A Southwest Summer: Pecos Archaeology Conference

I am at Pecos Archaeology Conference this weekend. For 3 days, the conference is renting a campground in a pine forest just outside of Blanding, Utah. A large white tent with vaulted ceilings and soft yellow globe lights serves as the central gathering space for papers and socializing. 


My recent research has been on ground slate tool manufacture in the Northwest Coast and Alaska, so I did not have relevant research to present at a Southwest Archaeology conference. I did learn a lot attending, though, and was especially interested in what my contemporary twenty-something researchers were doing. There are no electronics for PowerPoint presentations or any sort of visual aid, so some of the most entertaining talks have used lots of visual description and hand gestures to describe research details and project methods. Bad archaeology jokes are encouraged. 


Pecos does not have the formality of a larger anthropology conference such as the AAA's, and that is part of the appeal. 
Like the AAA's, however, the real magic happens when the presentations are over and people are free to talk to one another with no boundaries. I notice that this is a gathering of friends and colleagues who are there to get a chance to share their research from the past year and get interested in what their colleagues are doing. 


The campsites are scattered around the periphery like neighborhoods around a Great Kiva. When the sun goes down, a few of the old timers pick up their fiddles and mandolins and play into the night. 

Walls come down and friends are made. Around a circle of camp chairs, over dinner, during a band set. On the last day, tents will be taken down, cars packed, and everyone will caravan out and spread to their corner of the Four Corners until next year, richer with new ideas, knowledge, and friends. 

The group: Representing Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, BLM, and PaleoWest.

Shot of camp hangout area.

My first CRM project as a paid Archaeologist

I haven't written a blog post in over a year, and coincidentally, I have not participated in an excavation since then. I'm sure my posts on archaeological monitoring would have been riveting- like that glorious day during which I got to stop the dig crew for a full ten minutes as I documented a 10 cm stratum of re-deposited shell midden. Boy, did I feel like the keeper of the resources that day. Or the countless hours spent digging shovel test probes, analyzing soil profiles, and report writing. Most of my archaeology work over the past year has not been exceedingly blog-worthy, but I would like to share the story of my first real-life, grown-up, paid archaeology field work project.

I got a part-time job at a small Cultural Resources Management Firm out of Bellingham, Washington through a former professor of mine. Due to the nature of CRM work, often on-call and completely dependent on intermittent contract projects, I also worked part-time in a zooarchaeology lab at my former university.

My first contract job was a county storm water improvement project in Birch Bay, a 30 minute drive out of Bellingham near the Canadian border. I drove out to the project area, which was on a little side street off of the main road that wound around Birch Bay. At 7am the sun was just rising and the fall air was crisp and cool. Hundreds of Canadian geese flocked on the glassy, fog covered water. I unloaded my gear and made my way over to the excavation area. A huge excavator churned out large amounts of dirt with each bucket, such that I had to carefully watch and observe the trench profile as it was being dug so not to miss any changes in soil.

I had a solid background in archaeological theory and some formal excavation, but I was quick to realize that monitoring was very different. I had to pick up a whole new lingo from the world of contracting, engineering, and construction, and I had to learn it immediately on the job in order to know what was going on during a day’s work. My new boss had told me stories about novices making inadvertent discoveries of human remains on their first few days of cultural resource monitoring- it seemed to be the newbie’s curse. So, I felt that as long as I didn’t find any human remains or miss any culturally significant soils, then I would be doing ok on my first day.

I relaxed into the job over the course of the day, writing notes, drawing profiles, and doing photo documentation, making conversation with county employees, city employees, and contractors. I didn’t find any human remains or prehistoric soils on that first day.

I was the only female in the field that day and for most days on the project. I think it is a pretty typical situation for female archaeologists on monitoring projects, given the high ratio of males in the construction and engineering fields.  I can confidently report that I always felt welcomed on the project on a personal level. Sometimes, however, the archaeology portion of my job would be subtly ridiculed for a few reasons.

The first is that when you monitor for archaeology in a place that has been heavily graded or plowed in historic times, it is not highly probable that an archaeologist will find intact deposits or artifacts. So, the archaeologist’s presence at all can be jokingly voided by some project employees, even though it is a legal necessity if the permitting agency requires it.

The second stems from the first, which is the fact that if an archaeological resource is found, the project is put on hold indefinitely until the appropriate action can be taken to mitigate the resource in question. This can take a good deal of time depending on the mitigation required, and a lot of time lost for the project. It is in everyone else’s best interest but the archaeologist if no archaeological resources are found.

I found it best to have a light attitude while doing a thorough job, and had an excellent work experience on what will always be my first CRM archaeology project.  

Community Archaeology: Week Two

     We've moved a lot of dirt at the Kashevarof site since my last post, and we have learned a great deal.
     We still have not seen any bears where we are digging, but the location is perfect near Salonie Creek and the red salmon are coming in. We just have the squawking of the ravens and the chippering of the magpies to keep us company as we trowel away at layers of soil and ash that has been undisturbed for thousands of years. Every once in a while one of the volunteers will have this realization, hold up an artifact they've found in their unit and say, "I'm the first person to have touched this in a really really long time..."

    As we are entering the second week of excavation, it looks like we have at least three distinct occupations; the house feature under the Katmai ash fall being a Koniaq era fishing camp with ulus, built on top of a less intensive (absence of any permanent structures or hearths) Kachemak Bay era site marked by red chert flakes and flake tools, ulus, etc. Under an in situ grey ash that has been dated to around 4000 BP, we are finding evidence for an Ocean Bay era occupation as well. During this period, from around 7500 BP to 3500 BP, the Alutiiq were mobile hunter-gatherers and had not yet developed a reliance on fishing. They subsisted almost entirely on marine mammal hunting and used long lances made of ground slate to hunt them.

    Although archaeologists tend to emphasize the importance of features over 'pretty' artifacts, I have to say that we have found some showstoppers over the last week. Artifacts can be very useful for dating, as diagnostic of a particular style or manufacture, especially when a diagnostic artifact helps confirm the soil deposition of the site. We dig because we are passionate about learning the history of the Alutiiq way of life on Kodiak over time, but everyone likes to find something...

...especially when its a 4000+ BP perfectly intact marine mammal hunting lance!

        Ground slate lance used for hunting marine mammals during the Ocean Bay era, 4000+ BP. See maker's mark incised at the base and tip. The tip of a poison covered lance was meant to break off in the animal, killing it slowly. The maker's mark identified the hunter when the animal washed up on the beach days later.

 Ashley Weller with a gorgeous Kachemak Bay era ulu! According to museum staff, ulus with semi-lunate cutting surfaces were probably used for cutting, while ulus with flat cutting surfaces would have been better for scraping.

Ryan Cross, a geophysicist and friend of many at the dig came to survey with his Ground Penetrating Radar. Areas around the site that show potential for future excavation were imaged for house depressions.
 

Close encounters with a Kodiak bear...gut.

     Today was an off day for the Community Archaeology dig, but not for Alutiiq Museum activities on Kodiak. Jill Lipka, museum staff, has had a seventy foot bear gut thawing in her backyard and we have been waiting in anticipation for it to be ready for processing.

     Traditionally, bear gut was sewn by skin-sewers into parkas, blankets, and even smoke-hole covers in houses. It is thought that a bear-gut parka would likely have been a status item since it would take two or so good sized bears to make one single garment.

     To clean the gut, we used traditional ground slate ulus from the museum's teaching collection, which was a unique experience in itself- to have the opportunity to do experimental archaeology with tools from the archaeological record! And now I can say from experience that they worked very well to scrape the gut clean. We also tried unmodified shell as scrapers, which also worked well. The whole process of scraping the gut inside and out took about two and a half hours with six women working at once, talking and bonding over the general experience and the smell. The smell was pungent to say the least, but not at all as bad as you'd think it would be.

     The next steps in processing the gut will be to blow air into the ends of the two sections, tie off the ends, put round stoppers in the other to hold the shape, and hang them to dry. Jill Lipka is experimenting with different oils to use as emulsifiers to soften the gut and keep it flexible and durable once it has dried.

     This activity is part of a museum effort to apply for a grant for a broader gut sewing project. Hopefully future experimental projects will shed some light on the 'ins' and 'outs' of working with gut and other inner skins such as esophagus.

Scraping the gut clean with ulus, or women's knives. Photo cred: Ashley Weller

Turning the gut inside out, see tray of gut before cleaning on the right. Photo cred: Ashley Weller

                                                          A finished gut skin parka.
                   Photo: from the publication Alutiit/Sugpiat: A Catalog of the Collections of the Kunstkamera edited by Yuri E. Berezkin

Community Archaeology: The Kashevarof Site

     Today was the first day of real digging at the Kashevarof site KOD-1132 for Community Archaeology on Kodiak Is. The site is on the North side of Women's Bay, nestled in Salonie Valley on a raised berm above Salonie Creek.

     We are all making bets on what the site was used for- what people were doing here and why and how the ancient Alutiiq were using Women's Bay over time. Nearby sites give us an interesting picture that sheds some light on the prehistoric seasonal round.

     Bruhn Point is a 7000 BP-3000 BP fish processing site dominated by an assemblage of ulus and netsinkers used for processing large amounts of fish. Salonie Mound, which proved to be dated to the same time period was a winter village with house features, hearths, and other finds that indicated a substantial settlement at the site. The Amak site, with oldest dates of around 5000 BP, is dominated by an assemblage of ground slate bayonets and other gear that would have been used for seal hunting, likely out of a temporary camp where hunters brought their kills for drying and smoking. So far, three sites spanning from the Ocean Bay (7500 BP-3500 BP) to Kachmak (3500 BP-1000 BP) eras have been used for different functions in the same Bay.

     What does that say about what people were doing here and why they chose this particular bay for these different activities? The hope is that excavating at the Kashevarof site will help us complete the picture- one more piece of the puzzle to complete the story of the ancient Alutiiq and their way of life.

     Prehistoric archaeology on Kodiak is unique in the fact that most of the island was covered in white volcanic tephra in 1912 from the eruption of Mt Katmai on the Alaska Peninsula. When we excavate just under the modern soil horizon, the presence of the volcanic tephra tells us that the site has not been disturbed after 1912. This can be an issue in areas that may have been plowed in WWII for roads or other engineering projects. So, we have good piece of mind that what we excavate under the Katmai ash is prehistoric, although keeping in mind the hundred or so years before 1912 that there were cattle ranchers in the area--and almost immediately we found what look like cow bones. Large, robust, and weathered, the bones are almost from the lumbering bovine beasts that once populated the small valley.

     As digging progressed and the in situ living surface was taken down into the first cultural layer of the site, it became apparent that a large square depression at the West section of the site was a house. A clear wall cut was evident when the Katmai ash was taken off, but it wasn't until post-holes and a door appeared that it really came together as a correct hypothesis. A little later, ulus and red chert flakes were found associated with the house feature.

     There are a few things we can hypothesize about the house feature given the artifacts found with it so far. First, that it is at least 1000 years old. Chipped stone technology indicates an older site and the Koniaq did not utilize it like the Kachemak Bay or Ocean Bay traditions did. Also, that the house and the site in general is probably associated with fish processing activities. Ulus, or women's knives, were ground slate knives used to process a large amount of fish with less maintenance than chipped stone tools. Ulus, ulu preforms, and worked slate in larger proportion than red chert artifacts suggest a Kachemak era site over Ocean Bay. The presence of red chert flakes throughout the site does indicate chipped stone technology as well, but we have not yet found evidence for men's tools or knives that would be more associated with sea mammal hunting, an earlier adaptation.

     This is not to say that we will later find evidence of Ocean Bay era activity at the same site! The upper layers indicate early Kachemak activity (around 3500 BP) because of the presence of chipped stone technology along with ground slate technology. Ground slate working was probably integrated over time and definitely not all at once-it would have been a gradual change in response to more of a reliance on fishing. People probably developed a reliance on fishing because hunting individual sea mammals no longer supported populations which were growing more concentrated into villages, no longer mobile hunter-gatherers.

     It will be interesting to see what develops over the next few weeks at the Kashevarof site, hopefully it will give us a more complete perspective of the prehistoric Alutiiq seasonal round over time!

Kashevarof site excavated to bottom of Katmai Ash, 1912 marker

Outline of house feature at the top of the prehistoric surface

House feature with Jill for scale

Public Education and NAGPRA: Where are Museums Heading?

          As we leave the noughties and enter the 2010's, I have been thinking about the future of museums philosophically and conceptually-How has NAGPRA progressed and changed in 20 years and how will museums change to keep up with current cultural and societal needs?

First, a little history of NAGPRA:

          The NAGPRA act of 1990 provides the opportunity under a federal nexus for Native Americans and museum professionals to consult and proceed with repatriation of cultural resources. According to Martha Graham,  it also encompasses a broader scope than just repatriation of objects; it includes being conscious of social attitudes and communication between tribes and museum professionals/social scientists.

          NAGPRA requires federal agencies and federally funded museums to have a dialogue with federally recognized tribes about their collections. The tribes have the right to claim human remains and associated funerary objects, cultural patrimony, and sacred items. In addition to museums collections, the act also applies to cultural items excavated after November 16^th, 1990.

          Difficulties faced with the instigation of NAGPRA in the early years included tribes’ inexperience in museum practice and the seemingly daunting task of inventorying older collections that had to comply with the act. It is often implemented on a case-by-case, one object at a time, which makes it a slow, detailed process.

          Conceptually, in terms of Native American artifacts, public museums will probably incorporate less authentic Native American artifacts and more education collections which consist of artistic representations and modern reproductions of artifacts. Tribal museums are gaining ground and are employing more trained tribe members as staff. The continuing cultural revitalization in tribal culture will make cultural heritage items all the more sensitive to tribe members, probably finding homes in tribal museum/cultural center collections as opposed to public history museums.

Pros: Recent advances in 3-D printing bring up lots of useful options for “copying and printing” artifacts to metrically exact reproductions of the original, with the option of taking measurements during printing. This would be a possible opportunity for museums and repositories dealing with NAGPRA compliance (or other litigation in which items cannot be kept) to keep representations of artifacts for research or comparative collections.

Cons: A trend toward local, tribal run native heritage museums and repositories has the potential to exclude the public from viewing collections that were once available to research and see, especially culturally sacred collections and items.

       

On the upshot, everything accessioned and displayed in modern museums is collected for the purpose of education, which avoids collecting superfluous, redundant, or curiosity items. This selectivity ensures that items are representative of the current public, and incorporates a holistic element into collecting.

On the other hand, museums may not be inclined to accession items that would be important to archive but do not translate well to public outreach. State and national archives may see more collection of items that do not fit the public education model. 

           I think museums will continue to focus on public education for some time. As the core to museum's service to the public, educational representation and interpretation of collections plays a vital role in public awareness and critical thinking about past as well as current cultures and society. Study, observation, and exploration of past and present people and the way they choose to live in the world is important to our individual and collective growth.

       

Medical Anthropology with an emphasis on Anthropology

I recently went to a talk by M.D./PhD. Seth Holmes, who has worked with migrant farm workers to understand the social context which affects their health and health care. 

As an M.D. with a PhD. in Anthropology, Seth Holmes has a unique multi-disciplinary perspective on the health issues surrounding migrant workers. For his study, he observed the treatment of indigenous Triqui Mexicans both on farms and in clinics in the Skagit Valley. 

What he essentially observed was a social hierarchy with subtle racist reinforcements in Triqui farm life and clinic visits. This hierarchy determined health disparities, with Triqui Mexican workers having the worst health. 

 His ideas on how the interpretive lenses of local physicians normalize an ethnic stigma around migrant workers were particularly insightful. This is not a fault of theirs, as Holmes pointed out, but it brings the value of anthropological thinking to the forefront. Physicians were not aware of the social stratification on the farms because structural and symbolic violence diminished that awareness and perpetuated charged ethnic stereotypes. Holmes observed that one physician commented, "They like to work bent over." So, Triqui Mexicans are being blamed for their own health issues, which is not in the least productive in their recovery and general well-being.  

 A medical degree which included cultural anthropology and community health curricula would let M.D.'s treat the unique person with the social context of that person in mind. This is probably the most effective when treating cultural or ethnic minorities, but I think it is important for any patient-physician relationship. In the case of the Triqui workers, what good does it do if a doctor prescribes rest to someone who will be made to work just as hard to make a quota? How is the clinical gaze limiting the care of Triqui patients? Ideally, adequate care for Triqui workers would address the interaction of social, environmental, and biological factors which influence their health and well-being on the Skagit farms and in the community at large. 

The rift between hard medical science and social science is not the only factor in the treatment of migrant workers in the Skagit and across the United States. Semantics has a large part to do with it, too. One can't turn on CNN without seeing news perpetuating terms like "illegal alien." "Undocumented worker" is a bit better of a label, but a label nonetheless. Associating these words with migrant workers brings attention only to the illegality and the "criminality" of their state of being. Those labels become attributed to a seemingly intrinsic nature that they may or may not possess.