The Look of Lov...um...I mean...Archaeology

I am attempting to determine whether or not archaeology has an image problem. The public certainly has a skewed view of what an archaeolgoist is, and what we do, but I'm not sure whether that works for us or against us.

Most people, if asked, think that archaeologists look like this:


Or perhaps this:


But, of course, archaeologists look more like this,


tired and fatigued after carying heavy equipment a long distance. Or like this,


freezing our asses off at the campsite after a day of conducting fieldwork in the snow.

And obtaining artifacts looks less like this:


...and more like this:


In other words, the reality of archaeology is considerably less adventerous and sexy than the public perception, and considerably more of a daily grind with hardwork and inconveniences. Certainly, there are exciting moments - finding a cool artifact, having the data "click" in your mind and working out a puzzle, or debating with your colleagues and uncovering interesting facts and ideas. But, rather than run from booby traps, we stand around fires to ward off frostbite. Rather than fight Nazis, we contend with bedbugs at cut-rate motels. Rather than find idols of gold in long-forgotten temples, we carefully dig square holes and sift the dirt through 1/8" wire mesh looking for flakes of stone, pieces of bone, or the occassional bead. We don't find lost cities and civilizations, but rather we piece together an ever-more complete tapestry of facts to try to reveal what of the past that we can. We don't look for treasure, we sift the garbage of bygone eras looking for a sign of the people who left these remnants behind.

The question I have is: is this public mis-perception bad for archaeology?

Certainly, it's annoying to have to explain to people that I am more interested in examining collections of old shellfish than in seeking out holy relics. But, at the same time, the notion that archaeologists are dashing heroic adventurers no doubt does play into the fact that we generally do receive public support when Congress is threatening to gut the National Historic Preservation Act or limit archaeology funding via the National Science Foundation. So, is that a bad thing?

My knee-jerk reaction is to say "yes." After all, if we are benefiting from a lie, then it seems to me that we should not be benefiting at all. Of course, it's easy for me to say that when I am benefiting, and I suspect that I might change my tune were the situation to change.

At the same time, if I feel that this work is important, and obviously I do otherwise I would not have expended the time and energy necessary to get to where I am, then is it justifiable to take advantage of public misperception to continue doing said work? On the other hand, if he public misconceptions cause the public to expect something from us other than what we are doing, then might we simply be building up for a dissapointed backlash by taking advantage of this? Also, when we don't deliver on the expectations of palaces of silver and idols of gold, doesn't that just open up the doors to hoaxsters and charlatans such as Erich Von Daniken and Graham Hancock who are more than happy to just make shit up?

I don't know. But I have been wondering.

The reality is, of course, that real archaeologists do try to fight the misconceptions, indeed I have even tried to do so in this post. But I wonder if we are acting in our own interest when doing so - perhaps we are, perhaps we aren't, I don't know. And I also wonder if it would be ethical to change our tact and more actively take advantage of the image of Indiana Jones than we do, I am inclined to say that it would be unethical, but I can see compelling arguments to the contrary.

Regardless, I suspect that, for the near future anyway, things will continue as they have been, with hollywood pumping out nonsense, and archaeologists contradicting it and still benefiting from it.

The Anti-Vaccine Movement Lives on

Discover Magazine's website currently is hosting an article on why the anti-vaccine movement continues to grow despite the fact that all scientific evidence is mounted against them.

The anti-vaccine movement arguably began in 1999 when Andrew Wakefield published an article claiming a link between thimerosal, a preservative used in some vaccines, and autism. The "study" used a very small sample size, insufficient for clinical purposes, and it was later revealed that Wakefield had multiple financial interests in both decreasing the use of existing vaccines (because he had patented new ones) and in tying thimerosal and autism (he was being paid by attorneys representing families who wished to prove such a connection in order to claim a large financial settlement). The Lancet, the journal that published the paper, has since backed away from it after it came under fire by non-biased researchers, and Wakefield's co-authors have repudiated the paper, describing both flaws in the study method and stating that Wakefield never disclosed his financial interest in the matter to them.

But it was too late. With the publication of the paper, many people became understandably scared, and as these people began to merge with a larger group that likes to blame all manner of evils on the pharmaceutical industry*, and as such, a movement thoroughly sealed into an echo chamber rose, and no amount of strong, damning evidence proving them wrong will stop their march.

The Discover article discusses the current state of this movement, and there area few excerpts very much worth noting. For example, Wakefield's article pinned thimerosal as the culprit, and the alleged dangers of timerosal was long the rallying cry of the anti-vaxxer movement, but the preservative has long since been removed from vaccines, and so, rather than accept that the vaccines weren't the problem to begin with, they've simply changed their specific target:

In 2005 David Kirby stated that if autism rates didn’t begin to decline by 2007, “that would deal a severe blow to the autism-thimerosal hypothesis.” But as McCormick notes, despite the absence of thimerosal in vaccines, reports of autism cases have not fallen. In a 2008 study published in Archives of General Psychiatry, two researchers studying a California Department of Developmental Services database found that the prevalence of autism had actually continued increasing among the young. Kirby concedes that these findings about the California database represent a “pretty serious blow to the thimerosal-causes-autism hypothesis,”...in the face of powerful evidence against two of its strongest initial hypotheses—concerning MMR and thimerosal—the vaccine skeptic movement is morphing before our eyes. Advocates have begun moving the goalposts, now claiming, for instance, that the childhood vaccination schedule hits kids with too many vaccines at once, overwhelming their immune systems. Jenny McCarthy wants to “green our vaccines,” pointing to many other alleged toxins that they contain. “I think it’s definitely a response to the science, which has consistently shown no correlation,” says David Gorski, a cancer surgeon funded by the National Institutes of Health who in his spare time blogs at Respectful Insolence, a top medical blog known for its provaccine stance. A hardening of antivaccine attitudes, mixed with the despair experienced by families living under the strain of autism, has heightened the debate—sometimes leading to blowback against scientific researchers.

In addition, the focus on vaccines, against all evidence to the contrary, has resulted in both threats (including death threats) to researchers working on the real sources of autism, and in the re-appearance of often deadly disease long thought defeated:

But in 2006 Shattuck came under fire after he published an article in the journal Pediatrics questioning the existence of an autism epidemic. No one doubts that since the early 1990s the number of children diagnosed with autism has dramatically increased, a trend reflected in U.S. special education programs, where children enrolled as autistic grew from 22,445 in 1994–1995 to 140,254 in 2003–2004. Yet Shattuck’s study found reasons to doubt that these numbers were proof of an epidemic. Instead, he suggested that “diagnostic substitution”—in which children who previously would have been classified as mentally retarded or learning disabled were now being classified on the autism spectrum—played a significant role in the apparent increase.

Shattuck did not reject the idea that rising autism levels might be in part due to environmental causes; he merely showed the increase was largely an artifact of changing diagnostic practices, which themselves had been enabled by rising levels of attention to autism and its listing as a diagnostic category in special education. Yet simply by questioning autism epidemic claims in a prominent journal, he became a target. “People were obviously Googling me and tracking me down,” he recalls. Shattuck emphasizes that most e-mails and calls merely delivered “heartfelt pleas from people with very sick kids who’ve been led to believe a particular theory of etiology.” The bulk weren’t menacing, but a few certainly were.

********

“If there has been a more harmful urban legend circulating in our society than the vaccine-autism link,” University of Pennsylvania bioethicist Arthur Caplan wrote in The Philadelphia Inquirer, “it’s hard to know what it might be.” One type of harm, as Shattuck’s story shows, is to individual scientists and the scientific process. There is a real risk that necessary research is being held back as scientists fear working in such a contested field. Shattuck’s experience is not unique. Offit cannot go on a book tour to promote Autism’s False Prophets because of the risk involved in making public appearances. He has received too many threats.

...and...

Given enough vaccine exemptions and localized outbreaks, it is possible that largely vanquished diseases could become endemic again. (That is precisely what happened with measles in 2008 in the U.K., following the retreat from the MMR vaccine in the wake of the 1998 scare.) The public-health costs of such a development would be enormous—and they would not impact everyone equally. “If vaccine rates start to drop, who’s going to get affected?” Peter Hotez asks. “It’s going to be people who live in poor, crowded conditions. So it’s going to affect the poorest people in our country.”

In addition, the alternative medicine industry has capitalized on the fear of vaccines, and has produced many treatments alleged to cure autism (in each case, unproven) that pose very serious health threats in and of themselves:

Yet another cost comes in the rush toward unproven, and potentially dangerous, alternative therapies to treat autism. It is easy to sympathize with parents of autistic children who desperately want to find a cure, but this has led to various pseudoremedies whose efficacy and safety have been challenged by science. These include facilitated communication, secretin infusion, chelation therapy (which involves pumping chemicals into the blood to bind with heavy metals such as mercury), and hormonal suppression. It is estimated that more than half of all children with autism are now using “complementary and alternative” treatments.

And it is noted that in the end, the fact that 20th century vaccination programs have been so successful may be the reason why the anti-vaccine movement has gotten traction.

Paradoxically, the great success of vaccines is a crucial reason why antivaccination sentiment has thrived, some scientists say. Most of the diseases that vaccines protect against have largely been licked. As a consequence, few people personally remember the devastation they can cause. So with less apparently on the line, it is easier to indulge in the seeming luxury of vaccine skepticism and avoidance.

After I initially wrote this, but before it dropped into the blog feed, I heard this podcast, which covers much of the same ground. It's an interview between a research scientist and a television producer who produced a television show on the anti-vaccine movement in Australia. It's worth a listen.

One of the ironies of the anti-vaccine movement is that, unlike other anti-science movement such as creationism, it is more common amongst the well-educated and affluent. Although I can claim no expertise, I would suspect that there are three basic reasons for this:

A) As a well-educated and relatively affluent person, I know that it is often difficult for us to concede when we don't know something, and as a result we are often taken in by people who want to sell us a bill of goods and who have a good story with which to do so. We know we're smart, so we forget that there are matters on which we are not as knowledgeable as we like to think, and medicine and biology are often part of this.

B) The alternative medicine industry has long catered to the affluent and well-educated, and this industry has been a hotbed of anti-vaccine rhetoric.

C) These communities are the ones in which we are least likely to be exposed to these diseases, and where we are most likely to have access to good medical care to deal with them if we are exposed. In other words, because we are relatively privileged from a medical standpoint, we are able to weather the storm of illness better than other communities, and as such we don't think much of destroying the herd immunity that keeps both our children and, especially, those of our less affluent neighbors from contracting diseases.

This last point really bothers me. Every time I hear a self-described liberal announce that they will not have their kids vaccinated, and announce that they believe in social justice, I want to grab them by the lapels and scream "those are two mutually exclusive viewpoints, you fucking idiot!"





*The irony to all of this is that the pharma industry is certainly not without its own very serious faults. However, by focusing on something as well-proven as the standard childhood vaccines, the anti-vax crowd is unintentionally helping the industry in two ways: 1) they are drawing attention away from the industry's real wrongdoings, and 2) by focusing on something where the science is so clearly and obviously against them, they allow the industry to paint all of its critics as crackpots.

Lucky Number 14

As I sit here writing this, which is over a week before I post it because I'm loading the blog so that it will update even when I am too busy with fieldwork to write new updates (because I'm clever), I am sitting and having dinner in King City waiting for the work truck to cool down so that I can check the oil and determine the exact meaning of the rental vehicles "low oil" indicator.

This oil issue is ironic, as I am the lead archaeologist on a 3-D seismic oil exploration project*.

The way that this works is that a survey crew places source points across the landscape. At the source points, a vibration will be generated, either by a vibrating plate from a special truck or by a small explosive charge, and it will be measured at receiver points, where recording equipment measures the nature of the vibrations to generate a 3-D "sonar"-type map of the subsurface constituents, identifying mineral deposits including oil.

Currently, there are two survey crews, and each crew has a biologist and an archaeologist acompanying it to prevent damage to historic sites and to threatened/endangered specieis habitat. Another set of archaeologists, one that I overseee personally, works behind the surveyors, identifying and recording archaeological sites to ensure that nothing is damaged. It's a fairly good system, one that saves time and money on everyone's part, and effectively protects biological and cultural resources from damage.

However I have been working with a small crew. The reason for this is simple - the usual steady flow of field technicians has been slowed to a trickle by the introduction of a large number of projects throughout the state, and neighboring states. As a result, we have a few techs who've worked with us before, good folks all of them, and alot of new people (who, thankfully, have worked out pretty well so far).

The problem is that we need a large crew. Larger than the current one, which is already of quite a respectable size. So, you can imagine my surprise when I received a call from my boss asking me where I had gotten 14 field technicians for the project.

I did not have 14 field technicians (edited from the future: I have more than that now), and I stated as much.

"Oh, I just got off the phone with the lead biologist, and he said that you were bringing fourteen archaeologists out."

"Ummmm" I wittily replied.

"So, you don't have fourteen people?"

"Well...not as such..."

"Okay, good. I didn't remember you saying that you were bringing that many people." he said, sounding relieved.

"Where did this rumor come from?"

"Well," the boss began, I could hear him scratching his whiskers through his tone of voice "it's a seismic project. Gossip is gonna' be worse than in a small town full ofold ladies."

"ah."


Yeah, it's going to be a long few months.






*And before any of my friends or readers start commenting or complaining about me working with oil exploration teams, let me point out that these companies have enough political sway that they woud be doing this with or without environmental workers on the scene. At least as long as the environmental team, of which I lead the archaeology/cultural resources portion, is present, the damage to the environment is minimized from what it would otherwise be. It's for this reason that I will work with oil companies, the military, land developers, and just about every other entity that is usually the "bad guy" in political/environmental morality plays.

The fact of the matter is this: it's all fine and good to march, go to rallies, and circulate petitions - these activities have their place and use, but the organizations that have to clean up their act aren't going to police themselves, we all know that, and unless someone like me is willing to roll up their sleeves and actually do the work of environmental compliance, all of the various environmental laws that the rest of you are so proud of would never actually be enforced. For all the flack that I get, I am one of the few environmentalists that I know who can actually point to resources protected and laws complied with, and the others that I know who can make the same claim also work with the "bad guy" organizations - we have to, it's the only way that anything actually gets protected.

In other words, if all you do is talk, then get off of my back. I have work to do.

Why yes, I have had some very irritating conversations with self-proclaimed environmentalists. Why do you ask?

Opponents or Enemies?

A few years back I worked for a large engineering and environmental consulting firm at their office in Santa Barbara. In this office was one of the company's main attorneys, a man who I eventually learned had been active in the Republican Party from the 1970s through the 1990s, and who had very strong opinions about political figures. While he was often (in fact typically) very critical of the Democrats in Congress, when asked he could always explain his objections, and when those objections came down to simple differences in basic political philosophy, he was open about this and didn't try to dress it up as "I'm right, they're wrong" but rather would put forward that he operated from a set of assumptions about humanity in general and politics in particular that was different from those with whom he disagreed.

In other words, he often objected to policies, but he always retained a reasonable attitude and could discuss his views in a calm and fair manner.

After decades of talk radio and the recent advent of political blogs, I was surprised to see someone capable of this. After all, one need only turn on the radio or television to hear Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh accusing all "liberals" of being baby-eating satanist traitors, and a trip to the local cineplex will yield loads of joyful misdirection and emotional manipulation with Michael Moore* or Ben Stein.

And yet here was someone who politically was on the "other side" from me, and we were quite capable of not only finding the occasional common ground, but, much more importantly, of being able to actuallu understand what the other was talking about and, if not agreeing, at least seeing merit where it existed.

After a few months of working there, I asked him why he had left Washington D.C. and politics. His response rather surprised me.

"Well, I grew to hate what politics had become. You see, it used to be the case that people would disagree on policy, and they'd have heated debates in the Congress, and as soon as it was over, they could go to a bar together and talk about each other's hobbies and families."

I had always heard that politics had always been as overheated as it was now, and had said as much to him.

"No. The arguments in public were often vicious, and people would claim, and sometimes the people claiming this really believed it, that the policy of their opponents would have disasterous consequences - think of the Goldwater-era 'girl picking flowers' advertisement. But they never thought that their opponents were evil, they may have thought they were wrong or even misguided, but not evil. That's changed. Limbaugh changed it, Gingrich changed it, a whole lot of voters and radio listeners changed it. Now, it's not enough for the opposition to be wrong, they also have to be evil. You can't just be opposed to their policy, they have to be traitors. It's wrong, it's destructive, and it's dangerous."

Since then, I have looked into matters more, and while I am no expert, I think he's probably right. The problem isn't that public discourse has become "uncivil", as so many people complain, it's that it's become bat-shit insane.

To that end, I was happy to read this and discover that I am not alone. Check it out, and perhaps think about your own views of your political and/or social opponents. Do you see them as opponents, people who you disagree with but who are nonetheless still your fellow citizens, or do you see them as enemies who must be destroyed? And be honest when you answer this question for yourself, I suspect that we all fall prey to this impulse, especially given that there is a ready-made media machine that is more than happy to cater to it.




*Yes, I put Michael Moore in the same category as Limbaugh and Hannity. While Moore is more sophisticated and less directly partisan, his methods are nonetheless very similar - mis-direction, knocking down strawmen, taking matters out of context, and emotional manipulation. You can try to defend him all you want, but any positive label that you may try to give him - for example, I oftne hear people try to defend him by calling him a polemicist - can just as justifiably by attributed to Rush Limbaugh. Personally, I have no use for either of them.

A few more travel photos...

These are from Japan, again. I also need to post some from other places to which I have travelled.


The door of the hotel room that we shared:



A photo of a father and daughter sitting together in the Meiji Gardens:



A writhing mass of carp, also in the Meiji Garden. One member of our party was feeding them muffin bits despite adminisions from the rest of us, which caused the fish to gather together.



Kay and Patrick attempt to get their bearings:



The shrine with the giant bronze buddha at Kamakura:



The Shrine of the 47 Samurai:

The Beetle Bugs Me

My friends Dave and Eva are searching for a new car. They have decided that they would like to buy one of the classic VW Beetles - an honorable enough choice by any measure. They located such a car for sale in Aptos, but they live in San Francisco and did not want to make a 4-hour round trip for a car that might be a dud. I happen to live in Scotts Valley, a short drive from Aptos, and so they requested that I take a look at the car and report back to them.

These two have been very good friends to me, and I was (and remain) more than happy to assist them with this, and it was very simple for me to do. To that end, Kay and I set out for Aptos yesterday afternoon to have a look at a 1970 VW Beetle.

I call the car's owner, and he explains where to find the car - it's not at his home, but rather parked on a street near his home. This seems kinda' odd, but, well, if you know Santa Cruz, then this isn't quite enough to suggest a real problem, or even all that odd. When I arrive, the owner, who I will call Gonzo to protect the innocent, is waiting for us. The car is beaten up, the paint oxidized, and it generally looks like the 39-year-old car that it is. While Gonzo prattled on about the quality of the vehicle, I was busy doing things like opening up the hood (or the trunk - as these cars have the engine in the rear) to look at the engine, checking for signs of rust on the chassis, and trying to see if there is anything clearly wrong with any part of the vehicle. To all of this, Gonzo seems oblivious.

We finally move on to the interior, and it's thrashed. The seats have been patched with electrical tape, some of the wire connecting the ignition are no longer contained within the dashboard, and the seat springs have completey deflated. In short, it's clearly a vehicle that has seen 4 decades of use with little repair to the interior.

Finally, as per Eva's request, I ask to take the car for a test drive. Gonzo hands me the keys and says "yeah, that's fine, but if you crash it, you've bought it, because I don't have insurance on this vehicle."

Somewhat against my better judgement*, I take the car out for a test drive anyway. I get it started, the engine is louder than Hell, and I move down the street. I get to the corner, and brake in order to slow down for the turn...and the brakes don't work at first - I have to push all the way down to get it to brake, and the ride down is squishy, the braqke cylinder is clearly on its way out. I never bring the car above 15 miles per hour, navigate around the block ot the stopping point, turn off the car and get out.

Gonzo looks up at me and asks "So, what do you think?"

"The brakes are bad" I say, waiting for his response.

He quickly replies "yeah, they could use a little attention," turning a bit so as not to be looking directly at me when he says this.

A little attention? How about a complete fucking overhaul?

Here's the thing. When Eva asked about the car, she specifically asked if it would be safe to drive from Aptos to San Francisco should she purchase it. Gonzo said that it would be. This is bullshit. The engine would probably make it, but the brakes would do exactly nothing to stop the vehicle were it moving at freeway speeds - they barely worked when it was going 15 miles per hour! One spot of bad traffic, and Eva and Dave would have been in a world of hurt, or worse.

As I was handing bac the keys and walking to my car, Gonzo began to talk about how this was "one of the few un-restored VW Bettles from its era" - said as if to imply that the fact that it was a run-down deathtrap that appeared to have not had proper maintenance was something to be proud of.

So, this guy lied to my friends to sell them something that would endanger them had they bought it. I really wanted to smack him around a bit, but luckily I have enough self control (and sufficent fear of incarceration - I'll admit it, I'm a wimp) to simply hand him the keys back and walk away. In retrospect, I should have at least pointed out the fact that what he was trying to pull with this vehcile and the brakes could easily land him in a courtroom, but I wasn't thinking clearly enough at that time.

I drove about a block away, stopped the car, pulled out my phone, and dialed Eva's number.

"Hello?"

"Hey, Eva, it's Matt."

"Oh, hi. So, what do you think of the car?"

"Well, Eva, how desperate are you for a car?"







*I say only somewhat because, frankly, I think he'd have a hard time legally forcing me to pay for a car that I was test driving because he, as the owner, hadn't bothered to insure it.

Some things you might find interesting...

A couple of links that may be of interest.

A few years back, the BBC broadcast a documentary on the history of people questioning religion. Whether you are a believer or not, it does a good deal to explain the historical and social settings in qhich people questioned the existence of a spiritual component to the universe. The Documentary, titled A Rough History of Disbelief is available on Google video. Click the link to see it. Unfortunately, those who might most benefit from actually comprehending what non-believers think (such as one individual who used to post comments here claiming all sorts of non-existent moral failings on the part of non-believers) are the ones least likely to actually bother watching. So it goes.

On a related note, Greta Christina has a post up that well articulates what I have often seen as the problemw ith claiming to be "spiritual but not religious." It's a good read, check it out.

On the subject of archaeology, the Mythbusters have a two articles up on their site discussing myths and public misconceptions about archaeology. They're both informative and fun to read. Check them out, if you have the opportunity. My favorite quote from them is one in which they actually discuss my own industry:

Actually, there are far more qualified archaeologists than there are academic positions. In the 1970s and 1980s, archaeology students were advised to go to grad school so they'd be ready to replace their profs as said profs retired. This turned out to be one of the biggest archaeology myths ever.

Why? Because many academic departments just phased out those positions instead of restaffing them. Fortunately, legislation enacted in the mid 1970s to protect cultural resources on federal property provided thousands of new jobs for field archaeologists, in both private industry and the government.