The Town of Ballston, where my mother lives, has been fairly lucky as far as snow this winter. They’ve gotten some, but haven’t really been hammered. As a result, it was a white Christmas, but only just, and the snow was getting a bit worn-looking. The storm that has been creating havoc in the eastern US for several days was expected to miss entirely, but by Christmas it was tracking close to the coast, and so we did get some after Christmas snow. It was a pretty decent nor’easter along the coast, but we just got outer snow bands, for a total of about 5-6″ overnight. The trees were all snow-covered, and the bare patches and dirty spots disappeared, making everything clean & bright and new when I went out to get the paper (Paper delivery! Something we don’t have in Barrow. We can’t even get paper sent to the stores, apparently. And the newspapers wonder why readership is declining…). It’s hard not to feel optimistic when one goes out after a snow storm is over. The winds weren’t too bad here, although we did get enough gusts to take much of the snow off the evergreens over the course of the day.
The other thing was that the snow covered many of the plants, so the seed eating birds were looking for something else, and found the seed bell we’d gotten them for Christmas. We had a pair of cardinals, juncos, a blue jay, and tufted titmice and chickadees. Only the latter two stuck around until I got my camera out.
Action at the seed bell.Tufted titmouse.Chickadee
As far as I could see, there were no deformed bills in the bunch, unlike the situation in Alaska, where they are becoming alarmingly frequent.
In the afternoon we took a bus in to the University Museum at Penn for a look at the collections. William Wierzbowski, Associate Keeper of the American Section, has set things up for the visit. He had gotten a number of items that had been collected by the late Frederica de Laguna, (BMC ’27: founder of the Bryn Mawr College Anthropology Department) in Alaska out and had arranged them as a temporary “ancestor shrine” for us.
Frederica de Laguna "ancestor shrine" with a number of conference attendees. Rick Davis of Bryn Mawr, who was the host, is in the blue sweater at photo center.
It included maps drawn by Freddy, and fragments of Raven’s Tail weaving, a style which had fallen out of use and was recovered from archaeological fragments like these and a few remaining ethnographic samples.
Hand-drawn map of site location.Fragment of Raven's Tail weaving.
Bill also brought out THE original Clovis Points. It was really fun to see them “in person” as it were.
Attendees photograph the Clovis points.Clovis Point with original catalog card.Close-up of Clovis point.Close-up of Clovis point.
Here’s part one on the long-delayed wrap-up of the 18th Arctic Conference. There were a number of quite interesting papers, as is usually the case. Since most of this stuff is not yet fully published, it seems worthwhile to put a little update up here. If anything here sounds interesting, contact the authors.
The first day was mostly earlier material, from Northwest Alaska and the Alaska Range around Denali National Park. Jeff Rasic gave a paper (coauthored with Bill Hedeman, Ian Buvit and Steve Keuhn) about the Raven’s Bluff site. This site, about 100 miles north of Kotzebue, not only has fluted points and microblades, but it has a unit (Unit 1) with well-preserved old faunal remains! The 2009 and 2010 work has looked at soils, and there is clearly intact stratigraphy there. There is an upper ASTt (Arctic Small Tool tradition) component with a date of 2150±40BP, separated from the late Pleistocene materials with a fairly thick sterile layer. There are 10 C14 dates so far, 9800±60 BP and 10720±50, on the lower component. Very cool!
John Blong gave a paper on the summer’s work surveying in the uplands of the central Alaska Range, specifically the upper Savage River drainage (Denali NP) and the upper Susitna drainage. They also found some really old animal bones together with flakes (C14 dates around 10000BP), and excavated at Ewe Creek, where they got cultural material dating to 4500 BP.
Katie Krasinski gave a paper she had done with Gary Haynes on taphonomic analysis of Proboscidean remains. They had been able to work with fresh African elephant bones and Alaskan mammoth remains to look at how impacts by hammerstones, percussion flaking (this sort of bone can be flaked, as can whalebone) and carnivore chewing modify the bone. This is important, as groupings of non-intact mammoth (and mastodon in some areas) are often found. If there are lots of stone tools around, it’s fairly easy to figure out that people butchered them, even if they didn’t kill them in the first place, but otherwise, it’s a lot harder. This research is aimed at getting data to help figure that out when sites like that are found. They did gather a fair bit of data. Biggest surprise: a higher percentage of the animal-gnawed bones had spiral fractures than did the human-modified one.
Brian Wygal talked about survey in Denali NPP. There has been a several year project to try to get a handle on the prehistory of the park, finishing in 2009. The talk was a preliminary wrap-up of the project. He noted that they found the most sites the years they surveyed the fewest acres. This really points out a problem in Alaska, where the place is so huge and so little has been done. From the survey results, it also appears that the variations in tool kits which people have been wondering about are more related to seasonal movements and conditions, with microblades (and composite tools in general) perhaps being preferable in colder and snowy conditions.
Heather Smith gave paper on the excavations at the Serpentine Hot Springs site on the Seward Peninsula somewhat north of Nome. Prior work had found fluted point bases, and 2009 work had located a hearth which yielded a C14 date of around 11,200-11,400BP. Last summer’s work found more hearth features, which contained a lot of burnt bones and other organics. Dating is underway.
Lunch was in the Dorothy Vernon Room, a rather interesting room in the modern Louis Kahn dormitory Haffner Hall which includes much of the original Dorothy Vernon Room from the old Deanery. The afternoon was taken up by a visit to the collections at the University Museum at the University of Pennsylvania.
I was scheduled to pick up a rental car on Thursday. My brother drove us to Enterprise (who had the cheapest long-term 4WD rates around) to get the car. Seems like a simple thing….but not so much.
First, we were heading up Middle Line (or Middleline, depending on which sign you want to agree with on the subject of spelling), just getting ready to turn right onto Geyser Road to head to Saratoga. My brother had stopped at the stop sign, and a fellow in a pick-up who had the right-of-way started through the intersection. Some dude heading south on Middle Line blew through the stop sign and T-boned him, sending him spinning towards us. He wound up doing a 450+, parts flying everywhere, but didn’t actually hit us. So we pulled over (on top of one of the truck’s running boards, as it turns out), made sure everyone was alive & not bleeding and called 911. I actually pulled my phone out to call and answered an incoming call from my hairdresser, who I promptly hung up on.
My brother's Ford with the front tire on the Toyota's running board.A bit later, with fire police directing traffic. Stuff from the Toyota flew all the way into the snow to the right of the tan Ford!
The fellow in the pickup was fine, having luckily noticed the other guy at the last second, and floored it, so he got hit more on the bed than right on his door. The other guy was limping, although he kept saying it was a soccer injury. He was pretty shaken up, convinced his airbag hadn’t gone off (which it had), and generally freaked out. We had a bit of trouble getting him to sit down and stay put until EMS arrived.
His car was pretty messed up. The windshield was impacted pretty hard on the passenger side, which was odd given that he didn’t have a passenger or any head cuts and was holding his chest like he’d hit the airbag & wheel. Apparently, the starring was from the unrestrained GPS in the front passenger seat. There’s a lesson in that for all you kids out there…
Unfortunate result of using an electronic device while driving...
After the sheriff had statements, we were back on our way to the Enterprise in Saratoga. We arrived to find cars in the lot, but fortunately my brother didn’t leave, because there was also a small sign on the door saying they had relocated the previous day, a fact which the woman who took my reservation on Monday had neglected to mention!
We drove halfway back to Ballston, and located the new offices in a closed car dealership. They were getting the wiring for the alarm system installed on the door, so that every time anyone went in or out the tech had to get down and move his ladder. And one goes in and out a lot when renting from Enterprise…
So we got the Sorrento or equivalent I rented (AWD is a good thing in winter with my mom’s long twisty hilly drive) and set off. Almost immediately a low tire pressure light came on, so we went back. They didn’t have air yet, so we caravaned to a nearby Stewart’s Ice Cream, where they did have an air pump. The Enterprise guy said it was just low because it had gotten colder (which it pretty much hadn’t for the several days before and anyway, we were talking 18F, not -30F) but said he’d give us another car if the pressure was more than a couple of pounds under. It was six under on the first tire, and we did not need to mess with tires, so we said we’d take something else, please. He said all they had available was a Suburban, obviously hoping we’d say it was too big to drive. Since we’ve had, and really liked, 2 of them, that wasn’t a problem, and off we went, to his chagrin :-). So far, so good, although it appears to be about due for an oil change.
Not really. But getting ready to go on vacation is. We spent two weeks on Oahu over Thanksgiving. We’d been promising our daughter a trip to Hawaii when she finished high school, and this was it. Since the budget process at UIC was in full swing in November, that meant that everything had to be done before I left, not to mention all the usual packing and getting the house ready for a prolonged absence issues.
We got back (with the whole unpacking/laundry extravaganza that meant), only to leave in a week for upstate New York to visit my family for the Christmas/New Year’s holidays. That brought its own flurry of baking stollen to give in Barrow before I left, packing, Christmas shopping, etc. There was also the travel to arrange for the conferences in Europe that Glenn & I are going to in January, which is almost done.
All this by way of explaining the lack of posts for the last little while. I was on the computer so much for all of the above (except the baking, laundry & packing) that I really couldn’t face more screen time, even if there had been spare minutes.
Now we’re here after a 20+ hour trip fortunately unaffected by the bad weather happening across much of the country, so I should have a bit more time to write.
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.
Taylor Hall, first building built at Bryn Mawr College, from Thomas Library steps.Thomas Library
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.
Thomas Great Hall (apparently set up for some sort of event)Athena (actually a replica because the original was kidnapped and damaged) surrounded by offerings, holding what appears to be invitations to Lantern Night teas.Cloisters of Thomas Library.Back of Thomas Great Hall from the Cloisters.Dalton Hall. The "lantern" was a recent addition to hold a staircase that met modern code.
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.
I’m in Bryn Mawr, PA for the 18th Arctic Conference. The trip went well, with the biggest problem the 30+ minute taxi from the runway to the terminal here in Philadelphia. I’m staying in Wyndham, the Bryn Mawr College Alumnae House, replete with antiques, oriental rugs, etc. Rick Davis pretty much had everything in hand, so I had some free time to check out the 125th Anniversary exhibit in the Rare Book Room at Canaday Library, which was really pretty neat. A First Folio (Shakespeare), a Nuremberg Chronicle, a Maria Martinez black-on-black pot, Ansel Adams prints, Northwest Coast basketry, Mary Cassatt, Japanese woodblock prints, some lovely Greek pottery (including a plate by the Bryn Mawr Painter!) all in the same small room.
Had a nice dinner with Rick and Rick Knecht, and now off to bed to try & catch up on sleep so I can get up at what my body thinks is 3:45 AM.
I’ve been insanely busy for the last several weeks. I do now have a temporary admin assistant, Melinda Nayakik, who has been filing up a storm, which has been really helpful to get a handle on the office situation. Fortunately, Susie Stine, who has tons of accounting experience and has filled in on UIC Science’s accounting side before also became available. She’s helping Melinda learn the 2 (!) accounting systems and the paper-flow routines. Susie has also been really helpful as we work through moving billing to the main accounting folks. A good thing, too, since I’ve had the first round of corporate budgets and two CRM reports to take care of.
The budget is in the hands of the higher-ups until the next round, although there are a mass of questions flying back and forth as usual. One of the CRM reports is just waiting for a nicer background for the main map of this season’s work, assuming it is forthcoming soon, and the other has a couple of references that need to be added.
Other than that, the main thing that is urgent is the presentation for the 18th Arctic Conference in Bryn Mawr. I leave Tuesday night (since it takes a couple of days to get anywhere that is not in Alaska), so it has to be more or less done by then. I’ve got an outline, but I need to talk to a couple of whaling captain couples to make sure everything is correct, and I’d like some more pictures of current gear. I was going to work on this today, and maybe go visit some folks, but I somehow wound up with a stomach bug & couldn’t go out.
I’ve been working on the travel for the Christmas holidays (in upstate NY) and one of the two conferences I’m going to early next year. My husband & I are both giving papers at a conference in Munich in late January. He’s going to a meeting at Abisko in Sweden in mid-January, and they’re willing to have me come too, so we’re trying to arrange it as one trip. Less travel time, and it’ll keep the costs reasonable, I hope. The organizers are reimbursing a good bit of it, but still, no point going crazy. I’ve got to go to Tromsø in mid-February, so that travel needs to be figured out next.
Glenn & I may be the only folks at these meetings who actually think there’s a lot of daylight. Nothing like meeting in the far North in the dead of winter:-).
We’ll be on around 1:30 AKDT today. No Heather, since she fell on the ice we’ve got covering everything here (they even canceled the evening plane due to an icy runway) and hurt her ankle, so she’s laid up.
Out of Ice and Time 