Tag: CRM

ArchInk 2021, Day 2: The Best Rubbish

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Response to ArchInk prompt, The best rubbish. Cartoon image of 1930s deodorant/footcream tube (i.e. one of my favorite artifacts observed). There's an advertisement for this saying "Mary is beautiful but dumb because she does not realize she she smells poorly." Lather Up!

My response to the ArchInk prompt, “The Best Rubbish.” This is one of my favorite historic artifacts I’ve observed while surveying, a small pink tube of women’s underarm and footcream deodorant from the 1930s. I went down a rabbit hole of advertising for these products from that time and they are horrendous! Who knew a lack of deodorant could shipwreck marriages? Make a woman dumb? And so much more! There’s a wonderful article by Sarah Everts in Smithsonian Magazine about how advertising companies tried to convince women they smelled bad and needed their products: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-advertisers-convinced-americans-they-smelled-bad-12552404/.

ArchInk 2021, Day 1

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Comic in response to ArchInk prompt "Uncommon Ground," showing an archaeologist easily finding artifacts and features in the southwest USA, while having a much harder time in the grasslands/plains of the USA.

Here’s my contribution for Day 1 of Archaeology Inkotober 2021, the prompt being “Uncommon Ground.” The transition from one’s specialty area to another can feel a bit jarring at times. Yes, the process of analysis is similar across the board when it comes to ceramics and lithics, recording structures, etc. but actually being able to find said artifacts can be tough. I had gotten so used to my high desert environments, where there’s a field house, pueblo, or crazy huge artifact scatter every few meters, that moving to an area requiring shovel tests to see if anything–anything at all–was on the landscape, was a hard shift. But, no matter what, no matter where, there’s archaeology if people were there.

SHPO on a Hippo!

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SHPO_3

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.

WIA Blog Post: Ethics Cases and the Real World

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From a post I wrote for the WIA blog: https://womeninarchaeology.com/2019/05/28/ethics-cases-and-the-real-world/

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

 

WIA Blog Post: To Be or Not To Be An Archaeologist

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I wrote the following for the Women In Archaeology (WIA) blog.  Check out all of the great posts and podcast episodes on the website!

Consider the following:

“You know you’re an archeologist… when with a BA in Anthropology, field school, and post grad work as a field tech, you have never labeled yourself as an archeologist because in the purest form, you haven’t earned that title. Then you cringe when the non-degree holding, no field school, no anthro studies, shovel bum, I mean field tech, who is new to the community tells everyone he IS an archeologist. UGH!!”

A woman posted the above not too long ago on an archaeology-themed Facebook group and it spurred a variety of reactions from, ‘what the hell?!’ to ‘Ugh, I know! So, frustrating.’  My fellow Women in Archaeology Podcast hosts chatted a bit about our own reactions to the post.  Our overarching response was why on earth would she not consider herself an archaeologist?  There’s a lot to unpack in just these two sentences.  Let’s consider the first . . .

“ . . . have never labeled yourself as an archaeologist because in the purest form, you haven’t earned that title.”

This individual indicates that she has a great deal of experience and education in archaeology, so why wouldn’t she consider herself as an archaeologist?  I am loud and proud about my archaeologist status—I have earned it through experience (i.e. blood, sweat, and tears) and education (i.e. BA and MA in anthropology and archaeology).  Now, why wouldn’t she do the same?  One of the possible things going on here is called ‘imposter syndrome.’  There are numerous articles describing this syndrome by Time, Scientific American, The New York Times, and so on.  In a nutshell, imposter syndrome is the fear that you will be exposed as a fraud if you claim to be one thing or another, despite numerous accomplishments supporting your claims.  For example, you could never really be an archaeologist unless you fit the ideal—no matter how you strive, you simply are not good enough to have that title.

What does it mean to be an archaeologist in the ‘purest form’?  Is there really such a thing?  The pursuit of archaeology is conducted in a variety of forms, from the lab to the field, from academia to cultural resource management (CRM).  Being an archaeologist can mean surveying hundreds of miles or studying bones or analyzing ancient poop—there are many ways to be an archaeologist.  Consequently, ispso facto, therefore, forsooth, you—individual who posted this discussion inspiring post— are an archaeologist.  If you fear being called out for not having the specific qualifications to be the perfect archaeologist, don’t be.  No archaeologist is perfect.  And, the requirements for what it means to be an archaeologist are determined more by the type of career you hope pursue than some overarching label of what archaeology is supposed to be.  It is the job where the necessary education and/or experience comes in.

On to the second part of the post . . . “non-degree holding, no field school, no anthro studies, shovel bum, I mean field tech is new to the community.”

Now, there is something to be said about experience.  I have met many older archaeologists who learned on the job, before more rigid (and necessary) qualifications were put into place.  They have more knowledge of the field than I could ever hope to gain, however, that does not negate my education and fewer years of experience.  We can work together to really do some really great work.

Currently, If you search for any kind of archaeology fieldwork job, there is typically a list of requirements that any archaeology technician must have, including some coursework in archaeology, as well as some kind of field school.  So, it is hard to imagine there’s a shovel bum out there with zero schooling in archaeology or anthropology, no field school, and no experience in the field.  I’ve been an arch tech and I’ve taught arch techs—everyone has to have some understanding of the discipline.  Otherwise, they can do more damage than good at a site or on a survey.  It makes me wonder if a conflict transpired between this individual and the shovel bum.  It is not uncommon for PHd’s having trouble finding work right out of graduate school (I struggled right after my MA) and having to work at a lower level within CRM.  It may rankle to be at the same level as someone right out of college—but, that’s not the arch tech’s fault, and trust me, we’ve all been there.

What’s important is to showcase your knowledge, but also admit what you don’t know.  It is not helpful, whether you are the crew chief or the arch tech, to exaggerate your experience, since limits will show once the work starts.  Be proud of what you have achieved and be a role model for those who want to get the same level of education and experience, but just aren’t there yet.  If you confront someone who claims to be the best archaeologist in the world, but by no means has the skills, don’t worry about them—it will show in their work.  And, any crew chief, assistant crew chief, etc worth their salt, will notice, too.