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.
Monday, November 8, 2010
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
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.
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.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
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.
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.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Moving On, Again...
So, as stated several times lately, I have been slammed with work in Southern California. This has been keeping me from taking care of family duties, and has also put strain on my personal relationships. So, that means that I have to make a change.
I will be moving back to the Central Valley in order to be able to do fieldwork closer to home and to be near my sisters and their children. I will be moving over the course of the next month, so my updating schedule will continue to be sporadic. However, once I have moved, I should be able to update three or more times a week, so that will be groovy.
I will be moving back to the Central Valley in order to be able to do fieldwork closer to home and to be near my sisters and their children. I will be moving over the course of the next month, so my updating schedule will continue to be sporadic. However, once I have moved, I should be able to update three or more times a week, so that will be groovy.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
The Shield from Reality
You have, no doubt, encountered this at some point. You meet someone who is completely immune to all evidence, logic, and reason opposing a position that they hold because they have managed to convince themselves that there is some conspiracy, dark force, or flaw in everyone else's mind that prevents them from admitting "the truth!" Anything that you may say contrary to their conclusions must be wrong, because you and/or your information have some fatal flaw that prevents you either from ever actually seeing the truth, or from admitting it.
You may have even committed this fallacy, but you have definitely encountered it.
I first became aware of it some years back, when I encountered the wild and woolly world of pseudo-archaeology - the land of the Graham Hancocks and the Von Dannikens. The usual charge was "the 'mainstream academics' don't want you to know about this because it would ruin their professorships and book deals!" With that line of thought, any disconfirming evidence could be brushed off as propaganda by those who wished to hide the truth with a capital "T". Of course, the problem, obviously, is that this is an inversion of reality: it is Hancock and company who stand to lose money and prestige if reality isn't what they are saying it is, I have written previously about why professional researchers have no reason to hide new revelations about the past.
It's essentially a variation on the "poisoning the well" logical fallacy: rather than engage in a discussion of points made or information provided, the person committing the fallacy simply declares that the person, group, or institution providing disconfirming information is somehow corrupt, evil, or deluded and therefore can not be trusted. It tends to be applied selectively, though. When someone from the demonized camp says something that seems to be in agreement with the views of the person committing the fallacy, then the claims of evil-doing or delusion are suspended and the qualities (professional qualifications, group membership, etc.) that had been demonized are now glorified. So, for example, when a professional archaeologist says something that is in agreement with Graham Hancock, Hancock is more than happy to trumpet the fact that such a fine, qualified, individual with excellent academic ties agrees; but when the same academic disagrees with Hancock, he became yet another cog in the "academic conspiracy" to hide the past. It's a neat way to deflect criticism
As I say, I first became aware of this when as a student, when I was discovering the various silly claims in pseudo-archaeology. In the years since, I have come to notice just how common this fallacy is.
For example: when you look into the research concerning herbal remedies, you find a very mixed bag. Some of the herbs have medicinal value, others are nothing but placebos, some have value but not for what they are typically used for, some are nothing but harmful, and the ones that do have some value all have side-effects*. However, when I have spoken with people who use herbal remedies, they are usually excited when research shows benefits for one of the remedies that they favor, but they tend to dismiss research that shows other remedies to be ineffective or harmful as well as research that reveals the side-effects of the remedies that are effective as being "propaganda from 'Big Pharma', who have a profit motive for keeping you away from natural cures!**"
Glenn Beck has made ample use of this fallacy in his forays into pseudo-archaeology and pseudo-history. Again, the claim is that "the liberal elite" are covering up the truth about the past for their own nefarious ideological ends, and it is only Glenn Beck and his friends who are brave enough to reveal the true history to us all. Any evidence presented contrary to their views is simply brushed aside as evidence that the person presenting it has either been duped by some shadowy conspiracy of "the elites" or else is an active agent of said conspiracy. Just as Hancock is the one who actually stands to lose book sales if people don't believe him, and herb producers have the same profit motive as the "big pharma" that they criticize, Beck is creating a false history that suits his own ideological ends while accusing those who disagree with him of the very thing that he is doing.
But it is not a real argument in favor of anything. It is a deflection, essentially an admission that one has no legs to stand on and therefore will simply accuse anyone who disagrees of wrong-doings. Worse, those making these sorts of claims are usually hypocrites, doing the very thing that of which they accuse their opponents. When one hears someone say "well, my opponents claim X because, and only because they are guarding their ideological interests!" you should always be wary. It's not a guarantee, but there is a fair chance that the person with whom you are speaking is guilty of precisely what they are accusing everyone else of doing.
*Simple fact of the matter - if something has an effect on your body, it's due to the fact that it's monkeying around with your body chemistry. Everything that effects us, for good or for ill, has side-effects, no matter whether the substance is grown in the garden or manufactured in a lab. If something truly has not side-effect, then it's a fair bet that it has no effect at all.
**Because, you know, the companies that manufacture and sell herbal remedies never make any profit and have absolutely no financial incentive in getting you to use their products.
You may have even committed this fallacy, but you have definitely encountered it.
I first became aware of it some years back, when I encountered the wild and woolly world of pseudo-archaeology - the land of the Graham Hancocks and the Von Dannikens. The usual charge was "the 'mainstream academics' don't want you to know about this because it would ruin their professorships and book deals!" With that line of thought, any disconfirming evidence could be brushed off as propaganda by those who wished to hide the truth with a capital "T". Of course, the problem, obviously, is that this is an inversion of reality: it is Hancock and company who stand to lose money and prestige if reality isn't what they are saying it is, I have written previously about why professional researchers have no reason to hide new revelations about the past.
It's essentially a variation on the "poisoning the well" logical fallacy: rather than engage in a discussion of points made or information provided, the person committing the fallacy simply declares that the person, group, or institution providing disconfirming information is somehow corrupt, evil, or deluded and therefore can not be trusted. It tends to be applied selectively, though. When someone from the demonized camp says something that seems to be in agreement with the views of the person committing the fallacy, then the claims of evil-doing or delusion are suspended and the qualities (professional qualifications, group membership, etc.) that had been demonized are now glorified. So, for example, when a professional archaeologist says something that is in agreement with Graham Hancock, Hancock is more than happy to trumpet the fact that such a fine, qualified, individual with excellent academic ties agrees; but when the same academic disagrees with Hancock, he became yet another cog in the "academic conspiracy" to hide the past. It's a neat way to deflect criticism
As I say, I first became aware of this when as a student, when I was discovering the various silly claims in pseudo-archaeology. In the years since, I have come to notice just how common this fallacy is.
For example: when you look into the research concerning herbal remedies, you find a very mixed bag. Some of the herbs have medicinal value, others are nothing but placebos, some have value but not for what they are typically used for, some are nothing but harmful, and the ones that do have some value all have side-effects*. However, when I have spoken with people who use herbal remedies, they are usually excited when research shows benefits for one of the remedies that they favor, but they tend to dismiss research that shows other remedies to be ineffective or harmful as well as research that reveals the side-effects of the remedies that are effective as being "propaganda from 'Big Pharma', who have a profit motive for keeping you away from natural cures!**"
Glenn Beck has made ample use of this fallacy in his forays into pseudo-archaeology and pseudo-history. Again, the claim is that "the liberal elite" are covering up the truth about the past for their own nefarious ideological ends, and it is only Glenn Beck and his friends who are brave enough to reveal the true history to us all. Any evidence presented contrary to their views is simply brushed aside as evidence that the person presenting it has either been duped by some shadowy conspiracy of "the elites" or else is an active agent of said conspiracy. Just as Hancock is the one who actually stands to lose book sales if people don't believe him, and herb producers have the same profit motive as the "big pharma" that they criticize, Beck is creating a false history that suits his own ideological ends while accusing those who disagree with him of the very thing that he is doing.
But it is not a real argument in favor of anything. It is a deflection, essentially an admission that one has no legs to stand on and therefore will simply accuse anyone who disagrees of wrong-doings. Worse, those making these sorts of claims are usually hypocrites, doing the very thing that of which they accuse their opponents. When one hears someone say "well, my opponents claim X because, and only because they are guarding their ideological interests!" you should always be wary. It's not a guarantee, but there is a fair chance that the person with whom you are speaking is guilty of precisely what they are accusing everyone else of doing.
*Simple fact of the matter - if something has an effect on your body, it's due to the fact that it's monkeying around with your body chemistry. Everything that effects us, for good or for ill, has side-effects, no matter whether the substance is grown in the garden or manufactured in a lab. If something truly has not side-effect, then it's a fair bet that it has no effect at all.
**Because, you know, the companies that manufacture and sell herbal remedies never make any profit and have absolutely no financial incentive in getting you to use their products.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Research vs. Management
I have had the strange experience these last few weeks of being confronted face-on with the difference between research-oriented archaeology and management/compliance-oriented archaeology.
I have been out in the Mojave again - called out at the last minute to help define the boundaries of archaeological sites in order to ensure that they will not be harmed by planned construction activities, in this case, the use of specific dirt roads to get to and from construction locations. This means that I have spent the last two weeks digging 50-centimeter wide holes, sifting the soil through metal mesh screens, and making a catalogue of what was found, and then filling the hole back in.
And those of you who were in the Army probably thought that you were the only people required to continuously dig holes and fill them back in again.
This process is not nearly as arduous as it may sound when you are finding archaeological materials or when the soil is easy to dig and to screen. But digging through it is a bit like digging through concrete. So, we have had long days of hard physical labor. One the one hand, it is commendable that my client is going through such trouble to make sure that it doesn't damage any archaeological sites. On the other hand, my hands, shoulders, and back have probably aged ten years in the last two weeks.
Simultaneous with this field work, I have been working on a paper for publication in an archaeology journal. It is based on my Masters thesis, and represents and effort to reconcile two strands of anthropological data that are frequently at odds with each other. While working on the paper, I have been reminded of both the difficulty of doing the work that resulted in my thesis, and also the intellectual pleasure that I took in analyzing the data and writing the document.
Or, put another way, I have been reminded of what originally attracted me to archaeology in the first place.
It's a bit demoralizing to be working on a project that is regulation/management-driven and so far way from any real archaeology while simultaneously working on a research project. I know that not all of my projects are like this, and that my line of work has allowed me to dig up airplane crashes, cling to cliffsides, climb mountains, get whisked around in helicopters, and all kinds of other groovy things. However, at the moment, I am feeling a bit low, and wondering why I didn't become a dental hygienist.
So it goes.
I have been out in the Mojave again - called out at the last minute to help define the boundaries of archaeological sites in order to ensure that they will not be harmed by planned construction activities, in this case, the use of specific dirt roads to get to and from construction locations. This means that I have spent the last two weeks digging 50-centimeter wide holes, sifting the soil through metal mesh screens, and making a catalogue of what was found, and then filling the hole back in.
And those of you who were in the Army probably thought that you were the only people required to continuously dig holes and fill them back in again.
This process is not nearly as arduous as it may sound when you are finding archaeological materials or when the soil is easy to dig and to screen. But digging through it is a bit like digging through concrete. So, we have had long days of hard physical labor. One the one hand, it is commendable that my client is going through such trouble to make sure that it doesn't damage any archaeological sites. On the other hand, my hands, shoulders, and back have probably aged ten years in the last two weeks.
Simultaneous with this field work, I have been working on a paper for publication in an archaeology journal. It is based on my Masters thesis, and represents and effort to reconcile two strands of anthropological data that are frequently at odds with each other. While working on the paper, I have been reminded of both the difficulty of doing the work that resulted in my thesis, and also the intellectual pleasure that I took in analyzing the data and writing the document.
Or, put another way, I have been reminded of what originally attracted me to archaeology in the first place.
It's a bit demoralizing to be working on a project that is regulation/management-driven and so far way from any real archaeology while simultaneously working on a research project. I know that not all of my projects are like this, and that my line of work has allowed me to dig up airplane crashes, cling to cliffsides, climb mountains, get whisked around in helicopters, and all kinds of other groovy things. However, at the moment, I am feeling a bit low, and wondering why I didn't become a dental hygienist.
So it goes.
Monday, October 11, 2010
The Walking Dead, Sir Francis Drake's Ego, and Cultural Context
In 1579, Sir Francis Drake (a man with a commanding history considering that he was named after a type of waterfowl) made landfall on the Pacific Coast of North America and had a strange encounter with the native peoples. The exact location is unknown*, but is generally thought to have been along the northern California coast, probably somewhere in the vicinity of the San Francisco ay area, although arguments have been made that the fabled landing occurred in Oregon and not California, and at least one claimant puts forward the notion that a massive conspiracy has hidden Drakes' exploration of the Canadian coast**.
Regardless of where, exactly, it occurred, Drake landed on the Pacific Coast of North America, and met a group of natives. Duck, er...I mean Drake, accompanied by some of his men, met a group of natives who, amongst much pomp, presented Drake with a crown made of local vegetation, and a scepter, amongst many other gifts of food and other goods. Drake took this to mean that these people, so impressed by his regal bearing, had proclaimed him their king.
Healthy ego, that Drake.
To be fair, Drake came from a culture in which the ceremonial placement of fancy headgear and ornate staves was part of ceremonies intended to bestow power upon a political leader. It had never occurred to ol' Sir Francis that perhaps the fashionable hat and walking stick given him by the natives might not have the same meaning in the Americas as it did in Europe. And so Drake went on believing that, not only had he claimed that land for England, but that he had done so rightfully after being named the king.
Re-examination of Drake's account by modern anthropologists has produced a rather different story.
Ceremonies in which the dead ancestors, or the recently dead, return to interact with the living are common throughout the world, and were a normal part of the cermonial/religious life of the native peoples of western North America. In many of these ceremonies, it was necessary that the dead return in the flesh in order to accept gifts and witness rituals by those still living. This creates a bit of a logistics problem, as the dead aren't exactly known for getting up and taking part in elaborate rituals. The solution to this is to have people from another village appear and act essentially as proxies for the dead***.
And it appears that Drake and company showed up at just the right place at just the right time to serve the role of the returning dead.
The "crown" and "scepter" that Drake received are consistent with ritual objects used by the Miwok and other coastal Native American groups as part of such ceremonies. The description given by Drake of the other gifts and the activity surrounding them are also consistent with one of these ceremonies.
So, Drake thought that he was being made a king, and the natives thought that Drake and crew were the walking dead. Sure, a bunch of ship-bound limeys probably weren't what the locals were expecting, but they showed up at the right time and right place, and therefore they would do. I can only imagine that the natives were rather non-plussed when the people who were supposed to be playing the role of the dead finally showed up.
It's worth keeping this in mind. Every time that I hear someone discuss the wars in the Middle East, or travel to Asia, or any of the other myriad of situations where two different cultures come into contact, they assume that the people of the other culture view the world in the same way as them. But if the Zombie Drake Affair teaches us nothing else, it should teach us that even actions and items that seem absolutely clear-cut to one culture may have wildly different meanings to another. Leaving aside all of the Kum-By-Ya "Can't we all just get along" stuff, this is important to keep in mind if we actually want to emerge from interactions with other cultures while keeping our own skins intact.
Or, hey, you can always just treat this whole thing as a funny story. Which, it must be said, it is.
*For many years, a brass plate found in Marin County was held up by many, especially historian Herbert Eugene Bolton, as physical evidence of Drake having landed in the Marin County area. The problem is that the plate was manufactured in the 1930s by members of E Clampus Vitus (ECV) - a historical group which intentionally gave itself an absolutely meaningless Latin-sounding name - as a joke. Bolton didn't get the joke, and went on to proclaim the plate the real deal. Members of ECV tried to subtly tip Bolton off to the forgery, but were never successful, and were apparently too polite to call him on it and embarrass him publicly. In the 1970s, a battery of tests showed the plate to be a hoax, but the full story didn't come out until 2003, when Bolton was gone and the hoax could be revealed without causing him trouble.
You know, I wish I could invent something as funny as the true story of this brass plate.
**No, I'm not buying it, either.
***Whether they are viewed as proxies, or are viewed as the dead actually returning in the form of the neighbors, is a debate that I will leave to my ethnohistorian colleagues, as they are better at undertsanding, or at least accepting, the often convoluted reasoning that people use in many religious ceremonies.
Regardless of where, exactly, it occurred, Drake landed on the Pacific Coast of North America, and met a group of natives. Duck, er...I mean Drake, accompanied by some of his men, met a group of natives who, amongst much pomp, presented Drake with a crown made of local vegetation, and a scepter, amongst many other gifts of food and other goods. Drake took this to mean that these people, so impressed by his regal bearing, had proclaimed him their king.
Healthy ego, that Drake.
To be fair, Drake came from a culture in which the ceremonial placement of fancy headgear and ornate staves was part of ceremonies intended to bestow power upon a political leader. It had never occurred to ol' Sir Francis that perhaps the fashionable hat and walking stick given him by the natives might not have the same meaning in the Americas as it did in Europe. And so Drake went on believing that, not only had he claimed that land for England, but that he had done so rightfully after being named the king.
Re-examination of Drake's account by modern anthropologists has produced a rather different story.
Ceremonies in which the dead ancestors, or the recently dead, return to interact with the living are common throughout the world, and were a normal part of the cermonial/religious life of the native peoples of western North America. In many of these ceremonies, it was necessary that the dead return in the flesh in order to accept gifts and witness rituals by those still living. This creates a bit of a logistics problem, as the dead aren't exactly known for getting up and taking part in elaborate rituals. The solution to this is to have people from another village appear and act essentially as proxies for the dead***.
And it appears that Drake and company showed up at just the right place at just the right time to serve the role of the returning dead.
The "crown" and "scepter" that Drake received are consistent with ritual objects used by the Miwok and other coastal Native American groups as part of such ceremonies. The description given by Drake of the other gifts and the activity surrounding them are also consistent with one of these ceremonies.
So, Drake thought that he was being made a king, and the natives thought that Drake and crew were the walking dead. Sure, a bunch of ship-bound limeys probably weren't what the locals were expecting, but they showed up at the right time and right place, and therefore they would do. I can only imagine that the natives were rather non-plussed when the people who were supposed to be playing the role of the dead finally showed up.
It's worth keeping this in mind. Every time that I hear someone discuss the wars in the Middle East, or travel to Asia, or any of the other myriad of situations where two different cultures come into contact, they assume that the people of the other culture view the world in the same way as them. But if the Zombie Drake Affair teaches us nothing else, it should teach us that even actions and items that seem absolutely clear-cut to one culture may have wildly different meanings to another. Leaving aside all of the Kum-By-Ya "Can't we all just get along" stuff, this is important to keep in mind if we actually want to emerge from interactions with other cultures while keeping our own skins intact.
Or, hey, you can always just treat this whole thing as a funny story. Which, it must be said, it is.
*For many years, a brass plate found in Marin County was held up by many, especially historian Herbert Eugene Bolton, as physical evidence of Drake having landed in the Marin County area. The problem is that the plate was manufactured in the 1930s by members of E Clampus Vitus (ECV) - a historical group which intentionally gave itself an absolutely meaningless Latin-sounding name - as a joke. Bolton didn't get the joke, and went on to proclaim the plate the real deal. Members of ECV tried to subtly tip Bolton off to the forgery, but were never successful, and were apparently too polite to call him on it and embarrass him publicly. In the 1970s, a battery of tests showed the plate to be a hoax, but the full story didn't come out until 2003, when Bolton was gone and the hoax could be revealed without causing him trouble.
You know, I wish I could invent something as funny as the true story of this brass plate.
**No, I'm not buying it, either.
***Whether they are viewed as proxies, or are viewed as the dead actually returning in the form of the neighbors, is a debate that I will leave to my ethnohistorian colleagues, as they are better at undertsanding, or at least accepting, the often convoluted reasoning that people use in many religious ceremonies.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)