Musings

…historians consistently differ from ecologists, who more often than not treat people as exogenous variables that fit awkwardly if at all into the theoretical models of the discipline. The historian’s tendency is quite opposite. The chief protagonists and antagonists of our stories are almost always human, for reasons that go to the very heart of our narrative impulse.*

We archaeologists often try hard to get people, emotional people, into our publications, but it’s difficult to do while appeasing the gods of science by describing what is nearly unarguably true—systematically observed truths, anyway (and replicable, if at all possible—that’s why there’s so much data published in addition to discussions and analysis).

Charles Hudson’s recent fiction, Conversations with the High Priest of Coosa, is an example of a premier ethnohistorian abandoning the limitations of academic publishing in a search for (adventure in?) truths not readily accepted there.

BTW, a triumphant (not triumphal) 4.6 miles today at 3.6 mph. Whew! T-shirt weather already, even before 8 am.

* William Cronon. 1992. A Place for Stories: Nature, History, and Narrative, Journal of American History 78:1347–1376.

Posted at 11:18 AM | Comments Off on Story telling modes

Today I’ve been thinking volcanoes, which sent me to the dictionary to check out a few technical terms:

tephra

air-fall material (pyroclastics) ejected from a volcano during eruption

ash

fine tephra particles <2mm in diameter

lapilli

tephra particles 2–64mm in diameter; multiple forms

volcanic bombs or blocks

tephra objects >64mm in diameter

fugacity

a thermodynamic property of a real gas that, if substituted for the pressure or partial pressure in the equations for an ideal gas, gives equations applicable to the real gas (this one has my head spinning)

Posted at 10:22 PM | 2 Comments »

Lemme be explicit: M, this bud’s for you!.

These buds are in honor of Maureen, who passed her oral comps today (and her writtens last week)! Kudos, M!

I promised that I’d open a bottle of prosecco tonight since I can’t be in Lexington with you and the celebrants, and I want to report that I’m on my second glass! Cheers! Salud!

Posted at 8:53 PM | 4 Comments »

Even in Atlanta you can rent a castle! The Brits would probably laugh at us for calling this building a castle, but, here in the Sunny South, we boast about it!

Posted at 6:52 PM | Comments Off on Castle 4 rent

Got distracted thinking about the Olmec and the Mother/Sister Culture debate.

A few relevant references:

Blomster, Jeffrey P., Hector Neff, and Michael D. Glascock. 2005. Olmec Pottery Production and Export in Ancient Mexico Determined through Elemental Analysis. Science 307:1068–72.

Flannery, Kent V., and Joyce Marcus. 2000. Formative Mexican Chiefdoms and the Myth of the “Mother Culture”. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 19:1–37.

Flannery, Kent V., Andrew K. Balkansky, Gary M. Feinman, David C. Grove, Joyce Marcus, Elsa M. Redmond, Robert G. Reynolds, Robert J. Sharer, Charles S. Spencer, and Jason Yaeger. 2005. Implications of New Petrographic Analysis for the Olmec “Mother Culture” Model. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 102:11219–23.

Grove, David C. 1997. Olmec Archaeology: A Half Century of Research and Its Accomplishments. Journal of World Prehistory 11:51–101.

Pool, Christopher A. 2006. Current Research on the Gulf Coast of Mexico. Journal of Archaeological Research 14:189–241.

Wilk, Richard R. 2004. Miss Universe, the Olmec and the Valley of Oaxaca. Journal of Social Archaeology 4:81–98.

Posted at 10:27 PM | Comments Off on Olmec debate

The way cool thing about anthropological archaeology is that anything interesting can be considered within the field. Poetry? Yup. History? Yup. Climate change. Yup. Keeps me coming back!

This colorful image is from a report by Margo Schwadron, on the web from the venerable journal Antiquity, examining prehistoric settlement of the south Florida Everglades. Given the effects of small fluctuations in sea levels on this terrain, where people lived should directly reflect when that spot of ground was a) above water, and b) accessible.

Love those smeary-appearing “tree islands”. Just imagine how many bugs would attack you if you visited them.

Posted at 5:34 PM | 2 Comments »

Got distracted thinking about the Olmec and the Mother/Sister Culture debate.

A few relevant references….

Blomster, Jeffrey P., Hector Neff, and Michael D. Glascock. 2005. Olmec Pottery Production and Export in Ancient Mexico Determined through Elemental Analysis. Science 307:1068–72.

Flannery, Kent V., and Joyce Marcus. 2000. Formative Mexican Chiefdoms and the Myth of the “Mother Culture”. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 19:1–37.

Flannery, Kent V., Andrew K. Balkansky, Gary M. Feinman, David C. Grove, Joyce Marcus, Elsa M. Redmond, Robert G. Reynolds, Robert J. Sharer, Charles S. Spencer, and Jason Yaeger. 2005. Implications of New Petrographic Analysis for the Olmec “Mother Culture” Model. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 102:11219–23.

Grove, David C. 1997. Olmec Archaeology: A Half Century of Research and Its Accomplishments. Journal of World Prehistory 11:51–101.

Pool, Christopher A. 2006. Current Research on the Gulf Coast of Mexico. Journal of Archaeological Research 14:189–241.

Wilk, Richard R. 2004. Miss Universe, the Olmec and the Valley of Oaxaca. Journal of Social Archaeology 4:81–98.

Posted at 10:22 PM | Comments Off on Olmec debate

What you’re looking at here is a moderately high-resolution aerial photo (more or less) of an eroded hill-peak down in the Mixteca Alta (see this page), with some shapes drawn on it (thank you Illustrator). The shapes variously represent temple-mounds (the white squares), residential terraces (those long shapes rather like bacilli), and retaining walls (the long grey wide lines).

The whole mess is a map of a residential and civic-ceremonial architectural cluster slopped across a ridge, part of a now-abandoned community that extended across a spider-shaped set of ridge tops beyond the portion shown here, and had several thousand residents in its heyday. Occupation spanned the Classic and Postclassic (roughly), but now the hilltop is pretty eroded making discerning the architecture not only difficult while standing there, but hair-pullingly difficult if you’re trying to make this map—my task for today!

Posted at 6:38 PM | 2 Comments »

Few awnings like this survive in our neighborhood today. Even this one may be upgraded soon…. Nice pounding rain sound, as I recall, right up there with the echo in an attic under an uninsulated tin roof….

Love those stripes, too!

Posted at 6:39 PM | 3 Comments »

The other day I mentioned kids and dogs as an obvious possibility for somewhat or actually unexplainable features around domestic archaeological sites. So, was this floral art kids or adults?

(Obviously, even the best of show types of the canine persuasion are out here….)

On another note, here’re suggestions for overcoming stage fright. In a nutshell: “Don’t think about yourself.”

Yeah. If you can….

Posted at 11:05 AM | 1 Comment »