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.

Ah-dee-oh's

Well kids, I'm off to field school for the next two months. I shall see thee upon my return and shall post pictures (oooohhh....aaaahhhh)! In the meantime, look at my little thumbnail i.d. pic cuz that was the taken at field school 5 years ago.

Much love. Good luck with life. Funny, really. Despite the high cost of living, have you noticed how popular it remains? Lame Jack Handy theft. And what a note to leave on for so long. Alas! Well, perhaps I shall remedy it with a picture! THough that's always a trick to figure out...



Teehee. If any of you know the band Interpol, there's this song with these sick looking car accident victim puppets, but they look too freaky, so I fixed this one for a friend who likes the band. Well...now maybe the picture is worse than lame commentary! (That's ok, I thought the whole apricots in honey thing was the real low point!)

Loves!!!

And now a slightly longer Semester in Review...

Ok, I've recovered from the kick to the stomach moment of reflection and can now look objectively at life in the past four months. Here goes:

I started the semester with a highly enjoyable, though interestingly thought provoking, trip to Las Cruces, New Mexico for the Southwest Symposium archaeological conference. Very good stuff. I particularly enjoyed the first day's bits on landscape and such. Very post-processual, 'touchy-feely', archaeology. Useful in terms of acknowledging the human agent.

Following an uneventful and deceptively calm January, February hit with an, I'll admit, boring ethnographic paper due for Great Basin Seminar as well as a beginning attempt at determining what to do my archaeology paper on.

This was followed by March. Now, for those of you well acquainted with me, you'll understand that simply typing the name of that particular month makes me want to slink into the fetal position in the darkest recess of my closet while sucking my thumb and crying 'this is not happening.' That said, despite one of the worst 1st of March days I've had in years, the rest of the month wasn't so bad. Shocking considering my track record. Horrible month, really.

But I got a draft and bits in to Dr Janetski on my archaeology paper, which I finally settled into. It's on the Simms and Madsen Fremont Farmer/Forager bunk...stupid, really, and pretty annoyingly fore-sighted, but such is life. I'm designing a model test using survey data, which presents its own problems, but it's what I've got from the Forest. Since they're so nice as to give me a steady job during the summers, I can't help but feel a bit of obligation to use their data sets wherever possible. This way all that Section 106 fieldwork goes into research instead of a filing cabinet. There are a number of really interesting questions and projects I'd like follow up on while I'm with the Uinta, but to heck if there's time!

April has been a whirlwind adventure and there's still plenty of sprint left in the rush to field school May 2nd. My archaeology paper is progressing, though every student in the class is taking a 'T' on their transcript until they finish the paper...no stress there. Guess I know what I'll be doing at field school instead of enjoying my evenings... But there is light at the end of the tunnel, to be sure, and the research turned into a fairly good poster which I submitted to the Fulton Mentored Research Conference last week. Aaron, a fellow student and my sainted graphics expert, took first place in the department, and I followed for second. Dunno yet what the award is, but hey, cash is cash!

As for work, it's an on-going process. I've spent a number of hours this semester working with the photographic record of the Alkali Ridge Site 13 stuff from Harvard. This is one of Jim Allison's primary (of many) research bit right now...lots of pots and trying to shuffle through the excavation records. Good times. Of late, this part of the job has involved trying to determine vessel volume from photographs Jim took at Harvard last summer. So I hunch over a paper photograph with a ruler and try to scale things just right.

But research hours are nothing compared to the joys of field school prep. I've spent more hours in the basement than I thought possible, especially considering I'd already done a significant amount of time in that hole during my undergraduate roadkill boiling days. Sigh. But progress has been made and I think we'll actually make it in the end. I spent today washing the kitchen stuff and finalizing our shopping list so we can hit the stores this week and next. But highlights of the process have been trying out cots, setting up tents, and battling wits with Jim over whether or not we really need a box truck (where else would we pack it all? Really? Do you realize how much it takes to camp 25 people for 2 months?). I've enjoyed it. The better part of the semester was actually spent working on the ArcView maps for the research design and that was definitely rewarding.

Well, beyond school, there's been a great deal of piracy in my life. There's an eclectic bunch of archaeologists who spend their Saturday nights playing a very cool WizKids game called Pirates of the Spanish Main. It's become downright addictive. And I've also got a good friend whose favorite movie is Pirates of the Caribbean. He seems to think that we should watch it give or take EVERY WEEKEND so there go my Friday nights and here I am. Covered in basement dust and saying "Arrr" too much. Highly suspect, I'd say.

Alas. Such is the life of a common pir...I mean...student. And now, I'm off to another 700 pages for my readings class and preparation for two religion finals. As an aside, my father was able to interview with the Saints at War folks up in Salt Lake. Not only is this footage great for our family history, especially since he joined the Church as a direct result of his military service, but he will be part of the next Church video on the subject, which should be a hoot and a half. My father, the movie star. Ish. You read it here first, folks!

A Brief Semester in Review

In response to Dawn's inquiry regarding paper progress, I give you the Winter 2006 Semester in Review...

Ugh.

Well, that about sums it up folks. Bye now.

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.

Albert Einstein

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."


What a lovely perspective...
Just thought I'd share the giggle! =)