Musing to Camille and now to the World =)

Sometimes I feel like I'm living in a fish tank. Perhaps this is because I'm sitting in the over-crowded OPA Graduate office which is only a leap away from the third floor bedroom window of nobody knows who over at whatits complex...sigh. I'm trying to be motivated enough to write this stinkin' paper for J, but you know, there are a ridiculous number of variables in Fremont archaeology once you start looking at it. This is why I stick to historic. I had forgotten that for a bit and was being seduced to the dark side of prehistoric archaeology, but I remember now and will endeavor to pull myself free of the scary morass of Madsen's self-created empire. World archaeology tells us that noone in their right mind goes back to hunting/gathering after adopting farming, but here in our microcosmic world, we have a goodly collection of respected scholars who genuinely believe that that is exactly what happened. Are they respected outside the Great Basin? Perhaps not. And this may be the reason why. We are, perhaps, the laughing stock of American archaeology--foolishly going about, blissfully purblind, even while impending doom approaches rapidly from the theoretical hashings of the Southwest. So what can we do? My answer, typically and characteristically mind you, is to flee--in the flight or fight world of evolutionary studies, I'm a flitting bird skipping back and forth between branches whenever I deem one or the other a safe place. I turn to historic archaeology because it is boring, simplistic, and utterly devoid of the ugly variables created by a lack of written records. Ironically, there's a fan next to me that has "Nobility" written across the face. If I turn it on will I become a Fremont fighter or will it blow me out of OPA and back to my orange-carpeted bird-cage down the hall.