Kotoku-in, Japan

I spoke too soon - between the Thanksgiving Holiday, a friend visiting from Korea, a niece being born, and my own birthday...well, it's been busier than I had anticipated when last I said that I was going to start keeping the blog routinely. Hopefully this coming week will be less eventful.

In the meantime, another photo blog of a historic site, this one is in the city of Kamakura, Japan.

Located to the south of Tokyo, on a bay, the city of Kamakura is gorgeous. It's a popular tourist destination within Japan, and I can vouch from personal experience that the place bears a strong physical resemblance to Santa Barbara, California.



Kamakura has a fascinating role in Japanese history, but I would like to focus on a specific place, the Kotoku-in, and more specifically the Great Buddha within the temple grounds.



The Kotoku-in is a Buddhist shrine/temple located a 20-minute walk from the beach. The Great Buddha within it is an Amida Buddha, the principle Buddha of the Pure Land sect.





This statue was built around 1252, to replace a wooden statue that had been built in the 1240s but had been damaged in 1248. The bronze statue that now stands was expensive, but funds were raised, and the statue built.

The statue was originally covered in gold plating, but that has long since gone. It remains an impressive statue, though, standing 13.35 meters (approximately 40 feet) in height. And, interestingly, you can enter the statue.



However, you have to move through the statue quickly, and photos don't come out so well when you're using a cheap point-and-click camera.



I loved the irony of the atheist (me) and the western Pagan (Kay) walking through a giant statue of an eastern divinity.

Though the statue is the main draw, the rest of the grounds are quite impressive as well.




The statue is one of the better-known symbols of Japan, and it was an impressive site to see.

Abney Park Cemetery

Okay, finally done with most of the moving, and I finished edits to a paper so that it is prepared for publication (I'll update when it finally gets published). So, I'll soon be back on my normal bloggy schedule (three times a week, as time allows).

However, in the meantime, here's some more photos of a historic/archaeological spot. This one is Abney Park Cemetery in London.



Abney Park was laid out in the first half of the 18th century by Lady Mary Abney from lands that she held in the Stoke Newington area. The area was the home of Dr. Isaac Watts, a well-known writer of English hymns.

Grave of Isaac Watts

During the early 19th century, the park became the location of a Quaker school for girls. During the 1840s, it became the location of a non-denominational garden cemetery, allowing the burial of a larger swath of London's citizens than the sectarian cemeteries. It also contained an impressive arboretum, unsurprising given the popularity of botany during the 19th century.



The cemetery also contained a non-sectarian chapel, allowing anyone who wished to come worship, a radical idea in the 19th century. The chapel stood as a monument to religious tolerance, also a radical idea in the 19th century, but today is decaying and looks more like the set of a horror movie.








The trust cemetery was sold to a private company in 1880, who continued to run the cemetery until the company became insolvent in 1978. During this time, burials were packed tight in the cemetery, in it is clear from a casual stroll through the grounds that graves had begun to overlap each other.




This aspect, that material from one time is plopped right on top of and even mixed in with that from another, is one of the things that I find most fascinating about this place. It is what archaeologists refer to as a palimpsest* - a place where material from a wide range of time is deposited in one place, resulting in something that looks like a simple site but which is really a complex amalgam of many different uses of the same location over a long period of time.





In some cases, this includes finding new uses for old items.




Today, the park is preserved as an open space, and is a quiet, peaceful place to visit. Unfortunately, many visitors are not as good as they should be about taking their trash with them when they leave. However, this adds yet another layer to the palimpsest site that is the park.



*The term comes from medieval scholarship, where the term palimpsest referred to a scroll that had been written, the ink scraped away, and new writing placed on it. Sometimes the original writing could still be seen via depressions on the material where the pen had made its mark.

Knapp Castle

Still moving, so it's another photo blog. This one is for a legitimate archaeological site, one that is open to the public so this is not a breach of confidentiality, the ruins of a building in the Santa Ynez Valley in Santa Barbara County, CA.



The parcel was purchased in 1916 by George Owen Knapp, and a large, impressive house was built there. In 1940 Frances Holden bought the property and invited his friend, opera singer Lotte Lehmann to live there.




Within two months, the house burned down during a forest fire, leaving the ruins that have come to be known as "Knapp Castle."



Now it's a great place to walk to, just a short hike from the main road. It's also a place where a lot of annoying pseudo-hippies like to go on nights with full moons in order to sit in a circle and drum without a sense of rhythm.

Fort Point

So, I am in the middle of packing, and as such can't write too much, but I get alot of positive feedback on my photo entries, so here's a few to keep y'all entertained. In keeping with the general theme of the blog, these are of a historic spot that is also currently a park - Fort Point, a Civil War-era site in San Francisco.



This fort lies underneath the Golden Gate Bridge, in fact the Golden Gate Bridge was re-designed by its engineer in order to prevent damage to the fort, which he considered a historic treasure (I can't argue with him there).




However, as you can see in these photos, the ginourmous bridge does interfere with the appearance of the fort.

The fort has been well-preserved, and maintenance work has been done in a manner that maintains the general feel of what the fort had been like during the 19th century (sans the giant bridge overhead, that is).

This place is fantastic. It is a well-preserved bit o' history that I highly recommend visiting. It's also creepy as hell under the right conditions, and I expect that I will be posting some stories on my other blog.









Really, I don't know why this place hasn't been the subject of a horror movie.

It is worth noting that a fair amount of the historic archaeology done in North America is done on facilities that bear a resemblance to this place. So, while it isn't an archaeological site, it's worth visiting if you are an archaeology enthusiast.






Some of the strange angles and weird lighting int he place made for some great photographic opportunities, and some of these things look like something out of a steampunk fairy tale.

Wrapping Up

So, as stated before, I am leaving my current job to go to another one. I will still be involved in archaeology, and in fact will be doing essentially the same job, just with a different company in a different city.

It's a strange feeling. when I came to work with my current employer, I had intended to stay there for a good many years and get re-entrenched into the Monterrey Bay area, a location that I love. I had felt that I was returning home (I grew up in the Central Valley, in Stanislaus County specifically, but moved to Santa Cruz when I was 20 and adopted it as my home), and had anticipated building a life here. If the job went away - as sometimes happens, then I would find another in the area - by that time I figured that I would have enough skills and contacts to be able to find work with another company or with an agency within the general area.

I didn't anticipate what happened, or that it would happen within 3 and a half years. My company's main projects have gradually moved farther south, and the intensity of the fieldwork has increased, meaning that I spend much more time away from home than at home these days. At the same time, several family obligations have appeared which require me to be at home. So, I have given notice at one job and accepted another in Fresno.

I am genuinely excited about the company, I have worked for them int he past and they are fantastic, but it is difficult to return to the central valley 15 years after having left it. Returning to the valley after having escaped is hard - this is something that my friends from the bay area and Southern California have a hard time understanding, but those who are from the Central Valley all understand without me having to articulate it.

The Central Valley was always a decent place to live. Those of us who grew up there simply developed a bit of an inferiority complex because of all of the attention payed to the Bay Area and Los Angeles. When I was younger, it must be said that the Central Valley was a place of limited opportunities and social rigidity. But people have moved around, economic forces have changed the map, and the Central Valley is now quite different.

The valley has changed in the last 15 years, becoming a more vibrant and dynamic place than it had been during my childhood and early adulthood. I have also changed - I am more independent, less timid, and I have learned that you can make something interesting happen and that the place where your bed is located doesn't have to limit your options or life. What's more, I am returning to the Central Valley to take a career-track job that requires an advanced degree and considerable experience, not because I failed and have to head back home.

So, here we go. I am finishing up my projects this week, and packign up my apartment.

Water Dowsing Bandwagon

Did you know that farmers in the American south still use divining rods to find water?

Well, they may or may not, actually, but one of my relatives is of the impression that they do, and often brings this up as evidence that water divining (AKA water dowsing AKA water witching) works. To be fair, she would know if they did at least up through the 1950s, so we can take it as given that at least some farmers in Arkansas were using divining up to the middle of the last century.

Don't misunderstand me, I am not picking on my relative. This is a common lapse in critical thinking, committed by most of us at some point in time, the "but group X wouldn't do activity Y if it didn't work!" argument. It seems persuasive - after all, people who are reliant on something (as farmers are reliant on water) wouldn't want to waste time and energy on a non-productive effort to get the resource.

But people do. People use all manner of things that do not work to achieve various ends. Doctors, who should know better, hyper-dose vitamin C when sick despite the fact that the medical data shows that this doesn't really help; athletes wear holographic bracelets to improve performance, despite the fact that they are nothing but an "applied kineesiology" prop and don't actually work (by the way, you can get a nifty placebo bracelet for far less); and huge swaths of people would rather pray to a myriad of non-existent entities for safety than to do such basic things as wear seatbelts.

All of it is a waste of time, energy, and resources. And yet people do it. Well-trained, smart, and cautious people do.

Our 1950s farmers who rely on water divining are a good example of this sort of thing because of the fact that the farmer is the last person that you would expect to be wasting time and energy on needless superstition. While many of my urban friends have an image of the farmer as a goofy yokel who lacks in knowledge, nothing could be farther from the truth. Farmers tend to be very intelligent and practical, they are generally good at using resources wisely, they are mentally flexible, they usually are good with mathematics, are knowledgeable about practical applications of mechanical engineering, have a solid knowledge of field biology, they have always been inventive, and from the mid-20th century onward they tend to be very well-educated. They have to be, farming is a tough profession that will devour anyone who lacks both the general grit and the intelligence necessary to carry it out.

So why were these guys using water diviners, a profession that has been shown time and again to be a sham?

Well, there's alot of reasons why they might. The first may be that the diviners do find water - but not because of any special magical powers that they claim to have. One of the things that I frequently have to do is predict where archaeological sites will be, and a common thread amongst residential sites (campsites, villages, etc.) is that they are close to water. So, I have learned to look at a landscape, whether on the ground or with maps, and figure out where the water is likely to be most plentiful and/or accessible. I am not always right, but I am often enough. So, if I can do this in areas where I have only a passing knowledge, it's no stretch of the imagination that someone who is very familiar with an area will be more accurate more often, no mystic abilities needed. Of course, human psychology being what it is, these people may be convinced that they know where the water is for magical reasons and not because they simply have gathered basic information. Also, in most regions with water, if you dig deep enough, you'll hit it, so the water diviner can't help but find water...even if it isn't very convenient water to get to and you'd be just as well off letting a 6-year-old throw lawn darts to figure out where to dig your well. But, hey, regardless of self-delusion or efficiency, they find water and that's all that is necessary.

Another possibility is that it may simply be tradition to use a water-diviner. People in tough environments often rely on traditions and rituals to help them make it through the day - these need not be practical, they simply need to make the person feel like they have more control over their environment than they really do. While farmers often work in non-marginal environments, the resource strains that they feel are often similar to be people in less ideal places. By relying on water-diviners, they may be able to put worries about water aside and focus on other matters, allowing them to get things done - so what seems impractical may, in fact, be very practical when considered in its broader context.

There's also the confirmation bias, something at work in many decisions that all of us make. We forget the misses and remember the hits (or the other way around), making us believe that a view that we favor is the correct one. So, if you remember the time that Joe Smith found water on land that was thought barren, you may forget the 20 other times that he couldn't find water on land where it was clearly readily available.

And, of course, there's good ol' social pressure. It may be that paying the local diviner is a good way to keep money in the community, so you do it for that reason. It may be that everyone else believes in water divining, so even if you have your doubts about hiring someone to wave sticks about, you do it anyway in order to keep in line with the existing social order.

Now, if this particular gaffe in thinking were limited to water divining, I'd probably just ignore it. But it isn't. I note several other examples above, and if I were to sit down and look for more, it would be easy. It's common for us to assume that some phenomenon is real simply because people who we assume should know believe in it. However, as is shown by water divining, even the belief of professionals doesn't make something real.

Archaeology Blahs

I waiver back-and-forth regarding my views on the state of academic vs. resource management archaeology. The really interesting, exciting work is happening at universities and in museums, where researchers are finding new ways of examining the past and applying them in creative ways. From these efforts, we are learning not only about our collective past, but also about what humans are as a species, and what our problems and promises may be. This is both exciting and valuable.

At the same time, a good deal of academic research is also rather redundant, self-indulgent, or silly. For every paper that I have read which describes something interesting or useful about humanity, I have read another which confirms that yes indeed, people on the southern California coast did eat shellfish after all - just like every other study in the area has always confirmed (whew, I'm glad we got that cleared up!); or that declares that it would be nifty to think of an artifact as something that a person left somewhere (really? I had no idea!); or that archaeology needs a feminist avant-garde to encourage greater political expression within our work (interestingly, the NAZIs and Stalin's regime also wanted greater political expression in archaeology...just not of the feminist variety); or that we should abandon all practical explanations for material culture and focus entirely upon the symbolic explanations (so, you see, peasants didn't live in poor housing and deal with malnutrition because of economic realities, they did so intentionally in order to solidify their identities as peasants!). Yes, I have read papers and books that espouse all of these positions.

Sturgeon's law applies - 90% of everything is crap.

To be fair, most academic papers don't reach grand conclusions, whether profound or inane, but simply provide data. This is, of course, a reasonable thing in any research field. And archaeology is not alone in producing silly work - I meet researchers in chemistry, history, biology, literature, etc. etc. who swear that the same is true in their fields. But, the silliness, as annoying as it can be, is the price we pay for those occasional ground-breaking and brilliant pieces of work.

Still, it can be discouraging to be awash in a sea of silliness looking for the occasional island of profundity.

On the other hand, I believe that my colleagues in resource management archaeology and I are providing a valuable service in doing what we can to protect archaeological sites. We preserve sites that the general public seems to hold are important to cultural heritage, and we preserve sites that may yield information important to anthropology. And I can point to many, many successes.

But we have to choose our battles, we have to work within an often restrictive legal framework, and we have to accept that very often we will lose. Knowing all of that, we still have to get back out the next day and work for it all over again. Very often, I feel like Sisyphus, pushing a boulder up a hill only to have it roll down once I near the top. We lose sites because of decisions, both good and bad, from government agencies. We are not able to save everything, as much as we would want to, and it can be frustrating. Moreover, we are typically the red-headed stepchildren of the environmental protection world - developers tend to understand protecting animals and plants (they may not like it, but they understand it), they understand the need to keep air and water clean, they understand the need to keep the viewscape as pleasant as possible, but most of them don't understand why anyone would want to protect what amounts to old garbage. They get it when it's burials or historic buildings, but they don't tend to get it when it's just a flaked stone scatter or a historic campsite.

Most of my clients are good. Some honestly want to protect historic resources, others simply want to build and agree to historic preservation as a permit condition, but the result is the same either way, and that is an encouraging fact. But sometimes we are working not to preserve something, but simply so that a developer can cover their ass and or play a political game. I have dug holes that yielded nothing in too many hard-packed dirt roads to believe that it is always for a reason other than that a developer wants to play politics and make nice with an agency. I have monitored too much construction in archaeologically sterile areas to believe that we are always doing it because it a sense of responsibility rather than a simple way to make it look like responsibilities are being taken care of when they may not actually be.

It doesn't help that, very often, resource management archaeology is brushed off by academic archaeologists as something not worthy of their notice. This is especially frustrating as our fieldwork tends to be at least the equal of (and very often superior to) that of academic archaeologists. It also is frustrating in that the majority of data generated in archaeology is generated by resource management archaeologists, and then ignored by researchers*.

Anyway, this mood will pass, but it is a hard place to be.






*For example, I am reading a book right now on archaeology in the Santa Barbara Channel area of California, and the book states that there has been very little work done on the mainland. This is not true at all, but most of the work was done by resource management archaeologist, and is being ignored despite the fact that it addresses many of the research questions brought up in the book.