A very handy list of Open Access and other Journals:
List of Archaeology Journals | Doug’s Archaeology.
Thanks, Doug!
Category: science
Actual incremental progress on several fronts!
Now that the storms have passed for the moment, and I can once again get to the office, I’ve actually gotten a few things done. I managed to take the few comments on the mission statements for the GHEA working groups and finalize them. That done, I set up, not one, but two (!), working groups. The first is focused on coastal erosion, and the second on global change effects on the archaeological and paleoecological records. They are now open for members (a few have already joined).
Monday’s time-sheet approvals were particularly onerous, because a change of user ID in the time-sheet system didn’t work quite right, and not only detached users from approvers until they logged in again on Monday, it also rescinded submitted and approved time-sheets from last week which were done before the update! Much confusion and a royal pain for us and for the IT/accounting folks, I can assure you. But we persevered and everyone should get paid on time! There were a few other accounting and proposal related details to deal with today, but they’re pretty well in hand, and I just need a few more numbers to get the proposal out the door.
That done, I moved on to drafting a summary for newsletters (several paragraphs) of the Polar Archaeological Network meeting in Tromsø, which somewhat coincidentally (since I am the only overlap between the two groups at the moment) was all about global change and threats to the Polar archaeological and paleoecological records. That’s been circulated and I’ve made several revisions based on comments. I’ve gotten one more set from Maribeth Murray at UAF, which actually suggests two versions, one for social science audiences and one speaking more to the paleoecology/global change folks, so I should have that ready for final circulation to the attendees tomorrow, and then it should be ready to go to out. Maribeth and I (and the other meeting attendees) are also doing a poster at the Alaska Anthropological Association annual meeting in Fairbanks next week. PAN had a preliminary poster, which I am majorly rewriting and putting Alaska-specific images on (since this version is for an Alaska meeting). I’ve got to get that finished, circulated, and down to Maribeth in Fairbanks so she can get it printed up (since large-format printers are almost as scarce as hen’s teeth in Barrow).
Also needing finishing and polishing is my paper/PowerPoint for the meeting. I am in a session in honor of Ernest S. “Tiger” Burch Jr., one of the most renowned ethnologists who ever worked in the North, who passed away unexpectedly last September. He was a brilliant and meticulous researcher, widely admired among Iñupiaq people, particularly those of Kivalina, where he and his wife lived for some time, and an all-around good person. I was proud to have him as a friend, as was my husband, Glenn Sheehan, and it’s an honor to be asked to be in this session.
I had somehow lost track of when the meeting was, and had rather a jolt today when I opened an email about a side meeting, which mentioned the attached agenda for next week’s meeting! A mad dash to make travel plans ensued, so I now have a room, a car, a plane ticket and am registered for the meeting. All told–1.5 hours. Practice makes perfect (or at least faster).
18th Arctic Conference–Part 5 (Day 2-PM)
At last! After a fine lunch, we reassembled in Dalton for the afternoon session. We moved from Alaska to the North Atlantic, and a variety of Norse sites. Tom McGovern kicked it off with an overview of what had been accomplished during the most recent IPY. Much of this is due to the work of various NABO members. He talked about some really neat school outreach programs, including one issuing GPS and camera to students & teachers to record archaeology and in the case of Iceland, place names. He also highlighted a very interesting initiative to develop
Konrad Smiarowski talked about zooarchaeology associated with the Vatnahverfi Project, part of the Norse Eastern Settlement, Greenland. The project involved survey and excavation (following NABO common protocols, which make for great inter-site inter-comparability). He was looking at how the Norse immigrants adapted to a new environment with new (to them) resources. He had evidence for the adoption of seal hunting, which the Norse seem not to have done elsewhere, despite the presence of seals, as well as hunting of walrus for ivory and birding. Bones of harp and hooded seals, both of which are migratory, show up even at more inland sites, so it looks like either people are coming to the outer coast to hunt or the seals are being traded inland. It looks like they were net or drive hunting. Things seem to have been going on well, but increasing amounts of ice seem to have changed things, driving people to intensify sealing at the same time as it was affecting the local seal populations. Things ended badly, as we know.
Ramona Harrison gave an interesting paper on the farm Gásir and its hinterlands, including various types of landscape (hayfields, pastures, etc). She is working on the zooarchaeology as part of a long-term human eco-dynamics in Eyjafjörður, Northeast Iceland. Unfortunately, my notes on this appear not to have been saved, so I won’t go into more detail, so as not to mis-report anything Ramona said, but it was quite interesting, and reports should be on the NABO website soon, if they’re not there now.
The final paper was given by Seth Brewington on work in the Faroes, particularly at Undir Junkarinsflotti. It was abandoned in the 1300s due to repeated sand blows, which were a problem at that time in a number of places on the eastern side of the North Atlantic. The paper dealt with the zooarchaeology, which is quite unique as bone preservation generally seems to be bad in the Faroes, and the idea of keeping bone is still relatively new. The inhabitants seem to have been eating lots of birds (mostly puffins), even in comparison to other Norse sites, where the bird consumption seems to drop after the earliest settlement period.
18th Arctic conference–Part 4 (Day 2-AM)
This penultimate chapter is a bit belated, to say the least, due to holidays, much travel and associated presentations, and proposal preparation. However, there were some very interesting papers on the final day as well, and I decided I needed to get this written before yet another conference happened. And I needed a break from final tweaking of the PowerPoint for said conference.
The first paper was by Molly Odell, on economic change at Mitksqaaq Angayuk between 3400-100BP. The site, on Kodiak, seems to have had discontinuous occupations from Early Katchemak to the Russian occupation. Molly focused on the fauna from a midden associated with an Alutiiq house. The house seemed to have been occupied primarily by men, based on the artifacts. The midden showed a change from a pre-contact mixed fishery (primarily cod but with significant amounts of salmon and small amounts of other locally available fish) to a fishery focused almost entirely on cod in the historic period. Molly interprets this as a shift from a winter settlement to a cod-fishing camp, presumably staffed by men.
Jennifer Raff gave a paper on mitochondrial aDNA (ancient DNA) from the Lower Alaska Peninsula & Eastern Aleutians. This is interesting, as there are disagreements about how/when various cultures in that area appeared, and whether or not they represent in situ (in place) developments or population replacements. This work may help settle some of those questions. Not to spoil any surprises, as this paper is being published, but both haplotypes A & D are well represented, and there is B from one site!
Rick Knecht, a fellow Bryn Mawr College PhD, gave a “just out of the field” talk about excavations at Nunalleq, a Yup’ik site in the Yukon-Kuskokwim delta. The Yup’ik culture is quite well-known ethnographically, but almost no archaeology has been done in the area. Nunalleq, for which there is a date of 1300BP (not sure if that’s calibrated or what it’s on or associated with) has extraordinary organic preservation at the moment, but is suffering erosion, which is accelerating due to permafrost melting and sea level rise. The local community actually contacted the archaeologists in concern. The 2010 season excavated a house, with lots of organic artifacts (rye grass matting, for example) present on the floor. They think it might have been a men’s house, which are known for the Yup’ik from the ethnographic record, based on the low numbers of women’s artifacts recovered. There was a burnt side room, with a large number of arrowheads present, which is possibly a result of conflict. More work is planned.
Chistyann Darwent followed with a report on the 2010 work at Cape Espenberg, a beach ridge complex which is located near Kotzebue in the Bering Land Bridge National Preserve. This project has been doing survey there for a couple of years and has surveyed and mapped extensively, especially the more recent periods. They have actually been able to excavate several houses (one on each of the 3 Thule-age ridges) to a considerable extent. One thing they discovered was that the surface mapping did not necessarily give a good picture of what was under the ground in terms of houses, side rooms and so forth. One of the houses seems to have burned, although why is not yet clear. They excavated an outdoor ceramic manufacturing area (inadvertently–it looked like part of the house from the surface). The houses on the oldest and middle Thule ridges had Thule 2 harpoon heads associated with them, suggesting that they were fairly early. The also found a copper eyed needle, slat armor. The tunnel floor was lined with baleen. The youngest house was of a type that was familiar to the project’s elder consultant, who had been in the US Army during the Korean War, since he’d grown up in a similar house. It had lots of evidence for fishing. The dates were a bit later than prior testing had led them to expect, the oldest around 1260-1400BP, the middle 1450-1650BP.
Justin Tackney gave a paper on mDNA (mitochondrial DNA) from Nuvuk, as well as presenting the new direct dates that Joan Coltrane has for the human remains. The results show a number of haplogroups hypothesized to be founders to modern Inuit populations all in one area, which is new. In general, this supports a Thule expansion from North Alaska.
I got the slot before lunch, and gave a paper looking at the material culture of modern Iñupiat whaling. I am using this as a way to approach what sort of evidence might be expected in archaeological sites of whalers, and where that evidence might be found. Essentially, the modern case has a number of artifacts that are needed for whaling and nothing else, most of which have pre-contact equivalents. The interesting thing is that they are generally not stored in the house, which implies that excavations focused on houses may not be able to address presence/absence whaling too well.
A Meeting in Abisko
I’m at the Abisko Naturvetenskapliga Station (Scientific Research Station) in northern Sweden. There is a meeting here of scientists and station managers who are involved either directly (or indirectly in the case of non-EU participants) in a project called INTERACT which is about building research & monitoring infrastructure for arctic research. I’ve come along since my husband is here representing the Barrow Environmental Observatory, and we are both giving papers at a meeting in Munich after this.
It was quite the trip to get here, but the station is very nice, and it looks like it will be quite an interesting meeting.
18th Arctic Conference–Part 1 (the scenic view of Bryn Mawr College).
I’m back from the 18th Arctic Conference in Bryn Mawr. It was really busy, and the Wi-Fi at Wyndham, where I was staying and had downtime, was amazingly slow, so I didn’t try posting from there. I’m pretty busy, since I’m only here for a week before we go on a family vacation in Hawaii, so I’m going to break this into small chunks.
We were really lucky to have great weather the whole time. Apparently the weather has been rather awful this fall in SE Pennsylvania, but last weekend it was perfect. Bluebird days, still some leaves on the trees, not too hot or muggy. The campus looked lovely.
I went inside Thomas, which was the original College library. It is a bit Hogwarts looking, I suppose. There used to be a free coffee hour every day in Thomas Great Hall, where just about everyone on campus showed up. It was very handy.
Dalton Hall is where the meeting was held. It is the home of the Anthropology Department, and other social sciences. Dalton was built in 1892 as the first science laboratory dedicated to academics. It underwent a major rehab, which came out really well. The old building had central stairs, which weren’t up to code, so the “lantern” got stuck on to put the new stairs in. The labs and lecture spaces are just great, way nicer than when I was doing my AB and my PhD coursework there.
Running to stand still
No, not on a treadmill, although it would be nice to have a bit of free time for that. Actually, it’s where I’m at with work. I’ve been thinking about archaeology and ways that it can inform things besides our knowledge of past lifeways. For the past week or so, I’ve been running into lots of articles, posts, calls for white papers, and so on that connect to that in various ways. Today I attended a seminar that brought up a number of issues that archaeology could play a part in addressing in a meaningful way.
However, to take these thoughts further means I need a bit of time to think and read, and then try to put thoughts into sensible words that can communicate with a variety of communities. But the situation at work is still pretty stressful. My boss has sent her admin assistant to help me out and get cross-trained on our stuff for a week or two. Jennifer’s doing great, but it’s a really complex job, so she does have to ask me questions (which she does, instead of grinding to a halt, thank goodness) but I don’t actually know the filing system inside out (we’ve found 2 sets of files for some things where we would only expect one, and aren’t sure what the difference is yet) so sometimes it takes some time.
I am at least making progress on the reports, although ArcMap (the GIS program) decided to get weird this afternoon and refuse to import a bunch of STP (shovel test pit) locations I needed to finish a final map for one of the reports. It should have taken less than half an hour to do the map, but several hours later, no joy. Tomorrow (fingers crossed here).
I also have to finish assembling the PowerPoint for the Saturday Schoolyard talk this Saturday. Trace sent me his piece this evening (amazingly, he’d picked the same template & color scheme I was already using for my part, so that bit should be pretty easy. Heather just found out she isn’t leaving for Fairbanks for the Alaska Federation of Natives (AFN) meetings until Saturday night, so she’s going to talk too.
Sunday and Monday (which is a holiday in Alaska, so we are off work, theoretically) I am making a quick trip to Anchorage. Maybe I’ll get a little time to think on the plane…
How to write a news article about science? Spoof or template?
This post on The Guardian’s science blog has drawn a fair amount on interest in “new media” science quarters.. It’s pretty funny, although it occurs to me that there are probably writers out there who are taking it as a template for future endeavors.
Taking the temperature of permafrost and archaeology
Today the Saturday Schoolyard talk was about warming permafrost. The speaker was Dr. Vladimir Romanovsky, head of the Permafrost Laboratory at the Geophysical Institute at UAF. He gave a really good talk, explaining what permafrost is (permanently frozen ground, basically), why it matters if it melts, and how permafrost researchers go about taking its temperature (with thermistor (temperature sensor) strings down boreholes, mostly). He then went on to show how permafrost temperatures had changed through time as the atmospheric temperature had changed.
After that, he moved to predictive modeling based on climatic models. Using even a fairly middle-of-the-road climate model, it doesn’t look too good for permafrost in Alaska by the end of the century. He also showed active layer (the soil layer at the top that freezes and thaws every year) modeling done on a similar basis some years ago, and pointed out that over the 10 years since the model was run it had been spot on in its predictions. The active layer is clearly going to be a lot deeper if the predictions hold.
This is not good news for Arctic archaeology. Compared to most of the rest of the world, where archaeologists are left to puzzle out what people were doing from a few stone tools, waste flakes and potsherds, we get really good organic preservation here, which makes it possible to look at questions that can’t be addressed elsewhere for lack of relevant data. The reason the preservation is so good is in large part permafrost, and permanently frozen sites. Last week, when Claire was here, we were getting a lot of well-preserved 1600-1700 year old marine invertebrates from the samples. They exist because the layer was frozen for most, if not all, of that time.
I’m been thinking a lot about site destruction, and how to determine which areas are at highest risk, in order to prioritize field efforts. Perhaps because coastal erosion is the big and immediate threat at Nuvuk (and all the other coastal sites I’ve worked at except for Ipuitak, where the immediate threat was the seawall being built to prevent coastal erosion), I’ve tended to focus on that, as well as eroding river banks for sites along rivers. The melting of exposed ice wedges, which then leads to collapse of the overlying ground is also something I’ve been concerned about. And these are major threats, which can tumble entire houses upside down on the beach for the waves to destroy.
I hadn’t thought much at all about the risks to Arctic archaeology from a significant deepening of the active layer, which will mean that artifacts and ecofacts (animal bones, insects, etc.) will freeze and thaw every year (which is hard on things to begin with, often causing rocks and bones to split) and while they are thawed, they will be decaying. Even now, really old sites don’t have much organic preservation. Even sites that are in no danger of eroding are threatened with the gradual invisible loss of a great deal of the information they now contain.
Obviously, if we are going to develop a “threat matrix” for Arctic archaeological sites, this has to be part of it. I talked to Vlad a bit after the talk, and he thought he had students who could be put to work on this problem, perhaps by combining what we know about site locations in Alaska (by no means a complete listing) and the existing models for permafrost change. He also said that one could do active layer modeling for a specific site with a year’s worth of soil and air temperatures, so that’s something we definitely need to get started on.
Out of Ice and Time 