A 'Canadian connection' in North American faculty jobs in Archaeology?

In a paper in press in American Antiquity, Speakman and colleagues (2017) present some data about which archaeology programs in the US and Canada have been most successful at placing their graduates over the past 40 years or so. They conclude that “success in obtaining a faculty position upon graduation is predicated in large part on where one attends graduate school” and that “success in landing a faculty position begins the moment one applies for graduate school” because “being accepted into a top program, as well as the reputation of scholars in that program… really does make a difference.” To me (and for them), these overall conclusions are unsurprising, though it is nice to see impressions and rules of thumb being backed up with some hard numbers. In a nutshell, if you’re interested in being an archaeology prof in North America, you better graduate from Michigan, Arizona, Berkeley, UPenn, ASU, Harvard, TAMU, UCSB, Chicago or UNM, in that order, since these are the ten North American programs in their “tier I”. The second tier also does pretty well in placing grads, and it comprises UCLA, Florida, Pitt, UT Austin, Wisconsin, Tennessee, OSU, UNC Chapel Hill and Virginia.

The authors indicate some readers might be uncomfortable with their approach which divided the 110 North American universities in their sample into six tiers (I, II, III, IV, V, and 0), based on the number of their grads who have secured a faculty position. I’m personally not too bothered by it, as I think this is a rather apt reading of the data they present, rather than a direct judgement of the quality of the faculty in these different programs.

What did strike me, from my position as an archaeology professor at a Canadian university, is how these trends don’t quite seem to jive with the reality of the Canadian market. Based on the data presented, Canadian program are not particuarly great at placing their graduates into faculty positions. The Canadian institutions they list are, in decreasing order of success, McMaster (Tier III – 8 grads placed in 20 years), Calgary (Tier III – 6 grads), followed by Alberta, McGill and Toronto (all three in Tier IV, tied with four grads each), Simon Fraser University (Tier V, 2 grads), and finally UBC, Manitoba and Montréal in Tier 0, meaning programs that haven’t placed a single grad between 1994 and 2014.

Looking at this from a Canadian perspective, I was struck that this list excluded two Canadian universities with dedicated Archaeology programs leading to the PhD, namely Memorial University and Université Laval, though this is likely a result of the bias the authors themselves bring up about the completeness of the AAA AnthroGuide from which they gathered most of their data. Also excluded is the new PhD program at the University of Victoria, which didn’t exist for the period the authors consider.

Additionally, my admittedly subjective impression is that there are a proportionally a lot more archaeology faculty trained at Canadian institutions hired into Canadian program. In the database provided as part of the article’s supplementary material, only 59 of the 1084 (or 5.4%) archaeology faculty listed obtained their PhDs from Canadian programs; this drops to 4.6% (or 28/608) if you consider only those PhDs awarded between 1994 and 2014. This is much lower than my gut feeling of the proportion of Canadian-trained archaeologists is in actuality in most Canadian programs. For instance, at UdeM, out of our seven archaeology and bioarchaeology faculty, two (so 28.4%) received their PhD from Canadian institutions (actually, Québec, in this case); these figures will have to be adjusted next year, following the hire of a public archaeologist we're currently advertising for. Looking more broadly, at SFU, out of 16 tenured/tenure-track faculty listed on their website, fully 8 (50%) come from Canadian institutions, while neighboring UBC has 2/6 (33%) graduates from Canadian programs. At the other end of the country, at MUN’s archaeology department 7/11 (63.6%) tenured/tenure-track faculty listed received their doctorate from a Canadian program. The disparity between these numbers and the overall representation of Canadian PhDs in archaeology programs in North America as a whole is pretty staggering.

There are a couple of ways to think about this trend. On the one hand, it is probably not terribly surprising, considering that, by law, priority is given to Canadian citizens for positions in Canada; insofar as having a Canadian PhD is loosely correlated with being a Canadian citizen, this probably reflects that fact up to a degree. Likewise, scholars working on topics in Canadian archaeology are more likely to be trained in Canada and, in turn, to be appealing to Canadian programs wanting specialists in these issues. The flipside of both these considerations, of course, is that correspondingly fewer Canadian-trained archaeologists must serve as faculty in US archaeology programs, which would have the effect of depressing the already low representation of Canadian programs south of the border. Whether it also has the effect of creating a distinctive Canadian archaeological tradition is an open question; I would surmise that it doesn’t, considering the level of methodological and theoretical integration that currently characterizes the field, but this is just an impression. That said, these (admittedly partial) data suggest one thing rather clearly: if you want to teach archaeology in Canada, receiving a PhD in archaeology from a Canadian program would appear to give your chances a serious boost.

References: 

Speakman, R.J., C.S. Hadden, M.H. Colvin, J. Cramb, K.C. Jones, T.W. Jones, C.L. Kling, I. Lulewicz, K.G. Napora, K.L. Reinberger, B.T. Ritchison, M.J. Rivera-Araya, A.K. Smith and V.D. Thompson. 2017. Choosing a path to the ancient world in a modern market: The reality of faculty jobs in archaeology. American Antiquity: https://doi.org/10.1017/aaq.2017.36.

Stay classy, Kellogg!

In face-palm news for the day:

The Maya Archaeology Initiative, a nonprofit that supports education for Guatemalan children, is challenging a claim by Kellogg’s, the maker of Froot Loops and other sugary breakfast products, that its use of a toucan image infringes on the cereal giant’s Toucan Sam character.

I think this one doesn't even need any extra snark. I really hope Kellogg gets shot down on this, and that the Maya Archaeology Initiative gets a major boost in publicity as a result! 

Back in Denver!

I'm back from the field and getting ready for the new term which starts on Monday at UCD! I'm teaching Introduction to Archaeology (ANTH 1302) and Lithic Analysis (ANTH 4330/5330) this term. It should be an interesting semester - I'm moving into my new lab space, revamping Intro, and working on a bunch of different (and exciting!) projects, some of which I'll be discussing on this blog in the coming weeks and months.

Also, I'm excited that we have Sandi Copeland as a visiting professor in our department this year. Sandi's been using isotope analysis to reconstruct some aspects of sociality in early hominins in East Africa, and her recent Nature paper's been discussed in numerous media outlets over the summer. If you want an overview of what she's up to and what she studies, Live Science has also just published a really good interview with her that covers all of that, and which I urge you to go read.

Important Science!

Talk about some scientific research I get behind!

"These findings might help brewers in devising fermentation processes in which the release of yeast proteins could be minimized, if such components could alter the flavor of beer, or maximized in case of species improving beer's aroma," the report notes.

In fact, I'm sure quite a few archaeologists might be interested in this... In other beer-y news, I was finally able to sample Tut's Royal Gold after Todd Surovell's colloquium talk last Friday. It reminded me of a slightly bitter Hefeweizen, but it was pretty good. Can't beat that for an archaeologically-themed beverages.

Anthropological items of note, Aug. 24 edition

A few items of note, not all paleo-related, that grabbed my attention over the past couple of days:

• There's an intriguing report at Slate about the lone survivor of an 'uncontacted' (a term I abhor) native tribe in Brazil that was decimated by ranchers and loggers. The man now live in almost complete isolation in a 31-squared-mile 'safe zone' monitored by government official.The report includes an interesting allusion to ethnoarchaeological  observations on a series of huts that allowed officials to estimate the size of hiss original tribe and pinpoint the year, 1996, they were eradicated by land-settler. Chilling.

• Gizmodo offers an interview with Timothy Taylor who discusses some aspects of his upcoming book The Artificial Ape: How Technology Changed the Course of Human Evolution. The beginning of the exchange is wrapped in one of those annoying "Darwin was wrong" tropes that is completely misleading, but the rest of the piece presents an good overview of Taylor's view that human tool-use is radically different than any behavior observed in other animals. I should have more to say about this soon.

• BYU archaeologist Joel Janetski and his team have found evidence that prehistoric foragers ground seeds and plants into flour some 10,000 years ago at North Creek Shelter, in Utah. The milled seeds include sage, salt bush and various grasses, which were processed on grindstones. The discovery provides evidence that Paleoindian diet may have been more varied than generally acknowledged by those who focus on the 'hunter' in 'hunter-gatherer'.

• At Neuroanthropology, Greg Downey provides a long but very interesting discussion of Pat Shipman's new paper on the human-animal connection, focusing especially on the dog-human connection in human evolution.

New Paleoindian site in Keene, NH

It appears that a new Paleoindian site has been uncovered during the construction of a new middle school in Keene, New Hampshire. The report present a good overview in layman's terms of what has been uncovered so far

So far the artifacts have been found in oval clusters. Goodby speculates that these areas were where the people pitched tents or other shelters.

Primarily, the explorers have found a variety of stone tools that would have been used for processing animal hides, such as scraping tools. They've also found tools for making things out of bone and antlers as well as tools for engraving and splitting. But what's even more significant is what the stone tells the archeologists about the people who used them.

"We're learning for one thing that they had connections that extended all over Northern New England," Goodby said. "They were getting their stone from quarries as far away as northern Maine. And from sources in far north New Hampshire." He said there's evidence some of the stone may have come from Berlin and Jefferson.

He said they may have gotten this by following the caribou migratory routes, as that was their main game animal. He also said it may indicate that they were connected to other bands of people at this time so the stone moved from family to family.

Goodby also believes the type of stone they are finding in Keene as compared to the stone found in Swanzey in the 1970s, will ultimately prove the Keene site is even older than the Swanzey site.

Another exciting find was a stone fireplace that still had remnants of burnt fire wood in it. Next to the hearth, the archeologists also discovered what they believe to be burnt caribou bone. Goodby said testing will be done on the bone to determine the animal and the wood to determine what species of trees were in the area when these people lived there.

That's all well and good, and the report provides a nice example of how observation and interpretation can be woven together during archaeological research to develop solid working hypotheses. What struck me most about the report, however, is how the material recovered during excavation will be put to use in the coming years and use the shape part of the school's own curriculum. It appears that the school administrators have very sagely decided to use this material to provide students with an awareness of the deep past.

He said school officials will be building the finds into the curriculum so that students will understand the importance of the history right there in their backyard. He also said replicas of the stone tools will be on permanent display inside the school.

"The curriculum has been a little bit lacking when it comes to the original inhabitants in New England," Gurney said. "Now the students will be able to hold replicas of the actual artifacts in their hands and see exactly what the real tools looked like and touch and hold them…. It's just great."

If you ask me, that's a really fantastic manner of both underscoring the importance of archaeology to a young audience as well as of introducing students to the fundamental principles that allow people to study the human past and, more broadly, an array of 'paleo' disciplines by familiarizing them, for starters, with how dating methods work and the long history of human-environment interactions. Given the recent rise of the worst of obscurantist tendencies in some quarters, this can only be a good thing.

Neanderthals'r'us?

By now, unless you live under a rock, you should have heard the news: New genetic studies indicate that Neanderthals and modern humans likely interbred:

Among the findings, published in the May 7 issue of Science, is evidence that shortly after early modern humans migrated out of Africa, some of them interbred with Neanderthals, leaving bits of Neanderthal DNA sequences scattered through the genomes of present-day non-Africans.

"We can now say that, in all probability, there was gene flow from Neanderthals to modern humans," said the paper's first author, Richard E. (Ed) Green of the University of California, Santa Cruz.

The results of the study have been published in two papers in the last issue of Science (Green et al. 2010, Burbano et al. 2010 - both free access), where you can also find a free online feature. that provides some context to the public unfamiliar with genetics and/or Neanderthals To get a better idea of the significance and the nuts and bolts of this new work, you must, must go over to John Hawks' blog for a very thorough discussion. I largely agree with his take on the reports and what they mean, but as I've argued elsewhere, we need to reconcile the genetics with the fossil, and especially the archaeological records. Just as there was a great deal of well-founded skepticism by some about 'X woman' a few weeks ago (something which I've been meaning to write about and hopefully will get to relatively soon), people need to come to grips with all of the available data, as opposed to considering one line of evidence as trumping all others. In other words, it's not because some people wear lab coats that their data by definition trump all other!

In practical terms, I think this means that you will see a lot of people more sympathetic to a replacement position start arguing just that, that you need to reconcile these new genetic data with previous data that seemed to strongly support such a position (just how strongly is debatable, but besides the point here). Specifically, I think you'll see these people focus on caveats of genetic studies like they never have before, and latch on to less parsimonious explanations of the genetics as 'something that needs to be considered seriously' (in this case, though, the alternative interpretation is so much less parsimonious as to be untenable). Fundamentally, of course, there's nothing wrong with that; in fact, it's something I've argued for repeatedly both on this blog and in press (link to a free pdf on the Uluzzian). The key difference is that if people on both ends of the spectrum will (hopefully) begin playing by the same general rules.

Now, does this mean that it's time to do the Neanderthal victory dance (to quote Hawks) and to begin re-imagining the caves of Late Pleistocene Europe throbbing to the sweet rhythms of Barry White and Marvin Gaye? Well yes and no. Yes, there is no some fairly conclusive evidence that Neanderthals and modern humans interbred and yielded fertile offspring - this means that, from a purely biological standpoint, the two were part of the same species, Homo sapiens. But no, it does not directly answer the question of how and why Neanderthals ultimately disappeared. And also, NO!, "Let's get it on" is not now a sufficient way of thinking about the relationships between Neanderthals and early modern humans!

That said, in my opinion, the two papers papers (Greene et al. 2010; Burbano et al. 2010) have the potential to considerably change how Neanderthals are discussed, both in terms of how people approach the data and how the data is interpreted, which are slightly different things. First, the people, namely researchers involved in modern human origins research. For one thing, as I mentioned above, you're likely going to hear much more frequent calls to consider all the evidence available and how it agrees/disagrees. On the other, in order to best incorporate all the relevant data in interpretations, the debate should shift away from 'one size fits all' interpretations to interpretations that are more regional in scale. Whether or not any of this actually happens is another story, but these papers definitely have the potential of serving as game changers in the modern human origins debate.

What I find most exciting about the Green et al. (2010) study is that it provides a strong boost for the importance of archaeological evidence plays in understanding the process by which Neanderthals disappear. Quite simply, this is because the genetic data and the skeletal evidence (Trinkaus 2007) now both converge to show some significant degree of biological interaction between the two homminin populations. The thing is, genetics and physical anthropology informing us about the fact that such interaction took place, but they tell us comparatively in terms of how these interactions played out. This is where archaeology comes in, since it's the only way we have of getting at the various types of interactions Neanderthals and modern humans might have had and to remove the preconceptions implicitly imposed by the notion that they were two distinct species.

In practical terms, we should now thankfully be moving away from models that see Neanderthals as fundamentally different from 'us'. This means that there is little reason to continue depending on interaction models that see Neanderthals as merely 'copying without understanding' whatever different behaviors early Eurasian modern humans might have displayed. An extension of that is that if Neanderthals and modern humans interacted enough for the former to have contributed between 1-4% of the genetic material of people of non-African extraction today, the two groups must have been able to interact in a sustained manner, which rules out a scenario whereby rape plays a preponderant role (and plays on prevalent ideas of Neanderthals as the savage/dangerous other). This also has implications about communication between the two groups, by which I mean that they likely were able to speak to one another, as already suggested by both genetic and indirect evidence anyway.

Perhaps most interestingly is that the degree of genetic contribution of Neanderthals to modern human genetics also sheds some light about how intense the interactions might have been, and also what some of the demographic parameters of thee encounters might have been. The numbers do point to some kind of demographic imbalance, though it must also be remembered that genes, like culture, can sometimes diffuse into an area much in advance of the arrival of a new population (Eswaran 2002, Eswaran et al. 2005). In other words, modern human genes might have made their way into Neanderthal areas by virtue of Neanderthal-hybrid interactions as opposed to necessarily only through Neanderthal-modern interactions. What this means for how 'hybrids' might have been perceived or integrated in either population is open to debate, but is a debate that might well shift to the center of ongoing debates about the nature of interactions between prehistoric humans populations.

References

Burbano, H., Hodges, E., Green, R., Briggs, A., Krause, J., Meyer, M., Good, J., Maricic, T., Johnson, P., Xuan, Z., Rooks, M., Bhattacharjee, A., Brizuela, L., Albert, F., de la Rasilla, M., Fortea, J., Rosas, A., Lachmann, M., Hannon, G., & Paabo, S. (2010). Targeted Investigation of the Neandertal Genome by Array-Based Sequence Capture Science, 328 (5979), 723-725 DOI: 10.1126/science.1188046

Eswaran, V. (2002). A Diffusion Wave out of Africa: The Mechanism of the Modern Human Revolution? Current Anthropology, 43 (5), 749-774 DOI: 10.1086/342639

ESWARAN, V., HARPENDING, H., & ROGERS, A. (2005). Genomics refutes an exclusively African origin of humans Journal of Human Evolution, 49 (1), 1-18 DOI: 10.1016/j.jhevol.2005.02.006

Green, R., Krause, J., Briggs, A., Maricic, T., Stenzel, U., Kircher, M., Patterson, N., Li, H., Zhai, W., Fritz, M., Hansen, N., Durand, E., Malaspinas, A., Jensen, J., Marques-Bonet, T., Alkan, C., Prufer, K., Meyer, M., Burbano, H., Good, J., Schultz, R., Aximu-Petri, A., Butthof, A., Hober, B., Hoffner, B., Siegemund, M., Weihmann, A., Nusbaum, C., Lander, E., Russ, C., Novod, N., Affourtit, J., Egholm, M., Verna, C., Rudan, P., Brajkovic, D., Kucan, Z., Gusic, I., Doronichev, V., Golovanova, L., Lalueza-Fox, C., de la Rasilla, M., Fortea, J., Rosas, A., Schmitz, R., Johnson, P., Eichler, E., Falush, D., Birney, E., Mullikin, J., Slatkin, M., Nielsen, R., Kelso, J., Lachmann, M., Reich, D., & Paabo, S. (2010). A Draft Sequence of the Neandertal Genome Science, 328 (5979), 710-722 DOI: 10.1126/science.1188021

Autobiographical notes on Sally Binford

A colleague recently pointed me to an oldish post on Susie Bright's blog (link just slightly this side of NSFW) which comprises an absolutely fascinating autobiographical interview with Sally Binford, published in Janet Clinger's book Our Elders, Six Bay Area Life Stories. When I say fascinating, I mean I literally couldn't stop reading it until I reached the end, so read it at the risk of your own time! Talk about a person who lived an interesting life and on her own terms.

I've mentioned before in passing how Sally Binford was one of the early figureheads of the 'New Archaeology' in the 1960's, and the interview provides a great deal of detail (some of which is not exactly complimentary) on her relationship with Lew Binford, as well as her life before and especially after her involvement with the New Archaeology. It also provides an insider's perspective on some of the politics of North American anthropology and academia during the Sixties. And I'm sure the students in my Lithic Analysis class who just had to wade through L. Binford's post-Sally 1973 paper on the 'functional' interpretation of Mousterian typological variability for yesterday's class will especially appreciate this quote from the interview:

"He was an extremely brilliant guy, but couldn’t write a sentence that made sense — that had a subject and a predicate. His writing was unspeakable. My job in the marriage became to translate what Lew wrote into English... I would attempt to steer him away from his more imaginative notions and help him in finding data to support the sounder ones, then help him write them up in comprehensible English."

More relic fail!

Just last week, I discussed how archaeology and relics often don't go together so well, with the former usually negating the validity of the latter. And so this week, when a report of the archaeological discovery of a nail like that used to crucify Christ (and even better, cherished by Knights Templar as a relic!), my archaeo-sense immediately started tingling and so did Chris' at A Hot Cup of Joe.

Turns out my finely honed archaeo-sense didn't lie to me. Chris Cunnyngham discusses the truly bizarre reality of the context of this find and finds it rather weak (go read the piece, you won't believe it!), concluding that

So, boiled down, this is what we have: A man buys an old building, pronounces it a nation, secedes from his country, proclaims himself Prince, conducts archaeological digs and claims to have found three Templar skeletons and a nail that may have been a venerated relic of a crucifixion. And if it was a crucifixion nail it was one of thousands available.

Sounds a little sketchy.

To make matters worse, yesterday Portuguese archaeologist Élvio Sousa, soundly debunked the whole report via a scathing statement on the CEAM (a Portuguese archaeological institute) web site, of which I reproduce the English component here:

The news published yesterday in England, on the assumed Roman relics found in archaeological excavations carried out at Fort São José, erected in the eighteenth century, at Funchal Port, Madeira, requires the following statement from the Scientific Council of CEAM:

1. Considering the scientific archaeological work done by CEAM at Fort São José (2004-2006), it is manifestly false, the news of the discovery of Roman objects, especially in an area (dig) that corresponds with the excavated area.

2. This dig identified, to the bedrock, objects dating from the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries, although there are some traces that can date back to the seventeenth century.

3. The news of the findings of Romans relics is a “fantasy,” even more ridiculous by the sensationalist news of a wooden box (incredibly preserved, near the sea, over two thousand years), with three skeletons and three swords.

4. The nail that illustrates the news, if discovered inside the fort, is just an object used in residential constructions during the early Moderns times (seventeenth and eighteenth centuries). Many nails like this were found in the excavations (2004-2006). Equally, the references to skeletons are also a creation, to give emphasis to the mythical theory.

5. This view is supported by the British archaeologist and expert in Roman archeology Brian Philp (Kent Archaeological Rescue Unit) who has been following the present study of archaeological materials in partnership with the Scientific Council of CEAM.

6. In conclusion: this is pure imagination, without accuracy and scientific credibility. We are not familiarized with Mr Christopher Macklin and Bryn Walters and we do not recognize in them, any authority in the findings within this Military construction.

Un-frikkin-believable!

Four Stone Hearth 87 is live

Editon #87 ("Cabin Fever Edition"!) of the Four Stone Hearth anthropology blog carnival is up at Anthropology in Practice. Krystal did a bang-up job of it, so don't waste another instant and go check it out for the latest, freshest and neatest in anthro/archaeo blogging!

Winter and the life archaeological, redux

Last year, I posted a wintertime picture showing a tell-tale sign that an archaeologist might be living close to you in a city that receives regular snowfall. Well, it's been snowing lightly for two days in Denver, but it's nothing compared to the recent Snowmaggedon (a worse name I could not come up with even if I tried) in the eastern US. However, I've received a 'life archaeological' dispatch from one of my partners in crime currently stranded near Pittsburgh, that comprised the following picture and caption:

"It's hard to tell, but that's a perfect 1m trench with a beautiful profile
that I dug. No lithics though. Just snow."

It's reassuring to know it's not just me, sometimes!

Mica Glantz - Neandertal Paleobiogeography Colloquium at UC Denver

Next Friday, February 5 2010 (2:30PM, in AD 200), the UC Denver Anthropology Department is hosting a colloquium by Dr. Mica Glantz on Neandertal paleobiogeography in Central Asia (here'a link to a 2007 interview on her work on John Hawks' blog). Details below.

***********************************

Neandertal paleobiogeography in Central Asia: Testing the validity of the Neandertal range

Prof. Mica Glantz
Department of Anthropology
Colorado State University

Abstract:

The present study is primarily concerned with outlining the possible biogeographical limits of the Neandertal range. Until recently, the site of Teshik-Tash Cave in Uzbekistan was considered the eastern outpost of European Neandertals. In 2007, the mtDNA sequence of one Okladnikov Cave hominin was found to be similar to that of the Teshik- Tash child. Okladnikov Cave in southern Siberia is roughly 15 degrees to the north and east of Teshik-Tash. The working hypothesis is that the geographical region due east of Okladnikov and Teshik-Tash Caves expresses biogeographical factors that significantly differ from the region due west of these Neandertal sites. If this hypothesis is upheld, then these factors may define the limits of the Neandertal range. Results indicate that the biogeography of the region and the existing archaeological and hominin fossil records contain no clear evidence of a delimitation of Neandertal territory and that of East Asian archaics.

When: Friday February 5, 2010 – 2:30PM
Where: Administration Building, Rm. 200, University of Colorado Denver

Archaeology and jobs never seen in movies

Here's a humorous breakdown of the most common occupations held by the protagonists of most Hollywood movies. Having enlightened us about what jobs are usually seen in movies, the writers also provide a 'top ten' of jobs never seen in movies. And what clocks in at #10? You guessed it, archaeologist!

Archaeologist of really tedious, perpetually unfruitful digs: Movies tend to distort the profession of archaeologist and make it seem more glamorous than it really is. Instead of a swashbuckler rescuing ancient treasures from snake-pits, we’d like to see an archaeologist who digs tediously for months on end to unearth, say, one shoe horn from the Bronze Age every 11 years. Again, in keeping with this cinema verite approach, the archaeologists should not be played by actors fulfilling the screen portion of their good looking pop idol contract, but rather the type of personal-care avoiding sloppy intellectual whose own ears are a few missed cleanings away from being dig-worthy.

Actually, that's not completely true... The Royal Tenembaums had Anjelica Huston playing Etheline Tenenbaum, an archaeologist shown doing reasonably realistic archaeological things at a couple of points in the movie. Of course, Wes Anderson's mother was an archaeologist, so he may have had a slightly less "Indiana Jones-ized" view of what we do than most directors. Can you, kind reader, think of other realistic depictions of archaeologists in movies/TV shows?

Bob Kelly archaeology lectures at CU Boulder

Robert L. Kelly, a professor of archaeology in the department of anthropology at the University of Wyoming and a leading figure in research on prehistoric hunter-gatherers and the Paleoindian is giving the Distinguished Archaeology Lecture in the CU Boulder department of anthropology at the end of this month. He's also well known for his book "The Foraging Spectrum: Diversity in Hunter-Gatherer Lifeways" which is something of a must for anyone interested in hunter-gatherer adaptations, both in archaeology and as documented ethnographically. He'll be giving two lectures, both of which should be of interest to anyone interested in prehistoric foragers, the settlement of the New World and how archaeology can help understand some dimensions of human nature. Click on the flyer above for details about the lectures and info on how to get to them.

Modern human behavior in East Asia

In a recent paper, Christopher Norton and Jennie Jin review the evidence for 'modern' human behavior in the Late Pleistocene archaeological record of East Asia (i.e., China, Japan, and Korea). This is a welcome effort fits in with other recent reviews of the record of other parts of the Old World that, for various reasons, remained marginalized in most pre-2000 discussions of modern human origins, including Australia (Brumm and Moore 2005), Sahul (Habgood and Franklin 2008), and South Asia (James and Petraglia 2005). A thorough review of the situation in East Asia is also important in light of recent publications on early diagnostic Homo sapiens remains found at Tianyuan Cave in China (Shang et al. 2007) and reviews of modern human origins in the region that contrast somewhat with models popular in other parts of the Old World (e.g., Wu 2004).

Based on their review of the Pleistocene material culture and, to a lesser extent, the hominin fossil record in the region, Norton and Jin (2009) highlight the distinctive nature and internal heterogenetiy of the archaeological record of East Asia and conclude that:

"...based on the current state of the evidence from East Asia, we suggest that it is premature to argue for or against the saltational or gradualistic models. Second, evidence of watercraft and adaptation to higher altitudes should receive greater consideration for reconstructions of modern human behavior, particularly in East Asia. Interestingly, the evidence from northern China, Korea, and Japan lends more support for the saltational [replacement] model, while the evidence for southern China appears to corroborate the gradualistic [continuity] model. We postulate that this may in part be related to ecological differences between the two regions..." (Norton and Jin 2009: 258).

Adaptations to high altitudes is a bit surprising in this context, since the authors themselves indicate that current evidence suggests that only the lowest (< 3000m above sea level) parts of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau were settled by the end of OIS 3. This falls within the topographic range even of Neanderthals several tens of millennia earlier (Hopkinson 2007). That said, they are right to emphasize the importance of watercraft use and island colonization as important innovative behaviors, and their discussion of the human settlement of the Japan archipelago to illustrate this is quite good, drawing on both 'paleobathymetric' data and obsidian sourcing studies that show that obsidian traveled across open bodies of water to reach several Upper Paleolithic Japanese sites.

This is a very useful addition to the literature on the origins of modern human behavior on two levels. First, it succintly condenses a large body of research from a region that remains generally poorly-known by most paleoanthropologists, which is always a good thing in and of itself. Second, and most importantly, it underscores how distinctly the shift to behavioral 'modernity' unfolded in various parts of the Old World and even within single regions. Despite what some like to think, it is increasingly clear that this wasn't a uniform phenomenon across the Old World, and indeed that it couldn't have been. Their reference to ecological factors as one potential explanation for this is good, but I think that their discussion about different population densities in northern and southern East Asia is likely to have been even more important in fostering the need "for different foraging groups... to distinguish themselves from each other" (Norton and Jin 2009:247).

References

Brumm, A., and M.W. Moore. 2005. Symbolic revolutions and the Australian archaeological record. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 15:157-175.

Habgood P.J., and N.R. Franklin. 2008. The revolution that didn't arrive: a review of Pleistocene Sahul. Journal of Human Evolution 55:187-222

Hopkinson, T. 2007. The transition from the Lower to the Middle Palaeolithic in Europe and the incorporation of difference. Antiquity 81:294-307.

James, H.V.A., and M.D. Petraglia. 2005. Modern human origins and the evolution of behavior in the later Pleistocene record of South Asia. Current Anthropology 46:S3-S27.

Norton, C.J., and J.J.H. Jin. 2009. The evolution of modern human behavior in East Asia: current perspectives. Evolutionary Anthropology 18:247-260.

Shang, H., H. Tong, S. Zhang, F. Chen, and E. Trinkaus. 2007. An early modern human from Tianyuan Cave, Zhoukoudian, China. PNAS 104: 6573-6578.

Wu, X.Z. 2004. On the origin of modern humans in China. Quaternary International 117:131-140.

Scales of observation in forager studies

From R. Layton's Time and Change: Crisp Snapshots and Fuzzy Trends:

"... while anthropological field studies provide an adequate time scale to explain the mechanisms and proximate causes of human-animal interactions in particular circumstances, archaeological or evolutionary time scales are necessary to explain the long-term processes that brought those conditions about. The emergent properties of an ecological system are generated by the long-term interaction of species. The consequences of such interaction may well not be apparent within the time-span of participant observation, nor could they be understood by simply adding up a series of ethnographic 'snapshots.'" (Layton 2008: 8)

Reference:

Layton, R. 2008. Time and change: Crisp snapshots and fuzzy trends. In Time and Change: Archaeological and Anthropological Perspectives on the Long-Term in Hunter-Gatherer Societies (ed. by D. Papagianni, R. Layton, and H. Maschner), pp. 1-13. Oxbow Books, Oxford.

Archaelogies of tomorrow?

Last week, the students in my "Archaeological Methods" class presented preliminary versions of their final papers in poster format. I opted to have them play around with this presentation method since posters are becoming increasingly popular in professional conferences and especially because I think they give the presenter the opportunity to get more and more direct feedback on their work. Also, having them present posters as part of a class on archaeology gives them a 'taste' of what a real-life professional academic experience might actually be. And, upon seeing the posters as I was uploading them to the course website, A Very Remote Wife Indeed (wow, that sounds terrible, will need to find some other way to refer to her) quite justly observed that they all looked very sharp and very professional. I could only concur.

In any case, since I was really impressed with the breadth of topics my students decided to cover, I figured I'd post here the titles of their papers in order to give the AVRPI readership an idea of what young minds interested in archaeology are coming up with these days. Here they are, in the order in which they were presented in class:

1. Interpreting Gendered Social Identities Using Archaeological Evidence: The Canadian West Coast
   
   
2. Intraregional Analysis of Bronze Age Burials in Scotland
   
   
3. Remote Sensing in Archaeology: UAV-Based Aerial Photography
   
   
4. The Calico Early Man Site: Artifacts or Geofacts?
   
   
5. Division of Labour in Relation to Gender in the Folsom Tradition
   
   
6. Uncovering the "Lost Sisterhood": Historical Archaeology in the Red-Light District of Los Angeles, California
   
   
7. Uncharted Waters: Problems with the Chronology of Underwater Archaeological Sites in Florida
   
   
8. Ancient DNA and the Archaeology of Disease: Pathogen DNA from Archaeological Remains Provides a Definitive Diagnosis
   
   
9. The Norte Chico and Chavin Civilizations of Peru
   
   
10. Graeco-Thracian Relations in the Classical Period
    
    
11. Nasca, Peru: Its Pottery and Culture
    
    
12. Middle and Upper Paleolithic Burial Analysis: Implications for Neanderthal Cognitive Thought
    
    
13. Comparison of Archaeological Techniques Applied to Prehistoric and Forensic Contexts
    
    
14. A Comparative Analysis of the Monumental Archaeology of Easter Island (Rapa Nui) Moai and the Afghan Buddhas in the Bamiyan Valley
    
    

That Time of Year...

It's late November here at McGill, which means two things: snow is coming (in fact, it's coming down right now! argh!), and soon-to-graduate undegraduate students will soon be sending off grad school applications. When my students ask for advice about graduate school in archaeology, I usually refer them to this excellent overview about applying to grad school to do archaeology written by Keith Kintigh, of my old department (ahem, I mean school) at Arizona State University.

Now, I will certainly also be pointing them out to this 'disclaimer' found on the web site of Sönke Johnsen's lab.

Hat tip: Coturnix.

New blogs on the block

About ten days ago, I attended a little function here at McGill to honor the teaching skills of my friend Stephen Chrisomalis, now an assistant professor at Wayne State University. The reception was held because Steve was awarded a McGill Arts Undergraduate Society Excellence in Teaching Award at McGill, where he worked until this summer.

And I have to say, it's richly deserved. Beyond being an original thinker whose archaeological research is strongly and profitably rooted in comparative approaches, Steve (who incidentally was my TA in my very first archaeology course when I started out as an impressionable BA student at McGill back in 19coughcough) approaches teaching with more enthusiasm than I've seen in pretty much anyone involved in academia and, with his 'Cartesian' mindset (i.e., non-linear, which I definitely mean as a compliment!), he has the knack of coming up with innovative ways to get archaeological and anthropological matters through to students in ways that are both innovative and grounded in easily relatable topics and forms of material culture. It's a rare ability indeed, and one that I envy quite a bit now that I've started teaching on something resembling a regular basis. Habitual readers of AVRPI may remember that I had mentioned his Dollarware Archaeology website a few months back. Well, not only does he have a couple more such websites (here, here and here) where he compiles information and papers produced by the students in some of his courses, one of these is the topic of a talk he recently presented on the social underpinnings of stop signs in Montreal.

And, for another 'not only', it was my great pleasure to see recently that Steve has started his own blog, Glossographia, since blogging and new media through which to communicate anthropology writ large to a broader audience was a topic which we often discussed last year, as I was starting my postodc at McGill. Now, you'll have to excuse him if he tarnished what is otherwise an outstanding blog by talking about yours truly in one post, but I highly recommend checking it out and commenting on his posts. You won't be sorry!

Now, I've added a link to Glossographia in the links section of this humble blog, so you have no excuse not to check it out. But, I also want to point out two recent additions to the blogroll: Publishing Archaeology, by Mike Smith (a professor in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University - where I got my degree) who champions the causes of open-access publishing in archaeology and of how to disseminate archaeological literature as widely as possible (among other topics); and Middle Savagery, the brainchild of Berkeley PhD student Colleen Morgan, who devotes a lot of time and energy to how digital technologies can serve the needs and further the goals of archaeology and rendering accessible to a wider audience. Check out all three blogs, people! You'll come out of the experience a better person, if maybe one with slightly less free time.

Fear and loathing in the Pleistocene

There are a couple of interesting items on Neanderthals coming our way today, courtesy of the National Geographic. First is this short video that presents the contrasting views of I. Tattersall and J. Hawks on modern human-Neanderthal interactions:

Now, I'm sure it was unintentional, but this cracked me up: as the narrator announces "Today, it’s obvious who dominates the planet" and pauses, the video cues to a shot of John standing in the middle of Times Square(?), looking straight into the camera! And it's only fitting, really, considering the refreshing perspective Hawks brings to the debate over competition between the two hominin groups (transcripted by yours truly):

"It would be insane to go out and pick a fight. You’re not a military organization going in, looking to conquer. You’re a small group yourself. You sort of have to find a way to live with the locals and, as you do that, you learn from them to some extent. And the locals learn from you.

I feel like the defense attorney for the Neanderthals sometimes. I’m trying to see the ways that they overlap with us and trying to add complexity to the story because any story that involves things happening over a continent over thousands of years has got to be complicated."

Good little video, overall, though I was a bit aggravated by the conclusions narrated towards the end of the video: "Fossils are inconclusive, the answer lies in DNA." Well, no, actually. DNA provides some information, fossils provide other types of information and archaeology provides yet other information, all of which is necessary and complementary to reach an adequate understanding of this process. I hammer this a lot to my students and in my work, but it really cheapens the practice of physical anthropology and archaeology when they're considered only as icing on the interpretive cake of evolutionary genetics. Bones and stones (to simplify) are not just ancillary evidence: they're critically important sources of data that need to be accounted for fully as opposed to simply made to fit in the models derived from other disciplines. It's often all too tempting to grant greater weight to the conclusions of disciplines that are more directly grounded in the life sciences, but it's important to realize that they're also fraught with internal tensions and debates and wide-ranging differences in interpretation.

This ties in neatly with the second NG item, namely a report on a new reconstruction of a Neanderthal female. Here's a shot of this beauty:



But what you should really check out is the set of photos related to this reconstruction. Five pictures in, there's an especially great shot of the Neanderthal woman (nicknamed Wilma) thrusting a spear and sporting an extensive set of black tattoos on her back and upper chest. Now, why is this so neat (beyond being the closest thing to Neanderthal fetish/alterna-porn you're likely to ever see - I mean, it's a naked chick with tats and a weapon!)? Because the reconstruction is based on genetics, skeletal anatomy and archaeology. You have the genetics that have informed the artists about the likely hair and skin color of the Neanderthal. You have the skeletal morphology dictating the overall look and posture of the thing. And finally, you have the archaeology contributing some additional behavioral information. In this specific case, the reconstruction draws on discussions about the fact that Neanderthal females may have been integral to large game procurement strategies (i.e., no sexual division of labor) and on the fact that Neanderthals appear to have used manganese as a coloring material to on their skin. Kudos to the artists for artfully integrating all three lines of evidence!