The Southwest Symposium

I just posted this on Friends of the Fremont, but for those of you who are archaeologists, I'll add it here as well. You should probably just go to FOF, though...

I figure I better hurry and post just in case Holly decides to do something brash and actually post--wouldn't want to be branded as she has been.

That said, all I'm gonna say about you sceptics and your anti-historic attitude is...well...ok, I got nothin', but it's still cool. Pass your rust to me, I'll gladly take it--maybe it's my practical side reacting to the number of uncontrollable variables in prehistorics. But don't get me wrong, I'll take a pretty lithic scatter over a pile of cans any day of the week.

Now, to the Symposium...

First of all, even now, days later, I can feel my tailbone. The drive was LONG. I tried keeping the 'hey, we're bonding' perspective and that made it slightly more tolerable. 1776 was really enjoyable even though it came in such large blocks.

The first session was definitely the highlight for me, despite its comparative lack of historic discussion, but when it came down to it, I enjoyed the Pueblo talk a lot more than I did any of the Euro-American junk. Traitor to my own cause.

Christine Ward's discussion of lithic procurement. Definitely interesting stuff--a great way to start the conference. Aaron has already discussed it, so I won't except to say that it was definitely one of the more useful presentations.

Donna Glowacki's was a little soft around the edges, but I enjoyed the basic concepts. She discussed The Social Landscape of Depopulation in the northern San Juan. I resonate with ideas that go beyond what's strictly represented on the ground and really try to bring in our inherent understanding of humans, but getting too post-processualist can rub me the wrong way. In this case, some good points were made and I'll just choose to ignore the rest. Ultimately she suggested that movements in the region, particularly between the east and west, were caused by social differentiation in addition to drought. The east became more ritualistic than the west and that affected the equilibrium.

Does anyone know of any positive demonstration of the southwest "ball courts"? I mean, yes, they're big flat community areas with seating around, and yes, they're very similar to what we see in Mesoamerica, but do we have associated gaming artifacts? Just curious. I wonder if we tend to just follow along with traditional terminology and let previous biases (such as the standard south to north movement) cloud our ability to read the ground. Ball courts were mentioned, mostly in passing, in a couple of the presentations.

Wendy Ashmore was the discussant, as Aaron mentioned. Her broad discussion of landscape theory was certainly more useful than anything any of the other discussants shared. Her nine factors to be considered were: (1) use of ethnography, (2) consideration of the spatial scale, (3) physical visibility, (4) time, (5) decision making and strategy use, (6) social relations and interaction, (7) movement/pilgrimages, (8) power, and (9) citation circles/networks. I appreciated her inclusion of no. 9—that we need to acknowledge the work being done on the other side of the Atlantic and the Euros need to do the same.

Well, I’m long-winded. The point is that the conference had a lot of good points. I got to see a few token rusty things, particularly in Carol Griffith’s trash talk. Interesting history bites about waste disposal. Did you know there’s a landfill in Fresno that’s eligible for the Register under A, B, C, & D?! The fire talks were interesting, but I think more could have been done. My particular interest in the fire venue is maybe better saved for a separate post…I’ll probably do that one of these days.

In the meantime, it’s oddly nice to be back to the bubble, though I’m still hoping for a giant pin to come along someday. Looking forward to the Great Basin Conference, now, or whatever may come before that.