The semester ended without much fanfare for me–I only had one class and there wasn’t a specific final project for it, just a series of close readings of important texts in Materiality and Actor-Network Theory. It was one of the best classes I’ve taken, as it had a fairly light load of reading, but the things we did read were well-selected and important within the field. If I ever teach, and if I have much control over my course content, I’d love to lead a similar class. It’s also pushed me in a slightly different direction with my dissertation, one that will be more productive.
In the meantime I’ve done a few minor projects, taught myself some new tricks with photoshop and adobe illustrator, geared up for a photography/archaeology stint this summer, and done a lot of reading for an article that I’m writing. Nothing much bloggable, obviously, but it’s been nice to be able to have a little space to get myself ready for a summer of research.
I’ll be in Jordan for much of the summer, as previously mentioned, working on the site of Dhiban in my dual role as excavator and digital documentarian. Later this week I’ll have a link to the project blog, a collaboration with some Knox college undergrads. After the excavations there end, I’ll be attending the World Archaeological Congress inter-congress in Ramallah, then going back to Turkey to finish up a few things at good ol’ Catalhoyuk. By that time it will be late August, and I’ll be back in Berkeley to help teach Archaeology and the Media and attend to some undergraduate researchers continuing work on Okapi Island in Second Life. Expect to see more about the Bahrain Bioarchaeology Project, a couple of conference papers…and I’m thinking about taking Arabic. Y’know, because I won’t be busy enough.
So, for the next few days I’ll be tying off ends, cutting, changing a few colors, keeping many the same, and then restarting the steady weaving–hoping for a good pattern, or at least something that won’t come apart once off the loom.
At first, I was at a loss. Earlier in the week I had stated my intention to twitter the Stanford meeting of the Theoretical Archaeology Group on my blog, but there I was, standing outside the door of a conference room, wondering what exactly I should write. Twitter is a social networking site that allows users to send messages to their ‘followers’ in short, 140 character-long statements. These statements can be read online or sent automatically as a text message to your cellphone. Out of curiosity I signed up for Twitter in April of 2007, but didn’t use the service much, as I didn’t know anyone else who was using it at the time. Since then, Twitter has grown precipitously, with famous users such as Tina Fey, Oprah Winfrey, Hugh Jackman and President Obama (who has been rather quiet lately) updating their subscribers on subjects ranging from world policy to food preferences–Tina Fey ate a Caramello bar for lunch on February 3rd, in case you were wondering. I find Twitter useful primarily to join in a broader conversation during specific events; Twitter is nearly indispensable during South by Southwest, a large music, film, and interactive conference where I was a guest speaker on an archaeology panel last March. People attending the conference could use hashtags, a method of tagging updates that makes it possible to search for event and topic-specific commentary. I was able to find reactions to our panel discussion by searching for archaeology under the #SXSW hashtag and was happy to see that our discussion of virtual reconstructions and the archive were well-received by the technologists in the audience.
"Geek Girl Blogger" - normalized nerd performance?
I’ve always been a little curious about what I’ve informally called “nerd cadence.” Probably best typified by the “Comic Book Guy” on the Simpsons TV show, nerd cadence is a form of ultra-precise, highly melodic speech with clipped enunciation that is performed in communities of self-identified nerds or geeks. Like most people, I’ve encountered it off and on over the years, and it was in full force at the new Star Trek movie showing in Emeryville last week. Finally, in a fit inspired by Final Cut crashing on me for the third time I decided to look it up. My knowledge of linguistic anthropology is weak at best, but I was able to find a few sources in pretty short order.
First, I found out that what I had called “nerd cadence” was termed “superstandard English.” In her article, “The Whiteness of Nerds: Superstandard English and Racial Markedness” (and also in earlier article, “Why be normal?”: Language and identity practices in a community of nerd girls”) Mary Bucholtz calls the performance of superstandard English “central to nerdy practice… (there) is a particular emphasis on language as a resource for the production of an intelligent and nonconformist identity.” Superstandard English draws on both ideological and linguistic motivations, “contrast(ing) linguistically with Standard English in its greater use of ‘supercorrect’ linguistic variables: lexical formality, carefully articulated phonological forms, and prescriptively standard grammar” to distinguish the speaker from the umarked colloquial standard English and non-standard English. Bucholtz goes on to note the particular lack of current slang, and found that it was one of the “rare instances when the nerdy teenagers (she) spoke to were willing to admit to ignorance.” I wonder how much of that has changed with the growing prevalence of the internet and nerd culture.
So, anyway, I looked up some of Mary Bucholtz’s newer work and she is currently studying “The Development of Scientist Identities and the Retention of Undergraduate Women in Science Majors,” funded by the NSF. Hey, cool.
Let’s see what we can see from the Flickr group, Archaeology in Action!
This is the photo that inspired the post, honestly. Crazy cliff-hanging action from Buzz Hoffman, digging in the Aniakchak National Monument in Alaska. He has plenty of other lovely photos of this midden that is eroding out from the cliff. Be sure to check them out.
Very urbane and clean-cut archaeology from our English friends in Suffolk, digging a Roman enclosure. Sure, dig in squares. Just make them REALLY BIG!
Speaking of squares, here’s a nice shot from an excavation at Kouphovouno in Greece. Apparently, it’s the most important Neolithic site in Laconia!
Finally, a special shot for my friend Jason, who loves really big scales! These are Spanish beads from an excavation in Florida.
Please submit your field photos to Archaeology in Action, don’t just put them up on Facebook.