking
clock of other obligations, most faculty will err on the side of generosity and assign a B. Grades
creep.
4. More work. When faculty makes these decisions to award a B over a C, we do feel guilty! We
often look at a good paper and know that with a bit of time on our part and the students part, it
could be a great paper. Our justification for giving a grade on potential is tied both to an arbitrary
decision on our part (we only have so much time that we can devote to grading) and a sense of
confidence that the work done over the course of the semester represents a B effort.
An emphasis on process in a classroom with a diverse range of preparation requires us to create
courses where effort and improvement is part of what we evaluate for a grade. The more work we
assign, the easier it is to distinguish students who have earned a B from those who have earned a
C. Of course, see Point 3. The more work we assign, the less time we have to treat it critically.
Complicating the issue of students and faculty workload, there exists a reading and writing arms race
among a certain sect of faculty. Touting their olde skool values or coping with some kind of
childhood trauma, these faculty assign massive quantities of writing (and reading) to their classes,
and proudly declare their adherence to traditional values while bemoaning the hours of work
required to finish their grading. Most of us are confident enough in our approach to the classroom
that we can largely ignore these colleagues, but I suspect that their focus on writing more, reading
more, and grading more has had an impact on what we all do in the classroom. The more writing
there is to evaluate, the higher grades will creep as that work runs into the absolute limits of faculty
time.
To wrap up this somewhat rambling piece, grade inflation has occurred, at least in my hardly
scientific assessment, because students in our classrooms are less consistently prepared, and we have
shifted our pedagogy to focus more on process than expecting the classroom to achieve a single
484
common level of proficiency. As time pressure on faculty has increased in recent years and the focus
on process has unleashed a strange arms race among faculty to increase the amount of work in each
class, the tendency has been for grades to creep higher as increasing grading runs into the pressures
associated with accelerated workplace.
485
Late Roman Pottery on Kythera and Middle Byzantine Pottery from Thebes and Chalkis
January 26, 2015
https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2015/01/26/late-roman-pottery-on-kythera-andmiddle-byzantine-pottery-from-thebes-and-chalkis/
The most recent issue of the Annual of the British School at Athens is a treat! It contains an article
on the pottery from the site of Kastri on Kythera and a chemical analysis of the Middle Byzantine
Production pottery from the sites of Thebes and Chalcis. After the yesterdays election, it seems
appropriate to spend a little time thinking about Greece today.
Forty Years On: The Pottery from Historical Kastri Revisited by A. Johnson, K. Slane, and J.
Vroom re-examines some key depositions and assemblages at the site of Kastri on Kythera. This site
was originally excavated and published by J.N. Coldstream and G.L. Huxley in the early 1970s and
played a significant role in understanding the cultural and economic connections between Late
Bronze Age Kythera and Crete to its east. The site of Kastri, however, continued to be occupied
through the Medieval period, and the the long-running Kythera Island Project (KIP) reexamined the
historic period pottery from the Kastri excavations in light of recent research. Of particular interest
in this assemblage is the material from Late Roman and Medieval deposits.
The Roman and Late Roman material was studied by Kathleen Slane. Of particular interest to me
was the assemblage of African Red Slip and LRC (also known as Phocaean Red Slip) wares because
these types have often served as useful indicators of regional trade networks and tastes. The
presence of a remarkably robust assemblage of African Red Slip and a relatively common form of
late Late Roman C ware (LRC 10c) indicate that trade networks continued to function in the
Mediterranean well into the final decades of the 7th century. An earlier, but distinct Late Roman
phase included a nice group of 4th and 5th century sherds.
The later Late Roman material from this site is particularly interesting because it suggests that Kastri
participated in similar economic networks as the site of Corinth, Argos, Emporio on Chios,
and Sarahane. What is absent is any evidence for Cypriot Red Slip (LRD) wares which we have
come to understand continued to appear quite late (8th c?) and circulated as far as Crete and Chios
as well as on the island of Cyprus, the Levant, and southern Anatolia where is was likely produced.
Also absent were Cypriot produced Late Roman 1 amphoras, despite the regular contact between
Cyprus and eastern Crete. Because we know that African Red Slip is not uncommon throughout
Cyprus (and perhaps somewhat more common on the eastern part of the island) and even the latest
LRC wares appear across the island in substantial quantities, it would seem that the distribution of
LRD wares to sites on the Greek mainland and far western Aegean was rather less common. The
movement of ARS west to east is not shocking, of course, but the presence of LRC wares does
indicate movement of goods (at very least ceramics) east to west. The presence of some LR1
amphoras, probably from northern Syria or elsewhere in the Levant, further confirms the flow of
good west even in the 7th century. The absence of LRD would seem to be a matter of taste or
expense. Perhaps the ready availability of African Red Slips and some forms of LRCs drove out the
Cypriot Red Slip as it would seem occurred at some sites on Cyprus itself.
In the same volume is an article by S.Y. Waksman, N.D. Kontogiannis, S.S. Skartsis, and G.
Vaxevanis on the Middle Byzantine Production (MBP) pottery from the city of Thebes and its
port of Chalcis on Euboea. MBP is a group of pottery with green and brown glaze and sgraffito
decorations largely dating to the 12th and 13th century. Before I go on, a disclaimer. I am not a
486
ceramicist and my interest in Byzantine pottery production and circulation has largely been as a
spectator. Ive recognized the growing momentum over the last two decades to refine the current
chronology of Byzantine fine wares that circulated widely in Greece and the larger Eastern
Mediterranean. Waksman et al. conducted chemical analysis of fine ware of the MBP type from the
12th and 13th century context in the cities of Thebes and Chalcis. This study determined that
pottery from the two cities are distinct, and, more importantly, these two groups appear to be
manufactured locally based on comparisons with earlier locally made material from the region.
Identifying MBP as local to Thebes and Chalcis strengthens the growing impression that this region
was an productive economic center in the Middle Byzantine period. Weve recognized the city of
Thebes as an important political center with landed wealth (visible in the so-called Cadaster of
Thebes which dates a century earlier than the MBP group) and significant investment in silk and dye
trade. Now it would appear that Thebes and Chalcis were deeply involved in pottery production as
well. The MBP enjoyed a vast circulation with significant deposits appearing as far east as Cyprus
and the Levant and as far west as Lyon and Italy. The primary market for these types, however,
appears to be Aegean basin which scholars had long suspected as the production center for these
types.
The chemical difference between types associated with Thebes and those from deposits in Chalcis
indicates that Chalcis was more than just an emporium for the city of Thebes, but a thriving
production center in its own right. The significance of Chalcis as a production center is tied to the
production chronology MBP throughout from the end of the Middle Byzantine period (with its
attendant political disruptions) into the Frankish period where the Byzantine state largely ceased to
function in the Aegean basin. In its place emerged new economic (as well as political) networks that
leveraged existing production centers. For example, the production of ceramics at Chalcis benefited
from the close relationship with that city and Venice in the Frankish period. This relationship almost
certainly facilitated the distribution of MBP ceramics around the Mediterranean basin.
487
The Amphipolis tomb and Greek politics. As an important election looms, nothing is
irrelevant.
Papyrus, mummy masks, and cartonnage: a mummy, media, mystery! I think the idea of
using cartonnage as a way to launder papyrus purchased on the open market is ingenious and
disturbing.
For those of you who arent keep track. The St. Louis [soon to be formerly] AIA chapter did
this, so the AIA did this. This is a classic, oh no they didnt, oh yes they did situation.
A nice summary of digital and cyber-archaeology (that is archaeology conducted by and for
cyborgs) at the ASOR annual meeting.
The University of Sydneys Lego Pompeii does include Steve Ellis with an iPad.
A fantastic blog post on Punk Archaeology by Paul Mullins, and Andrew Reinhards paper
from the Punk Archaeology panel at SHAs.
Because Eric Clines book is not getting enough publicity, people are now reviewing the
reviews of the book.
Early Europeans apparently ate dogs and [honey] badgers. Archaeological evidence also
suggested that the honey badger dont care.
The Pantone color of the year is Marsala, and Andrew Reinhard is right in the thick of it.
Some neat stuff from a year with the North Dakota State Historical Society.
I have a blog post brewing about the reasons for grade inflation.
Atari: Game Over will be available on DVD on February 2nd, in plenty of time for
Valentines Day! Watch me say the word Strohs.
What Im reading: S.A. Harvey and D. G. Hunter eds., The Oxford Handbook of Early
Christian Studies. Oxford 2008.
488
489
Review of Mike Dixons Late Classical and Early Hellenistic Corinth, 138-196 BC
January 21, 2015
https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2015/01/21/review-of-mike-dixons-late-classical-andearly-hellenistic-corinth-138-196-bc/
I started this review about six months ago, and then a million and one things intervened. The review
is now done (just in time for me to get another book to review) and a working draft is at the end of
this post.
One thing that Dixons book did get me thinking about other than Corinth and the Corinthia is
the recent boom in interest in the Hellenistic world. When I was in graduate school, the next big
thing was Late Antiquity, and this was really the long tail of a small, but influential body of
scholarship in the 1970s and 1980s that inspired a generation of Late Antiquitists. These Late
Antiquitists, in turn, produced a generation of graduate students who finished their degrees in the
last decade of the 20th and first decades of the 21st centuries. Peter Browns The World of Late
Antiquity (1971) and the late antique contributors to Alexander Khazdans Oxford Dictionary of
Byzantium (1991) provide useful bookends to the formative phase in the development of Late
Antiquity as a boom field.
Im not as familiar with the develop of the Hellenistic world as a field, but my two main regions of
study have show and significant uptick in the number of dissertations and scholarship focusing on
the Hellenistic era. Much of the scholarship with which I am familiar is archaeological and I suspect
that Susan Rotroffs work has had a significant impact in our view of the archaeology of Hellenistic
Greece and Aegean. As far as Hellenistic Cyprus, there is an impressive cohort of freshly minted
Ph.D.s ready to write the history of this period on the island. If I was an investor in academic
futures, Id be all-in on the Hellenistics, right now.
So Dixons work represents the first in what will most likely be an impressive groundswell of
scholarship on Hellenistic Greece and Hellenistic Eastern Mediterranean more broadly. As such, it
should be seen as a useful bellwether.
View this document on Scribd
490
bewildering. Nicolaous short article takes an important first step in sorting out the evidence for
liturgical furnishings on Cyprus. Olivier Bonnerots work on the material used in wall mosaics adds a
material science dimension to this work, and as his base of evidence expands, we could imagine this
producing important understandings of the processes used to create Early Christian spaces.
4. Troodos. On Cyprus, the last frontier for understanding the Late Roman and Early Christian
period are the Troodos Mountains. Tassos Papacostas provides a key introduction to the
complicated situation of the mountains on Cyprus during Late Antiquity. While elsewhere in the
Eastern Mediterranean during this period, increasingly marginal lands are being used and settled, on
Cyprus, the Troodos mountains appear all but abandoned of significant (i.e. visible) settlement at
this time. What is strange is that Cyprus appears to be prospering during Late Antiquity and
settlement on the coastal plain expanding significantly. Moreover, recent work by intensive survey in
the Troodos demonstrates that mineral resources continued to be extracted from long-known veins
and the island contributed substantially to the increasing military requirements of the Late Roman
state. So why there are so few settlements in the Troodos remains unclear. Perhaps the 4th century
earthquake led to substantial population decrease or contraction of settlement leaving plenty of open
land available for Cypriots at the end of Antiquity. Perhaps land in the Troodos was used only
intermittently and seasonally leaving behind only very limited artifact scatters. Or perhaps, as
Papacostas suggests, the large urban areas along the southern coast represented the outlets for goods
from the mountainous interior and the economic centers of Cypriot settlement.
5. Early Byzantine and Late Roman Administrative Life. Charles Stewart and David Metcalf provide
insights into the administrative life on the island. Stewart provides a much needed survey of the Late
Roman fortifications on the island with special attention to the walls at Amathus, SalamisConstantia, and Carpasia. David Metcalf uses the evidence from sealings to demonstrate that the
island continued to be tied to the capital and Byzantine administrative structures even during the socalled Condominium period when the island was supposed to be under joint Byzantine and Arab
rule.
This volume deserves place next to Davis, Stewart, and Weyl Carrs Balance of Empires as a key
recent contribution to the study of Late Antique Cyprus. For scholars interested in the next big
thing, Id start clearing space for some volumes on the archaeology and history of Hellenistic
Cyprus.
492
As readers of this blog know, these contributions began as a series of 3D Thursday blog posts,
but soon took on a life of their own as citations in scholarly publications and reading assignments in
classes around the world. This volume consists of expanded and refined versions of many of the 3D
Thursday papers with a new introduction. We feel confident that this is the first accessible primer to
introduce both the theory and practice of 3D imaging in a Mediterranean and European
archaeology. This slim volume is ideally suited for classroom use particular in Mediterranean
archaeology classes which have tended to focus less on the technologies of archaeological work and
more on formal concerns.
Best of all, the book is available for free and open access. So, please, download a copy, share the link
to this page, and spread the word. Since The Digital Press at the University of North Dakota has no
marketing wing, no budget, and no staff (and makes no profit or money!), I need you, dear readers,
to help spread the word about our books. So please, tweet, Facebook, Ello, email, SMS, and
otherwise circulate a link to this blog post!
For those of you who prefer your books in all three dimensions, a paper copy is available on
Amazon for the low, low price of $24.
From the back of the book:
493
With the advent of low-cost and easy to use 3D imagining tools, the discipline of archaeology is on
the cusp of a major change in how we document, study, and publish archaeological contexts. While
there are a growing number of volumes dedicated to this subject, Visions of Substance: 3D Imaging
in Mediterranean Archaeology represents an accessible and conversational introduction to the theory
and practice of 3D imaging techniques in a Mediterranean and European context.
Original published as series of popular blog posts, the articles in this volume maintain their energetic
and approachable tone, but now have full citations and an expanded introduction.
View this document on Scribd
This is the second publication of The Digital Press at the University of North Dakota. The first
book, Punk Archaeology is available as a free download here and on Amazon.
494
cause) not going to eliminate all the challenges that publishers and editors are trained to resolve.
Laying out a book and copy editing it with collaborators and contributors can be tedious (if at times
moderately entertaining) process, and not being a professional publisher or editor undoubtedly led
to more mistakes and infelicities of design. At the same time, I felt like I controlled more aspects of
the publication process including the right to distribute the book for free. The tools necessary to
design and publish a digital or paper book are now readily available to anyone with even a modicum
of computer skills. Most academics have enough editing skill to contribute to editorial work. Finally,
(and probably most controversially) most academic publications do not need to current level of
scrutiny that they endure.
As I think more and more about the future of academic publishing, I think that academic publishing
collectives must be the way forward.
496
The sad and strange saga of the St. Louis AIA chapter continues to develop. It now appears
that this chapter will lose its charter and give archaeologists everywhere a chance to be selfrighteous.
Part of the drama is that the members of the St. Louis AIA chapter who authorized the sale
of antiquities appear to be extraordinarily sensitive. This is the AJA editorial that they made all kinds
of threats about.
A nice remembrance of Tony Wilkinson. I never met him, but his work was important to my
development as a historian.
Cyprus Airways is in trouble. The airline has an interesting history. I guess that makes the
worlds most famous Hawker-Siddeley Trident abandoned property.
A bit of hesitation (and some shrimps and tenderloin) about having a man camp as a
neighbor.
This is what Devo and Neil Young did when they jammed together.
What Im reading: M. Parani and D. Michaelides, eds. The Archaeology of Late Antique and
Byzantine Cyprus (4th-12th centuries A.D.): Recent Research and New Discoveries. Cahiers du
Centre dEtudes Chypriotes 43 (2013).
What Im listening to: Bill Evans Trio, Complete 1961 Village Vanguard Sessions.
497
498
499
One of the sections that Ive agreed to co-author with David examines sacred places and landscapes
of the Early Christian world. Our goal is both to set up a series of essays on churches, martyria,
house-churches, baptisteries, baths, and monasteries and to consider how these places fit together to
contribute to a Christian material world. In particular, I want to explore the question what is a
Christian landscape.
1. Sacred and Secular. One major theme in the study of the Late Roman world is the momentary
appearance of the secular that preceded the emergence of a universal Christian discourse. With the
retreat and suppression of paganism, certain practices were left without a clear religious context in
Late Roman society. These secular spaces could involve the artistic invocation of traditional pagan
deities shorn of their ritual associations, scenes of authority outside the institutional power of the
church and without clear foundations in the emerging Christian cosmology, and even the realm of
everyday interactions between pagans and Christian depended on a middle ground respectfully
devoid of overt religious expression. Thus the Christian landscape is a place of both places clearly
articulated within a Christian cosmos, and non-places that at least for a moment in Late Antiquity no
longer represented a pagan threat, but still had no place within the Christian discourse.
2. Buildings and Landmarks. The role of church buildings in organizing and articulating space in the
Late Roman city is well known, but scholars have not entirely escaped the approach dictated by the
great Richard Krautheimer in his Three Christian Capitals. His approach was saturated with the
political maneuvers of the imperial elite during a particularly fraught time in Roman history. The city
and its churches expressed the political aspirations of the both the institutional church and these
buildings elite patrons with little view toward the communities who lived, worked, and worshiped in
and around these buildings. The spread of Christianity likewise had an impact on older monuments
and places within the city which increasingly took on new significance for Christianized
communities. Unpacking how Early Christian communities received and understood both explicitly
Christian and earlier monuments represents an ongoing challenge to a construction of an Early
Christian world.
500
3. Moving through a Christian Landscape. Central to any effort to understand the meaning of
landmarks and buildings within a Christian context is grasping movement. Recent work on Early
Christian pilgrimage across the Mediterranean complements work on stational liturgies within urban
settings to establish the significance of some large-scale public movement through the landscape.
These studies with a few notable exceptions, however, have tended to be anchored by monumental
architectural and impressive urban byways. At the same time, archaeologists are thinking more
broadly about the routes and paths that construct relationships between spaces and places in the
ancient world. Linking informal routes and paths to Christian monuments and places will be a key
way to share the world of public ritual with the everyday movement of private life.
4. Time and a Christian Landscape. The continued importance of memory in construction
landscapes means that we have to start to consider both the visible monuments, but also those less
visible places where social memory and the history of the community intersect in every day life. I
think the long tail of the Early Christian period has particular significance here as the ruins and
remains of Christian monuments often remain important places in the landscape long after they
have ceased to function as places of regular worship. It will be particularly valuable to understand
how the long life of buildings, the memory of ruins, and archaeological practices from long before
the advent of the modern discipline shaped our understanding of the Early Christian material world.
More on this soon and note the new category!
501
Narrating Archaeology
January 14, 2015
https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2015/01/14/narrating-archaeology/
This week I started on one of my major sabbatical projects. I began the process of editing and
writing the volume dedicated to our excavations at Koutsopetria on Cyprus. This volume will be
PKAPII or PKAP2 whichever looks cooler.
The largest part of our volume will be a detailed treatment of our excavations on Vigla, a Hellenistic
fortified site on a prominent coastal plateau. We will publish a discussion of our excavation
practices, their results, the architecture and fortifications, and, of course, the significant assemblage
of Hellenistic material from this site. The volume will also include discussions of the excavations by
our team and Maria Hadjicosti at the Early Christian basilica associated from the Late Roman coastal
site of Koutsopetria. More on Koutsopetria later because now its all Vigla, all the time.
Over the next few weeks, I plan to spend time revising my colleagues, David Pettegrew, detailed
treatment of the stratigraphy and phasing of our excavations on Vigla. To be fair to David, these
treatments represent the hard work of interpreting the various contexts excavated over our three
seasons of work, but at present they are presented in outline form with bullet points. His work has
made it fairly easy to identify the various contexts that represent the archaeological phases at the site,
but tough reading for anyone not committed to wading through copious archaeological details. My
job is to simplify his detailed outlines while preserving and bolstering the basic arguments that he
made concerning the stratigraphic, architectural, and historical relationships at the site.
when they narrate events (although good detective stories sometimes do work this way). After
mulling and reading a good, I decided to invert Davids narration and start with the earliest phases
of activity on Vigla and then argue for the series of changes that took place in our trenches. I think
that this makes it easier for me to integrate our archaeological observations with our historical
arguments later.
2. Archaeological Description and Published Data. Traditionally, one of the roles of the
archaeological monograph served was to make descriptive data available to as wide an audience as
possible. Today, however, it is becoming increasingly common for projects to make all their data
available online including their notebooks, their finds, their inventoried objects, photographs, and
drawings. In this situation the archaeological monograph goes from being the primary location for
the presentation of raw archaeological data and its interpretation to serving as a conduit between
archaeological interpretation and a body of evidence that might be available elsewhere. Our volume
will still include plenty of primary evidence for our arguments like an artifact catalogue, specific
references to stratigraphic units, some section and trench drawings, and short descriptions of
complete assemblage from each unit. At the same time, I think that we should place greater
emphasis on the interpretation of this data including narration since the reader will have access
to a far more complete dataset online.
3. Narration and Reflexivity. The trend toward increasingly relfexive archaeological practice and
publication habits has had a significant influence on how I think about both field work and
publication. In fact, this blog and its effort toward a reflexive transparency in my thoughts about
archaeology, my academic career, and my teaching is a direct outgrowth of my commitment to
demystify academic work and life. So, it concerns me as Ive started to narrate life history of the
site of Vigla over time that my efforts to convey to make our work conform to a historical or even
broadly biographical pattern runs the risk of obscuring a reflexive narration of the archaeologists
work. Im not so naive to think that a reflexive critique is somehow independent from the perils of
the narrative form (after all Ive read Hayden White). The old objectivist in me still worries Ill
obscure the myriad small steps that produce our understanding of the past when I invert the
traditional archaeological narrative and supplant it with a historical one.
In the end, Ill have to trust the reader to drill down into our data and to celebrate the possibility of
upsetting or challenging our narrative by engaging with the raw data that our project produced. And
maybe simply acknowledging this fact and recognizing the limits of our narrative structure is
enough?
503
504
Housing inventories, salaries, and the actions of state institutions are relatively slow to adapt to the
needs to extractive industries. Extractive industries, ever vigilant of the price of commodities, labor,
and technology on a global market, have become increasingly able to deploy or withdraw resources
on short notice, on a global scale in the pursuit of profit. Their ability to function quickly on a global
scale suggests that traditional spatial peripheries are vanishing as particular forms of capital, labor,
and technology can now appear in nearly any location around the world. This is a realtime
manifestation of the increasingly decentered financial markets which depend less managed systems
associated with the traditional core, like the New York Stock Exchange, and, instead, operate
continuously in distributed, digital worlds. So, if a core does exist, it is not a spatially defined one,
but rather a system of links, processes, expectations, and operations that allows one set of resources
to outpace others in order.
It is worth contemplating whether the speed of these extractive industries is a response exclusively
to the global market for these raw materials or also served as a strategy to avoid potentially costly or
complicating entanglements with localized forms of authority. In fact, it seems like the traditional
dichotomy of core and periphery has been overtaken by the dichotomy between fast global and the
slow local. These two phenomenon are not characterized by their respective spatial extents, but
rather by their velocity.
At the end of last year, Jo Guldi and David Armitage published a slim volume called the History
Manifesto. I blogged about it here. The argument that they make is the historians have to once again
embrace the challenge of big data to study large-scale, long-term, and often slow moving,
phenomena. Clearly they appreciated the global scope of much history in the modern era and the
need to develop skills and discourses that accommodates history on an unprecedented scale. As Ive
thought more and more about their book and our work in the Bakken, Ive wondered whether a
history of global phenomenon is possible for our contemporary era. The speed and scope of events
like the Bakken boom almost certainly taxes the tools that historians have at their disposal. In fact,
historians have largely relied upon physical, spatial structures to focus our research. Even as we have
worked to pay increased attention to events at the periphery (and embraced the contingency of the
countryside), weve continued to rely on the resources of the core to guide our work as the core
505
preserves archives, political texts, and economic data upon which big history can be constructed.
With the rapid pace of a globalized work and the decentering of capital, decision making, markets,
and data (distributed data!), the historians gaze has to both expand to capture the ghost in the
machine, but to focus in order to describe sequences of events that occur so quickly as to approach
simultaneity.
506
507
My goal as a publisher was to move this content into a book form. To do this, we invited the
contributors to revise their papers and provide better quality images when necessary. Those inclined
can see their work move from from the realm of the blog to the less ephemeral world of a digital
and bound book.
This process was interesting to me for a number of reasons. First off, my hope is that the blog to
book process continues the process of expanding the boundaries of scholarly communication to
include the less formal space of the blog. Since the early days of my blog, I have made a little show
of migrating it to a paper ready format as a light-hearted gesture in this general direction. I still
dont have the nerve to actually count my blog as part of my academic output, but its hard not to
see it as part of my scholarly identity.
I also have become more and more interested in the publication process. Ive long admired the
Journal of Roman Archaeology for its austere and lets say uneven editing; the spirit of the
journal is captured beautifully in their website. I imagined it as a model of publishing efficiency as it
dispensed with even the most basic formatting cues beyond footnotes, page numbers, and titles. My
second love, has long been Hesperia, which subjects its authors to an arduous editorial process,
exacting standards, and a good bit of design swagger in its presentation. Hesperia is for an
academic journal sexy and it knows it. As some new to publishing, I realized that nothing I did
would come close to Hesperia, but I could approximate a Journal of Roman Archaeology vibe. In
fact, I think I could even do a tiny bit better than the JRA without succumbing to the need to
actually take design seriously. This means that a respected academic template already exists for
efficient publication with relatively little polish.
A colleague and I were chatting yesterday and we both noted how, in some point over the last half
century, the correspondence or note has vanished as an academic genre. I recall Hesperia having
published short epigraphic articles maybe a decade ago and I certain cite a few short notes in my
own work, but as far as I can tell, few journals in the humanities continue to publish contributions
under, say, 8,000 words. An editor once told me that it was because short articles took every bit as
long as long articles to lay-out and edit, so it was more efficient to have 5 long articles rather than,
say, 4 shorter notes and 3 longer articles. Book reviews continue to appear because, generally
speaking, they are less editorially intensive (that is, they less editorial contact with authors and peer
reviewers). I wonder if we can create a model for these think a streamlined publication flow that
emphasizes public peer review through a blog like interface, and making the publication of notes no
more intensive than a book review.
Ive been thinking about the influence of speed lately. To return to Harmut Rosas book, he argues
and Im simplifying greatly here that acceleration and speed in late modernity have led significant
and recognizable social change. (For a much better consideration of Rosas work in this context go
here.) He is not the first to make these arguments, but he does summarize a vast swath of recent
scholarship on the topic (and Ill write more about this soon) and identifies the acceleration of the
late modern world as the key instrument to social transformation. Among the many direct effects of
speed, for Rosa and others, is its tendency to collapse space and distance, and, I might add, promote
the creation of spontaneous communities around events that might otherwise exist in physical or
intellectual isolation.
To apply it to our case here, Rosas concept of social acceleration explains how rapid publication has
the potential for creating a sense of scholarly immediacy in print publications that we usually reserve
508
for, say, the communal experience of academic conferences. Streamlined publishing from blog to
book preserves some of the rawness of conference presentation (or blog post) while formalizing
what might otherwise be ephemeral, informal interaction between academics. So as I work toward
booking at the speed of blog, I have become increasingly interested in how publishing old-style,
paper (or for that matter digital books) quickly based on academic ephemeral could make social and
intellectual ties between academics more transparent and to localize, even if its just on a page, the
liquidity intrinsic in the modern academy.
509
If youre in New Orleans for the Archaeological Institute of American/Society for Classics
Society meeting, you should get up, get dressed, and head over to hear our paper.
A palindromic amulet from Cyprus. The translation is difficult but it seems to read I can
see Turkey from my house. Wait, thats the Sarah Palindromic amulet.
Some great top tens lists for folks who like to binge read their blogs. First from Corinthian
Matters (check out what made #1!) and then head over to the ASOR blog for their top 10.
Some new GIS data from the good folks at the Corinth Excavations.
For folks who tend to only read posts once, you should head back to my Atari Game as
Artifact and check out some of the updates.
510
Lets just agree that it is difficult to know what exactly happened here.
511
Time to Degree
January 8, 2015
https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2015/01/08/time-to-degree/
If you havent had a chance to check out Dimitri Nakassiss blog post earlier this week at his Aegean
Prehistory blog, you should take the time now. He takes on the issue of time to completion for
Ph.D. with particular reference to Classics and applies Malcolm Gladwells somewhat arbitrary
10,000 hour rule. He argued that, despite the problematic nature of Gladwells proclamation, in
Classics, 10,000 hours is a reasonable length of time necessary to produce a substantial dissertation
(he calculated 10,000 hours is about 2.74 years). This is on top of the time a student will spend
acquiring mastery of Greek and Latin which he suggests is another 10,000 hours of time (or
approximately another 3 years). All told, then, the Ph.D. in Classics should run close to 6 years in an
American institution. (I might add that a Ph.D. in Ancient History should take around the same
length of time even if we allow that most Ancient History programs do not emphasize languages at
quite the intensity, any time gained in that area is lost to methods courses and various discipline
specific seminars.) As a result, Ancient History and Classics are among the most time consuming
Ph.D.s to complete within the academy.
This argument got me thinking, once again, about the unintended consequences of shortening time
to degree and various recent efforts to either accelerate or dilute the Ph.D. programs in the
humanities. Putting aside the observation that more people receive Ph.D.s in the humanities than
there are jobs available, and shortening the time to degree alone will do little to remedy that
situation, I have a few observations:
1. Ph.D. as a Professional Degree. From its introduction in the U.S. in the late-19th century the
Ph.D. at least in History was considered a professional degree designed to control access to our
increasingly professionalized academy. In other words, lacking any certification like the bar or
medical boards, holding the Ph.D. became the marker for professional standing in most of the
humanities. Thus, Ph.D. programs served to establishing and perpetuate the professional credentials
in our fields. We should be wary of any efforts to weaken the professional core of our disciplines
from individuals outside our discipline. Pressures to change our professional credentialing can be
seen as part of larger process of deskilling and deprofessionalizing the academy.
2. Ph.D. Programs as More than Professionalizing. The legacy of Ph.D. programs as professional
programs is that the individual is seen as the most important outcome of the program. If the
individual cannot be hired or does not continue to contribute to the profession (defined
disciplinarily) then this is an outcome that does not coincide with the historical goals of this degree
in the humanities. Some programs, to be sure, have begun to emphasize the potentials for
employment outside the discipline for their graduates, and shift their programs accordingly, and this
is a good thing as long as professional outcome for these students more or less aligns with the
professional training of the faculty in these programs. After all, medical doctors should not be
training cooks and engineers are probably not ideal for training the next generation of poets.
This tendency to emphasize professional outcomes of Ph.D. programs is historically understandable,
of course. It does tend to overlook one of the byproducts of these programs: new knowledge. The
dissertation is more than just a tool for professional credentialing, but an actual contribution to
human and disciplinary knowledge. Both the work of the academy and the work of the discipline
and profession occurs just as much in Ph.D. programs as among credentialed professionals. In fact,
512
the Ph.D. programs often serve as incubators for ideas which accelerates their development in the
humanities. Enforcing time to completion may undermine the potential of these programs as part of
the larger knowledge producing ecosystem of the American academy.
I know Ive used this comparison in the past, but some aspect of the Ph.D. program is like minor
league baseball. These programs are both the training ground for the profession, but also share most
of the characteristics of the profession, just like Single-A ball is not the same as the major leagues,
and not all Single-A players are promised a position in the major leagues, but minor league ball does
produce baseball and ensures that the game continues to have a grassroots presence in communities
and developing players have a chance to refine their skills. It has always struck me as odd that more
people are not outraged about the minor league baseball system considering the outcry among
academics for a similar problem.
3. Ph.D. Programs as Pioneers. Finally, we should recognize that the graduate education tends to
depend on the flipped classroom and learning by doing which are key aspects of many efforts
to reform undergraduate education. Graduate education so often relies on the co-development of
specialization between the graduate advisor (the guide on the side) and the student. This process
takes time and is immensely valuable for both the student and the research faculty who advises
them. Accelerating the process of graduate education runs the risk of weakening the development of
specialized knowledge. If we accept that educational practices that cultivate the development of
knowledge both among students and faculty are a priority for education all levels, it would seem
problematic to work counter to this at the graduate level where so much of these practices
developed.
I dont mean to suggest that these observations eliminate all concerns that surround the increasingly
long time to completion for graduate students in the humanities. I recognize, of course, that
fellowships and teaching assistantships regularly pay below the poverty line for these students. And
graduate students are often asked to do more than just focus on their studies and teach courses
which slow their progress to degree. At the same time, I fear that our highly practical and humane
approach to reforming graduate education cares a bit too much for the individual product and not
enough about the intricate ecosystem that our current process embodies.
513
The artifact was identified with a metal tag taped to the interior of the bag:
514
This did not represent the most secure method for labeling an artifact ever invented. The game itself
is not labeled in any way and it is only ever identified by its inventory number rather than a formal
description.
The game that I purchased was in its plastic blister pack package and labeled for sale at Target for
$32.99.
The unopened blister pack suggests that the game was probably returned after going unsold at the
store rather than defective or returned after the initial sale (although that is possible). We found
whole cartons of games priced for retail in the landfill and I hope that at least some of these
assemblages of games were preserved intact rather than being (once again) separated for resale.
515
Opening the ziplock bag was a mistake. The odor released suggests that the sweet and dusty smell of
the landfill had fermented into something indescribable. It caused our beloved family dog (who had
spent a good bit of time earlier in the day frolicking with a piece of his frozen poo) to shudder and
immediately ask to be let out of the house into sub-zero temperatures. If there is any doubt that this
particular game originated in the Alamogordo landfill, the odor alone might authenticate its
provenience.
The game did not appear to be cleaned in any way or modified. The blister pack had ruptured
probably during its time in the landfill and I was starting to photograph the artifact, the the odor was
sufficiently intense I thought it best to do someplace other than in my home. It is notable that
Centipede is one of the games released in silver boxes; it was released, I think, in 1982, to generally
positive reviews. (See the Atari Age page on Centipede here with links to reviews.)
The game came with a certificate of authenticity, but nothing on the certificate related to the specific
game beyond including the identification number. It was attractive if generic printed on 40 weight
paper and decorated with photographs from the excavation. The certificate was signed by the mayor
of Alamogordo, Susie Galea, the games famous designer, Howard Scott Warshaw, and Joe
Lewandowski. This is a nice touch, but they dont authenticate the particular game; they authenticate
a serial number associated with a plastic bag in which the game was placed. Interestingly, the
Centipede was not designed by Howard Scott Warshaw, but by Ed Logg and Donna Bailey, one of
the only female Atari engineers, and it was subsequently ported to the Atari 2600 VCS. In other
words, the history of the Centipede game is really quite different from the history of the E.T. game,
but the two games are conflated by their ultimate fate.
516
The game also came with a little history of the Atari dump and it recovery by none other than Joe
Lewendowski. Its a nice general overview of the Atari tomb, its discovery, and a recovery.
517
518
The entire package was well done to contextualize the object within a particular sequence of events
and ensure the games transition from returned and discarded merchandise to historical artifact.
The most interesting gap in this transmission is the absence of any link between the particular game
and the historical record. The game itself is not marked in any permanent way (although I suspect
the smell will not easily disappear) nor marked as associated with the other games from this
particular excavation. For example, there is no register identifying this game as one of a number of
similar types nor is there any formal archaeological record (e.g. a description of the object, its
archaeological context, or relationship to the larger assemblage). The buyer is required to piece that
together if possible for example, this game was probably an unsold return from Target or just
enjoy the object as a souvenir from a rather unusual media event.
Fortunately, for this little orphan object, it will go to live at the University of North Dakotas
Department of Special Collections where it will be joined by various bits of archaeological
information recorded from the site (by the punk archaeology team) and, in time, some
interpretative material written up over the next year.
519
UPDATE: So, Ive been chatting with my buddy, Paul Worley, on Twitter all morning about how
strange it must be for me to purchase an artifact that acquired some (all?) of its value because I
participated in its excavation as a real archaeologist. In other words, my presence at the dig
validated the archaeological legitimacy and authenticity of these artifacts.
I responded that I was not entire convinced that these were archaeological artifacts, but rather
media artifacts. Their value is less bound up in our legitimizing presence and more bound up in
the production of a documentary and a rapid online community who promoted the urban legend,
excavation, and its results. My argument undermining their validity as archaeological artifacts derives
from both how they are presented and how they were produced. As my post points out, theyre not
presented archaeologically at all. They lack any unique identifiers (except probably smell) that makes
them archaeological. They methods that produced these artifacts were likewise only marginally
archaeological. Their context was pretty simple and documented superficially, but because of the
requirements of documentary filming, safety regulations, and city policies and practices, we were not
able to guarantee their unbroken continuity from the bottom of the trench to the storeroom to
Ebay. Im not suggesting that these are fraudulent in any way, but the performance of archaeology
involves the systematic excavation, documentation, presentation, and ordering of the artifacts (and
the world). Our work only fulfilled a few of these roles in New Mexico, and the presentation of
these artifacts on Ebay and in the flesh reveal the limits of their archaeological character.
The Centipede game presented to UND this morning will have the additional benefit of eventually
being housed with my notes from the dig, copies of publications, media coverage, and presumably
the Zak Penn movie. My hope is these efforts will allow me to perform (some) archaeology and to
recontextualize the object in a way that increases its value as both a media and cultural artifact. Im
skeptical if it will even be regarded as truly archaeological, but like 19th century curios, we can at
least use it to pose questions about how we produce value in our capitalist age.
UPDATE 2: Heres the official press release on this:
UND adds to its digital artifacts collection an old Atari gaming system cartridge part of recent
archaeology dig
The University of North Dakota Department of Special Collections in the Chester Fritz Library got
an unusual addition this week: an Atari game cartridge once buried in a New Mexico landfill.
Special Collections is best known for housing collections associated with important national figures
like former North Dakota politicians William Langer and Byron Dorgan, and documents related to
the history of the Red River Valley, North Dakota and the University. Special Collections also
accepts documents related to faculty research.
The Atari cartridge, a Centipede game for the Atari 2600, was among the thousands excavated from
the famous Atari Burial Ground in Alamogordo, N.M., in April 2014. Bill Caraher, UND associate
professor of history; and Bret Weber, UND assistant professor of social work; participated in the
excavation that was funded as part of a documentary film. Caraher purchased a game from the
excavation, which was made available by the City of Alamogordo, and has donated it to the
University.
520
While I usually do not condone purchasing archaeological artifacts of any kind, Caraher said.
These artifacts are somewhat different because they represent our very recent past. When I saw
that the Smithsonian had received a game and several other major cultural institutions as well, I had
to acquire one for UND to commemorate the Universitys participation in this unusual excavation.
Curt Hanson, director of UND Special Collections, went on to say, This is definitely the first
artifact from a landfill in our collection, and also the first video game, although with UNDs growing
status as a university on the cutting edge of the digital innovation, we would not be surprised to see
more digital artifacts coming into Special Collections.
I grew up playing Atari and to see my childhood treated as an archaeological artifact and preserved
in our collection, as well as places like the Smithsonian, is really exciting!
The UND Working Group in Digital and New Media will host a showing of the documentary Atari:
Game Over this spring and bring in the punk archaeology team who participated on the
excavation for a round table conversation on archaeology, the media, and video games as artifacts of
our times.
UND Special Collections also houses notebooks and documents related to Carahers longstanding,
and more conventional, field work projects on Cyprus.
Curt Hanson (left), director of UNDs Department of Special Collections, holds sealed bag
containing an Atari 2600 gaming system cartridge for the 1980s era game Centipede. The cartridge
was unearthed recently during an archaeological dig in an old New Mexico landfill. UND history
professor Bill Caraher (right), who was part of that excavation and an associated documentary film
about the dig, purchased the cartridge from the city of Alamogordo, N.M., and handed it over to
UND Special Collections this week.
521
To clarify and focus our argument, we replaced our famous typology of workforce housing with a
continuum that ranges from formal to informal settlement types. Our article acknowledges the
existence of formal, workforce housing sites in the Bakken like those constructed and managed by
global logistics companies, but focuses instead on more informal settlements that range from RV
parks to hastily constructed mobile home parks. Our continuum relates to larger conversations of
informal urbanism in a global context, but is also tailored to the local situation. For example, even
the most formal workforce housing site remains temporary, and less formal sites are even more
contingent.
522
Next, I argue more forcefully that the Bakken is part of a global periphery. Western North Dakota
has long been outside the main centers of capital and dependent upon tenuous links to these centers
for economic and political development. Because the local communities have only limited political
and economic power, and what they do have is centered in the most densely settled areas of the
area, namely towns, short-term workforce housing sites developed just outside the periphery of
these communities and draw upon whatever limited infrastructure is available, while standing outside
existing communitys ability to exert authority. A similar pattern of settlement is visible throughout
the global periphery where large informal settlements cluster outside the somewhat fragile
jurisdiction of the urban core whether these are colonias on the Mexican-American border or
favelas surrounding major urban areas in Brazil or the famous Indian slums around Mumbai.
This pattern is distinct, of course, from the typically American suburban settlements which tend
both to be more formal and emphasize a kind of permanence that most informal settlement lacks
(although in a global situation might aspire to). The important role of fixity in American
expectations of settlement reveals key aspects of the American domestic ideal. Suburbs often
emphasize permanence both as an effort to create soothing constancy to a dynamic world, to
reinforce the enduring character of the domestic ideal, to convey privilege grounded in long-term
stewardship over the land.
These suburban ideals influence the structure of informal short-term settlement in the Bakken. We
traced the negotiation of domestic life in workforce housing through five material aspects of life in
informal camps: insulation practices, architectural enclosures, platforms and paths, demarcated
property, and ritual objects. Ill post more on this maybe next week as I pull together the diverse
strands of my argument as theyre manifest in these five aspects of the informal material life in
workforce housing.
For now, Ill emphasize that insulation practices and architectural enclosures arrest the mobility of
RVs and transform even if just symbolically the mobile character of the RV or mobile home into
a permanent space evoking, to be sure, the expectations of suburban life, but doing so in a way that
allows the RV to return to its mobile character without any structural changes. Of course
architectural enclosures, mudrooms and the like, and insulation also have practical advantages for
residents in the Bakken. Insulation is necessary to reinforce the thin outer shell of the RV against the
sometimes brutal North Dakota winter and enclosures both expand the livable space of an RV and
provide room for residents to remove muddy clothes, creates an airlock in the winter, and adds
room for storage to the cramped conditions of the RV.
523
Platforms, paths, and demarcated property boundaries represent strategies designed to create
personal space in the contingent settlements of the Bakken. The positioning of an RV at one edge of
a lot opens space between it and its neighbor. In some cases, residents build a deck here, often of
salvaged materials like shipping pallets and scrap plywood. In other cases, residents fill this open
area with potted plants, lawns, work areas, and even fence it in to distinguish it from their neighbors
and to create personal space similar to the American front yard. In fact, it is not uncommon for
residents to maintain the street facing side of their lots and discard unused or broken objects behind
their RVs indicating that they understand the street side of the unit as a place for tidy display and the
back of the unit as a space of opportunistic discard much the same way that backyards in suburban
subdivisions are more private and front yards more public.
Finally, the objects associated with platforms and property in the Bakken reveal how the hyper
masculine work in American extractive industries manifests itself in the publicly visible, domestic
assemblages. The presence of grills, free weights, tools and appliances present a complex image of
life in contingent settlements. Barbecue grills, tools, and free weights are objects long associated with
the performance of masculinity in a domestic setting (we need only to think back to Terrell Owens
famous driveway workout interview). Appliances, however, tell a more complicating story and
reflect the practical limits of life in an RV.
Informal workforce housing in the Bakken represents a hybridized adaption of peripheral settlement
drawing on characteristics of informal, contingent settlement familiar to scholars of settlement on
the global periphery and in the developing world, but also shares features with ideals of domesticity
manifest in American suburban life.
524
525
manuscript that documents this excavation, and now I need to collate that with our more recent
work.
Ill also need to return to my work on the Late Roman room associated with the Early Christian
basilica at the site of Koutsopetria. This was excavated in the 1990s and will be published with our
one season of excavation at the site in 2008. We managed to refine the chronology of the building
on slightly and to document a bit more thoroughly the events associated with the rooms decline and
abandonment. Beyond that, our work mostly consists of putting the architecture of the room and its
wall painting in the context of church architecture on Cyprus.
2. Polis Preparation. With any luck, Ill have a three week season at the site of Polis-Chrysochous
this summer that hopefully involves putting the finishing touches on a major publication of the Late
Antique phases of the South Basilica there. To be able to maximize my time in Polis, we need to
work out the stratigraphy for the last few trenches of EF2 and the trenches associated with Roman
period site of EF1.
More important than that, we need to make sure that our work over the last four years is ready for
publication. To do that, we have to complete the manuscript that we drafted about 6 months ago
and figure out where we need to fill in gaps during the field season. With a little luck, that
manuscript might be submitted by the spring with the understanding that for it to be publishable, a
few loose ends need cleaning up.
3. Man Camp Writing. With crashing oil prices and budget cuts among the major companies active
in the Bakken, I have the creeping fear that the boom will be over before any of our major
publications on our work appears. Thats probably unfounded, but it does encourage me to stay
focused on tasks associated with my three major Bakken Boom writing projects:
a. Article. Our major scholarly product, representing the first 2.5 years of field work, is currently
under revision. Ive made some pretty major cuts, reorganized and hopefully strengthened the
argument, and, most located our work more fully in the conversation about settlement, domesticity,
and masculinity in the U.S. With any luck and with the approval of my coauthors, well be able to
resubmit this article in the next few weeks.
b. The Tourist Guide to the Bakken Oil Patch. After a few weeks of cajoling, my co-author, Bret
Weber, convinced me that we needed to add another loop to our itinerary. This look will run from
Watford City south to Belfield, east to Dickinson, and then north on ND Route 22 through Killdeer
and Mandaree on the Ft. Berthold Reservation. In fact, hes scouted this route over the winter break
and Ill hopefully be able to do a follow up run through the area in late January. With this last leg of
the itinerary being complete, well work on producing a final copy and figuring out where to send
the product before I head to the Mediterranean this summer.
c. The Bakken Boom Book. This massive tome which includes papers by nearly 20 contributors is
out in peer review right now and itll need attention as soon as it returns to my desk in the late
winter. Im very pleased with how the book is shaping up and excited for it keep moving along
without delays.
Other projects:
526
1. Publishing. As readers of this blog surely know, I have started a small press called the Digital
Press at the University of North Dakota. Im probably too excited about it, but our first book, Punk
Archaeology, currently ranks #1,191,400 on Amazons sellers list, right behind (sort of) Eric Clines
1177 B.C. This month, our second book will appear, called Visions of Substance: 3D Imaging in
Mediterranean Archaeology edited by myself and Brandon Olson, and our third book will appear in
April!
2. Book Reviewing. Im embarrassed to say that I have not yet finished my review of Michael
Dixons Late Classical and Early Hellenistic Corinth, 338-196 B.C., but its almost done, which is
good because theres another book in the way! Ill, as per usual, post my completed, pre-publication
draft here.
3. Paper Giving. Next week, my colleagues on the Western Argolid Regional Project are giving a
paper at the Archaeological Institute of Americas annual meeting in New Orleans. I cant take much
credit for that fine paper, but the project directors are accomplished writers and the paper is
entertaining! I would love to say that well post it online, but with increasing restrictions on the
dissemination of archaeological information on the internet, I dont think the project directors will
feel confident posting the paper. So, if youre at the Archaeological Institute of America meeting, go
and check it out. Nakassis, James, and Gallimore is better live anyway.
Ill be giving a paper in Boston in February at the Mobilizing the Past for a Digital Future workshop
though, which will be a major update to my paper given last spring at the University of
Massachusetts and revised as Slow Archaeology for North Dakota Quarterly.
4. Serving. One of aspects to my sabbatical is that I insisted on continuing to fulfill some service
obligations both on campus and in the community. I get the impression that this is quite
unorthodox. That being said, our campus is currently oppressed by the tyranny of a faction, and it
would seem irresponsible to leave the situation wholly unopposed, for many of the boldest spirits
have left the university, quit academia, or worse, while the remaining faculty, the readier they were to
be slaves, were raised the higher by wealth and promotion. (Ok, that was overly dramatic, but that
was called love for the workers in song, probably still is for those of them left.) So, Im on some
committees and doing that thing on campus.
Im also serving on the North Dakota Humanities Council and the State Historic Preservation
Board. Fun work that would be a shame to abandon to the selfish delights of sabbatical.
5. Reading. One of my colleagues (of a rather Sallustian comportment when it comes to campus
politics) remarked at a holiday party that he was working to get back to the basics and do things
like read. Ive been haunted by these words since then and plan to redouble my commitment to
reading and listening to what books have to say, rather than mining them for my own, largely
inconsequential purposes.
6. Running. I need to write a blog post on this, but Ive started running. Not far, not fast, and not
with any great purpose, but my goal is to run a 5k in late September. Right now Im nursing an
aggravated adductor in my left leg, but once that calms down, Ill be back in my shoes making steady
progress.
527
A couple more New York Times articles on the Bakken: A Priest in the
Patch and Corruption and the Reservation
I had a small panic last night that our workforce housing sites in the Bakken might all start
to close down in the wintertime making it harder to document what was left behind.
Be cold!
What Im reading: L. Wilkie, The Lost Boys of Zeta Psi: A Historical Archaeology of
Masculinity in a University Fraternity. Berkeley 2010.
What Im listening to: Duke Ellington, Afro Bossa; Atlas, Real Estate.
and preference shown for the hill of Vigla nearby. Perhaps memory of the Bronze Age site of
Kokkinokremos functioned more like pagan sanctuaries in Greece rather than Hittite monuments in
Asia Minor. The presence of the past at Kokkinokremos discouraged resettlement and repelled
activity rather than attracting it.
Unfortunately, there is too much college footballing on today to give this any further thought today.
Have a happy new year celebration. I hope all my dedicated readers have a chance to cherish good
memories and find strength and hope in the bad ones.
530
531
Audiophile bargains by Schiit stacked atop a vintage (aka used) Marantz 2235B.
So how does this relate to getting new, possibly more frugal folks into the hobby:
1. The Stereo Store is Key. I live as much of my life on the internet as humanly possible because I
live in small town in North Dakota (seriously). I purchase everything from books to music, food,
adult beverages, clothes, and stereo gear online. The nearest stereo shop is about an hour away and
the closest concentration of shops is 3 or 5 hours away. So I dont get a chance to listen to new gear
very often.
For better or for worse, developing taste and knowledge of stereo equipment requires listening
mostly back-to-back to different equipment. And for better or for worse, much of the recent
generation of affordably priced stereo gear is sold direct to consumers. The way these companies
claim to keep their prices low is by selling direct and cutting out store markups. I dont know if this
is true, but it sounds like something that could be true. So theres a problem here. While I recognize
that most internet direct companies have generous return policies and even encourage you to try out
their gear, this is not the same as listening to gear in a store.
532
Moreover, the recent trend toward crowdfunding gear and allowing (encouraging?) consumers to
purchase audiophile grade equipment without even being able to hear it suggests that direct sale
online guys understand that a substantial group of audiophiles are willing to purchase moderately
priced equipment without hearing it at all.
I understand, of course, that the internet has not just a space for selling stereo gear, but also a place
for talking about it. While I still look forward to the monthly arrival of Stereophile, I spend much
more of time reading Part-Time Audiophile, The Absolute Sound (online), The Digital Audio
Review, and Audiophiliac. At the same time, I recognize the reading a great review, even from a
reviewer that I trust, is not the same as actually hearing stuff myself. One learns to listen better only
by hearing, and one develops ones own taste in gear by connecting specifications with the sound
that one likes. The more gear someone has heard, the more someone is likely to be able to figure out
through an online review or a product description what one is likely to enjoy. This is something that
comes with experience, and, right now, affordable level gear directed toward audiophiles who are
new to the hobby or less inclined to drop big-bucks on stereo gear is much more likely to be sold
online than in shops.
Without complaining too strongly about a business model that has benefited me personally (I own
Zu speakers and have a growing gaggle of Schiit gear), I am concerned that this is not a good way to
grow the hobby. After all, the hobby is based, at least in part, on our ability to talk about our tastes,
to compare different equipment, and to identify aurally things that we like.
To get more people into listening to high-end, stereo gear, we have to make sure that brick-andmortar shops are thriving and these shops stock entry level gear. This, I would guess, is a risk for the
shops, because entry level gear most likely offers smaller profit margins, and for the manufacturers
who currently sell direct on the internet. Regional audio shows certainly help, but again, these shows
are not necessarily going to attract someone who is audiophile-curious.
2. A Hobby is a Conversation. With the growth of online communities, the audiophile hobby seems
have access to a medium for growth. At the same time, I think that the audiophile press remain the
crucial catalysts for expanding the audiophile hobby. They are, of course, beginning to take entry
level gear a bit more seriously, and there is no doubt that many of their hearts are generally in the
right place. Im sometimes skeptical about their ability to maintain a focused interest on gear that is
not aspiring to be perfectionist quality or summit-fi, but is designed to provide better sound
within the reach of everyday people.
To take entry level gear seriously, the audiophile media needs to resist the temptation to compare
every $100 USB DAC to a DAC costing many, many thousands more. This is the equivalent of
reviewing a Honda Civic, and adding a paragraph or two reminding the read that it is not nearly as
good as a Porsche Panamerica or Aston Martin DB8. Of course, this is incredibly reassuring to a
Da Vinci owner that their five-digit DAC is not bested by a $100 USB doojaggy, but it does little to
make the entry-level audiophile feel like their investment in their system should be taken seriously.
Including this new group in the conversation involves meeting them where they are in terms of
desirable products and moving just a bit away from the exotica.
Anyway. I understand the draw of the exotic and fun of enabling audiophile voyeurism, but we can
learn a thing or two from Steven Mejiass late The Entry Level column over at Stereophile (and
Steve Guttenbergs work over at the Audiophiliac). Both manage to review entry level gear with
533
enthusiasm, communicate the excitement of affordable gear, and avoid humbling comparisons to
audio exotic or suggestions that various gear is perfect for use in the pool house.
3. Recognize that Low Price is Not a Silver Bullet. Some of the recent enthusiasm for low-priced,
audiophile gear seems to be detached from a realistic understanding of how entry level audiophiles
purchase gear. They seem to think that serviceable $50 Dayton Audio speakers and $20 Lepai amps
will somehow draw people to the hobby (and I do get that some of the focus on super-affordable
gear is just a way to say that better sound costs almost nothing). But, again, Im skeptical that
focusing on such inexpensive gear is the way to attract new audiophiles.
Most people who like music are already spending money on CDs, vinyl, downloads, and whatever
(even assuming that some of their music is purchased used or pirated), and even cheap CDs and
downloads would cost a significant portion of these inexpensive stereo systems. People interested in
getting better sound are already spending a couple or few hundred dollars on headphones, so its a
bit silly to think that they wouldnt spend at least a much on a home system, and maybe more.
As I noted in Point 1, part of the goal of engaging the new audiophiles is engaging their passion for
music in a realistic way. Entry level audiophiles want to be part of a conversation that reflects their
commitment to music and not some race to the bottom.
4. Celebrate Used Gear. The best way to get people into our hobby is through used gear. I know,
used gear does not attract advertisers, but it does provide a relatively painless way for new
audiophiles to get into our hobby. Moreover, for dimes on the dollar, used gear provides access to
brands that make up the audiophile firmament and instantly involve new audiophiles in the brand
conversation around which so much of our hobby revolves.
Used gear is readily available from places like Audiogon and Ebay, but right now most chatter about
used gear centers around user generated threads on forums rather than in the proper audiophile
media. This is a shame. While there is plenty of interesting chatter on these forums (and not a few
experts, self-proclaimed and otherwise), there is still no authoritative voice on used stuff among the
mainstream audiophile media. Stereophile still fills out their online offerings with vintage reviews,
and one of the British audiophile magazines has some throwback discussions on classic pieces, but
these rarely take into account what is available at a reasonable price to an audiophile on the market
today.
5. Write about Resale Values and Upgrade Paths. Talking about used gear is not just about
purchasing used gear, but it also involves thinking about how new audiophiles get involved in the
hobby. Most of us get into the hobby through constructing systems that are designed for upgrades
in a realistic affordable way. For most audiophiles, this involves selling off unneeded components to
fund upgrades (rather than storing them in that magical closet that all audiophile reviewers seem to
have filled with old gear).
So part of a consideration when someone buys new gear to build a system is to understand the
combinations of upgrades and resale moves necessary to continue to improve ones audio
experience. There is data out there, of course, that could be scraped from Audiogon, Ebay, or other
used sites. A combination of that and the authority of trusted audio media sources would make this
an invaluable resource for the starting audiophile. With all due respect to the folks at Your Final
System, Im always thinking of how to make my system just a little bit better and having some advice
534
on upgrade paths would be brilliantly helpful. I might ignore the advice, but the philosophies behind
the selection of complementary equipment would be very helpful in getting a starter audiophile on
their own route to audio bliss.
In the end, attracting new audiophiles to the hobby is as much about how we engage people
potentially interested in our hobby as the actual products and music that were all so passionate
about. Much of this is bound up in the large audiophile ecosystem that includes manufacturers,
advertisers, reviewers, and, yep, bloggers (or columnists, as I now claim to be). While my
observations here might be wide of the mark, my point of departure thinking back to how I got
involved in the hobby is as good a place to start as any. After all, even audiophiles had to have a
first time.
535
Im not much of a movie reviewer type. In fact, I dont really like movies. I guess I sometimes find
them entertaining, but Im not a cinema guy and the more important a film is the more difficult
I find it to pay attention or sit still.
That being said, I did enjoy Zak Penns Atari: Game Over, and not just because I have two and half
lines of dialogue during which I mention Strohs and wood, although that was awesome. By the way,
you can watch it for free! FREE!
While the movie is superficially about Atari and the E.T. video games buried in the New Mexico
desert, Penn seems mainly interested in unpacking myth along loosely Freudian lines. This is not
surprising for a guy who has spent his career adapting comic books to film. It is also not surprising
for a guy who has done movies with the likes of Werner Herzog whose best work has almost
nothing to do with what its about.
For some basic background, the video game E.T. was introduced in 1982 and was widely derided as
the worst video game ever made. By 1983, it was clear that both the game and the entire Atari
company was in trouble and by the end of that year, the company was taking drastic steps to manage
losses. As part of that process, thousands of E.T. games were dumped in an Alamogordo, NM
landfill. For a decade or so, the Atari dump was largely forgotten, but with the dawn of the internet
age, people began to revive the memory of this event and ascribe to it legendary (or even mythical)
536
proportions. The film, Atari: Game Over, takes this myth and the 1980s Atari phenomenon as a
starting point for reflecting on how the first generation of home video-gamers construct video game
culture and history.
So the film starts with Zak Penn linking Atari to his own childhood. Childhood is key here. Andrew
Reinhard, then, introduces the mythic element. Freud, of course, argues that myths represent the
wishes of our childhood, which, for better or for worse, the rational world of adulthood suppresses.
Atari is a figment of our childhood, transformed into myth, and perpetuated in stories like the secret
Atari burial ground (or the Loch Ness monster, for that matter). The existence of secret Easter
Eggs embedded in some of the legendary video games like Adventure and, of course, E.T., is a
doubly mythic sledgehammer. The Easter Bunny, the myth of the eternal return, and the sudden
reappearance of the absent creator god via his initials secreted into video game play makes clear that
this is not a film about the video game industry any more than Fitzcarraldo is about a boat. As the
Atari founder Nolan Bushnell puts it, Adults just dont get it.
The entire film is filled with the interlocking stories of childhood, the early years of Atari, the Atari
game myth, and the utter irrelevance of the superficial adult world. The film was anchored, of
course, by the excavation of the famous dump of E.T. cartridges in the Alamogordo landfill.
Excavation, of course, is gesture familiar to anyone who has read even a little Freud. This movie is
not subtle.
Howard Scott Warshaw is the star of the film. He is engaging and sympathetic and has what I
believe some folks would call camera presence. He was the designer of the E.T. game as well as a
number of other huge hits for Atari in the early 1980s including Yars Revenge (which contained
an Easter Egg) and, of course (in case you didnt get it) Indiana Jones. Warshaw describes the
creative, ecstatic, and chaotic atmosphere at Atari in the early 1980s. Puerile humor (Ho-weird),
drugs, women, summersaults down grassy hills, and hot tubs reinforced the motto We take fun
seriously. Of course, in the world of myth, fun is serious business and a necessary accompaniment
to childhood. Warshaw tells as much when he says that his time at Atari made it very difficult to find
another job as satisfying, creative, and exciting for his next 20-odd years of adulthood.
Much of the serious history of Atari is narrated by Manny Gerard, a Time Warner Executive, who
made it clear that the culture at Atari was incompatible with the adult world (after all, they just dont
get it), and this created major issues for the company. The most major of these is when the late
Steve Ross, a Time Warner executive negotiated a $22 million deal with Steven Spielberg to bring
E.T. from the big screen to the Atari VCS. Warshaw is dragged from his hot tubs and wordplay to
produce this game in 5 weeks. Spielberg enjoyed it and approved it, and to remind of you the mythic
origins, Penn provides a clip of the TV commercial where an offscreen E.T. tosses Elliot (the little
boy from the E.T. movie) the game.
Warshaw attempted to create a game where the player had genuine emotional connections with the
character and gameplay. E.T. had to escape the adults including an FBI agent who wanted what you
had and a Scientist who wanted who you were. Elliot was your ally and he was the only one who
could help E.T. avoid the adults and other pitfalls to return home.
The author Ernie Cline appears in the film and reinforces the connection between Atair, the E.T.
game, and childhood euphoria stating at one point that he loves people who love things. Cline lets
us know about the Easter Eggs in E.T. which, when discovered, transform the famous flower from
537
the movie into Yar from Yars Revenge, and Indiana Jones from that game. He savored the myth of
the E.T. burial, but was perhaps a little too enthusiastic about debunking it as he adventured his way
from Austin to Alamogordo in his DeLorean with a stuffed E.T. doll as his copilot. Yeah, Im
serious.
Throughout the end of the 1970s and early 1980s Atari was the fastest growing company in history.
When the E.T. game flopped, Manny Gerard claims that he had to actually call and ask the finance
folks whether Atari was making its numbers. To his surprise, they were not and had lost hundreds of
millions of dollars (who knew?!). A new CEO entered (from Philip Morris, no less). Folks lost their
jobs, the party ended, and unsold or returned inventory had to be dumped. The Alamogordo landfill
was a convenient place to bury almost everyone in the films childhood. All that was left was
memory which, of course, informed myth, and fueled a neurotic nostalgia.
Joe Lewandowski, the amiable Alamogordo garbagologist and amateur archaeologist, provided the
crucial clue to unpacking our collective childhood by painstakingly identifying the pit in which the
Atari game was buried. Zak Penn is on hand for parts of the search despite the best efforts of
various adults dressed in snazzy suites and talking officially to undermine the project.
Lewandowski, Penn, and company got permissions not only excavate the landfill and, perhaps in a
Jungian turn, to resolve their lingering childhood by revealing and rationalizing these myths as parts
of our collective unconscious. In other words, its good to enjoy video games, to love things, to
read comic books, to watch movies based on comic books, to go into the friggin New Mexico
desert looking for buried E.T. cartridges. These things are normal. Were normal. Even Ho-wierd
Scott Warshaws painful nostalgia for his days at Atari is normal.
We just need to avoid the adults, excavate through the detritus of our over-burdend contemporary
life, and prove to the world that myths are real, and our collective neurosis will be resolved. Of
course, its no surprise in the end that the heavy equipment discovered the games at 28 ft. below the
surface of the landfill. The youthful and exuberant Andrew Reinhard with his team of serious
archaeologists validated the discovery. Raiford Guins unpacked the significance of the find. Zak
Penns anxiety was put to rest and Howard Scott Warshaw was visibly emotional that so many
538
people continued to care about something that he made. It is clear that the myth of the E.T. game,
of the Atari dump, of the video game world, and even Ernie Clines DeLorean, all matter and linger
on, powerfully, just below the adult world.
The Easter Egg in the film comes toward the end when Penn reveals that Warshaw finally found a
profession that brought him the same satisfaction as his youthful days at Atari: hes a
psychotherapist.
The rest of the movie lets you down easily. The dump in Alamogordo wasnt an effort to hide the
E.T. game from humanity. It was a routine warehouse inventory dump to save money. In fact, the
dump wasnt only E.T. Games, but a whole range of Atari games, many of which had been returned
or were unsold. The myth that the failure of the E.T. game destroyed Atari was also debunked.
539
The new Hesperia arrived in time for your holiday reading. I had access. Ive heard its a
ripping read.
Some depressing, but also intensely familiar, photographs of dying Greek shops.
Urban Giants: a short movie about the massive telecommunications centers built in the
1920s and 1930s by Western Union and AT&T.
Living simply astride a yurt in the Wyoming. Ive heard that experienced yurtsman can milk a
yurt while riding it across the steppe. Its just what Ive heard
What Im reading: L.G.Gerber, Rise and Decline of Faculty Governance. Baltimore 2014.
What Im listening to: Ray Charles, The Genius Sings the Blues (mono); Miles Davis,
Round About Midnight (mono).
540
Weve tried to teach him manners. But when he got his Chewbacca stocking and stuffed lamb, it was
GAME ON.
541
542