a guide for student (and non-student)

S O C I E T Y F O R A M E R I C A N A R C H A E O L O G Y

SAAarchaeological recordNOVEMBER 2011 • VOLUME 11 • NUMBER 5

the

SPECIAL FORUM: NEW DEAL ARCHAEOLOGY, PART II

¡La inscripción solo está abierta hasta el 9 de diciembre!

Inscribirse ahora para la Conferencia Intercontinental a http://bit.ly/ConfIns

Conferencia Intercontinental En la ciudad de Panamá, Panamá

13-15 de enero de 2012

Visite http://bit.ly/ConfRes para ver los resúmenes aceptados

¡La SAA viene a América Latina! Presenta la primera Conferencia Intercontinental de la SAA, una conferencia única diseñada para unir a la SAA y los Latinoamericanos. La Conferencia abrirá con una sesión especial por la tarde del

viernes, seguida de un día completo de sesiones plenarias el sábado y terminando con medio día de sesiones plenarias el domingo. La capacidad máxima para la Conferencia es 235 asistentes.

¡Nos vemos en Panamá!�

Editor’s Corner

In Brief

Letter to the Editor

Annual Meeting: No Cause for Blues in Memphis

Annual Meeting: Memphis in 2012!

Careers in Archaeology: Archaeology: Community College Style

Volunteer Profile

Putting the Power Back in PowerPoint: A Guide for Student (and Non-Student) Presenters

Continuing Professional Education in Archaeology: A New Program

“Everyone Loves Archaeology”: Bridging Communitiesthrough Archaeological Research

special forum: new deal archaeology part ii

New Deal and River Basin Survey Archaeology at FortLaramie National Historic Site

William S. Webb’s WPA Archaeological Legacy in Kentucky: From Adena to Indian Knoll

New Considerations of Old Distributions: Site Occupations at the Deptford Site (9CH2),

Chatham County, Georgia

Preston Holder on the Georgia Coast, 1936–1938

The Legacy of Lilly, Black, and the WPA at AngelMounds near Evansville, Indiana

financial statements

positions open

news & notes

calendar

2 Jane Eva Baxter

3 Tobi A. Brimsek

4

5 Paul Welch

6 Jeanne Lopiparo

7 Nancy Gonlin

10 Lee Rains Clauss

11 Christopher Andres, Eric Bartelink, Mark Hill,Heather Lapham, Mary Ann Levine, and Sarah McClure

15 Ian Burrow

17 Dana Lepofsky

Guest Editor: Bernard K. Means

21 Danny N. Walker

24 George M. Crothers

27 Victoria G. Dekle

30 Kevin Kiernan

34 Timothy E. Baumann, G. William Monaghan, Christopher Peebles, Charla Marshall, Anthony Krus,and Joel Marshall

40

42

43

43

The Magazine of the Society for American Archaeology Volume 11, No. 5November 2011

SAAarchaeological recordthe

On the cover: Glenn A. Black and Ely Lilly (center image, l-r) organized and directed the WPA excavations at Angel Mounds near

Evansville, Indiana from 1939 to 1942. The surrounding images are from the WPA work at Angel Mounds including from the top

the 1941 Mound F excavation exposing the primary mound surface, opening a large area across a palisade ridge, exposing several

bastions along the east village, and a close-up of the WPA crew atop Mound F in 1941. Thomas Boyd (front row, third from the right)

is still living at 92 in Evansville and is the last surviving WPA crew member from Angel Mounds. Courtesy of the Glenn A. Black

Laboratory of Archaeology and the Trustees of Indiana University.

2 The SAA Archaeological Record • November 2011

This issue features the second part of a two-part forum on New Deal Archaeologysponsored by the History of Archaeology Interest Group and guest edited byBernard K. Means. The first part of the forum (May 2011) featured articles that

addressed the scope and broader impacts of New Deal programs on archaeology in thepast, and how contemporary archaeologists can use the information gleaned fromthose programs in their work. This second part of the forum presents individual casestudies of work done under the broad umbrella of New Deal programs and featuresindividual archaeologists and specific sites as illustrations of the enduring legacy ofthis era in American Archaeology.

Having a two-part forum offers me the opportunity to remind readers that all issues ofThe SAA Archaeological Record are available online as well as its predecessor publica-tion, The SAA Bulletin: (http://www.saa.org/AbouttheSociety/Publications/TheSAAAr-chaeologicalRecord/tabid/64/Default.aspx). It is policy that the online version and theprint version you receive in the mail are identical in content and format, so you can usethe print and electronic versions of an issue interchangeably. As many of you have letme know that you use content from The SAA Archaeological Record in public presenta-tions and with your students, this is an excellent resource you can use to share infor-mation with various constituencies with an interest in archaeology. In this particularinstance, you can go to the May 2011 issue to reacquaint yourself with Bernard Mean’sintroduction to the forum before delving into these interesting case studies.

Forums are an important part of The SAA Archaeological Record’s content, and upcom-ing issues will feature forums on field schools, the rise of bioarchaeology, and casesstudies in international collaboration. Most forums are brought to my attention by peo-ple interested in having a topic featured in the magazine, or through the organized ses-sions prepared for the annual meeting. If the topic has broad disciplinary appeal, I amhappy to work with a guest editor(s) to bring the forum to the readership. I would bevery interested in hearing your suggestions for future forums or article collections, andam particularly interested in developing a forum on private sector archaeology. If youhave ideas for such a forum or are interested in participating, please contact me at [email protected]. As always, I welcome inquiries about potential contributions, com-ments on previous content, and items for news and notes and the calendar features.

EDITOR’S CORNERJane Eva BaxterThe SAA Archaeological Record

(ISSN 1532-7299) is published fivetimes a year and is edited by JaneEva Baxter. Submissions should besent to Jane Eva Baxter, [email protected], DePaul University,Department of Anthropology, 2343North Racine, Chicago, IL 60614

Deadlines for submissions are:December 1 (January), February 1(March), April 1 (May), August 1(September), and October 1(November). Advertising and place-ment ads should be sent to SAAheadquarters, 900 Second St., NE#12, Washington, DC 20002, (202)789-8200.

The SAA Archaeological Record isprovided free to members and insti-tutional subscribers to AmericanAntiquity and Latin American Antiq-uity worldwide. The SAA Archaeo-logical Record can be found on theWeb in PDF format at www.saa.org.

SAA publishes The SAA Archaeolog-ical Record as a service to its mem-bers and constituencies. SAA, itseditors and staff are not responsiblefor the content, opinions and infor-mation contained in The SAAArchaeological Record. SAA, its edi-tors and staff disclaim all war-ranties with regard to such content,opinions and information pub-lished in The SAA ArchaeologicalRecord by any individual or organi-zation; this disclaimer includes allimplied warranties of mer-chantability and fitness. In no eventshall SAA, its editors and staff beliable for any special, indirect, orconsequential damages or anydamages whatsoever resulting fromloss of use, data, or profits, arisingout of or in connection with the useor performance of any content,opinions or information includedin The SAA Archaeological Record.

Copyright ©2011 by the Society forAmerican Archaeology. All RightsReserved.

SAAarchaeological recordthe

The Magazine of the Society forAmerican Archaeology Volume 11, No. 5November 2011

3November 2011 • The SAA Archaeological Record

SAA Is Coming to Latin America!

As you are aware, January 13-15, 2012 mark the dates for SAA’sfirst-ever Conferencia Intercontinental, a unique conferencedesigned to bring SAA and Latin Americans together. For themost part, all of the materials developed about the Conferenciahave been in Spanish, as the sole language of the Conferencia isSpanish. All accepted papers and abstracts are now posted onSAAweb, accessible through the Home Page (www.saa.org).Papers were selected through a comprehensive peer-reviewprocess by the Conferencia Program Committee. General regis-tration is now open through December 9, 2011. Join us in Pana-ma City, Panama for this premier event.

The meeting will be held at the convention center, ATLAPA, inPanama City, Panama. The meeting hotel is the Hilton Double-tree in Panama. SAA will be providing a free shuttle servicefrom the DoubleTree to ATLAPA. You may make hotel reserva-tions via the link on SAAweb. SAA’s special rate includes break-fast and internet. ¡Nos vemos en Panamá!

SAA 2012 Ballot

The 2012 SAA ballot link will be sent to all members during thefirst week in January via email. If the Society does not have youremail address, or if the email bounces back, a postcard withinstructions on how to access ballot material will be mailed. Inaddition to the 2012 slates, there will also be a proposed Bylawsamendment for your consideration.

To help ensure the efficiency of the web-based balloting system,please remember to update your email address in the Member’ssection of SAAweb (www.saa.org) or by emailing your updat-ed/current email address to the SAA staff at [email protected].

Most importantly, please make sure that the ballot email [email protected] makes it through your spam filters!

Committee Service

As of last November, the Society began a new way to populatecommittees with volunteers. In order to open the process to themembership, each November the Society puts out a web-basedcall for volunteers for SAA committee service. This Novemberthe call will be put out for vacancies beginning at the close of the2012 Annual Business Meeting in Memphis. Committee termsare generally two years. You may submit up to two separateinterest forms each November. If you are seeking reappoint-ment to a committee, you are also required to submit an inter-est form. You may only serve two consecutive terms on the samecommittee. The exception is awards committees, where nomember is eligible for a second term.

The question on the interest form has been reformulated thisyear to: Please describe your experiences, skills, and/or interests thatare relevant to the committee’s charge.

Please be aware that generally there are more volunteers thanavailable slots. Your statement will be an important factor in thedecision-making process. Decisions are made with the inputfrom the chair by the Board liaison to that committee. With theopen call, the Board instituted a selection process that involvedthe committee Board liaisons, rather than all committeeappointments resting between the President and the chair. Onegoal of the selection process is to ensure the diversity of per-spectives on each committee. We appreciate the willingness ofeveryone to serve. Please watch for the open call announcementin early November.

Home of the Blues, Birthplace of Rock ‘n’ Roll— MEMPHIS!

Have you registered and made your reservations yet? Memphisis driveable for over 50% of the population! The headquartershotel for the 77th Annual Meeting in Memphis is the MarriottMemphis Downtown which is located directly across the streetfrom the Memphis Cook Convention Center. The conventioncenter, along with the headquarters hotel (Marriott Memphis

IN BRIEFTobi A. Brimsek

Tobi A. Brimsek is executive director for the Society for American Archaeology.

IN BRIEF

>IN BRIEF, continued on page 4


To the Editor:

First of all, I wanted to say that I greatly enjoyed the most recentSAA Archaeological Record and the discussions of collaborationbetween archaeology and anthropology. I’m writing because Iwanted to inform you of a session that was held during the 2010AAA meetings in New Orleans that pertained to precisely thisissue. This session was titled “Speaking The Same Language:Bridging The Ever-Growing Disciplinary Divide Between Cul-tural Anthropology And Archaeology,” organized by Ivy Hepp.In this session graduate students from Florida State Universityand the University of Colorado discussed many of the issuesrelated to the ever-growing gap between archaeology andanthropology. Although the session was on the last day of theconference, many anthropologists attended it, and it was evenfeatured in an article on the Chronicle for Higher Education’swebsite: http://chronicle.com/article/Anthropologists-Look-for/125464/. I think many anthropologists/archaeologists inter-ested in this topic would find information presented in this ses-sion useful.

Jakob SedigPh.D. CandidateUniversity of Colorado-Boulder

Downtown), will be the hub of all meeting activity. In additionto the headquarters hotel, there are several overflows: Courtyardby Marriott Downtown, Crowne Plaza Memphis Downtown,Doubletree Hotel Memphis Downtown, SpringHill SuitesCourt Square. There are two properties exclusively for students(current valid student id’s will be required upon check-in): SleepInn and Suites, Court Square and Comfort Inn Downtown.

Complete reservation information, including cut-off dates andrates as well as links for reservations is available on SAAweband will, of course, be included in the Preliminary Programavailable in December. Click on the “2012 Meeting Hotel Infor-mation” link on SAA’s homepage (www.saa.org) to see thisinformation now. Updated information on hotel availability willalways be posted on SAAweb on the meeting hotel page.

Register by January 15, 2012 at one of the meeting hotels to beentered into a drawing for a free year’s membership in SAA.

Earthquakes, Hurricanes, Floods....Frogs, Locusts?

Washington, D.C., SAA’s headquarters location, experienced aplethora of natural phenomena in recent months (ok, not frogsand locusts) starting with the hurricane, continuing with a 5.8earthquake (which did not do damage to our new headquartersbuilding but did shake lots of pictures on the walls) followed byfloods. While we hope we can stop there, we are waiting withbaited breath. Importantly all is well, everyone is safe, and thenew offices are superb. As executive director, I would like to reit-erate my open invitation to members to drop by and visit when-ever they are in DC!

LETTER TO THE EDITOR IN BRIEF

CALL FOR PAPERS

October 12-13, 2012Vanderbilt University

Nashville, TN

Archaeological Sciences of the AmericasSymposium 2012

Submission deadline: September 5, 2012www.vanderbilt.edu/anthro/asas2012

[email protected]

Isotopes * Geoarchaeology * GIS * GPR * XRF * Paleoecology * Archaeometry * And More!

FORTHCOMING FROM THE SAA PRESS

Contemporary Perspectives In Southeastern Archaeology:

From Colonization To Complexity

DAVID G. ANDERSON AND KENNETH E. SASSAMAN

A NEW TITLE IN THE SAA CONTEMPORARY PERSPECTIVES SERIES


Being the Program Chair for the SAA Annual Meeting issomething like preparing for doctoral candidacy exams,though happily without the exams. Over the last two

weeks I’ve been immersed in the breadth of our profession, andhave learned about iguana consumption in Mexico, the materi-al culture of low-rider social clubs, the several varieties of earli-est stone tool assemblages in Brazil, and a set of intriguingapproaches to dealing with the problems of societal classifica-tion that have been with us since Lewis Henry Morgan. A ses-sion likely to draw a large audience focuses on the direction(s)processual archaeology should take in the post-Binford era. Andas has been common in recent years, there are multiple sym-posia honoring the careers of distinguished senior colleagues.Some of the more thoughtful and provocative papers each yearare in festschrift symposia, where authors challenge oldassumptions and revisit past debates with new data and newideas. These sessions are also usually entertaining, and you’lllearn what really happened during that (in)famous field seasonat Santa Marta or Bogalusa or Hell-for-Certain Gulch.

The number of presentations in Memphis is going to be mod-erately large compared with recent years. There will be morepapers (>2,200) and posters (>460), along with workshops,forums, and the Ethics Bowl, than you can possibly attend. Imean that literally; there is simply no way to arrange the sched-ule in a way that avoids putting sessions on similar subjects atthe same time. For example, there are 28 symposia onMesoamerican topics but effectively only eight time slots, sowatch out for dashing Mayanists on their way from one roomto another. The Southwest is also “overbooked,” and as onemight expect with the meeting being in Memphis, Southeast-ern symposia are also going to be doubled up. I suspect everyone of us will find we want to be in two or more places at once.We have 24 rooms for presentations. Fortunately, the smallestholds 68 people so I hope we won’t have any of those regrettablescenes where 50 people are trying to attend a session in a roombuilt for 30.

Of course, the biggest session, and the only one which will havenothing scheduled opposite it, is the annual Business Meeting,

starting at 5 on Friday afternoon. The Business Meeting is yourchance to find out what the Board of Directors and Officers aredoing with your organization (and your money). There is also acash bar in the room, in case you feel the news requires lubri-cation. One very good reason to go to the Business Meeting is toattend the handing out of SAA awards. If you’ve never beenthere when the Lifetime Achievement Award is conferred,you’ve missed an opportunity to be present with the great fig-ures in our profession.

Despite the delightful diversity of presentations on the programat Memphis, I do note a couple of surprising absences. Zooar-chaeologists missed a great opportunity to address the archaeol-ogy of barbecue (hey, it’s Memphis!), and, alas, nobody sent in asubmission on the archaeology of Elvis. But rather than endingthis column with such dubiously tasteful comments, I’ll tell youmy favorite paper title, “How Chocolate Came to Be.” This isgoing to get a large room, I promise.

NO CAUSE FOR BLUES IN MEMPHISPaul Welch

Paul Welch is the Program Chair for the SAA 77th Annual Meeting.

77TH ANNUAL MEETING

Bridge at Sunset. Photo Credit: Jack Kenner.


April in Memphis is warm and the flowers are blooming,which provides the perfect opportunity to enjoy a walkalong the Mississippi, a run on Mud Island, or a visit to

one of its many outdoor and indoor attractions. We have organ-ized several tours that highlight Memphis’ prehistory, urban his-tory, and music history, and are also including recommendationsfor Memphis destinations that you might visit on your own.

A tour of the Chucalissa Archaeological Site and C.H. NashMuseum, just south of downtown Memphis, will highlight theMississippian occupation that was widespread along the bluffs,as well as the research, educational, and participatory programsspearheaded by the University of Memphis. In addition toextensive collections from excavations of the Mississippianmound complex, the museum features exhibits, hands-on activ-ities, and an arboretum and nature trail. This tour, led by muse-um director, Robert Connolly, will take place Friday morning.For those who can’t get enough archaeology, Pinson Mounds,Parkin Archeological State Park, the Hampson ArcheologicalMuseum, and Shiloh Mounds and National Military Park arewithin a two-hour drive of Memphis.

For your inner paleoethnobotanist, the dogwoods and azaleaswill be in bloom, which you can enjoy both throughout the cityor “in captivity” at the Memphis Botanic Garden in East Mem-phis or Overton Park in Midtown Memphis (though pleaserefrain from charring the specimens for your type collections).Overton Park’s old-growth forest is an arboretum on the Regis-ter of Historic Places and shares the park with the Brooks Muse-um of Art. The Brooks features impressive permanent collec-tions, rotating exhibitions, and one of the best brunches inMemphis. While you probably won’t see pandas, cheetahs, ormonkeys throughout the city (barring a Zanesvillian catastro-phe), you can enjoy them at the world-class Memphis Zoo (alsoin Overton Park), which features an eclectic assortment ofarchaeological iconography.

The Egyptian-themed Zoo entrance, along with the enormousglass Pyramid on the Mississippi River, are befitting tributes toMemphis’ claim to a privileged position on the “American Nile.”You can explore its history at the Mississippi River Museum by

taking the monorail or footbridge from Front Street to the MudIsland River Park, which also features a half-mile scale model ofthe entire Mississippi River and boat rentals. In the historic Mem-phis Cotton Exchange, the Cotton Museum presents how theseinnocuous looking fluffballs have defined Memphis history, shap-ing both booming successes and glaring injustices in the Missis-sippi Delta region. The legacies of slavery and history of race rela-tions can be best explored at the must-see National Civil RightsMuseum, built around the historic Lorraine Motel (a short ridesouth on the vintage Main Street trolley line). If your first view ofthe preserved façade doesn’t make an indelible impression(approach it from the south if you can), the moving portraits ofabolition and the civil rights movements certainly will.

In order to explore the multiple layers of Memphis historyinscribed in the modern urban landscape, SAA will offer twohistoric walking tours by Memphis encyclopedia, Jimmy Ogle.A bottomless fount of local knowledge, Jimmy brings both visi-ble and invisible Memphis alive through the traces of its histo-ry in the built environment. For the material-culture-minded,just ask him about any manhole cover.

And of course, no trip to Memphis would be complete withouta visit to the veritable time capsule of extreme aesthetics that isElvis’ bedazzled mothership. The SAA will offer a trip to Grace-land on Saturday morning that includes roundtrip transporta-tion and the “Platinum Tour,” which grants access not only tosequined jumpsuits and shag-carpeted ceilings, but the man-sion, planes, and cars. While Graceland is a bit off the beatentrack, there are almost endless opportunities to explore Mem-phis’ rich music history, from the neon splendor of Beale Street,to Sun Studios, to the Center for Southern Folklore.

And finally for sports fans, mid-April brings not only the lastweek of Memphis Grizzlies NBA basketball, but also the firstweek of minor league baseball at the beautiful Autozone Park(i.e. the nicest baseball park where you might still, upon occa-sion, see a ground ball go through the shortstop’s legs) —and ofMemphis Roller Derby (i.e. the only place where you can see thePrissKilla Prezleys take on the Women of Mass Destruction).Oh yeah, and Memphis has more golf courses than Starbucks.

77TH ANNUAL MEETING

MEMPHIS IN 2012Jeanne Lopiparo

Jeanne Lopiparo is an assistant professor at Rhodes College and Chair of the local Advisory Committee.


This column is part of the occasional careers series that follows the Careers in

Archaeology Special Issue of The SAA Archaeological Record in March of2011. The Public Education Committee has solicited several additional con-

tributors for this occasional column that will appear over the next several

issues.

Istarted my career as an archaeologist at an exceptionallyyoung age— literally in the backyard of my family home inPittsburgh! Our house, built in 1899, had a mystique about

it, and the southeast corner of our backyard, in particular, was aspecial area— it had a “Digging Hole.” No other yard containedsuch mysterious ground. The Digging Hole was a ready-maderecreation spot for the eight of us children and for the neigh-borhood children as well. Only in this spot were we allowed thefreedom to play in the dirt without remorse and without pun-ishment from Mom for digging up her flowerbeds. The DiggingHole provided us hours of entertainment. While I knew little ofthe world of professional archaeology, I thoroughly enjoyed thefeel of dirt on my hands and the excitement of discovery. Myyoung imagination was further fueled when, to my delight, Jeff(one of five older brothers), hid pennies and miniature plasticgreen army men for me to uncover. “Staging” artifacts was com-mon, but it was more than finding objects that kept all of us dig-ging. My eldest brother Rich summed it up best when heremarked that “All the curiosity was based on the principle thatthere was information down in that hole and we could find outwho had been here before us if we just dug deep enough.”

During summer vacations throughout my childhood, my par-ents took our family to sites and museums in Pennsylvania andsurrounding states, like Fort Pitt, Carnegie Museum of NaturalHistory, Indian Caverns, Horseshoe Curve, Fort Necessity, andIndependence Hall. Exposure to real archaeological digs atMonticello and Williamsburg showed me that one could makea career out of digging.

When I was in sixth grade, I mentioned my interest in archae-ology to my father. He produced a series of concise books onwide-ranging topics from the Science Service of Washington,D.C.: Classical Archaeology and Archaeology: Middle America. Theglamour of far-off places captured my fancy, and I was sure

Spanish lessons would serve me well in Spain, Peru, and Mexi-co! I remember reading Ivor Noël Hume’s Historical Archaeolo-gy, marveling at how much information could be obtainedthrough careful recording and analysis. Picked up by my fatheron our trip to Williamsburg, this book is now in my stacks, andI very fondly remember him every time I see it. When Mr. Har-vey asked us ninth graders to write a paper, “You and YourFuture,” I had no hesitation about what I wanted to do. At themature age of 14, I wrote that I was already highly qualified tobecome an archaeologist. I had an interest in excavation, hadtaken geometry, thought I spoke Spanish, and had experiencedliving conditions that mimicked the field experience (ten peopleall in one old house with only one full bath!).

Since my initial Digging Hole experience, I have had significantmentors during my career. Professor Paul Heberling, the only

ARCHAEOLOGY: COMMUNITY COLLEGE STYLENancy Gonlin

Nancy Gonlin is an Instructor in the Department of Anthropology at Bellevue (Community) College in Bellvue, Washington.

CAREERS IN ARCHAEOLOGY

Office bookshelves with publications from my childhood that inspired me to

become an archaeologist. Photo by Mary Anne Meng.


anthropologist at Juniata College in Huntingdon, PA, hadenough enthusiasm for an entire department! He taught corecourses in every field, offered special topics, and supervisedtutorials. He ensured that I had a well-rounded exposure toanthropology, but also to related disciplines (sociology, psychol-ogy, history, geology, and biology) that would allow me the flex-ibility to specialize later on. Prof. Heberling also provided theopportunity to work at the historic site of Greenwood Furnace incentral Pennsylvania.

Penn State archaeologists William T. Sanders and David Web-ster were in the midst of conducting Proyecto ArqueológicoCopán–Phase II in the early 1980s when I started graduateschool. Jumping at the chance to gain field experience in Hon-duras, I assisted fellow graduate student AnnCorinne Freter-Abrams and later, David Webster. I became captivated by thestudy of Classic Maya commoners. Ann was exceptionallypatient and kind, explaining regional prehistory and methods.She also got me through my first episode of culture shock. Noneof the locals understood my Spanish, and I couldn’t understandtheirs, despite several years of classes. Ann showed me theproper way to order a Coke. To mark my birthday, she surprisedme with a cake that closely resembled Structure 10L-4 inCopán’s Main Group!

I served as David Webster’s graduate student teaching assistant,and I successfully completed my advanced degrees under hisguidance. His engaging manner of lecturing provided me valu-able lessons in teaching style. I learned that solid knowledge ofa subject was the foundation upon which I could tell a greatstory, and I came to appreciate that getting students interestedin my subject was half the battle to learning.

I was a Summer Fellow at Dumbarton Oaks (DO), and ElizabethBoone, then DO Director, and fellow Fellows, Stephen Houston,

Patricia McAnany, Karl Taube, and David Webster, provided live-ly exchanges that dramatically increased my appreciation ofancient Mesoamerica. The luxury of having the DO collection atmy fingertips was priceless. The intellectual stimulation therewas exhilarating.

These diverse experiences, plus my willingness and ability toteach a wide range of courses and to be flexible in scheduling,all added up to marketability. I did not know I would go on toteach courses in my specialization as well as across all fourfields in anthropology. My first academic appointment came atKennesaw State University in Georgia. My husband Vishy, arocket scientist by training, and I moved to Atlanta for his newjob with Lockheed. My long-time friend and cultural anthropol-ogist, Alice James of Shippensburg University, assisted me withmy new part-time teaching duties and showed me how muchfun one can have at the same time!

A few years later, Vishy and I left the Southeast for the North-west because he took a job with Boeing. I returned to Georgiabriefly as a visiting scholar at the University of Georgia. Uponmoving permanently to the Northwest, Mr. John Osmundson,Anthropology Department chair at Bellevue Community Col-lege, hired me to teach nighttime classes. Over the years, Imoved from part-time evening teaching to a tenure-track posi-tion and department chair. I now enjoy a successful career atBellevue Community College, which recently changed its nameto Bellevue College.

Academic preparation in anthropology does not include explicitinstruction in administrative duties, marketing skills, or for that


Explaining the basics of stone tool technology is facilitated with materials

that students can see and touch for themselves. Photo by Mary Anne Meng.

Nan at Philae, Agilkia Island. Egypt is a country that should be on every

archaeologist’s “bucket list.” Photo by K. Viswanathan.


matter, the most current teaching technologies. In 2009, due tolast-minute schedule changes, I found myself having to teach anon-line course for the first time, with only one day’s instructionon how to manage the on-line environment! Since then, I haveprogressed from a state of total fear (!) and apprehension toappreciating this mode of teaching, and embracing on-linecourse design and development. Although on-line courses donot reproduce the on-campus experience, they have theirrewards and work well for certain types of students. The on-lineinstructor can still “e” in the classroom to deliver lectures, holddiscussions, show films, and “chat” with students. From myinstructor’s perspective, teaching on-line allowed me to teachAND safely recover from a fall I experienced during fieldwork!

My primary job as a community college instructor is to providehigh-quality accessible education to a diverse group of students,most of whom are not sure what anthropology is and some mayrequire special accommodation. Given the open enrollment poli-cy of the community college, where anyone can become a stu-dent, people with a wide range of abilities and interests attendclasses. It takes a skilled individual to accommodate all learningstyles and simultaneously ensure that solid content is impartedwith high standards of evaluation. Most often, the only anthro-pology to which a student will be exposed is the one class theytake to fulfill a graduation requirement. I derive great satisfactionin passing down the basic tenets of our discipline to another gen-eration who can usefully apply them to their own life situations.

It’s time consuming to teach, but even more time consuming toensure that students learn. Thus, long hours inside and outsidethe classroom are the norm for a community college instructor.I spend a large portion of every day preparing for class to ensure

that materials are relevant and updated, and reach the intendedaudience. The standard load per quarter for full-time faculty isthree 5-credit classes of 42 students each. Within the past 11months of writing this essay, I have taught 14 courses, includ-ing several sections of the four-field survey course; two inarchaeology; one in biological anthropology, a new one in nutri-tional anthropology; and a course in linguistics that I had nevertaught. Without a solid foundation in all fields of anthropology,my job would be extremely difficult. Other daily activitiesinclude lecturing, composing exams and activities, and grading.Office hours are spent assisting students with course contentand dispensing career advice or meeting with the other anthro-pologists in my department. And for comparative perspectives,there are faculty in psychology, sociology, criminal justice, andgeography in my immediate office area upon whom I can read-ily call. The call of college governance is ever present.

Maintaining currency in my specialization is essential, so I ded-icate time to reading journals, recent books, and websites,researching areas of interest, and doing fieldwork when feasi-ble. I continue to make contributions through select publicationprojects, conference presentations, reviewing others’ manu-scripts for publication, and providing feedback on NSF propos-als. The intellectual stimulation and the satisfaction from scien-tific inquiry are rewards in themselves. In between all of theseactivities, my husband and I walk a few miles nearly every dayand hit the gym as well. It clears our heads, provides timetogether, and benefits our overall well-being.

I’m really proud of the college for what it can offer in anthro-pology education. I spent four years as department chair andhelped to reshape the department in numerous ways. Anthro-pology classes had suffered from low enrollment for a few years.As chair, it was my responsibility to increase the numbers andremove our classes from the proverbial administrative hit list.Along with willing and enthusiastic department members, were-vamped existing courses and updated the curriculum. Wemarketed our classes by rewriting catalogue descriptions andcreating lively course titles. A course called Food, Drink, & Cul-ture (rather than Nutritional Anthropology) draws a roomful ofstudents with a waiting list!

Fieldwork is the hallmark of our discipline and one of its mostexciting and challenging aspects. So we also provided studentsexperiential learning activities to actually DO anthropologyinstead of talking about doing it. Our high-quality, practical, andfun fieldwork exercises aptly demonstrate to students howanthropologists conduct their science. In one fieldwork exer-cise, for example, students measured offices across campus andcomputed roofed-over space and square feet/individual. Theylearned to make quantitative and qualitative assessments and


Roberto López Bravo (then Director – Museo de Sitio de Palenque) shows

Nan’s tour group around the Temple of Inscriptions, along with budding

historian Marlon Shota Gonlin. Photo by Jeffrey H. Gonlin

>GONLIN, continued on page 44


When I received the invitationfrom the The SAA Archaeologi-cal Record to write a piece

regarding my volunteerism within the SAA, I was pleased to begiven an opportunity to highlight the important work of theGovernment Affairs Committee. My comfort with the request,due to the relative anonymity I thought it would afford, disap-peared when Jane Baxter clarified that the focus of the volunteerprofile was not to be the committee, but me. It was at thatmoment I envisioned a message being sent to SAA Headquar-ters with the clipped, ominous phrases: Associations unclear...intentions unconventional... ranks infiltrated.

Why the dramatic internal response? In short, it is because I amnot an archaeologist— at least not wholly, and most definitelynot in the traditional sense. When I joined the SAA in 2000, Iwas an applied archaeology graduate student with an under-graduate degree in historic preservation. At the time, my workexperience ran the gamut from archives, architectural history,and academia to regulatory archaeology, NAGPRA compliance,and curation. Fast forward to today... I am just as adept atrecording a pithouse as a Prairie-Style home; just as comfort-able crafting archival scope and content descriptions as NEPAneed and purpose statements; and just as passionate about reg-ulatory compliance and policy analysis as community-basedparticipatory research and restorative justice. My education andexperiences have led others to describe me as an applied anthro-pologist, historic preservation specialist, educator, and activist.However, I am fairly certain that who I am professionally defiesclear definition— a situation that I recently discovered to be truefor a growing number of SAA members.

At the 76th Annual Meeting in Sacramento, several forumsfocused on applied archaeology and its various domains ofapplication. I was delighted to see my chosen approach withinarchaeology receiving some overdue attention, but disturbedthat the general tenor of the discussions was one of distress and

disillusionment. I knew the problems all too well: Internshippapers were not held in as high esteem as theses; RPA mem-bership seemed improbable; tenure was problematic. In short,people who had dedicated themselves to a career inapplied/action/activist archaeology felt devalued and ostracizedby peers, the academy, and some professional organizations. Atthe time, I did not have the opportunity to express empathy orprovide hope for those expressing frustration and fear, but thisvignette offers me such an opening. So, to the tempest-tossed,tired archaeologists that view their associations with the disci-pline as tenuous, I encourage you to find guidance in the para-phrased words of Tennyson: Lose yourself in action, lest youwither in despair.

This month you have an opportunity to engage in the work ofthe SAA by nominating yourself for committee service. You mayfind yourself currently struggling with the bastions of Americanarchaeology, and thus think this counterintuitive, but I assureyou the SAA has room for both its most strident champions aswell as those who see themselves as change-agents. After all, theSAA has always embraced my person, even when our politicswere incongruent. On more than one occasion in the last elevenyears, I have voted with my feet (and my pocketbook) and leftthe fold for a time, but the SAA has always welcomed me back.And, upon my return, I was not treated as a nameless drone ora member of a fringe element, but as a peer with ideas worthyof inclusion in the annual program, and most recently, as a col-league honored with the invitation to serve on the GovernmentAffairs Committee. I am only in my first year of service andalready I find it to be immensely enlightening, compelling, andrewarding. I do not think this experience unique to me, so Iunreservedly encourage all fellow SAA members with a passionfor purpose and a desire to shape the direction of the disciplineto act upon the invitation.

volunteer profile:

Lee Rains ClaussThis column is a new feature of The SAA Archaeological Record. In each issue, we’ll be featuring a member of one of the SAA’s

many committees and interest groups. If there is someone you’d like to see profiled in this column, please contact Jane Baxter.

VOLUNTEER PROFILE


PowerPoint slideshows have become an increasingly com-monplace feature of professional conferences since theSAA established the Student Paper Award in 2000. As

PowerPoints are now ubiquitous, it is important to emphasizethe necessity of producing excellent presentations. In recogni-tion of this fact, submissions for the Student Paper Award areevaluated on many different criteria including the visual com-ponent of the submission. The committee assesses papers onthe basis of the: (1) quality of the arguments presented; (2) qual-ity of supporting data; (3) contribution to broader methodologi-cal or theoretical issues in archaeology; (4) contribution tounderstanding a specific region or topic; (5) quality of writing,organization, and length; and (6) quality, appropriateness, andnumber of visuals for a 15-minute oral presentation. As thevisual component of the submission is evaluated and pdf files ofall PowerPoint slides to be used in the oral presentation are arequired part of the award submission process, the SAA Stu-dent Paper Award Committee seeks to offer a few helpful sug-gestions for creating excellent visuals. While the content of thisarticle was prepared for student presenters, we hope this guidewill be useful to nonstudents who are interested in becomingbetter acquainted with what is now the standard for visual pre-sentations at the SAA and many other conferences. PowerPointis an incredibly effective tool for communicating complex ideasto an audience while infusing presentations with greater visualinterest. Despite this, distracting PowerPoints can be counter-productive and weaken conference presentations. To help pre-senters put the “power” back in PowerPoint and produce high-quality competitive submissions for the Student Paper Award,we provide suggestions for text slides, photographic images,and graphics in the form of charts, tables, and figures.

Avoiding Text Slide Pitfalls

Keep the text to a minimum. This is the first rule to adhere tojudiciously when making text slides. The use of complete sen-tences is rarely advisable and in the world of text slides, less ismore. Using small amounts of text in the form of bullet pointsor short phrases is more appropriate, and most PowerPoint afi-cionados advise against the use of more than six words per line

and six lines per slide. Your text slides will not be evaluated asexcellent if they are so densely packed that they are renderedunreadable to the audience. Text slides are a poor medium forcommunicating high levels of detail and text-heavy slides onlyserve to obscure key points (Figures 1a and 1b).

Font size is another extremely important consideration in thecreation of text slides. The body of text slides should featurefonts no smaller than 24-point. Slide titles should use even larg-er font sizes, while smaller font sizes are acceptable for refer-ences or captions. Selecting an appropriate font style is equally

PUTTING THE POWER BACK IN POWERPOINTA GUIDE FOR STUDENT (AND NON-STUDENT) PRESENTERS

Christopher Andres, Eric Bartelink, Mark Hill, Heather Lapham, Mary Ann Levine, and Sarah McClure

Christopher Andres, Eric Bartelink, Mark Hill, Heather Lapham, Mary Ann Levine, and Sarah McClure are members of the

SAA Student Paper Award Committee

STUDENT AFFAIRS

Figure 1a: Example of a text slide containing too much information.

Remember the six words per line, six lines per slide rule.

Figure 1b: Example of an effective text slide containing an appropriate

amount of information. This slide follows the six words per line, six lines

per slide rule.


significant. Clear and commonplace fonts are typically prefer-able to quirky or fanciful ones as unusual fonts can deflectattention away from your central message. Once you haveselected the appropriate font size and style it is important to uti-lize the same format throughout your talk.

Effective slides should also feature good contrast between textand background. Certain color combinations will make yourslides difficult to read and bright fluorescent hues should beavoided. While some backgrounds may be well suited to non-academic presentations, many templates are often too busy formost audience members at scholarly conferences. Evaluate youroptions carefully (Figures 2a and 2b).

Another important tip for the preparation of excellent presenta-tions is not to go overboard with the number of slides present-ed. Most talks should closely adhere to the one slide per minute

rule. Thus, a 15-minute presentation should not include signif-icantly more than 15 slides. Moreover, transitions from slide toslide should utilize animations sparingly. While some anima-tion might be occasionally warranted, it is typically prudent toavoid over-animating your PowerPoint presentation as sensoryoverload will overwhelm and distract your colleagues. And final-ly, remember to include citations and references on slides wheresuch features are warranted.

The Production of Impressive Images

Incorporating images such as photos into slideshows canenhance presentations and have the potential to effectively com-municate difficult concepts. While the adage “a picture is wortha thousand words” can sometimes be true, only high quality,carefully selected, and appropriately sized images will result inthe desired outcome. If you find yourself wanting to apologize

STUDENT AFFAIRS

Figure 2a: Example of a text slide with a distracting background. Note: The

text is very difficult to read and against the background due to lack of con-

trast.

Figure 2b: Example of an effective text slide with a visually appealing

image. Note: The text is easily read and the image is well-positioned within

the slide.

Figure 3a: Example of a “distracting” pie chart with too many data cate-

gories. Note: The key for this chart is not helpful for understanding the dis-

tribution of the data.

Figure 3b: Example of an effective pie chart with an appropriate number of

data categories. Note: The key for this chart is very helpful for understand-

ing the distribution of the data.


for any aspect of your photo, jettison it from your presentationwith no second thoughts.

Utilizing digital photos or maps that are heavily pixilated iscounterproductive. The incorporation of blurry images not onlygives the appearance of being unprofessional, their poor-qualitydiminishes effective communication. The inclusion of fuzzyimages is never justified. It is also important to crop the edgesof any photo that includes extraneous detail that might shiftfocus away from the central image and message. Photoshopshould be used to correct any image that is too light, too dark,or off-centered. Once high-quality images are identified, theyshould be labeled and thoughtfully placed on the slide (Figures3a and 3b).

The Art of Graphics

Archaeological presentations routinely include graphs andcharts to display various forms of data. While graphics can beexcellent additions to any PowerPoint presentation, they alsocan easily confound your audience if you present too muchinformation. When presenting a table, for example, font sizeshould follow the rules above, and you will still want to maintainthe six words to a line and six lines to a table whenever possible.Exceeding this guideline will likely force you to reduce font size,resulting in an indecipherable graphic. Large tables should thusbe avoided. Labels are essential and it is typically best to keepyour labels horizontal. Similarly, pie charts that consist of toomany slices will dilute your main point. Pie charts that consistof approximately a half-dozen slices will communicate yourfindings most effectively (Figures 4a and 4b).

Submission Process

While the Student Paper Award committee evaluates submis-sions from numerous standpoints, we hope that this short arti-cle will help students and others prepare outstanding visuals,while making more transparent how the visual components ofall award submissions are evaluated. Students are invited toconsult the SAA website (www.saa.org/AbouttheSociety/Awards/StudentPaperAward/tabid/185/Default.aspx) to learnmore about eligibility criteria, required submission materials,and deadline information. The submission deadline for thisyear is January 12, 2012, and students are encouraged to contactMary Ann Levine ([email protected]), CommitteeChair, should they have any questions.

STUDENT AFFAIRS

Figure 4a: Example of a map missing archaeological site locations. Text

Labels and/or symbols should be used to identify relevant information fea-

tured in the map (e.g., site locations, geographic features, trade networks,

etc.)

Figure 4b: Example of an effective map. Archaeological site locations are

clearly indicated using different symbols and colors.


The Eighth of the SAA’s Principles of Archaeological Ethicsreads as follows: “Given the destructive nature of mostarchaeological investigations, archaeologists must ensure

that they have adequate training, experience, facilities, and othersupport necessary to conduct any program of research they ini-tiate, in a manner consistent with the foregoing principles andcontemporary standards of professional practice.”

Once we are out of graduate school and (we hope) busilyengaged in our jobs in CRM, government, teaching, or else-where, finding opportunities for training and for keeping up todate with discoveries and theoretical and technological advancescan become a little more challenging. There has been much talkin recent years about the need for creating a framework for con-tinuing education in archaeology. Who can provide it? How canit be accredited? How can it be documented on your curriculumvitae?

For the last few years the Register of Professional Archaeolo-gists has been actively working on this issue. After much hardwork and dedication by our CPE Committee, the Register isnow pleased to announce the official launch of the RPA Con-tinuing Professional Education (CPE) Program. Designed par-ticularly for Registrants, it is nevertheless open to all.

Like the SAA Principles, the RPA’s Code of Conduct directlyaddresses the issue of qualifications and competence. Item 2.1of the Code states that it is an archaeologist’s responsibility to“stay informed and knowledgeable about developments inher/his field or fields of specialization,” and 1.2 stipulates thatan archaeologist shall not “undertake any research that affectsthe archaeological resource base for which she/he is not quali-fied.” As those members of the Society who are on the Registerwill know, breaches of the Code render a Registrant open to theRPA’s Grievance Procedure. This program is entirely voluntaryfor RPAs.

The new RPA program therefore supports and strengthensRPA’s mission to “establish and maintain the highest standards

of professional archaeological practice,” and will, we hope, alsobe welcomed by the wider archaeological community. The7,000-member SAA, as one of the four sponsoring organiza-tions of RPA (along with the Archaeological Institute of Ameri-ca, the American Anthropological Association, and the Societyfor Historical Archaeology), is a key part of that community. Ourintention is that the RPA imprimatur will help people to identi-fy CPE offerings that are focused, relevant, and taught by quali-fied individuals.

How the RPA CPE Program Works:

The core idea is that educational programs designed for the con-tinuing professional development of archaeologists can now becertified by the Register, provided that they meet RPA’s clearlydefined written standards and criteria.

Applications for Certification will be reviewed by the RPA Con-tinuing Education Committee. The Committee will determinewhether or not the proposed program meets RPA’s criteria. Theprogram must have or demonstrate:

1. Educational Focus: All CPE programs must focus on learn-ing. CPE programs may include workshops, trainings,classes and other suitable formats. The length, depth,venue, and manner of instruction must be appropriate forthe subject matter and stated learning objectives.

2. Expert Instructors: All instructors must be subject matterexperts. An expert is defined by the Register as a profes-sional who has mastery of the method and theory of the sub-ject matter as demonstrated in practice, teaching, research,or publication. Instructors also must demonstrate profi-ciency in the specific principles of the activity being taught.In team-taught programs, instructors must be subject-mat-ter experts in the field(s) for which they are responsible.Archaeologists in teaching roles in the programs must beon the Register of Professional Archaeologists.

3. Lack of Commercialism: CPE instructional materials must be

CONTINUING PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION IN ARCHAEOLOGY

A NEW PROGRAM

Ian Burrow

Ian Burrow is President of the Register of Professional Archaeologists for 2010-2012.

ARTICLE


for educational purposes. Program materials promotinggoods or services are unacceptable.

4. Non Discrimination: CPE programs must be open to allRPAs eligible to participate. Certain CPE programs mayrequire prospective participants to demonstrate knowledgeor proficiencies prior to enrollment.

5. CPE Credit: CPE programs may range from short coursescompleted in hours, to intensive field, class, or laboratorytraining that take days or weeks to finish. The Register rec-ognizes the value of documenting both successful CPEcompletion and the program scope and intensity. One hourof CPE credit will be given for each hour of program train-ing, up to a maximum of eight hours per day and 40 hoursper week. Successful completion of the program will be rec-ognized with a certificate of completion.

6. Evaluation: All CPE programs must submit to the Registercopies of original attendance logs and participant evalua-tions of CPE content and delivery. The submission to theRegister must specify the RPA or RPAs who successfullycompleted the program and must be received by the Regis-ter within 20 days of CPE program completion. The Regis-ter may, upon review of the submission and other materials,ask for modifications to the program or withdraw Registercertification for the CPE program.

If the program meets the above criteria, the CPE provider willbe able to advertise the offering as an RPA-Certified CPE pro-gram, and is permitted use of the RPA logo.

Certified CPE programs will be listed on the Register’s website(www.rpanet.org). Prerequisites and the number of CPE credithours offered will also be identified. Instructors will be free toadvertise elsewhere and to invite non-RPAs to participate.

RPA’s who take these programs will receive a certificate of suc-cessful CPE completion. One hour of CPE credit will be givenfor each hour of program training, up to 40 hours per week.

Next Steps

I encourage anyone who is offering a workshop, seminar, orother educational program that appears to meet these criteria toconsider applying for certification. As an incentive, RPA is waiv-ing application fees for the first year. We have launched this pro-gram in the belief that it addresses a need in the archaeologicalcommunity, and I will be interested to see how it develops in thecoming months.

The development and launch of this program would not havebeen possible without the vision and dedication of our CPECommittee, and particularly the work of Jeff Altschul, Jo Reese,and current chair John Welch.

You will find full details at the “Continuing Education Certifica-tion Program” tab on the RPA website (www.rpanet.org)

If you have additional questions contact the RPA ContinuingProfessional Education Committee Chair, John Welch, [email protected].

Free Trial - eHRAF Archaeology *Online archaeological traditions and sequences *Ideal for ethnoarchaeology, research and teaching *Subject-indexed at the paragraph level *Full-text books, dissertations, & journal articles *Online student exercises

Human Relations Area Files (HRAF) e-mail: [email protected]; Web: www.yale.edu/hraf

Phone: 203-764-9401 or 800-520-HRAF

ARTICLE


Afew months ago I gave a talk at an environmental educa-tors’ conference with a presentation with the same title atthis note. My presentation followed that of two geography

colleagues; the first works with high-tech virtual models and thesecond studies the social landscape of the soccer World Cup. Myfirst colleague started his talk with the question, “Who here is agamer”? to which about 1/5 of the audience raised their hands.My second colleague, fully expecting to one-up his friend asked,“Who is a soccer fan”? (remember, this is Canada) and about 1/3of the audience raised their hands. Then it was my turn. “Whohere loves archaeology,” I asked. I was pleased but really not sur-prised that almost every hand in the audience went up— and theywent up quickly.

Now, to be fair, when I relayed this story to my friend MicheleWashington, she said that I’d have gotten a different responserate if I had posed the same set of questions to her Tla’aminFirst Nation community. She said this to me wearing her brightyellow Brazil soccer jersey. Still, I maintain that what I say istrue: Everyone, well mostly everyone, loves archaeology. Howmany of you have heard, “I always wanted to be an archaeolo-gist....” I believe that is our responsibility as archaeologists touse this love and fascination with our profession to educatebroadly about a range of heritage-related issues.

My experiences in British Columbia tell me that archaeologistscan use the widespread intrigue associated with our disciplineto not only educate about heritage, but also to help build bridgesbetween communities. Field schools, for instance, provide anexcellent context for people to come together around a sharedenthusiasm for seeing history and playing detective. Manytimes, people who are normally adversarial in their relations candiscover common ground this way. Often, landowners who areinitially guarded and mistrustful about what the presence ofsites on their land might mean,become keen partners in her-itage conservation via engaging in the process of actually doingarchaeology. End-of-year school fieldtrips provide a ready forumfor connecting kids to the past. And, events involving food andartifacts are always sure to draw in both people from diversecommunities, including the media.

I am fully aware that the fascination with archaeology is oftenembedded in a more complex love-hate relationship. Here inBritish Columbia, as elsewhere, the love of archaeology is cou-pled with a range of less-positive emotions: fear that personalland will be confiscated in a land-claims process, racist ideasabout First Nations, belief that artifacts should be sold for per-sonal profit, and fear that the discovery of an archaeological sitewill reduce property values, slow down development, or add sig-nificant costs to any project. I’ve heard it all many times, but inmy experience, with careful maneuvering, ultimately the love ofarchaeology helps lure people in to an open discussion aboutheritage values.

Building Bridges

A potentially powerful bridge formed through archaeology isthat between First Nations and non-Native communities. Herein British Columbia, the link between these two communities isobvious since most of the archaeological sites can be tied to FirstNations ancestry, but are now on private, non-First Nationsland. I have witnessed time and time again people of both com-munities sharing ideas and excitement about artifacts and anexcavation unit. Discussions of land claims are put aside to holda projectile point and marvel at the fact that someone held thissame point several millennia before. The artifact in theseinstances becomes more than just a stone tool; it is the mediumby which intercommunity communication begins (Figure 1).

Similarly, archaeology can be used to make bridges between thegeneral public and the scientific community. It’s fair to say that,at least in North America, most of the general public does notconnect with the minutiae of scientific research. However,many people are easily engaged in scientific questions whenthey revolve around the discovery of the past. Again, the abilityto touch past lives is a potentially powerful medium for publicengagement.

Archaeology can also create bridges between the scientific com-munity and that of resource managers more broadly. Here, thegreatest inroads are between the links made between zooar-

EVERYONE LOVES ARCHAEOLOGYBRIDGING COMMUNITIES THROUGH ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH

Dana Lepofsky

Dana Lepofsky is Professor in the Department of Archaeology, Simon Fraser University.

ARTICLE


chaeologists and paleoethnobotanists on the one hand andmodern natural resource managers on the other. Increasingly,archaeologists are considering what relevance their data have inmodern management contexts (e.g., Frazier 2007; Lyman andCannon 2004). Many are beginning to work with managers todesign archaeological research that is both temporally and spa-tially relevant to answering questions about managingresources and ecosystems today (Figure 2).

A personal favorite is the potential for archaeology to bridgecommunication between elders and youth and in fact, youthand anyone. I have seen it happen over and over again. The gen-eration of “plugged in” youth need to see, touch, and feel some-thing to connect to it. Holding artifacts, digging in the dirt witha trowel and seeing the stratigraphy unfold, or discovering arti-facts in the screen, all provide a tangible connection between thepast and present. A landscape that was previously thought of asa homogenized, western European creation, transforms to alandscape with history— where other children long ago alsoplayed in the dirt, fought with their siblings, and ignored theirparents. In this context, the past has importance and thereforeso do some of us older folks who are connected to it (Figure 3).

And finally, archaeology has the potential to make linkagesacross political spectra. I have worked with people who are situ-ated at the right and left extremes of this continuum and havewitnessed, again, the power of archaeology to make linksbetween people who otherwise would have little in common. Ofcourse, people on the right often tend to start with a stance thatarchaeology prevents much-needed development, and peopleon the left often argue for heritage protection (at least when thesite isn’t in their own yard). However, gentle and subtle intro-ductions to an archeological record that reveals hidden secretshas the potential to break down these entrenched views andopen up discussions about the value of heritage to societiesbroadly.

The Under-Tapped Potential of Archaeology

While I appreciate the theoretical discussions in our disciplineabout engaging diverse communities and the lead of the SAA’sin making concrete efforts to reach out (e.g., Malloy and Jepp-son 2009), I am most excited by the many small steps taken tomake links between communities. Archaeology is a powerfulway to start discussions that ultimately lead to broader shifts inperspective about the importance of cultural and biologicaldiversity, history, local ecological knowledge, and so many otherthings.

Without question, it is our responsibility to use our privilege asarchaeologists to educate widely about heritage. The age-old fas-cination with discovery, past lives lived, and well-crafted, beauti-ful objects all play into our favor. Taking advantage of these factsrequires that we spend significant amounts of time doing on-the-ground education. It also requires that we embrace the idea

Figure 1. Dana Lepofsky discussing artifacts and heritage preservation at a

neighbourhood potluck organized by SFU-Tla'amin project team members

and SFU field school students. Neighbors gathered to share food and to help

excavate a test pit in a midden located in an undeveloped lot owned by the

municipal government. Many of those neighbors are living on portions of

the archaeological site and thus were keenly interested not only in the cul-

ture history, but also their rights and responsibilities associated with archae-

ological heritage (Photo by Ken Lertzman, used with permission).

Figure 2. Dana Lepofsky explaining to a group of managers from the BC

Ministry of Forests about the excavation of a pithouse and the importance

of thinking of deep time (Photo by Ken Lertzman, used with permission).

ARTICLE


that a public that is well educated about archaeology will be ourstrongest allies not only in protecting archaeological sites, butalso in promoting the notion that heritage preservation is fun-damental to the well being of people and this planet.

To this end, I offer a list of 12 mini-projects that my colleaguesand I in British Columbia have found to be powerful ways ofengaging the public. These projects are designed not only toincrease the public’s connection to archaeology and heritagepreservation, but also to encourage communication betweensometimes disparate communities.

1. Hold a community potluck associated with excavations andfield schools. Sharing food is a fundamental component ofmaking intercommunity links.

2. Hold artifact nights where the public can bring in artifactsfor identification. Let people hold an artifact and imagine itin the hands of someone in the distant past. Then . . . youcan talk to them about the importance of context/undis-turbed sites and of controlled excavations.

3. Make an artifact kit and have it with you at all public venues,and again, let people touch the artifacts.

4. Create an educational and engaging pamphlet to pass out atpublic events. Kids will invariably bring these home to theirparents.

5. Make “Everyone loves archaeology” buttons or stickers thatpeople can take away. These are guaranteed to keep the con-versation going after people leave you.

6. Have your students make compelling educational posters todisplay at diverse public venues.

7. Make dioramas or large, laminated drawings or 3-D mapsthat help people visualize how the very spot in which they arestanding was once alive with other peoples’ lives. And,remember, not everyone loves stratigraphy as much as we do.

8. Talk to schoolchildren about heritage in as many venues asyou can.

9. Write short, accessible articles about archaeology and her-itage in local newspapers and newsletters. Do this often.

10. Create engaging web sites that give a taste of the excitementof archaeology (e.g., http://www.sliammonfirstnation.com/archaeology/) and how it is linked to broader heritageissues.

11. Cultivate relationships with journalists and other media andwork with them to write articles that are both interestingand highlight the importance of respecting heritage values.

12. Even when you’re working in remote field situations, try andhave a portion of your project that is visible and accessibleto locals. If appropriate, have signs, media, etc. that encour-age “drop in” visitors. You won’t get as much research done,of course, so it may be best to do this in a focused and lim-ited time frame. Students are fabulous tour leaders and giv-ing them this role adds another dimension to knowledge-sharing. And, always let visitors touch the dirt— either inthe screen or using a trowel. The physical connection to thepast is powerful.

References Cited

Frazier, J. 2007 Sustainable Use of Wildlife: The View from Archaeozoology.

Journal for Nature Conservation 15:163–173. Lyman, R. Lee, and Kenneth P. Cannon (editors)2004 Zooarchaeology and Conservation Biology. University of Utah

Press, Salt Lake City.Malloy, Maureen, and Patrice L. Jeppson2009 Public Outreach Efforts at SAA. Collaborating for Effective

Community Engagement. The SAA Archaeological Record9:30–32.

ARTICLE

Figure 3. Tla'amin cultural advisor and project collaborator Siemthlut

(Michelle Washington) and her daughter Alana help field school student

Melissa Cutting screen for artifacts. Hundreds of visitors of all ages, from

both the local First Nations and non-native community, visited the excava-

tions to learn about the deep and often invisible history of their community

(Photo by Georgia Combes, used with permission).


Application Deadline: March 1, 2012

Announcing a Summer Institute for College and University Faculty:

Mesoamerica and the Southwest: A New History for an Ancient Land

On-Site in Mexico, Arizona and New Mexico June 17 – July 23, 2012

Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and sponsored by The Community College Humanities Association (CCHA), this five-week Institute, held on-site in locations in Mexico and the U.S. Southwest, will enable twenty-four faculty participants to explore the rapidly accumulating new collaborative scholarship by investigators in both Mesoamerican studies and Southwestern studies Institute seminars, discussions and on-site field study with renowned visiting specialist scholars in Mexico and in the Southwest together provide a compelling format for the selected Institute Summer Fellows directly to engage with the “new history for an ancient land.” Site visits enable Fellows to evaluate for themselves at first hand the similarities and differences between such Mesoamerican sites as Teotihuacan and the Aztec Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan, and Southwestern sites such as Chaco Canyon, Mesa Verde and Aztec Ruins -- in terms of commonalities and differences in architecture, site design, iconography, and hypothesized worldviews and religious and ceremonial systems. Stipend: Participants receive all lodging, internal travel and site-visit costs for all scheduled activities during the Institute as specified in the detailed Daily Schedule, along with a few pre-arranged meals. Participants are responsible for all other meal expenses; for personal expenses; and for their own individual travel arrangements to arrive in Mexico City by Sunday, June 17, 2012 and for return from Santa Fe anytime after July 23, 2012. For Application and Information Packet download Institute Application Packet directly from our

website at www.ccha-assoc.org/MesoSW12/index.html

Institute Faculty John Pohl (Curator of the Arts of the Americas, the UCLA Fowler Museum);

KarlTaube(Anthropology,University of California at Riverside); Eloise Quiñones Keber (Art, Baruch College and the Graduate Center of CUNY); Alan Sandstrom (Anthropology emeritus, Indiana-Purdue University); Kelley Hays-Gilpin (Archaeology, Northern Arizona University and Research Associate, Museum of Northern Arizona) with Ramson Lomatewama; Stephen Lekson (Curator of Anthropology, Museum of Natural History, University of Colorado); F. Kent Reilly (University of Southwest Texas); Ramón Gutiérrez (U.S. History, University of Chicago; Fran Levine (director of the New Mexico History Museum, Santa Fe); Donna Glowacki (Anthropology, University of Notre Dame)

For additional information you may also contact one of the Project Co-Directors:

Dr. George Scheper (Humanities, Community College of Baltimore County and Faculty Associate, Advanced Academic Programs, The Johns Hopkins University) ([email protected])

Dr. Laraine Fletcher (Chair, Anthropology, Adelphi University) ([email protected] or [email protected])

Or contact the Project Manager: Prof. David Berry, Executive Director of CCHA, the Community College Humanities Association) (tel. 973-877-3204; [email protected]).

Application Deadline: March 1, 2012


New Deal archaeology happened across Wyomingbetween 1938 and 1941 with a formal WorksProgress Administration (WPA) program titled the

“Wyoming Archaeological Survey” authorized in November1938 (Sowers 1941). The Wyoming Archaeological Surveywas an extensive WPA project covering all portions of thestate with field offices at Laramie, Casper, Sundance, andLander. Most work was completed at known archaeologicalor historical sites, but several areas were surveyed for newsite locations. Investigations occurred at 38 sites, includingsuch well-known ones as Dinwoody Cave, Spanish Diggings,Castle Gardens, Medicine Hat Cave, and Fort Caspar (Sowers1941). Minimally, preliminary results were presented formost of these projects in the form of monthly reports, but formany sites without reports we have been unable to deter-mine what work was done or exact site locations. As withmany other WPA projects, the survey closed with the adventof World War II, but provided a basis for future archaeologi-cal research.

Other New Deal archaeology was conducted in Wyoming,including at Fort Laramie. Fort Laramie was first establishedin 1834 as a fur trader post (Barbour 2000), purchased by theUnited States Army in 1849 and decommissioned in 1890with the property sold to several civilian ranchers (McChris-tian 2008). For the next 47 years, until July 5, 1937, the prop-erty remained in civilian hands (Mattes 1980; McChristian1998). In March 1937, final paperwork was signed for theState of Wyoming to buy the main portion of the fort prop-erty from the private owners. The fort was “given” to theUnited States government on May 3, 1938 and declared to beFort Laramie National Monument by President Franklin D.Roosevelt on July 16, 1938. The property was expanded in1960 to include additional lands east of the original area tothe North Platte River. The property was designated FortLaramie National Historic Site in 1961 following this expan-sion.

Architectural and archeological studies of the fort structuresbegan while the fort was still state property (Mattes1980:128–129) with a Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC)project “Topographic and Building Survey of Fort Laramie”between November 29 and December 25, 1937 (Figure 1).This project was to map the boundaries of the National Mon-ument and all standing structures and features within itsboundary. Part of the mapping project was also to “clean up”the monument area of all “trash” from the 48 years of home-steader occupation following the military abandonment in1890. G. Hubert Smith, an National Park Service (NPS)archaeologist, was detailed to Fort Laramie to supervise this1937 project “to . . . coordinate clean-up work to ensureagainst the accidental destruction of bona fide historic fea-tures (Mattes 1980:134). Twenty CCC enrollees were trans-ported daily from the Lake Guernsey Camp for the project:

Among results of the fortuitous CCC project werevastly improved appearance of the grounds, the firstreliable site map to record accurately all identifiablehistoric features, and preliminary archeology whichdelineated hidden building sites and laid the ground-work for the area’s unique collection of military periodartifacts . . . A by-product of the archeological surveywas confirmation of the fact that the Monument areaexcluded over one-half of the 1890 Fort grounds, pri-marily the Quartermaster and stabling area [Mattes1980:134].

This latter discovery was critical justification for the 1960expansion of the monument grounds. Even today, activityareas associated with the military occupation at Fort Laramieremain in private hands, protected from destruction for themost part by concerned neighbors. Based on availablerecords, this and later Fort Laramie CCC projects were notassociated with the Wyoming Archaeological Survey, butwere specifically funded for Fort Laramie after the site waspresented to the NPS in 1938.

NEW DEAL ARCHAEOLOGY, PART II

NEW DEAL AND RIVER BASIN SURVEYARCHAEOLOGY AT FORT LARAMIE

NATIONAL HISTORIC SITEDanny N. Walker

Danny N. Walker is an archaeologist with the Wyoming State Archaeologists Office.


Concern about the undocumented archaeology at FortLaramie noted by Smith in 1937 was paramount from itsfirst occupation by the NPS. A series of meetings were heldin 1938 and 1939, resulting with the Park Service developingand beginning a formal plan for restoration. The primaryobjective was to save all the extant buildings by the bestpreservation techniques possible. That objective continuestoday with continuing restoration and stabilization plans.More important, those early restoration projects would onlybe undertaken cautiously and after thorough historical,architectural and archaeological research (Mattes 1980:138).This tradition has continued over the years with the CCC,River Basin Survey (RBS), NPS, and University of Wyomingconducting a series of studies related to restoration projectsand occasionally pure research (Walker and De Vore 2008).

With that goal of intensive research in mind, formal archaeo-logical studies began between June and August 1939, at FortLaramie National Monument by a WPA workforce of 15enrollees from Camp BR–83, Veteran, Wyoming (a side campof Lake Guernsey), under the direction of G. Hubert Smith.The three buildings examined were the powdermagazine/arsenal (Figure 2), adjacent officers’ quarters, andthe infantry barracks on the north end of the Parade Ground(Figure 3). No detailed analyses of the recovered cultural mate-

rial were ever conducted, but the artifacts were collected forstorage, interpretive displays and later research (Smith 1939*).

Following Smith’s 1939 work with the CCC, archaeology wasconducted by RBS crews hired specifically on NPS or otherfederal program funds for various projects. Excavation wasundertaken in the fall of 1940 on Officers’ Quarters D andthe Sutler’s Store (Hendron 1941). This document is one offew early reports that discusses details about artifacts recov-ered in the excavations and set the tone for all future archae-ology reports at Fort Laramie: provide as much detail as pos-sible with the available funding. Archaeology and restora-tions at Fort Laramie ceased during World War II and did notresume until 1949 when the RBS resumed archaeologicalwork at the fort in response to building restoration compli-ance and research needs (Mattes 1980).

The 1950s and 1960s saw a major restoration period at thefort where all standing structures had at least stabilizationprojects, and often major restoration as well (Mattes 1980).These projects were either conducted after archaeologicalinvestigations, or archaeologists were called to Fort Laramiebecause of inadvertent discoveries (Walker and De Vore2008). The volume of archaeological data gathered over thepast 70+ years is phenomenal and has provided more ques-tions than answers about the history of Fort Laramie.

As can be seen by these brief discussions of this early work,the major goal of the NPS in 1938 was to learn about thearchitectural and occupational history of these structuresthrough archaeological studies. While some today may ques-tion excavation techniques used by the WPA or RBS (notethe use of a pickax in Figure 3), the crews did discover detailswe would not know if the projects had not been conductedbefore restorations began.

For the next 60+ years, a series of investigations were madefollowing the original mandate that no restoration would beaccomplished without extensive archaeological research


Figure 1: 1937 CCC mapping crew from Camp Guernsey on porch of

Commanding Officer’s Quarters, Fort Laramie National Historic Site

(Courtesy, National Park Service, Fort Laramie National Historic Site).

Figure 2: 1939 excavations at three-company barracks, north end of

parade ground, Fort Laramie National Historic Site (Courtesy, Nation-

al Park Service, Fort Laramie National Historic Site).

Figure 3: 1939 excavations at arsenal building, Fort Laramie National

Historic Site (Courtesy, National Park Service, Fort Laramie National

Historic Site).


(Walker and DeVore 2008). This mandate continues today,drawing on updated survey techniques including extensiveuse of geophysical equipment for field investigations (Figure4) (Walker and DeVore 2008). Knowing the history of archae-ological work at a locality over the years is critical for properinterpretation of “modern” archaeological surveys, whetherthey be traditional walk-over pedestrian surveys, or as at FortLaramie in recent years, geophysical surveys. This knowl-edge is highly critical when modern studies are conducted atplaces like Fort Laramie National Historic Site in Wyomingwith Euroamerican occupation that has been constant since1834 and a prehistoric occupation dating back 10,000 years.

References Cited

Barbour, Barton H.2000 Special History Study: The Fur Trade at Fort Laramie Nation-

al Historic Site. National Park Service. Submitted to FortLaramie Na tional Historic Site. On file, Fort LaramieNational Historic Site, Wyoming.

Hendron, J. W.1941 An Introduction to the Archeology of Fort Laramie. National

Park Service, Midwest Archeological Center. Submitted toFort Laramie National Historic site. On File, Fort LaramieNational His toric Site, Wyoming.

Mattes, Merrill J.1980 Fort Laramie Park History, 1834–1977. Rocky Mountain

Regional Office, National Park Service, United StatesDepartment of the Interior, Denver.

McChristian, Douglas C.1998 Historic Resource Study, Fort Laramie National Historic Site –

Part V, the Private Property Era 1890–1937. National ParkService. Submitted to Fort Laramie National Historic Site.On file, Fort Laramie National Historic Site, Wyoming.

2008 Fort Laramie: Military Bastion of the High Plains. Arthur H.Clark, Norman, Oklahoma.

Smith, Hubert1939 Archeological Report, Fort Lara mie National Monument,

Sum mer 1939. Unpublished cultural resource managementproject re port prepared for National Park Service by Mid-west Archeologi cal Center. On file, Midwest Ar cheologicalCenter, National Park Service, Lincoln, Nebraska.

Sowers, Ted C.1941 The Wyoming Archaeological Survey. University of

Wyoming, Laramie.Walker, Danny N., and Steven L. De Vore2008 Final Report on 2002–2005 Geo physical Surveys at Fort

Laramie National Historic Site, Wyoming. University ofWyoming. Submitted to Fort Laramie National HistoricSite. On file, Fort Laramie National Historic Site, Wyoming.


Figure 4: 2010 Gradiometer survey coverage map, showing extent of geophysical survey coverage at Fort Laramie National Historic Site.


Beginning in 1934 and then continuing uninterruptedfrom 1937 until 1942, William Webb directed majorarchaeological excavation projects throughout Ken-

tucky using federal work relief funds. The majority of thiswork was done through the Works Progress Administration(WPA), but it also included funds from the Federal Emer-gency Relief Administration (FERA) and labor supplied bythe Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC).

Fresh from his experience managing large excavations proj-ects for the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) in Alabamaand Tennessee, Webb began a statewide archaeological pro-gram in Kentucky in 1937. Over the next four and a halfyears, federally supported excavations were conducted at 72sites in 17 Kentucky counties (Milner and Smith 1986:27).Surveys were also conducted in a number of other countiesthat never progressed to excavation projects.

Although Webb’s academic home was in physics, he devel-oped an interest in Kentucky archaeology while participatingin statewide geological expeditions with Kentucky’s eminentgeologist, Arthur Miller, in the 1910s and 1920s (Schwartz1967). Eventually, Webb teamed up with zoology professorWilliam Funkhouser to produce the first synthetic account ofKentucky prehistory (Funkhouser and Webb 1928) and a sys-tematic survey of known sites (Funkhouser and Webb 1932).By the early 1930s, Webb had become the most knowledge-able person in the state on Kentucky archaeology.

The WPA archaeology program in Kentucky identified fourareas as research priorities. The first area, in western Ken-tucky, consisted of the lower Tennessee and CumberlandRiver valleys, which were slated for inundation by TVA. Thesecond area, in south-central Kentucky, was known for itsextensive cave development where it was thought the bestpossibility of finding an association between Pleistocene ani-mals and human remains might exist. The third area, along

the Green River in west-central Kentucky, was known for itsnumerous Archaic shell midden sites. The fourth area,which coincides approximately with the Bluegrass Region innorth-central Kentucky, was known for geometric earth-works and mounds of the Adena culture (Milner and Smith1986:17). The latter two areas were of special interest toWebb because of his previous work in the Tennessee Valleyon large shell middens and Copena mound sites.

Ultimately, the selection of sites for excavation was partlydriven by the need to salvage remains threatened by damconstruction (the lower Tennessee and Cumberland rivers),but, more significantly, areas of the state with high unem-ployment. This latter concern made the shell mound regionof the Green River especially attractive. With the exception ofone small project, no WPA work was conducted in the caveregion. However, some work was eventually done underWPA auspices in northeastern Kentucky on late prehistoricFort Ancient sites along the Ohio River.

Webb put the large WPA crews to good use because hebelieved near total excavation of sites allowed for a more com-plete reconstruction of the archaeological culture. Webb con-sidered large museum collections to be essential for advancingscientific knowledge and for educational purposes. Webb alsoemphasized the recovery of human skeletal remains becauseof their importance for understanding the history of pale-opathologies and examining human variation among Ken-tucky’s prehistoric people (Milner and Smith 1986:14). Webborganized his projects with military efficiency and insisted onstandardized recovery and recording methodologies. Per WPArequirements, Webb hired college graduates in archaeology tosupervise projects, but insisted they follow his plan of work.Inexperienced WPA work crews were trained on the job, andcould work their way up from “shovel men” to archaeologicalexcavators and, in a few cases, to crew supervisors.


WILLIAM S. WEBB’S WPA ARCHAEOLOGICAL LEGACY IN KENTUCKY

FROM ADENA TO INDIAN KNOLL

George M. Crothers

George M. Crothers is the Director of the William S. Webb Museum of Anthropology and an Associate Professor at the University of Kentucky.


Webb’s regimental control may have stifled experimentationamong his supervisors, but it led to standardized collectionsof archaeological remains, field forms, photographs, maps,profiles, notes, and other primary documentation that is asgood or better than many archaeological collections recov-ered today. This was due not only to Webb’s administrativeskills, but also to the outstanding individuals he hired: menlike John Cotter, the WPA State Supervisor; William Haag,the WPA Laboratory Manager; and Charles Snow, the physi-cal anthropologist in charge of analyzing human remains.

By and large, the most significant WPA research programderived from excavation of Archaic sites in the Green Riverarea (Figure 1) and Adena sites in the Bluegrass (Figure 2).These two programs remain primary research topics today.Unlike much of the TVA work in the southeastern U.S. andthe later Bureau of American Ethnology’s River Basin Sur-veys, many of the Kentucky WPA sites were not destroyed orinundated by reservoirs. Long-term research programs, suchas the Shell Mound Archaeological Project begun by WilliamMarquardt and Patty Jo Watson (2005), integrate continuingresearch on museum collections with targeted excavation ofexisting sites to recover material that was not a routine partof the WPA program. Thirty-seven Green River shell middensites have been nominated to the National Register of His-toric Places, and many of these comprise a thematic Nation-

al Historic Landmark district. Likewise, many of the Adenamound sites are also on the National Register.

Today, the WPA collections at the University of Kentucky arestill the most requested research materials in the museum.Requests for access to the collection have steadily increasedover the 70 years since the last WPA project. As a measure ofresearch access, for example, Figure 3 shows the number ofMaster’s theses and Ph.D. dissertations by year that includeprimary analyses of the collection (i.e., direct analysis ofmaterial rather than relying on published data). Access to thecollections is not just a product of University of Kentuckystudents. In fact, the overwhelming majority of researchbeing conducted on the collections is done by non-UK stu-dents (Figure 4). A complete list of scholars requestingaccess to the collection includes major universities across theU.S. and many international institutions as well (e.g., Uni-versity College London, Centro Nacional Patagónico,Kitasato University School of Medicine, University of Toron-to, University of Kent, Universität Tübingen, among others).

Some have denigrated William Webb because he did nothave a professional degree in anthropology, his early tech-niques were sometimes crude, his management style wasdictatorial, and he feuded with his contemporaries in Ten-nessee and elsewhere over management of the projects


Figure 1. WPA crew excavating the Carlston Annis shell mound (15Bt5) in 1941. Digital image from the original print (negative no. 4886), William S.

Webb Museum of Anthropology, University of Kentucky.


(Lyon 1996). The substance of Webb’s contribution to archae-ology through the WPA program, however, remains solid.Negotiating the bureaucracies of TVA and the restrictionsimposed by WPA, Webb put an organizational structure inplace for his supervisors to produce useful research. In fourand a half years, Webb advanced knowledge of Kentucky pre-history farther than anyone had done before or has donesince. Webb’s legacy continues with each new inquiry intothe collection and each new discovery of the wealth of infor-mation contained in the WPA materials.

References Cited

Funkhouser, William D., and William S. Webb1928 Ancient Life in Kentucky. Geologic Reports Vol. 34. Ken-

tucky Geological Survey, University of Kentucky, Lexing-ton.

1932 Archaeological Survey of Kentucky. Reports in Archaeologyand Anthropology, Vol. II. University of Kentucky, Lexing-ton.

Lyon, Edwin A.1996 A New Deal for Southeastern Archaeology. University of Ala-

bama Press, Tuscaloosa. Marquardt, William H., and Patty Jo Watson2005 Archaeology of the Middle Green River Region, Kentucky.

Institute of Archaeology and Paleoenvironmental StudiesMonograph 5. University of Florida, Gainesville.

Milner, George R., and Virginia G. Smith1986 New Deal Archaeology in Kentucky: Excavations, Collections,

and Research. Occasional Papers in Anthropology No. 5.Program for Cultural Resource Assessment, University ofKentucky, Lexington.

Schwartz, Douglas W.1967 Conceptions of Kentucky Prehistory: A Case Study in the His-

tory of Archeology. University of Kentucky Press, Lexington.


Figure 2. An Adena paired post structure pattern at the base of Crigler

Mound (15Be20). Photograph taken November 13, 1941. Digital image

from the original print (negative no. 5636), William S. Webb Museum

of Anthropology, University of Kentucky.

Figure 3. Number of theses and dissertations using WPA collections

completed by year. Total completed is 51; year >2011 indicates research

access approved, but thesis not yet completed.

Figure 4. Thesis and dissertation projects by University of Kentucky stu-

dents versus all other universities. Total for Kentucky, 16, all other uni-

versities, 46.


The Deptford site (9Ch2) in Chatham County, Georgia,has been an important location for Southeasternarchaeological research for almost a century. Located

on bluff edges east of Savannah, Georgia, Deptford was anextensive shell midden with an associated burial mound.Some of the most significant figures in Eastern North Amer-ican archaeology worked at the Deptford site in the early1940s, including Joseph Caldwell, Antonio Waring, PrestonHolder, and Catherine McCann. During the WPA excava-tions between 1937 and 1942, a large crew excavated over40,000 square feet and recovered nearly 100,000 artifactssimply through trowel sorting. All of the maps and many ofthe original field notes have been misplaced since excava-tions ended with the onset of World War II, but a detailedartifact analysis in the 1990s has reopened hundreds of oldunits to future research potential.

Although the site was first excavated close to eighty years ago,the collections have remained an important resource foraddressing social questions throughout the prehistoric periodon the southern Atlantic coast. In one of the most famousapplications of Deptford materials, Joseph Caldwell (1970)created the well-known and well-worn coastal ceramicchronology using stratigraphic evidence from Deptford andother sites in the WPA excavations around Chatham County(DePratter 1991). Decades later, Jerald Milanich (1971, 1972*)used Deptford as a type site to define a Middle WoodlandDeptford culture for the coastal region. Although archaeolog-ical research on the southern Atlantic coast has been morelocal and contextual since these earlier culture history appli-cations, the Deptford site has maintained a strong exposurethanks to Caldwell’s chronology and Milanich’s “culture.”Beyond the large ceramic collection, however, we still knowvery little about this extensive site and how social life changedthrough time at this prehistoric palimpsest.

Thorough Excavations, Scant Reporting

The WPA excavations in Chatham County, Georgia were led

by a group of soon to be well-known archaeologists in East-ern North America. The investigations at Deptford were notcontinuous, as different portions of the site were excavated atintermittent times throughout the duration of the entireChatham County project. Antonio Waring and Preston Hold-er were the first archaeologists to visit Deptford during theproject in 1937, where they excavated a few units across thesite and established a working ceramic chronology for theregion (Waring and Holder 1968; see also Caldwell and War-ing 1939). H. Thomas Cain excavated the Deptford BurialMound (9Ch2a) in 1937, but the primary Deptford excava-tions did not begin until 1941.

The director of the main Deptford excavations, CatherineMcCann, was a graduate student from the University ofPennsylvania and one of the first female archaeologists inthe region. McCann is more well-known for her earlier workat the Irene Mound site (9Ch1) (Caldwell and McCann 1941),for which she published work on faunal (McCann 1939a,1939b) and ceramic materials (McCann 1941; also seeClaassen 1999:98). Although many women were involved inthe Chatham County excavations, McCann was the onlywoman in a supervisory position during the entire project.Following her work at Irene Mound, McCann was put incharge of the Deptford excavations in 1940 (DePratter 1991),and Caldwell made McCann the second author on the Dept-ford site report he began drafting several decades later.

Unlike the Irene Mound site, the Deptford materials werenot analyzed directly following the excavations and, to thisday, there is no final report for the site. The most compre-hensive description is in DePratter’s report on all of theChatham County excavations, including a sample analysis ofsome materials in the collection and some of Caldwell’sincomplete and unpublished drafts. Several factors con-tributed to this fragmented state. For instance, all the origi-nal site maps, profile drawings, and original field notes havebeen misplaced. Although some of this may be attributed toarchival inconsistencies throughout the past several decades,


NEW CONSIDERATIONS OF OLD DISTRIBUTIONS

SITE OCCUPATIONS AT THE DEPTFORD SITE (9CH2), CHATHAM COUNTY, GEORGIA

Victoria G. Dekle

Victoria G. Dekle is a graduate student in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Kentucky.


the excavations at Deptford ended rather abruptly with theonset of World War II and many of the artifacts were hastilyboxed, occasionally without provenience information(DePratter 1991:1).

New Distributions

Recent developments with the Deptford collections are open-ing up potential to this commonly cited but mysterious site.Between 1994 and 1997, Mark Williams at the University ofGeorgia Laboratory of Archaeology directed an extensiveanalysis of the entire Deptford collection. This analysis,which was funded by the National Park Service, has nowreopened the Deptford site to further analysis and interpre-tations than were previously possible. My undergraduatehonors thesis (Dekle 2007) of horizontal ceramic distribu-tions through time is the first attempt to work with the datafrom the complete artifact analyses (see Dekle 2010 for amore detailed description of the methods and results).

In this research project, Williams and I re-created the exca-vation grid using the provenience information on the origi-nal artifact bags (Figure 1). We then plotted all artifacts hor-izontally across the 510 7.5 x 10 ft (2.3 x 3.1 m) units at thesite, including nearly 72,000 ceramic sherds. Another 17,000sherds are identifiable by trench number and location, butthese long linear trenches are not particularly useful for an

accurate spatial analysis. Vertical stratigraphic distributionshave not been completed at this time, but level informationdoes exist in the collections database and this research willbe instrumental for future work.

Even though the scale is extremely broad, this analysis hasexposed some previously unknown facts about the Deptfordcollections. First of all, the Deptford series is not the mostcommon ceramic type at the Deptford site (Table 1).Chatham County Cord Marked, a Woodland series previous-ly identified by DePratter (1991) in his original work with theChatham County WPA materials, is the most commonceramic type at the site. Although this type is new anduntested, the fact remains that Deptford ceramics do notdominate the collection, and this will have important impli-cations for our understanding of Middle Woodland and“Deptford” culture (Milanich 1971, 1972*; Stephenson et al.2002). Further, the ceramic spatial distributions indicate thatoccupation and/or depositional locations clearly shiftthrough time (Dekle 2010).

Conclusions and Future Suggestions

In his draft report on the Deptford excavations, Joseph Cald-well expressed some concern about the site’s future researchpotential. He argued:

It is rather a pity that the Deptford site has obtained suchprominence in the literature, principally, of course, as the


Figure 1. Recreated Map of the Deptford Site 1940–1941 Excavations

Units.

Table 1. Ceramic Counts at the Deptford Site by Series.

Ceramic Series Units Trenches Total

Allendale 0 1 1Altamaha 10 4 14Brewton Hill 37 10 47Chatham County 22,278 5,027 27,305Deptford 11,176 2,087 13,263Irene 18 2 20Oemler 42 10 52Refuge 4,214 711 4,925Savannah 723 178 901St. Catherines 120 42 162St. Johns 40 4 44St. Simons 27 0 27Unidentified Clay Tempered 3,986 935 4,921Unidentified Limestone Tempered 5 0 5Unidentitifed Mica Tempered 1 0 1Unidentified Sand / Grit Tempered 8,055 2,058 10,113Untyped Decorated 199 120 319Walthour 5,412 1,209 6,621Weeden Island 2 0 2Wilmington 15,539 4,274 19,813Total 71,884 16,672 88,556


type site for a series of pottery types. The results of theexcavations did not come up to expectations, and the ter-mination of the project prevented a detailed analysis ofthe materials. There is a large amount of pottery from thesite, and most of this can be identified. Many of the non-pottery artifacts did not occur in features, but in arbitrarylevels in the general digging and there is little certainty asto their cultural affiliations. An analysis of the contents ofthe features, principally midden pits, needs to be made,but this might not yield as much information as shouldbe gained from other sources, such as smaller, one peri-od sites. Deptford was too large, too mixed, containedmore occupations than we were able to recognize at thattime, and in hindsight, I believe, the site was carefully,but not brilliantly dug [Caldwell et al. 1973, quoted inDePratter 1991:127–128].

Although Caldwell raises some important issues about thequality of the excavations and curation, there is still researchpotential in the Deptford collections if we strictly adhere tothe surviving provenience information and focus on whatinformation we can infer.

The Deptford collection is already inspiring new questionsabout prehistoric life at the mouth of the Savannah River aswe highlight previously unknown ceramic distributions andquestion some of our previous assumptions about chronolo-gy and prehistoric socialization in the area. DePratter (1991)has already offered an excellent suggestion about furtheringour knowledge of the site through detailed cluster analysis,which may expose Woodland and Mississippian “household”concentrations despite the lack of feature and post-holeinformation. Such analysis has already been conducted atWoodland midden sites in Florida (Saunders 1998; Wallis2007). Thanks to the University of Georgia’s full-scale analy-sis in the 1990s, we can now begin such an analysis that willtruly enhance our understanding of this significant site andprehistoric life on the southern Atlantic Coast.

Acknowledgments. I would like to sincerely thank those individuals whohave always recognized the potential in WPA collections and who haveinspired my curiosity with enthusiasm and plenty of stories about South-eastern archaeology through the twentieth century. Most especially, I wishto thank Mark Williams for his patience and never-ending support as Istumbled through this research project— the very first of my career. Also,thank you Chester DePratter, Victor Thompson, Stephen Kowalewksi,and Richard Jefferies for your all your guidance into coastal archaeology.I am delighted to be part of this themed issue and the associated SAAposter session, and I am grateful to Barnard Means for creating thisopportunity with tremendous organization and enthusiasm. Fundingand other support for this work was provided by the National Park Serv-ice and the Laboratory of Archaeology at the University of Georgia. Final-ly, I offer my most sincere thanks to WPA archaeologists, field crews, andother support staff that began this research so many years ago. You allmade such important contributions to our field and we are foreverinspired and indebted to your efforts.

References CitedCaldwell, Joseph R.1970 Chronology of the Georgia Coast. Southeastern Archaeologi-

cal Conference Bulletin 13:88–92.Caldwell, Joseph R., and Catherine M. McCann1941 The Irene Mound Site, Chatham County, Georgia. University

of Georgia Press, Athens.Caldwell, Joseph R., Catherine M. McCann, and H. Thomas Cain1973 The Deptford Site, Chatham County, Georgia. Manuscript

No. 272, on file at the Laboratory of Archaeology, Univer-sity of Georgia, Athens.

Caldwell, Joseph R., and Antonio J. Waring, Jr.1939 The Use of a Ceramic Sequence in the Classification of

Aboriginal Sites in Chatham County, Georgia. Southeast-ern Archaeological Conference Program 2(1):6–7.

Claassen, Cheryl P.1999 Black and White at Irene Mound. In Grit Tempered: Early

Women Archaeologists in the Southeastern United States,edited by Nancy Marie White, Lynne P. Sullivan, andRochelle A. Marrinan, pp. 92–114. University Press ofFlorida, Gainesville.

Dekle, Victoria G.2007 Making Sense of a W.P.A. Excavation: Archaeological

Reassessment of the Deptford Site (9CH2) in ChathamCounty, Georgia. Unpublished honors thesis, Departmentof Anthropology, University of Georgia, Athens.

2010 The Deptford Site: Reconfigured and Reconfigured. EarlyGeorgia 38(2):185–203.

DePratter, Chester B.1991 W.P.A. Archaeological Excavations in Chatham County,

Georgia: 1937–1942. Laboratory of Archaeology Series No.29, University of Georgia, Athens.

McCann, Catherine1939a Faunal Remains at Irene Mound: Abstract. Southeastern

Archaeological Conference Newsletter 2(1).1939b Faunal Remains at the Irene Mound, Savannah. Society for

Georgia Archaeology Proceedings 2(2):37–40.1941 The Development of Cord Marking Pottery in Chatham

County. Society for Georgia Archaeology Proceedings 3(1).Milanich, Jerald T.1971 The Deptford Phase: An Archaeological Reconstruction.

Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthro-pology, University of Florida, Gainesville.

1972 The Deptford Phase: An Adaptation of Hunting-GatheringBands to the Southeastern Coastal Strand. SoutheasternArchaeological Conference Bulletin 15:21–33.

Saunders, Rebecca1998 Swift Creek Phase Design Assemblages from Two Sites on

the Georgia Coast. In A World Engraved: Archaeology of theSwift Creek Culture, edited by J. Mark Williams and DanielT. Elliott, pp. 154–181. University of Alabama Press,Tuscaloosa.

Stephenson, Keith L., Judith A. Bense, and Frankie Snow2002 Some Aspects of Deptford and Swift Creek of the South

Atlantic and Gulf Coastal Plains. In The Woodland South-east, edited by David G. Anderson and Robert C. Mainfort,Jr., pp. 318–351. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa.

Wallis, Neill J.2007 Defining Swift Creek Interactions: Earthenware Variability

at Ring Middens and Burial Grounds. Southeastern Archae-ology 26:212–231.

Waring, Antonio J., Jr., and Preston Holder1968 The Deptford Ceramic Complex. In The Waring Papers:

The Collected Works of Antonio J. Waring, Jr., edited byStephen Williams, pp. 131–151. Papers of the PeabodyMuseum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard Univer-sity, Cambridge.



Very little information is in print about Preston Hold-er’s extensive, seminal, Works Progress Administra-tion (WPA) era excavations of prehistoric and early-

contact Indian sites on the Georgia Coast, from Savannah toSt. Simons Island, between April 1936 and February 1938.For reasons that remain obscure, his WPA supervisors inWashington and Georgia did not permit Holder to publishhis work-in-progress, discouraged the use of his results forhis Columbia doctorate, and effectively hid his formalunpublished reports and relevant papers from scrutiny. Insome cases, the supervisors expunged the reports andpapers. Under his name, only one meager, two-page note,which was never intended for print publication, brieflydescribes five of the sites that he excavated in 1936 and 1937on St. Simons Island. Nonetheless, Holder’s importantarchaeological work in Georgia is richly attested in relativelyunknown, untapped, and unpublished resources, includingofficial and unofficial reports and correspondence; detailedfield notes, burial lists, faunal lists, graphs, and maps; labo-ratory and sherd analyses; contemporary artifact displaysrequisitioned for locals and tourists; a wide range of photo-graphs; and 33 large bins containing many thousands ofclassified ceramics. The purpose of this short survey, whichis extensively documented in a forthcoming chapter (Kier-nan 2012), is to bring these effectively lost and forgottenresources to the attention of the archaeological community.

Holder prepared his lone “publication” as a three-minute talkfor Lucy B. McIntire, Division Supervisor of WPA archaeo-logical projects in Savannah, who wanted to report on Hold-er’s work at the June 12, 1937 meeting of the Society forGeorgia Archaeology in Columbus, Georgia. Excusing him-self because his work at Cannon’s Point at the northern tip ofSt. Simons Island was at a critical stage, Holder politelydeclined her invitation to pay his own way to Savannah toride with her to Columbus to hear his own paper read. Thereport was published a year later in the first issue of the Pro-ceedings of the Society for Georgia Archaeology, likely with-out his knowledge, as Holder was then in graduate school at

Columbia. At any rate, “Excavations on St. Simons Islandand Vicinity, 1936-1937,” which is familiar to Coastal archae-ologists, provides a brief and accurate description of his exca-vations on St. Simons Island at the Airport (Site I), the SeaIsland Mound (II), the Charlie King Mound (III), and Gas-coigne Bluff (IV), with a progress report on Cannon’s Point(V). Less well known are the further details of his work atCannon’s Point, of his two-month excavations at the impor-tant Evelyn mounds in north Brunswick (VI), and especiallyof his five months supervising the first, extensive excavationsat the Irene Mound in Savannah.

After lengthy and personally costly delays by the WPA districtoffice in Savannah, Holder began salvage archaeology in May1936 at the St. Simons Island airport, a WPA project alreadyunder advanced construction. His initial workforce consistedof two African American shovel men named Charlie Kingand George Life (see Figure 1), a white laboratory assistantand shovel man named C. O. Svendsen, the son of the light-house keeper, and Holder’s first wife, Ruth. This small,unusually integrated crew, occasionally augmented by otherworkers at the grudging discretion of the engineer at the air-port, accomplished a great deal. By the time the engineercompelled them to leave the site, Holder had mapped, pro-filed, and meticulously documented 200 burials and theirfunereal offerings, exposed and plotted 3,000 post-molds, andstatistically analyzed 21,000 ceramics and other artifacts. Thedecorated ceramics prevailingly reflect a culture that overmany hundreds of years used carved paddles to stamp the wetclay with complicated patterns known as early Swift Creek orwith a previously unknown, handsome design, which Holderdesignated St. Simons Herringbone Stamp. From the airport,Holder moved his crew to two mound burial sites, the first onthe property of Charlie King, one of his first two AfricanAmerican workers, and the other at the northern tip of SeaIsland, on the property of one of his main sponsors, the SeaIsland Company, which together with the Brunswick Boardof Trade and the Society for Georgia Archaeology helped payhis salary before WPA funding cleared.


PRESTON HOLDER ON THE GEORGIA COAST,1936–1938Kevin Kiernan

Kevin Kiernan is Professor of English Emeritus at the University of Kentucky.


Holder’s excavations of these two mounds are helpfully com-memorated in a large, professionally executed, profile, con-tour, and location map, which I discovered in 2007 amongthe Papers of Antonio J. Waring, Jr., at the National Anthro-pological Archives of the Smithsonian Institution in Suit-land, Maryland (Figure 2). The inventory listed it as “Map ofSt. Simons Island, Georgia— Chirby King Mound,” which Iassumed must be a mistake for “Charley” King. Because itwas rolled too tightly to open without damaging it, the mapfirst required professional restoration. Once flattened, treat-ed, and conserved, however, the map repaid the cost with asurprise bonus of the Sea Island Mound; confirmed the mis-spelling of Charlie King’s name; and disclosed importantdetails about the sites and Holder’s methodology. The pro-files delineate three layers of the burial mound at Sea Island,for example, and expose the severe pitting of the survivingarea of the Charlie King mound, which road workers hadheavily quarried for sand. The contour map at Sea Islandmound shows the pits dug by pothunters before Holderarrived. And the location maps for both sites, laid out bytrench and station, make it possible from Holder’s meticu-lous surviving records to pinpoint, for example, post-molds,middens, fired areas, and even specific artifact finds, in theIndian village at Sea Island, and the positions of graves andgrave goods at both mounds. M.O. Bellingrodt of Savannahinitialed and dated the map on October 22, 1937, when Hold-er was working at the Irene Mound in Savannah. Holderwrote to Waring in November that Bellingrodt was makingbeautiful tracings of the profiles from St. Simons and waskeeping a detailed drafting record of the excavations at Irene.These other maps have gone missing.

There are many sources of information on the other sitesfrom St. Simons Island and Glynn County. The most obvi-ous sources are his reports to Arthur Kelly, carbon copies ofwhich Holder fortunately sent to Frank Setzler at the Smith-sonian Institution and to other involved parties, as Kelly losttrack of his own copies. Because it shows how generouslyHolder, though deep in his studies at Columbia, shared thedetails of his WPA excavations, I will cite from the descrip-tions of Cannon’s Point (Site V) and the Evelyn Mounds (SiteVI) from a January 1939 letter to Joseph Caldwell. Holderhad hired Caldwell as his assistant and intended replace-ment at Irene in September 1937, but Kelly decided thatCaldwell was not ready to supervise five months later, at theend of January 1938, when Holder left for graduate school.When he was about to succeed the second of two interimsupervisors, both of whom he had served as an assistant, atthe Irene Mound in January 1939, Caldwell repeatedlyimportuned Holder for information about Irene and his ear-lier work on the lower Coast. In his five-page, single-spacedreply, Holder reminds Caldwell of the huge sherd collection,with site numbers (I-VI) marked on each sherd, “establish-ing the ware-categories for the Coast,” which Holder hadorganized in shoe boxes in Savannah. Because Caldwell wasconfused about the site designations in the field reports toKelly and on the sherds, Holder offered to answer any spe-cific questions. He even agreed to a proposed trip to Savan-nah, provided his expenses were paid, although “it seemsfoolish to make a trip like that only to explain the site-desig-nations.” Holder’s reply to Caldwell’s questions about thesite designations furnishes a convenient set of descriptionsof all the Lower Coast sites, an explanation of trench and sta-tion and depth marks on sherds, and other useful clarifica-tions. A short paragraph on Gascoigne Bluff (Site IV)explains that test-pits revealed identical wares to those at theAirport, suggesting a wide, sprawling occupation by this cul-ture on the island.

At Cannon’s Point (V) Holder excavated five distinct loca-tions, designated V A-E. Perhaps writing from a recent cur-sory look at his report to Kelly, Holder somewhat conflatedhis descriptions of V A and V B in his letter to Caldwell.According to his formal report, it was V A, not V B, where hedug a trench 5 feet deep and 45 feet long and found almostpure shell with virtually no midden deposits or sherds. At VB he thoroughly explored 500 square feet of level shell areas,but found only a fragmentary human tibia and femur, somemidden pits, and no post-molds or other evidence of perma-nent occupation. The most fruitful excavations were at Site VC, in the expansive open field south of the river, where heand his crew uncovered extensive evidence of village occupa-tion, a large number of “finely executed, grit-tempered, well-


Figure 1: Preston Holder and his integrated crew at St. Simons Island.

Courtesy of the Coastal Georgia Historical Society.



Figure 2: Restored map of the Chirby King Mound. Courtesy of the National Anthropological Archives.


fired cord-marked and Lamar Complicated Stamped and finecheck-stamped” sherds, as well as an amorphous, butundoubtedly artificial, burial mound, previously disturbed byplowing and pot-hunting. Explorations at V D and V E didnot produce significant results, although for V E Holderadded the interesting detail that the extent of the work con-sisted of “cleaning off profiles already left by excavations forroad-work.” We know that at least from the time of FannyKemble in the 1830s shells from the middens were used topave the roads on the island.

Evelyn Plantation (Site VI) was also excavated in five loca-tions, which Holder designated VI A-E. He was particularlyproud of this site, where he had identified the first unam-biguous chronological sequence of ceramics in Georgia. Heassumed that Caldwell would remember it, because Holderhad taken him to see it several times. “This is my baby,” hetold Caldwell, “and it’s up to me to walk the floor with it. Ihave the data available here, sherd-counts, etc., and there isno reason for your lab to worry about the thing.” This com-pelling site, still significantly preserved in the neighborhoodnow built around it, includes VI B, a huge, truncated, pyram-idal mound, thought to be William Bartram’s famous“tetragon terrace.” About 50 yards to the west is Mound VI Cand its adjacent borrow pit, where Holder recorded thestratigraphy of Swift Creek over Vining (i.e. Deptford) Sim-ple Stamped and Deptford Check Stamped ceramics, a typeHolder himself first described. He warned Caldwell to becareful with this collection, as well as with those designatedVI SP 1-7, “which represent collections from stratigraphicpits at various points on the site. These should be keptintact,” he cautioned, “and not mixed with other sherds.”Holder also found at this site the first whole, boldly execut-ed, Swift Creek pot on the Coast. He took an excellent pho-tograph of it, but the pot itself disappeared in the 1960s.

Holder’s least-known and most poorly understood work wasat the Irene Mound in Savannah from early September 1937to the end of January 1938. For example, Paul Fagette (1996)thought that Holder worked for his successor, VladimirFewkes, in February 1938, while the better-informed EdwinLyon (1996) leaves the false impression that Holder left theproject in the lurch, rather than preparing for his replace-ment and training him in January, before Fewkes took overin February. In fact, Holder set up a huge, classified, ceram-ic repository in Savannah to train his assistants, includingCaldwell, to recognize sherd types in the field. He prepareda comprehensive, 35-page, series of methodological guidesfor his successor. He also sent a seven-page interim reporton his work-in-progress to Kelly on 30 November 1937, anda detailed, 12-page, final report on 24 January 1938, a week

before he departed for Columbia. Holder sent the finalreport and the guides to the Smithsonian’s WPA representa-tive, Vincenzo Petrullo, who had reassured Holder that anyfinal publication on the Irene Mound would most likely becoauthored by the four archaeologists who worked at the site.It remains a fascinating, if unsettling, subject of furtherresearch to learn why Preston Holder’s excellent reports onhis excavations in Glynn and Chatham counties were neverpublished.

References Cited

Fagette, Paul1996 Digging for Dollars: American Archaeology and the New Deal.

The University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.Kiernan, Kevin2012 Preston Holder’s WPA Excavations in Glynn and

Chatham Counties, Georgia, 1936–1938. In Shovel Ready:Archaeology and Roosevelt’s New Deal for America, edited byBernard K. Means. The University of Alabama Press,Tuscaloosa, in press.

Lyon, Edwin A. 1996 A New Deal for Southeastern Archaeology. The University of

Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa.


Forthcoming in 2012!

All the King's Horses: Essays on the Impact ofLooting and the Illicit Antiquities Trade on OurKnowledge of the Past

Edited by Paula Kay Lazrus and Alex W. Barker


Angel Mounds (12Vg1) is a palisaded Mississippiantown with 11 earthen mounds on the Ohio River nearEvansville, Indiana, and was occupied from A.D. 1050

to 1450 (Black 1967; Hilgeman 2000; Monaghan and Peebles2010). Although first documented in the late nineteenth cen-tury, no systematic excavations were undertaken until 1939with a Work Projects Administration (WPA) project underthe direction of Glenn A. Black, Indiana’s “first full-timearchaeologist” (Black 1944, 1967:20–26; Griffin 1971:13; Kel-lar 1965, 1971; Madison 1988, 1989:121–151; Purdue 1897;Ruegamer 1980:257–297; Stinson 1883; Thomas 1894). TheAngel site had been purchased the previous year by the Indi-ana Historical Society (IHS) through the generosity of EliLilly and at the suggestion of Warren K. Moorehead, who vis-ited the site with Lilly in 1931; Moorehead claimed that it was“the most important place archaeologically” in the Hoosierstate (Griffin 1971; Madison 1989:142; Moorehead 1931).

During most of the 1930s and 1940s, Lilly was the presidentof both Eli Lilly & Company, a large pharmaceutical manu-facturer in Indianapolis started by his grandfather and name-sake, and the IHS, a private, nonprofit organization dedicat-ed to preserving and interpreting Indiana’s heritage (Madison1989; Ruegamer 1980:257). Lilly began his interest in archae-ology as a collector of prehistoric antiquities. By 1930 hisattention shifted from buying objects for personal enjoymentto fostering scientific research of the prehistoric past, epito-mized by his Prehistoric Antiquities of Indiana, the first com-prehensive publication on Indiana prehistory (Lilly 1937).

The 1931 Lilly and Moorehead field trip to Angel Moundsalso included Black, who at the time was a serious avoca-tionalist from Indianapolis, as the driver and guide. Blackimpressed both Lilly and Moorehead with his self-taughtknowledge of archaeology. With Lilly’s support, the IHShired Black that same year and then sent him for formaltraining at the Ohio Historical Society under Henry C.Shetrone for eight months. After he returned, he quickly

rose in the professional ranks, which included his role as afounding member of the Society for American Archaeologyas well as his serving in nearly every capacity on its board(Vice-President, 1939–40; Council Member, 1940–41; Presi-dent, 1941–42; Treasurer, 1947- 51) (Kellar 1964, 1965, 1971).

Ironically, as steadfast Republicans Lilly and Black wereopposed to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal pro-grams, but later decided that they would be “crazy for notgetting some of that easy money back that we are all payingout” (Black 1938; Madison 1989:144). The Indiana HistoricalBureau sponsored the WPA work at Angel Mounds, but theIHS still provided the bulk of the state’s contributing fundsfor this project, including the salary of Black and assistantWilliam Rude, who had worked with Black previously atNowlin Mounds (Black 1936). The IHS also became therepository for all of the materials and associated records, pro-viding public access for research. This role was passed to theGlenn A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology (GBL) at IndianaUniversity in 1965 (Griffin 1971).

Between 1939 and 1942, a total of 277 men excavated nearly37,000 m_ at the Angel site, uncovering a large section of theeast village, tracing the course of the palisade, and dissectingMound F almost completely (Black 1967:22, 26). From thebeginning, Black wanted to focus the WPA work on ordinaryvillage life. Because the ongoing WPA excavations at the Ten-nessee Valley impoundments seemed to center on earth-works, Black believed the focus at Angel Mounds should beon occupation areas to identify everyday life at the site andthat a “more realistic picture would result with the discoveryand exploration of the city dump, burial grounds of the ordi-nary folk, and the dwellings sites of the dominate element ofthe population” (Black 1967:229). The East Village excavationwas the epitome of this effort, opening nearly 17,000 m_ andexposing a complex/dense arrangement of house trenches,pit features, burials, and a stockade with bastions along itseastern edge.


THE LEGACY OF LILLY, BLACK, AND THE WPA AT ANGEL MOUNDS NEAR

EVANSVILLE, INDIANATimothy E. Baumann, G. William Monaghan, Christopher Peebles,

Charla Marshall, Anthony Krus, and Joel Marshall

Timothy E. Baumann, G. William Monaghan, Christopher Peebles, Charla Marshall, Anthony Krus,

and Joel Marshall are all affiliates of the Glenn A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology, Indiana University.


Most of the WPA crew members were unskilled laborers intheir thirties and forties with families from the Evansvillevicinity. As an example, Thomas A. E. Boyd, who is now 92,was one of the youngest on the crew and is the only one stillliving. In an oral interview conducted in 2010, he describedBlack as a polite man, but serious about archaeology. Boyd’sjob, like most of the unskilled laborers, was to shovel skimand then wheelbarrow the dirt. Comparing work at AngelMounds to his previous WPA and CCC employment, Boydsaid that it was hard work, but better than other make-workjobs because of its scientific significance. In the end, therelief workers were all just happy to have a job.

WPA archaeological investigations were suspended early in1942 for the duration of World War II, but excavations begananew through Indiana University as soon as peace wasdeclared. In 1944, Black was appointed as a Lecturer at Indi-ana University where he taught three classes and a fieldschool at Angel Mounds each year between 1946 and 1962.With this shift, Black began to view Angel Mounds as ahands-on classroom to teach the next generation of archaeol-ogists. The WPA survey, excavations, and artifacts collectedprovided a strong foundation from which Black trained stu-dents on excavation methodology and prehistoric culture, butat a slower pace than the WPA era. Over 100 students partic-ipated in Black’s Angel program, 35 percent of whom werefemale during a time when women were often not allowed inthe field. Many of his students went on to become prominentarchaeologists, including William Dancey, Charles Faulkner,Robert Funk, Alice Kehoe, and James Kellar.

The Angel site was and continues to be at the forefront ofnew and multidisciplinary applications to archaeological

research. Black and Lilly were on the cutting edge of archae-ological research with their use of aerial photography (Black1967), botanical studies of vegetation and their relationshipto archaeological features (Zeiner 1944, 1946), zooarchaeolo-gy (Adams 1945), radiocarbon dating, and proto-magnetom-etry (Black and Johnston 1962; Johnston 1964). Six of thefirst ten radiocarbon dates processed by the University ofMichigan in 1949 and 1950 were from Angel Mounds andthe first magnetometry survey on an archaeological site inthe North America was undertaken at Angel Mounds (Blackand Johnston 1962; Johnston 1964).

Black had almost finished the scholarly culmination of hislabors, Angel Site: An Archaeological, Historical, and Ethnolog-ical Study (Black 1967), when he died from a heart attack onSeptember 2, 1964 (Black 1967). This two-volume set wascompleted by James Kellar, his former pupil and the firstdirector of the GBL, which opened in 1971 at Indiana Uni-versity in Black’s honor and again through the generosity ofLilly.

Mound Construction and Chronology

Of WPA-era excavations at Angel Mounds, the East Villagewas the largest, but Mound F turned out to be more ambi-tious and interesting in terms of human landscape and sitechronology. However, Mound F was not part of the originalexcavation plan. The excavation grew from Lilly’s discussion


Indiana University field school students at Angel Mounds (1960).

(Photography courtesy of the Glenn A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology

and the Trustees of Indiana University).

Magnetometry Survey by Glenn A. Black (center) (ca. 1962). (Photog-

raphy courtesy of the Glenn A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology and the

Trustees of Indiana University).


with Fay Cooper-Cole at the University of Chicago concern-ing evidence of a flood during the occupation at the Kincaidsite in Southern Illinois (Black 1967:229). Cooper-Cole(1951) believed that this flood caused the Kincaid village tobe abandoned for a period of time, which intrigued Lilly.Even though the East Village evidenced no such inundationduring its occupancy, Lilly nevertheless believed that thelargest mounds at the Angel site (A, E, and F) would be greatplaces to find proof of the timing and magnitude of this floodabove the Wabash River. Regardless of Black’s skepticismabout the flood, Black needed little urging to excavate one ofthe mounds. He chose Mound F mainly because Mound Awas too big and daunting and Mound E was covered withtrees, which he erroneously believed would preserve themound.

Black planned to “peel” the mound by stripping discrete filllayers to expose occupation surfaces and then excavate thosesurfaces. He placed his first trench, which was 2.2 feet deep,on the southeastern margin of the mound to create a workingsurface, and discovered “a small fireplace...about 1 foot belowthe mound surface” (Black 1967:234), which he took todemarcate the pre-mound-construction ground surface. He

then proceeded to cut perpendicular trenches into the moundto discover “inner mound” layers. In this manner, Blackbegan stripping what he would later call the “secondarymound fill,” which was about 2–3 m thick, and ultimatelyexposed the “primary mound surface,” which had a largemultichambered building, rich in features, contexts, and arti-facts (Black 1967:242–244). No buildings were discovered onthe top of the secondary mound fill (i.e., pre-excavation plat-form of Mound F), although historic and prehistoric burialswere abundant within the secondary fill (Black 1967; Sullivan2010). By November 1941, Black had removed the entiremound cap and excavated most of the primary mound sur-face. What he discovered during this dig proved remarkableand continues to be a research focus for the GBL.

Black never completed his excavation of Mound F because ofWorld War II and then his death in 1964, which was shortlyafter he and Richard Johnston renewed excavations underthe primary mound surface. Johnston, and then John Dor-win, continued to excavate Mound F as Indiana Universityfield schools in 1964 and 1965. Although these excavationshave never been completely analyzed, another mound plat-form surface, which was informally referred to as the “InnerMound,” was discovered about 1 m under the primarymound surface and included structures. The excavation ofMound F discovered at least two mound platform surfacescontaining building buried within Mound F. Importantly,the final platform that existed when the site was abandonedby A.D. 1450 included no structures. Future researchincludes reopening Mound F in 2012 as a field school to doc-ument the remaining section of the inner mound and deter-mine its age and method of construction.


Fluorite Figurine Recovered from Mound F by the WPA Crew in 1940.

(Photography courtesy of the Glenn A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology

and the Trustees of Indiana University).

WPA Excavations in the East Village of Angel Mounds (1940) (Photog-

raphy courtesy of the Glenn A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology and the

Trustees of Indiana University).


Data from the WPA Mound F excavations continues to con-tribute to the research agenda at Angel Mounds. Mound Fdata has been used in several dissertations and research proj-ects (e.g., Hilgeman 2000; Monaghan and Peebles 2010;Schurr 1989a, 1989b, 1992, 1997). Some of the earliest radio-carbon dates applied to archaeology derived from Mound Fand the Mound F collection continues to provide radiocar-bon samples from which site chronology was developed(Hilgeman 2000; Monaghan and Peebles 2010). Additionally,these and other ages from Mound A provided a new under-standing of Angel Mounds development indicating thatMounds A and F were first constructed about A.D.1050–1100 (coincident with the founding of the site) and likethe rest of the site, were abandoned by A.D. 1450. Unlike theWPA Mound F excavations that essentially destroyed it, therecent work at Mound A by Monaghan and Peebles (2010)used small-diameter solid-earth cores and resistivity profilesto reconstruct mound stratigraphy and chronology with onlyminimal impact to the mound. The structures associatedwith a the primary mound surfaces in Mound F and MoundA indicate that they were used until about A.D. 1400 whentheir buildings were dismantled or burned and the platformscovered with a fresh layer of mound fill just prior to siteabandonment. This final filling episode to cap the moundsmay be a “ceremonial closing” of the site (Monaghan andPeebles 2010). In fact, the best-known artifact at the site, a ca

25 cm high kneeling man fluorite figurine, was discoveredone foot below the top of the secondary mound fill and sup-ports the notion of a ceremonial end for at least Mound F.

Chasing Palisades

The palisade was the third focus of the WPA excavations in1939 as well as subsequent field schools and exploratorymagnetometry work (Black 1967; Black and Johnston 1962;Johnston 1964). This work identified two major palisadesets, both of which contain bastions: the “outer palisade,”which surrounded the entire perimeter of the settlement,and the “inner palisade,” which bisected the site’s interior.Both of these bastions had a contemporaneous wall or“screen” that was erected in front of the Inner and Outer pal-isades. The presence of bastions strongly implies that thesepalisades were defensive (Fontana 2007:73; Keeley et. al.2007; Milner 1999). In the past decade 12 new AMS dateshave been obtained and suggest that both palisades stood forthe duration of Angel’s occupation. Magnetometry work thatwas begun in 1958 has continued during the 1990s and2000s and has identified additional screens and new palisadesegments (Ball 1999; Peterson 2010). A 2011 field school willbuild on this previous research and attempt to clarify thetechnology and chronology of these multiple fortificationfences.

Ceramics and Chronology

The GBL currently curates nearly 2 million pottery sherdsfrom Angel Mounds. The majority of these were collectedduring the WPA era excavations, but limited research hadbeen conducted on these materials until the 1980s by SheriHilgeman (Curry 1950a, 1950b; Hilgeman 1985, 1991, 2000;Kellar 1967). Hilgeman’s dissertation research analyzednearly 23,000 sherds from the Angel site, including all deco-rated fragments, effigies, and handles in the GBL collection,to determine the variety and frequency of types and to createa ceramic seriation that followed changing plate and handleforms.

Her research also focused on Negative Painted Pottery (NPP)from the Angel site and the Lower Ohio Valley. NPP vesselsare primarily plates and carafe-necked water bottles withcommon designs of filled bounded triangle areas and South-eastern Ceremonial Complex motifs of a cross-in-circle andthe sun circle. Most scholars, including Hilgeman, suggestthat these vessels were ritual wares used for special cere-monies or feasts (e.g., the Green Corn Ceremony).

The Angel site has more NPP (4,569 sherds) than any othersite in the United States, suggesting that this site may be theorigin and hearth of NPP technology in the Midcontinent. InHilgeman’s (2000) culminating publication, Pottery andChronology at Angel, she presented a refined typology of


WPA Crew Member Uncovering a Small Bottle at Angel Mounds (ca.

1940) (Photography courtesy of the Glenn A. Black Laboratory of

Archaeology and the Trustees of Indiana University).


NPP and utilized spatial data, experimental archaeology, andethnohistorical research to determine its fabrication and cul-tural function. Recent research has begun to critically testHilgeman’s interpretations with advanced analytical methods(e.g., GIS, residue analysis, synchrotron) to clarify the manu-facture, use, chronology, and inter- and intrasite distributionof this pottery type (Baumann et al. 2010; Gerke 2010).

Bioarchaeology

Excavations, mainly during the WPA project, uncoverednearly 300 burials at Angel Mounds that varied primarily bylocation; some in Mounds F and I, others near the palisades,but most in the East Village. Black (1967) carefully recordedtheir position (flexed or extended), orientation, and gravegoods, but their stratigraphic and contextual informationwere described in less detail. Mark Schurr (1989) used thisdata to develop chronology and to examine diet and mortu-ary practices at Angel Mounds. He also applied fluoride dat-ing to determine that most East Village burials were interredlate in the site occupation and through stable isotopes hedetermined that the Angel population was heavily dependenton maize (Schurr 1989, 1992, 1997, 1998; Schurr and Powell2005; Schurr and Schoeninger 1995).

Current research on the WPA-era burials is now applyingancient DNA (aDNA) analysis. This research has focused onmitochondrial DNA and has addressed many questions firstadvanced during the WPA excavations (Marshall 2010). Forinstance, Charla Marshall has determined as part of her dis-sertation that the genetic relationship between the “con-joined twins” identified by Black (1967:206–207) was inaccu-rate (McCormick and Kaestle 2009). Her research has alsoillustrated the presence of a rare mitochondrial subhap-logroup in ancient North America. Unfortunately, only10–25 percent of the 100 individuals sampled by Marshallhas yielded enough DNA for analysis. This poor DNA recov-ery is attributed primarily to excavation techniques from theWPA era since these resulted in the human remains beingsun dried, which is known to cause irreparable damage toDNA in archaeological bones (Bollongino and Vigne 2008).

The Legacy

Ultimately, nearly 2.4 million artifacts were collected duringthe WPA excavations. Each had to be washed, roughly classi-fied, labeled, and a corresponding catalog card created. Thecollections themselves, however, were not studied in anydetail at that point and some parts have yet to be analyzed.Subsequent work must take into account the manner of excavation— their archaeological context— which might con-strain the use of the WPA data to help address currentresearch questions. Regardless, these materials and theircontents have been sufficient to answer questions of healthand disease in the Angel population (Schurr 1989a, 1992,

1997, 1998; Schurr and Powell 2005), provide a chronologybased on ceramic form and decoration (Hilgeman 2000),yield another independent chronology based on the absorp-tion of the element fluorine by bone (Schurr 1989b), providematerial for absolute chronology using radiocarbon, AMS,and luminescence techniques (e.g., Monaghan and Peebles2010), and offer the potential for the study of human diet andadaptation. The WPA efforts can also provide testimony onagricultural practices, offer broad measures of hunting andgathering wild plants and animals, and answer a range ofquestions about the production and use of stone tools. Since2005, archaeological field schools at Angel Mounds haveincluded small, focused excavations and broad programs ofremote sensing to better understand the archaeological con-texts defined by Black’s excavations. In 2011, the fieldworkwill continue by reopening and expanding off of Black’sWPA work in the East Village and along the Palisade tostudy/compare old data with new techniques.

References Cited

Black, Glenn A.1967 Angel Site: An Archaeological, Historical, and Ethnological

Study. 2 vols. Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis.Black, Glenn A., and Richard B. Johnston1962 A Test of Magnetometry as an Aid to Archaeology. Ameri-

can Antiquity 28:199–205.Griffin, James1971 A Commentary on an Unusual Research Program in

American Anthropology. In The Dedication of the Glenn A.Black Laboratory of Archaeology, April 21, 1971, pp. 10–27.Glenn A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology, Indiana Uni-versity, Bloomington.

Hilgeman, Sherri L.2000 Pottery and Chronology at Angel. The University of Ala-

bama Press, Tuscaloosa. Kellar, James H.1965 In Memoriam of Glenn A. Black, 1900 – 1964. American

Antiquity 31(3):402–405.Lilly, Eli1937 Prehistoric Antiquities of Indiana. Indiana Historical Socie-

ty, IndianapolisMadison, James H.1989 Eli Lilly: A Life, 1885–1977. Indiana Historical Society,

Indianapolis.Monaghan, G. William, and Christopher S. Peebles2010 The Construction, Use, and Abandonment of Angel Site

Mound A: Tracing the History of a Middle MississippianTown through Its Earthworks. American Antiquity75:935–953.

Schurr, Mark R.1992 Isotopic and Mortuary Variability in a Middle Mississippi-

an Population. American Antiquity 57:300–320.

For a complete list of references cited, please contact Timothy Baumann

at 812–855-0022 or [email protected].



a quarterly publication of

Vol. 12 No. 3

$3.9

5

HOHOKAM DISAPPEARANCE NEW DEAL ARCHAEOLOGY THE 920-MILE DIG

The Archaeological Conservancy

A ROCK ART REVOLUTION SEARCHING FOR PIRATES SUMMER TRAVEL SPECIAL

a quarterly publication of The Archaeological Conservancy

Vol. 11 No. 2

$3.9

5

Archaeologists are searchingland and sea for evidence of thepeople who first met Columbus.

Archaeologists are searchingland and sea for evidence of thepeople who first met Columbus.

-

WE WANT YOU! VOLUNTEERS NEEDED FOR THE ANNUAL MEETING!

For the 77th annual meeting in Memphis, Tennessee, SAA is seeking enthusiastic volunteers who arenot only interested in archaeology but also looking to save money and have fun.

In order for volunteers to have more meeting flexibility, SAA will again only require 8 hours of volun-teers’ time! The complimentary meeting registration is the exclusive benefit for your time.

Training for the April 18-22 meeting will be provided from detailed manuals sent to you electronicallyprior to the meeting along with on-the-job training. As always, SAA staff will be on hand to assist youwith any questions or problems that may arise.

For additional information and a volunteer application, please go to SAAweb (www.saa.org) or contactLorenzo Cabrera at SAA: 1111 14th Street, Suite 800, Washington, DC 20005, Phone +1 (202) 559-7382,Fax +1 (202) 789-0284, or e-mail [email protected].

Applications will be accepted on a first-come, first-served basis. The deadline for applications is Febru-ary 1, 2012, so contact us as soon as possible to take advantage of this wonderful opportunity!

See you in Memphis!


Position: Assistant Professor OfAnthropologyLocation: Portales, New MexicoEastern New Mexico University seeksapplications for a full-time, tenure-trackAssistant Professor of Anthropologyposition beginning August 2012. Weseek a Southwest archaeologist special-izing in ceramic analysis. We prefersomeone who is a materialist with anactive research agenda and a solid back-ground in quantitative methods. Facultyresponsibilities include a 12-credit-hourteaching load per semester, studentadvising, and other duties as assigned.The successful candidate must be will-ing to run a summer field school inalternate summers. Our program has astrong graduate component, and candi-dates must be willing to help superviseMaster’s theses. Candidates must havePh.D. completed by August 2012. Appli-cations should be submitted online athttp://agency.governmentjobs.com/enmu and should include a letter of inter-est outlining qualifications, current cur-riculum vitae, contact information forthree references, and transcripts (unoffi-cial for application purposes). Pleasecontact the Human Resources office at(575) 562-2116 for instructions on apply-ing by mail. Applications will bereviewed beginning January 4, 2012.Applicants must pass a pre-employmentbackground check. ENMU is an Affir-mative Action Employer. The Universitydoes not discriminate on the basis ofrace, color, national origin, sex, age, ordisability in its programs, activities, oremployment. People seeking additionalinformation about the University’snondiscrimination policy should contactthe Affirmative Action Officer at theabove address.

Position: Assistant Professor andAssociate professorLocation: Tulsa, OklahomaThe University of Tulsa, a selective pri-vate institution, is adding two archaeolo-gists to its Department of Anthropologyas part of a newly approved Ph.D. pro-gram. The department seeks (1) atenure-track Assistant Professor withPh.D., and (2) a tenured Associate Pro-fessor. Regional and topical specialtiesare open but should complement thoseof the existing faculty. We welcomeapplications from specialists in faunalanalysis, bioarchaeology, geomorpholo-gy, etc. Both appointments involveteaching a range of classes at the under-graduate and graduate levels, and appli-cations will be strengthened by demon-strated excellence in teaching. For thetenured position, preference will begiven to advanced candidates who havebeen successful in securing outsidefunding for their research. Salaries arecompetitive. Applications shouldinclude a curriculum vita, a statement ofresearch interests, teaching evaluations(if available), and contact informationfor professional referees. Review ofapplications will commence December1, 2011, and will continue until the posi-tions are filled. Address applications toMichael E. Whalen, Chairman, Depart-ment of Anthropology, The University ofTulsa, 800 South Tucker Drive, Tulsa,OK 74104-3189. Questions or requestsfor further information should go to:[email protected]. The Uni-versity of Tulsa is an EEO/AA employer.

Position: Assistant Professor (2 positions)Location: Carollton, GeorgiaThe Department of Anthropology at theUniversity of West Georgia invites appli-cations for two tenure-track positions atthe Assistant Professor level, beginningAugust 2012. Ph.D. in Anthropologyand college teaching experience arerequired by the contract start date. Weseek two broadly-trained archaeologistswho have a commitment to undergradu-

ate teaching and an active research agen-da which includes an understandingand appreciation of culture. Ability andinterest in teaching Introduction toAnthropology (4-subfield), a wide rangeof archaeology courses, including areaand topic courses related to one’sresearch interests, an archaeologicalfield methods course and courses thatwill support our developing PhysicalAnthropology or Linguistics programsare highly desired. Archaeologists whospecialize in prehistoric and historicperiods will be considered. One of thepositions will be appointed to be thedirector of the Antonio J. WaringArchaeological Laboratory, which is acuration and research facility. For theDirectorship, experience in the curationof archaeological collections is required,as is a research agenda that focuses onSoutheastern United States. We seek aperson who has a strong interest indeveloping the Waring Lab as a focus ofresearch and education for the depart-ment, community and region. For theother position, geographic area is open.If interested, please send a letter ofapplication, current curriculum vitae,and the names of three professional ref-erences to Dr. Karl Steinen, Departmentof Anthropology, University of WestGeorgia, Carrollton, Georgia 30118 orsend email applications to [email protected]. Each position willbe reviewed separately. Clearly indicatein the cover letter whether applicant isapplying for “Director/Archaeologist” or“Archaeologist.” Separate applicationsare required for each position. Applica-tion screening will begin on December15, 2011 and will continue until the posi-tions are filled. Salaries are competitive.Please send any questions [email protected]. West Georgia isan Affirmative Action/Equal Opportuni-ty Institution.

Position: Assistant ProfessorLocation: Poughkeepsie, NYThe Department of Anthropology at Vas-sar College invites applications for a

POSITIONS OPEN


tenure-track position at the assistantprofessor level in archaeology. VassarCollege is an equal opportunity/affirma-tive action employer and is strongly andactively committed to diversity within itscommunity. The successful candidatewill have a record and vision of researchand teaching on the archaeology ofNorth America, particularly historicalarchaeology. We especially encouragecandidates who have conductedresearch in issues of power, inequality,and creativity in American cultures, willinvolve students in field and laboratoryresearch, and will contribute to multi-disciplinary programs such as NativeAmerican Studies; Science, Technology& Society; Environmental Studies.Teaching load in the first year is fourcourses; after that it is five courses peryear. Vassar is a highly selective, coedu-cational liberal arts college of about2,450 undergraduates (no graduate stu-dents) located in the beautiful and his-toric Hudson Valley 75 miles north ofNew York City. The city of Poughkeepsiebenefits from rich cultural diversity andconvenient commuter rail access to NewYork City. Candidates must have Ph.D.in hand by July 1, 2012. To apply, pleasevisit http://employment.vassar.edu/applicants/Central?quickFind=51227 tolink to the posting for this position. Can-didates should submit a letter of appli-cation, C.V., graduate school transcript(unofficial copies accepted for initialapplication), course syllabi, and at leastthree letters of recommendation. Appli-cants wishing to be considered for aninterview at the AAA Meetings in Mon-treal must submit materials by Nov. 1;all applications received before Nov. 15will be given full consideration.

Sixth Annual Dissertation ResearchGrants in Historic Preservation. SRIFoundation is pleased to announce thatit again will award two $10,000 SRIFDissertation Research Grants toadvanced Ph.D candidates. Two classesof award will be considered. The firstclass of award will be given to studentswho expand the scholarly impact of oneor more completed historic preservationprojects. The second class of award willbe given to students who advance thepractice of historic preservation. Awardswill be made to the top two proposals,regardless of class of award.

Applicants for the first class of award(e.g., in archaeology, cultural anthropol-ogy, historic architecture) must useinformation derived from one or morealready completed historic preservationprojects as their primary source of data(e.g., a series of compliance-driven cul-tural resource inventories, large-scaleexcavations, historic property recordingprojects). Applicants for the second classof award (e.g., in anthropology; history;architecture; historic preservation plan-ning, law, and public policy) mustundertake research directed primarily tounderstand and improve the practice ofhistoric preservation (e.g., designinglocal historic preservation plans, devel-oping Tribal historic preservation pro-grams, investigating creative alterna-tives to standard mitigation for historicarchitectural resources and archaeologi-cal sites).

Detailed information on this disserta-tion research grant program, includingan application form, will be posted onthe SRI Foundation website(http://www.srifoundation.org) under

Educational Opportunities andResources by October 1, 2011. Applica-tions will be accepted through FridayMarch 1, 2012. The SRIF DissertationResearch Grant Review Committee willevaluate all proposals and make fundingrecommendations to the SRIF Board ofDirectors who will make the final awarddecisions. Winning applicants will benotified during the week of April 9–13,2012. Grant funds will be released with-in 60 days of award notification.

For more information, contact Dr. CarlaVan West at 505-892-5587 or [email protected]

2012

JANUARY 13–15Conferencia Intercontinental. SAA islaunching the first-ever ConferenciaIntercontinental in Panama City, Pana-ma. The official language of the 2012Conferencia is Spanish, the language ofour host country. All informationregarding the Conferencia will appear inSpanish. See http://bit.ly/SAAConfer-encia

JANUARY 14–15The13th biennial Southwest Sympo-sium will be held at the University ofNew Mexico, January 14–15, 2012. Foursessions will focus around the confer-ence theme Causation and Explanation:Demography, Movement, HistoricalEcology. The conference is hosted by theUniversity of New Mexico and the

NEWS & NOTES

CALENDAR


Bureau of Land Management. For moreinformation and to register, please visithttp://www.unm.edu/~swsympos/.

MARCH 30–3128th Annual Visiting Scholar Confer-ence at the Center for ArchaeologicalInvestigations, Southern Illinois Uni-versity Carbondale. This year's confer-ence, entitled 'The Archaeology of Slav-ery: Toward a Comparative GlobalFramework,' will be held March 30-31,2012. The goals of the conference are(1) to develop an interregional and cross-temporal framework of the archaeologi-cal interpretation of slavery and (2) topromote a diachronic approach to thetopic, extending from before themoment of capture to beyond emancipa-tion. Abstracts are due to [email protected] by December 5, 2011. Moreinformation on the conference and thecall for papers can be found here:http://cai.siuc.edu/vspages/marshall/vsconf.html

APRIL 9–13The First International Conference onBest Practices in World Heritage-Archaeology aims to generate a meetingpoint on Archaeology management andtreatment of World Heritage sites. It willfocus on Archaeology, keeping in mindthat it needs to consider not only thesites, which have been inscribed asWorld Heritage due to its Archaeological

nature, but also any site, property orgroup of material properties, inscribedas World Heritage, which can be studiedusing an archaeological methodology.The Conference is organised by theComplutense University of Madrid, andsponsored by the Council of MenorcaIsland (Balearic Islands, Spain), so thatMenorca Island will become a place ofreference for studies on the treatment ofproperties inscribed by UNESCO. Web:h t t p : / / www. c o n g r e s o p a t r im o -niomundialmenorca.cime.es/portal.aspx?IDIOMA=3 Email: [email protected]

APRIL 18–2277th Annual Meeting of the Society forAmerican Archaeology. Memphis, Ten-nessee. www.saa.org.

2013

JANUARY 9–12The Society for Historical Archaeology’sannual Conference on Historical andUnderwater Archaeology; RamadaLeicester Hotel and University of Leices-ter, Leicester, England, UK. Abstractsubmission deadline: July 9, 2012. Con-tact: Dr. Sarah Tarlow, School of Archae-ology and Ancient History, University ofLeicester, Leicester LE1 7RH, Leicester,England, UK; email [email protected]; fax+44 (0)116 252 5005

learned about social status differencesand their material manifestation.

The creative environment and the lati-tude for pedagogical experimentationfostered by the community college andinstitutional financial backing con-tributed to the success of our revitaliza-tion plan. Students can now earn a con-centration in Anthropology along withtheir Associates’ degree. They canchoose from 18 different anthropologycourses that span the discipline, and ourfill rates have jumped substantially. Andit has been a pleasure to work with greatstudents and dedicated faculty.

Student learning is at the heart of thecommunity college experience, andthose who enjoy teaching should seri-ously consider this kind of academicposition. There are more students thanever attending community colleges, yetfewer faculty who are trained in the fourfields. One can start preparing byattending an undergraduate and/orgraduate school that values the four-fieldapproach, or at least three fields. Teachclasses in grad school and teach acrossthe discipline. Get field experience out-side of the immediate area in which youare interested—working in the USA isvastly different from working in Mexicoor Central America. Get a range of expe-riences (teaching, fieldwork, travel,research, grants, publishing, museum,CRM, fellowships, tour guide) to seewhat you like to do. Archaeology at acommunity college is what you make it.

GONLIN, from page 9 <

NEW! Northwest Coast: Archaeology as Deep History

By Madonna Moss

Northwest Coast

S A A C o n t e m p o r a r y P e r s p e c t i v e s

Archaeology as Deep History

Madonna L. Moss

NOW AVAILABLE AS KINDLE® EDITIONS!

California's Ancient Past: From the Pacific to the Range of Light

By Jeanne E. Arnold and Michael R. Walsh

Voices in American Archaeology

Edited by Wendy Ashmore, Dorothy Lippert, and Barbara J. Mills

Ethics in Action: Case Studies in

Archaeological Dilemmas

By Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh, Julie Hollowell, and Dru McGil

Non-P

rofit O

rg

US

PO

STA

GE

PA

ID

HA

NO

VE

R, P

A 1

7331

PE

RM

IT N

O 4

Chan

ge S

ervice R

equested

SEND US YOUR POSTERS! Don’t forget to submit your Archaeology Week /Month Poster to SAA for the 2012 contest. Thisyear’s contest will include posters dated April 2011 through March 2012

• Submit a cover sheet with contact name, title, mailing address, email, and phone number.Please include written permission to display images of winning posters on the SAAWeb and inthe newsletter of the SAA Council of Affiliated Societies.

• Mail two copies—unfolded and unmounted—of your state poster to: Maureen Malloy, Societyfor American Archaeology, 1111 14th Street NW, Suite 800, Washington, DC 20005 by March 1,2012.

• Email a digital copy of the poster to [email protected]

All submissions received by the deadline will be displayed in the exhibit hall at the annual meetingin Memphis, Tennessee, April 18–22. Meeting participants will vote for their favorite poster and thetop three winners will be announced at the SAA Business Meeting on Friday April 20, 2012.

Check out the archive of winning posters on SAAWeb at http://www.saa.org/publicftp/PUBLIC/resources/ArchMonthforpublic.html

The poster archive includes winning images dating back to the first competition, held in 1996.

a guide for student (and non-student)

Documents