Washout

Today became quite the bummer.  June 4 was supposed to be the first day of the first SUNY-Orange archaeological field project, but the rain would not cooperate.

The rain was falling as I was driving my kids to their daycare, but seemed to lighten up as I dropped them off.  But, driving south correlated with increasing rain intensity...almost like the project site was a magnet for it.

All the students showed, or called, but the rain was just too much.  The students and I held a quick meeting under the awning of a Rite Aid and then I drank too much coffee.  Thankfully, the rain has continued since I made the weather cancellation call. 

Here's hoping for better luck tomorrow.

Setting Out the Grid

Feature 2 in Locus A

The groundwork has been laid for next week.  We will begin our excavations in the smaller of two areas, one that I've labeled Locus A.  There we will excavate 18 systematically placed shovel test pits (and likely a few judgmental as well) around at least two features.  Additionally, we should excavate two or more 1x1 meter excavation units near the features.

Too Awesome Not to Post

This image has little direct relevance to the field class that begins next week, but it's just such an awesome artifact that I had to post it. In graduate school, I worked on a couple of Hohokam sites, so their material culture is near and dear to my heart, though I have to say that I was never aware of this one.

Here's the caption that accompanied the image on the Arizona State Museum's website:

This Hohokam rabbit net, about 165 ft long by 3.6 ft wide, is made of knotted human hair! This photo is from 1967 (by Helga Teiwes) and shows E. Leavitt and R. Medieiars laying it out on the sidewalk adjacent to the museum.

Feeling Soil Texture

This video will likely seem strange and boring to you field students right now, but it will serve as a good reference as we go through the season.

Equipment is arriving.  Your $50 is being put to good use.  June 4 is a go.

Race, Social Construction and Mortality

Thanks to many of the posts examining race over at Living Anthropologically , I got turned onto Lance Gravlee’s 2009 article, “Race Becomes Biology.” There are a lot of reasons to like the article, but in particular, he brings attention to a recurrent problem I have when talking about race to students. Students definitely do usually interpret the traditional anthropological critique of race as “oh, anthropologists say race doesn’t exist, so it’s not important.” And while that’s clearly not what I’m arguing in class, it’s painstakingly difficult to clearly articulate the nuance.

Old Fire

Wonderwerk Cave, South Africa

Thanks to Molly for the initial heads up on this.  News in the archaeological world is all about a site in South Africa that seems to show convincing evidence for the use of fire by about one million years ago.  This is about 300,000 years earlier than we had discussed in the archaeology class.  As the linked article describes, the antiquity of the use of fire illustrates even more the long history of biological and cultural change that has characterized the story of our species.