Adaptive Diversity

I'm continuing the ever-unpleasant endeavor of finishing my Fremont Farmer/Forager paper for Dr Janetski. It's focused on Simms' notion of adaptive diversity, if I haven't mentioned that before. Basically the idea is that the Fremont people chose, on an individual basis, how they ought to live each year or season--one year I'm going to farm, the next I'll wander the hills gathering roots and rabbits and such. Interesting concept but not entirely reasonable if you look at hunter-gatherer/farmer behavior throughout the world.

But adaptive diversity puts me in mind of that opening bit of The Gods Must Be Crazy. It talks about how 'civilized' man creates new environments for himself instead of adapting to what he already lives in, such that he has to constantly disadapt himself from his present surroundings and readapt himself to an entirely different set of conditions. This has created all sorts of craziness sense man didn't know when to stop and created a complex of daily adaptations that have become 'required' for survival. Work, home, car, stores, etc.

So why did we do it to ourselves? We created all these 'labor saving devices' which now require children to be sentenced to 12-20 years of education just to survive in this environment that we've created. But if we go out into the original environment from which 'civilized' man emerged, we don't know how to survive.

Hence survival classes that ask people to pay large amounts of money in order to learn how to readapt to their ancestral environment. Sigh. Our air-conditioned, 4 Wheel Drive selves are something of a tribute to our inability to exist in this complicated, 'civilized' world of ours.

And I'm typing this on a laptop that's wirelessly linked to somebody or other's network in the Elms Apartments...ok, so all adaptation isn't bad...

Hoe-La

Back to 'civilization' and finally settled into a nice place south of campus. Field school was...well, long and informative and a whole bunch more adjectives that could be taken in multiple ways. I'm glad to be back where I have control over my company, let's just say, and glad to be up in the mountains working for the Uinta again. It's paradise, really.

My field school summary, in brief, is this: I'm sick of camping with archaeologists, we hit a cow with the truck (no damage to either party), midden is artifact rich, I'm sick of archaeologists, Anasazi are cool, but I'm still doing a historic thesis, did I mention I'm sick of archaeologists?, my crew was freaking hilarious (I'll tell stories, but not here), we got 13 flat tires including my freeway blowout on the last day, and I'm sick of archaeologists. About sums it up. Love my job, don't get me wrong! We really did find some neat things. It'll be interesting to follow the research over the years of the project, though I'll be long gone by the time it's done.

I'm a bit slow on the uptake of reestablishing contact with everyone, so my apologies, but internet service was finally installed in the house yesterday, so that'll help. I had to turn my baby (that's my laptop, for those of you who don't here the day-to-day cooing) in for a little maintenance check. Thankfully it only took a couple days and since it's from PC Laptops, didn't cost me a thing.

My other baby, Dirt the Subaru, got new tires Monday. She's ready for a road trip. I think I'll go to Disneyland in a couple weeks. No really. I'll post pictures. Now to find a digital camera...

Well, Pirates part deux is good, for those who haven't seen it, though, as expected, I had some issue with the increased super-natural element. Somehow barnacle-covered fathers are less realistic than sabre-fighting skeletons. Figure that one out!

Much love to all! The picture is an old 1980's view (all I've got) of Land Hill where we excavated in Utah.