I made a quick kid friendly video for all of those caregivers out there, filling in the role as teachers during this crazy time. It’s the ‘ABCs’ of archaeology, with terms, bouncy music, and moving images. Some of the terms I chose are ridiculous, but you’d be surprised how hard it is to find an archaeological term for ‘Q’! Click on the link below, which will take you to YouTube.
You may be chuckling to yourself or asking ‘what on earth is a SHPO?’. A SHPO is a State Historic Preservation Officer, which was created by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966. Every state has a SHPO and a SHPO Office. They oversee the compliance efforts of all federal agencies (i.e. BLM, NRCS, NPS, Forest Service), as well as private companies receiving federal funding. They are there to help ensure that we make a good faith effort in recording, reporting, protecting, persevering, etc. cultural resources.
You can listen to the podcast on the WIA Blog (Click here) or download the episode on iTunes:
I’m very proud to be a part of this podcast and one of the hosts on this episode:
Issues of Alt-Right and White Nationalist Groups Co-Opting History
White supremacists and the alt-right often use of history and archaeology as a mechanism to ‘legitimize’ their claims. Join us as we discuss this trend from the misrepresentation of Norse history to the misbelief of a racially pure Greek and Roman world. These groups have twisted the past to their agenda in dangerous ways. What can we do to combat this trend?
Sometimes I think past peoples are just messing with archaeologists. You never know . . .
ArchInk/ Inktober Prompt: Layers
I think a lot of folks assume that archaeologists do only one type of archaeology throughout their lifetime, but for many archaeologists their career varies from one type to another. For example, I’ve been a grad student, federal archaeologist, teacher, shovel bum–the whole gambit. And, within that, I’ve done Cypriot, Classical, Southwestern (US), and Western (US) archaeology.
Check out all of the great posts by the hosts of the Women in Archaeology Podcast!
Full Text:
I think every student should have a good grasp of cultural resource management (CRM) legislation, from the Antiquities Act of 1906 to the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 (NAGPRA). It’s important to know how and why we practice archaeology in the United States, to show the effort necessary to protect the past. Frankly, without CRM law, most American archaeologists wouldn’t have a job. As much as I want to think the best about the USA, I don’t think the government would automatically record, preserve, and protect archaeological sites without laws in place. It’s similar to the need for the Clean Air Act or Clean Water Act—without it, things would be so much worse. Our representatives have to make sure we’re not breathing mercury. With the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 (NHPA), agencies like the National Park Service or Forest Service are legally mandated to have archaeologists on staff. Without the NHPA, sites would easily be destroyed in the name of progress. Or pit toilets.
When studying CRM law, you’ll quickly learn there’s a lot of gray area, when ‘acting in good faith’ can mean different things. For one archaeologist, it may mean making sure everything is surveyed and carefully recorded, sending out consultation letters and following up with stakeholders, and so on. For others, it means doing the bare minimum, cutting corners whenever and wherever possible. It’s important to recognize the difference, when there’s both a legal and moral imperative to do the right thing. It’s our responsibility (both as citizens and archaeologists) to keep archaeology honest, because there are far too many who relish doing work in that gray area. Google ‘Effigy Mounds National Monument’ and ‘NPS destroys archaeology to build trails’ and you’ll see that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There are well-known public lands agencies that routinely ignore CRM laws, indicating not only the necessity of enforcing these laws, but also the need and value of integrity in our field. Now that I have you thoroughly depressed and/or confused, back to the matter at hand.
Okay, CRM laws and archaeology. There’s this lovely event at the Society for American Archaeology (SAA) conference called ‘The Ethics Bowl’ where a bunch of graduate student teams debate ethical and legal issues in CRM—sounds thrilling, I know (I actually love this stuff). For my Intro to Archaeology course, I have my students break up into groups and dissect a case study from one of the Ethic Bowls. These cases describe real-world situations in archaeology, where the right answer isn’t always clear. For example, one case from 2018 describes a new supervisory archaeologist at a company who is pressured to make her crew survey too fast a pace (miss sites), push it in over 100 degree weather (OSHA violations), not record GPS points or notes or take photographs, and purposefully miss sites. This is a huge violation of NHPA, and beyond that, it is unethical to push a crew, even if it means not making the profit a company hoped for. Both archaeology and archaeologists suffer in this instance.
There are a variety of Ethics Bowel cases available on the SAA website, including issues surrounding human remains, international sites, community involvement, looting and so on. The cases are supposed to make you think. The focus is largely on how we conduct archaeology, not how archaeologists conduct themselves. There are definitely bad archaeologists in the field. I’ve never really thought about ethics cases covering what can happen at universities, at field schools, in the field hotel on a CRM project, beyond the project, in an advisor’s office. The things we—as archaeologists—all know happens, but simply don’t talk about. Sexual harassment and discrimination aren’t covered in CRM law and practice. It isn’t something I’ve routinely covered with my students in the past. This is where that issue of integrity comes really comes into play. Is our field a safe space for upcoming young archaeologists to thrive? Frankly, it depends.
There aren’t provisions in the NHPA on what to do if a crew chief consistently belittles you based on your gender. It wasn’t covered in undergrad or graduate school what to do if your advisor at field school tries rape you. Retaliation for reporting discrimination or refusing your advisor’s advances isn’t spelled out in any compliance law. I am so used to only considering compliance legalities, not necessarily who is involved in that work. It is easy to assume that all an archaeologist would have to worry about is the ethical and legal side of one’s work—not being afraid if your rapist, victimizer, assailant, would be welcome at the same events you wish to attend, like a professional meeting (i.e. SAA 2019 Conference). An entire organization demonstrated that you can scream at the top of your lungs, but they won’t stop to listen, deciding to keep up the façade that there’s nothing wrong with our field.
While perusing the 2019 Ethics Bowl cases (yes, SAA, this looks bad), I was surprised to come across Case Seven, which describes the situation of Tim Roberts, a third-year doctoral student who feels increasingly uncomfortable by his advisor; she made advances, lewd remarks, etc. When confronted, she threatens him with leaking his research. When he reaches out to faculty, they dismiss his claim, state he shouldn’t talk about the accusations, and threaten dismissing him from the program. Sadly, this is not an uncommon real-world story. And, as the SAA demonstrated, something most organizations like to pretend isn’t happening. CRM laws have no sway over this case, and reporting systems fail, so it’s all up to ethics and integrity. And if that fails? Long ago, I was taught to consider myself lucky to only have been sexually harassed in the field. Did the organization I worked for do anything to the individual? No. What did that teach me? I simply wasn’t as important as my crew chief, to move on, that I was lucky, that it could’ve been worse. The #MeToo symposium at the SAA 2019 Conference further highlighted how prevalent and well-known harassment, discrimination, and assault are in our field. So, what should ‘Tim Roberts’ do? I don’t know. And that scares me.
As I wrote earlier, I think every student should have a good grasp of cultural resource management (CRM) legislation, from the Antiquities Act of 1906 to the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 (NAGPRA). But, there needs to be more. During my last couple of courses, I’ve tried sharing the underbelly of our work, not only unethical compliance stories. Students should know. I provide the harassment policies of various organizations, talk about reporting abuse, and so on. I share social media statements, news articles, and my own observations from the SAA 2019 conference.
Students to professionals should be able to practice archaeology without fear of discrimination or retaliation for refusing to keep quiet. Where do we go from here? Instead of this whole debacle at the 2019 SAA conference becoming just another Ethics Bowl case, let’s hope the organization will sincerely listen to task forces (hopefully, CRM and federal agencies will follow suit), understand the social media anger, truly embrace the #MeToo movement, and make archaeology a more welcoming place. Unless broad sweeping changes and major attitude adjustments are made, the same things will happen again and again. Without action, valuing ethics and policies just simply isn’t enough. We can do better.
Links:
If you attended the 2019 Society for American Archaeology (SAA) conference and/or have kept up with the organization’s incredibly poor response to the Yesner situation, you then know how incredibly disappointed so many people are in the SAA. And, others have put it far more eloquently than I ever could.
My Resignation as Chair of the SAA Media Relations Committee (Killgrove) http://www.poweredbyosteons.org/2019/04/my-resignation-as-chair-of-saa-media.html
That Time The Society for American Archaeology Blocked Me On Twitter (Killgrove): http://www.poweredbyosteons.org/2019/04/that-time-society-for-american.html
#SAA2019 and the Public Face of Harassment: Thoughts and Resources on #metoo and the SAA (Klembara and Markert): http://mapabing.org/2019/05/01/saa2019-and-the-public-face-of-harassment-thoughts-and-resources-on-metoo-and-the-saa/
Scholarly Society in ‘Crisis’: Want to know how to handle a Me Too-related incident and related public relations snafu? Don’t ask the Society for American Archaeology (Flaherty): https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/04/30/how-not-handle-me-too-related-public-relations-crisis
View Dr. Sarah Rowe’s Letter to SAA president Joe Watkins on twitter: https://twitter.com/Archaeo_Girl/status/1120502473003819009
View new membership and establishment of the SAA Task Force on Sexual and Anti-Harassment Policies and Procedures on Twitter: @SAATFPolicies
Check out my other posts on the ‘What’s Up, Archaeology?” blog!
Here is the full text:
When I was in college, oh so long ago, we focused primarily on the traditional aspects of archaeology without doing much in the way of hands-on activities; anything of that sort was left for fieldschool. Most of the students in the introductory archaeology courses were planning on majoring in the field, and so fieldschool was a requirement, so it’s not surprising methods and artifact analysis were left out. But, I’m a hands-on kind of learner. The more I can see, touch, and interact with, the better I will remember it. If I solely learned about lithics and the process of creating stone tools in class/from books without learning flint knapping or working with collections of flakes, cores, and tools, I don’t think I would be able to recognize tools and such in the field as quickly or with as much accuracy. That being said, I still drone on about theory, formation processes, the history of archaeology and the like in my courses, but I try to have a hands-on aspect as well. After covering dating methods, I set up a large dendrochronology (see the post on tree-ring dating) master sequence on one of the walls and handed out tiny tree ring ‘samples’ that my students had to match up to the sequence. They had to figure out when the tree started growing, when it was cut, and how many wet and dry spells occurred.
What I hope my students see: the artifacts from this ‘site’ are from an established village. There’s groundstone, so agriculture may be present. There is a variety of pottery types, as well as lithic materials, so there may be trade.
This past week I covered the different types of artifacts typically observed in the material record, like stone tools and pottery. I raided type collection for all kinds of artifacts to set up small mock archaeological sites in my classroom; each site even had it’s own context! I wish we had the time to set up mock sites outside, but this was just going to have to do. So, I set up three prehistoric sites, two historic sites, and one trick (got to keep students on their toes). Some of the sites had to be created with photographs of historic artifacts, but I think they got the idea across.
Lab questions for each ‘site.’
More than anything, I wanted my students to think about what artifacts can tell you about a site, like what people ate or trade networks. And, how the lack of artifacts may indicate looting. Context is key—for artifacts to have meaning, we have to know where they were located. Then, we can generate a narrative for what happened in the past. That’s why I included a photograph of a rather famous looter’s basement, who had artifacts piled to the ceiling. A couple of students came up to me, saying, “but this isn’t a site! What’s the context?” and we had a nice chat about whether or not you can actually learn anything from something completely out of context.
When I was in college, oh so long ago, we focused primarily on the traditional aspects of archaeology without doing much in the way of hands-on activities; anything of that sort was left for fieldschool. Most of the students in the introductory archaeology courses were planning on majoring in the field, and so fieldschool was a requirement, so it’s not surprising methods and artifact analysis were left out. But, I’m a hands-on kind of learner. The more I can see, touch, and interact with, the better I will remember it. If I solely learned about lithics and the process of creating stone tools in class/from books without learning flint knapping or working with collections of flakes, cores, and tools, I don’t think I would be able to recognize tools and such in the field as quickly or with as much accuracy. That being said, I still drone on about theory…
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