My video project is finally done! I’ve chosen to do a short film about Main building at Vassar College as a national historic landmark. In this film, I’ve presented many different perspectives of students on the different roles of Main building. I was primarily interested in how the title of “national historic landmark” influences the way in which residents view the building.
I really enjoyed making a movie for this topic. I think the short film is an efficient an interesting way to convey the kinds of ideas I introduce about Main building as a landmark and home. Though iMovie quit on me a few times (which was NOT a pleasant experience), I was finally able to finish and post it on youtube.
Every stone wall winding through the woods and towns of the northeastern U.S. is an archaeological site. They may be commonplace, but by studying them we can gain a glimpse into the history of the region, from the geological formation and distribution of the stones to the rise and decline of farming in the northeast with industrialization. By studying these everyday artifacts, we can look into history through the eyes of the people who lived on and worked the land, often people whose voices and lives were never written down for future generations. During the course of my research, I purposely tried to find out information about many of the often unacknowledged participants in the story of agriculture in the northeast, for example, Native Americans, immigrants, children, and slaves. Another goal for this project is to contribute to the public’s knowledge and appreciation of the study of the physical artifacts of past cultures, and by emphasizing ways that people can go out and analyze these walls for themselves, I hope to encourage people to get interested in the archaeology of their own communities.
Harlem: Inside and Out is an online exhibition, in the form of a blog, about the Harlem Renaissance. The exhibition is organized into seven themes (as shown on the right) that aim to capture different facets of the African American experience in Harlem during the 1920’s. There is also a page about the exhibition and pages for my sources and suggested readings.
Primarily I wanted to use my final project to test my own bias. As we have talked at length in this course about issues of indigenous and community archaeologies, I wanted to examine how aware I was of my own biases and how difficult it really is to incorporate minority narratives and oral histories in a museum exhibition in order to create a more accurate portrayal the African American community. As it was not feasible for this to be a collaborative project, and we worked with so many forms of new media in our workshops each week, I decided to create a very interactive exhibition in order to gain that sense of multivocality and multiple perspectives and minimize the influence of my own stereotypes. I thus have used videos, sound clips, interviews, excerpts from Harlem Renaissance writers, scholarly perspectives, and links to interactive learning tools and other online exhibitions.
I also wanted to get people thinking as they go through this exhibition, and have therefore posed numerous questions throughout the exhibit that ask viewers to compare what they read or hear in varying primary sources to the works of art themselves, and to relate different artists or black and white interpretations of a subject matter. The goal is for viewers to comment with their thoughts and generate an online discussion that gets people to think about this time period in a new way and recognize their own stereotypes as they open themselves to new, non-white narratives. Enjoy!
For my final project, I wanted to find a way to overcome what I viewed as two major problems in K-12 archeology education:
The necessity of costly material teaching tools, be they models of artifacts, materials for reconstructing digs, or the actual cost of taking a whole class to visit a site
The site-specificity of simulation programs, which may make it difficult to impart thematic problems in archaeology
This screenshot demonstrates the user-input based interface of much of the game (Superstar Shia LaBeouf is not actually featured in this game).
Thus, the video game Practicing Praxis was born. Guided by Professor Praxis, a khaki-clad mentor, the user learns how to cooperate with different members of their field team (all of whom have very different goals), how to work with native communities, and how to ultimately present their work to the public. By using a choose-your-own-adventure format, the game simulates the reality of subjective problem solving and challenges the player to think about the stakeholders involved in each decision, and whose desires and opinions should be put above the rest– there is no right answer!
I had initially planned to give the user a letter grade at the end of the game, but working through the different scenarios made me realize that praxis (as it is implemented, not theorized) is inherently idiosyncratic, though we may hope to standardize it when it comes to ethics. Thus, I tried to constrain the chastisement in the game to instances of disrespect and thoughtlessness on facilitators’ parts as opposed to deducting points for preferring local news coverage to blogging.
This game is currently only for PCs and can be downloaded here (to install, extract all items from folder and click on the .exe file). Please forgive any lingering bugs and glitches– while I have been working on streamlining the system, this is still very much a first draft of a first attempt. Have fun!
This course focused in part on presentation of archaeology to the public, both how and why. I believe that one of the strongest benefits that the discipline of archaeology can provide to the public is through education. Archaeology makes history tangible and local, so students who learn history through archaeology are learning in a way that makes history personally relevant to them.
I chose to create a classroom unit based on this belief. My project consists of five lessons created with fourth graders from my hometown of Weston, CT in mind. The lessons teach the history of Native Americans in the Connecticut area from the first inhabitants of the area 10,000 years ago to the colonial period alongside lessons in archaeological methods. Though students would by no means gain a complete knowledge of either archaeology or American Indian history and culture from this unit, the unit was created with the goal of having each topic reinforce the other, with the result that students are interested in retaining the information they learn and continuing to learn on their own.
One of the highlights of the unit I have created is the final lesson, a mock excavation in which students form groups to carefully excavate artificial plots of land, then record data about artifacts, ecofacts, and environmental conditions, and finally build a mini-museum. As a hands-on experience, the excavation should capture students’ attention and motivate them to carefully consider what they have learned. The mock excavation, with its focus on data recording and collaboration with teammates and stakeholders, also works to eliminate stereotypes and misconceptions the general public may have about archaeology.
All contributors to this blog are authorized to view the unit guide and the accompanying PowerPoint presentation, both stored on Vspace. Anyone else interested in seeing the project can contact me at caclevenger@vassar.edu for permission.
I just found out that I will be living in New York City this summer, and thought it would be fun to look into the archaeology of the city. So much of our class has been focused on tribal communities and more open landscapes, that I thought it would be very interesting to looks at how an urban archaeology is conducted, the different kinds of artifacts it yields and the different interpretations that can be drawn.
I thought this article from the New York Times gives a great little introduction to the archaeology of NYC, especially for the general public who may not be familiar with the field. I enjoyed their use of personal stories and I think it makes archaeology much more accessible for the uninitiated. By referring to specific artifacts, such as a broken bottle, and by placing the objects in their context on a cartoon map of the city, the article allows the reader to identify with the archaeological sites, both physically and geographically. I also like the interactive nature of the map, and think that the pop up descriptions show visitors how information can be drawn from the smallest artifact, such as a goat horn, or the most subtle changes in soil.
However, I wish the site enabled those interested by these projects to learn more about the digs. For example, it would have been great if readers could click on the blurbs to get more information and links to other sources or sites about the projects. This way the article would appeal to both the casual reader and those who want more in-depth information. I also have to look down upon the title, which uses key buzz words (“Raiders” – which makes me think of Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, and “Lost City” – which sensationalizes New York’s colonial past) to grab the reader’s attention and set the reader up for a tale of adventure and treasure. But especially in such a populated urban area, this article really gets the viewers to consider archaeology and think about their surroundings in a new way.
I also found this fun walking tour of the city’s early history through archaeology if anyone else is going to be in the city over the summer!
Since the one hundredth anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic has drawn quite a bit of attention to underwater archaeology, I decided to post about a different underwater archaeology project: the ancient Byzantine shipwreck at Yassi Ada, located right off the coast of Bodrum, Turkey.
I came across a “This American Life” episode titled, “Contents Unknown.” The theme of this episode was “stories of filling in the blank,” so a story about an archaeological excavation fit in naturally. The segment within the episode titled, “He Shapes Ship Shapes by the Sea Shore” tells the story of the archaeological excavation of the Byzantine shipwreck at Yassi Ada through the eyes of Fred van Doorninck, the assistant director of the project, and George Bass, the director of the project. The reason Doorninck and Bass’s story fits so well into this episode about “filling in the blank” is due not only to the fact that they uncovered important insight into the Byzantine Empire but also because they had to be incredibly innovative and creative when it came to their methodology of excavation. The field was incredibly new and in fact this project is often viewed as one of, if not the first, complete underwater archaeological excavations. Since there really wasn’t any information about how to properly conduct underwater archaeology without destroying the site of study, Doorninck and Bass ended up inventing some techniques that have been the foundation of underwater archaeology techniques that are frequently used today.
One of the first problems they faced was the fact the scuba diving was very new, and they could only search the shipwreck for approximately twenty minutes. Another problem lay in the material that encased the ship: saltwater. The problem was to search the ship and extract information and samples without destroying, which they claimed could easily happen simply when brushing sand away from the ship. They finally came up with the brilliant idea of sharpening bicycle spokes and sticking fragments of the ship onto them with the ultimate goal of recreating the ship. More information about the structure of the ship was based on the indentation the ship made in the sand. Doorninck finally collaborated with scholars of naval architecture to produce a sound model of what the ship looked like.
One of the biggest breakthroughs in their research was the discovery of an inscription on an amphora. After many years of research, they discovered that the inscription indicated the captain of the ship was a priest. Many priests were in fact captains of ships because many Christian churches apparently owned ships during this time period. The ship also had many similarly shaped and sized amphoras in it implying that people during this time period had access to factories and mass production, which meant accessibility to much more technologically advanced resources than had previously been thought. Ultimately the researchers hypothesized that this ship was lent to the Byzantine army by the church indicating that the relationship between the Christian church and army was much more intertwined than had originally been thought.
I personally loved this story. The facts of the project really are inspiring and truly show how important archaeology can be in uncovering histories and stories of the past while also demonstrating the innovative techniques and problem solving skills that accompany this field of study. What I enjoyed most though, was listening to Doorninck and Bass talk about the project. In the past, I have often stereotyped archaeologists as super serious scholars who don’t really have any emotions or joke around because they are so invested in their work. During the episode, Doorninck actually jokes that putting the ship together was almost “… impossible…If there had been one less fragment…I wouldn’t have been able to put the pieces together.” I definitely recommend listening to this episode. The interaction between the two scholars is refreshing as they truly convey the great amount of respect they have for each other and passion they both have for the project.
The following video is the first part of a video about the beginnings of underwater archaeology. It’s pretty awesome to see some of the actual artifacts found (skip to 2:30) as well as the old school scuba gear (skip to 3:00).
This article, entitled “Debt-Ridden Greece Hopes Ancient Sites Can Yield New Cash,” from the New York Times, reflects our discussion of cultural tourism on an even larger scale. As we have seen, cultural sites often turn to tourism to help bring in desperately needed money. In the face of public funding cuts, officials of Greece’s national landmarks are using a similar principle. In addition to promoting tourism, these sites are trying to attract foreign filmmakers, fashion photographers and advertising firms by lowering their once high “rental” prices to $1,300 a day for photographers and $2,000 a day for film crews, and by simplifying their bureaucratic process.
These low prices seemingly invite anyone with a little money to come in and take over valuable sites like the Acropolis, making Greece’s heritage the backdrop for a cheesy commercial or the setting for an epic shootouts. As with many of the local tribal sites we have discussed, there is a major concern that such tourism and advertising could demean one’s history and culture and make it seem inauthentic. I believe that in opening up these sites to such advertising firms, there is a risk that the importance of a site and its identity could be lost. While tourists come for the culture and experience, using an archaeological site in advertisements for products unrelated to the site or as the background for a women in fancy evening gowns could dissociate the place from its meaning for consumers. To protect these sites I feel that any films or photography shoots that use the site need to, in some way, benefit the public’s understanding of the site, rather than just use it as a pretty background or to stir intrigue.
However, as the country’s archaeological council is allegedly very stringent on who they give permission to, hopefully no real danger is posed. As long as officials are careful and do not allow sites like the acropolis to become too overdone or take a backseat to company’s product promotions, Greece’s national archaeological monuments should maintain their integrity and significance. Hopefully these new advertising means can make the public aware of new sites, increase tourism, and promote a positive image of Greece in a time of financial troubles, in addition to promoting their products or providing entertainment.
To begin, an excerpt from 20th century master of horror H.P. Lovecraft‘s The Case of Charles Dexter Ward:
Charles Ward was an antiquarian from infancy, no doubt gaining his taste from the venerable town around him, and from the relics of the past which filled every corner of his parents’ old mansion in Prospect Street on the crest of the hill. With the years his devotion to ancient things increased; so that history, genealogy, and the study of colonial architecture, furniture, and craftsmanship at length crowded everything else from his sphere of interests… The gaps of information which the alienists noticed were all related to modern matters, and were invariably offset by a correspondingly excessive though outwardly concealed knowledge of bygone matters as brought out by adroit questioning; so that one would have fancied the patient literally transferred to a former age through some obscure sort of auto-hypnosis…
All his final efforts were obviously bent toward mastering those common facts of the modern world which had been so totally and unmistakably expunged from his brain… it was clear to all who watched him that his whole programme of reading and conversation was determined by a frantic wish to imbibe such knowledge of his own life and of the ordinary practical and cultural background of the twentieth century as ought to have been his by virtue of his birth in 1902 and his education in the schools of our own time. Alienists are now wondering how, in view of his vitally impaired range of data, the escaped patient manages to cope with the complicated world of today; the dominant opinion being that he is ‘lying low’ in some humble and unexacting position till his stock of modern information can be brought up to the normal. (read the entire story here)
This section seemed to capture the antiquarian sensibility, especially in regards to positionality and objects of study, and the difficulty of meshing research (or rather, academic affections) with praxis. As Ward struggles to catch up on modernity and to make up for lost time, as it were, after the years he has spent studying nothing for the past, his condition becomes an allegory for the permanent scholar: the individual that is permanently detached from reality, exhibiting academic objectivity to excess, and to a point where they cannot longer utilize their society’s entrenched tools for communication. This passage reminded me of our own discussions of academic isolationism, and how archaeologists’ fascination with the past risks being completely insular and self-serving if we forget our debt and our inherent connection to others around us. Ward, as Lovecraftian characters are wont to do, is unfortunately beyond such redemption and is condemned to an institution (albeit, largely for his dealings in the occult, as, once again, Lovecraftian characters are wont to experiment with.)
H.P. Lovecraft (1890 – 1937)
The same edition (The Call of Cthulhu and Other Dark Tales [Barnes and Noble, 2009]) includes a serial called Herbert West: Reanimator, about a mad scientist obsessed with bringing the dead back to life. As archaeologists, are we not ourselves reanimators of some sort, bringing life back into the dark and dusty corners of subterranean societies? Our act of revitalization is not one of paternalistic guidance (one should hope!), but an act that restores a site to its former glory– a glory wholly its own, completely untainted by the reanimator’s own visions– and re-validates its inclusion into the world of the living.
This afternoon, I decided to indulge in a little noontime respite by settling down with a tuna fish sandwich and some cable TV. In negotiating between 30 Rock and My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, I eventually ended up with Oddities, the third member of the Teddy’s Favorite Shows Triumvirate. This show also provides an uncanny manifestation of a mainstream archeology (note the website’s dappled display of biological anthropology)– that is, antiquing– as an entertainingly ruthless pursuit of historical curios.
Oddities details the exploits of a Brooklyn antique shop that draws in all sorts of wild and crazy products and people. Their wares range from sideshow props to quack medical devices to bits of anatomy (real or fabricated). The proprietors make their living by hunting out or discovering new items, not excavating items from their original geological context as an archaeologist might, but certainly unearthing items from the various nooks and crannies of society itself as the items are usually taken private collectors or from collections being decommissioned by museums. This form of alternative salvage archaeology (all too appropriately Brooklyn) leads the Oddities cast to some rather unique items accrued for somewhat soulless business.
In Season 3’s “The Power of A Grey Skull”, two of the cast members are asked to find an eye-catching piece for a local tattoo parlor. They eventually come upon a Peruvian elongated skull; take a look at how they handle the acquisition in this two-minute clip that refuses to be embedded in WordPress. Do you agree with the handlers’ assessments? What do you make of the gentleman who is selling the skull? What does each party hope to gain from the transaction?
In another episode, the proprietors are contacted by a seller who wishes to sell a mummified hand. They have to determine a) if it is authentic, and b) if they can sell it. How does their procedure differ from an archaeologist’s (particularly in terms of motivation)?
Once they determine the item is authentic, they have to go through their attorney to determine if they can legally sell it (if I remember correctly, they could not legally sell a form of human remains whose value exceeded $5000.) Do you think these items should be allowed to be collected/displayed/traded out if they don’t meet the criteria to be considered “valued” artifacts? Where do our morals stand on such issues, as scientists, and as part of the public ourselves? Isn’t a delight in rare and mysterious things from ages past the very reason we went into archaeology to begin with? Who are we to take an element of that away from the public, especially if they cannot afford to accredit themselves simply to partake in a dig, and especially if they items they are collecting are essentially museum scrap?
