Short Piece in Society for American Archaeology's Archaeological Record

Thanks to Lewis Borck (University of Leiden) and Matthew Sanger (Binghamton) as well as the many other contributors to the latest SAA Archaeological Record (Vol. 17 No. 1) for their contribution and invitation to me to participate in the Anarchy and Archaeology volume. The topics covered range well beyond strictly archaeological topics, and so many anthropologists, philosophers, educators, etc. will find provocative material there. How wonderful also to reconnect in a collaborative way with a former TA of mine, Uzma Rizvi! Here's the link: http://www.saa.org/AbouttheSociety/Publications/TheSAAArchaeologicalRecord/tabid/64/Default.aspx

2017 Teaching and Learning Symposium at UWM

On January 12 I had the pleasure to participate in the 2nd Annual Teaching and Learning Symposium at UW-Milwaukee. Organized by their Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, the symposium was an all-day event that brought together over 200 brilliant and enthusiastic teachers. I presented my emerging project developing a Framework & Freedom approach to increasing student creativity in the classroom. I proposed that 'play' is an ideal form of student engagement, where 'play' follows Marcuse's (1955) definition of an activity done for its own sake, not for an indirect benefit. I then led about 12 college teachers of diverse experience levels (and languages) through an exercise that taught the approach while modelling a Framework & Freedom approach. The entire packet of support materials - including the power point, in-seminar exercise, and example class exercises - is linked here.

Art Expose

On December 13, 2016 I had the privilege of exploring a "Chimu Effigy Vessel" from the Krikorian Collection at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee Art History Gallery. The vessel is an enigmatic object in that it has all the surface features of an authentic pre-Colombian vessel. It also has a hole from a barreto, or iron bar used for sounding soft earth in search of huacos, ancient pots. However, the composite face on the side of the vessel mixes Early Horizon/Early Intermediate Period (1000 BC- AD700) northern imagery with Middle Horizon (AD 500) highland imagery with northern Late Intermediate Period (ca. AD 1300) imagery. There's nothing preventing these three kinds of images to have been mixed by a pre-Colombian artisan; but it is very unexpected to see them together. Perhaps future research into the history of this object as well as residues on its surfaces - particularly interior surfaces - will illuminate the history of this mysterious object.

UWM Art Collection, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Robert V. Krikorian, 1986.006.07

Thanks to UWM Art Collection staff for the photo.

Lecture December 4, 2016. "Neighborhood Society: Ancient and Modern"

I'm honored to be presenting a lecture for the Archaeological Institute of America - Milwaukee Chapter on December 4, 2016 on the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee campus (Sabin Hall, Room G90).

This lecture will cover my current thoughts and efforts to connect neighborhood archaeology on ancient sites to what we know about the social life of American neighborhoods in recent history. Namely, I'll present recent conclusions and future plans on my work in Peru and compare it with recent research and teaching on historic Chicago neighborhoods. 

Thanks to AIA-Milwaukee and UW-Milwaukee for the invitation and hospitality! Scroll down for the calendar of all currently-scheduled lectures.

October is for skulls

October is the spookiest month. In its honor I'm posting all the representations of skulls at hand in my house. Is this exercise in repetition useful or enlightening in any way? Well, for one thing it demonstrates the wide variation in depictions of skulls available to consumers (like me). How might this representational variation compare with morphological variation in actual human skulls? How much "skullness" is required for us to read an object as a skull, specifically a human skull? What are the different conventions at work that modify a skull from being a "punk" image to being mass-produced Halloween decor to being expensive glass home decor/art?

Hyperreality in Tosa

In Wauwatosa - or just plain Tosa as is more often said - Hart Park shows us that hyperreality can give us everything we want, and more. But it can't blot out some of the more mundane elements

of landscapes we might like to forget. We can have trees emerging from rock formations that give us the option of either stairs or an escarpment for summiting and our choice of twisty or straight slides for the down climb. We can play in caves and half finished canoes formed from the trunks of impossibly large hardwood trees. Neither the trees will rot nor will the rock formations erode. 

Moreover, a hyperreality playscape allows us to engrave these impossible objects with dedications to donors and inspirational texts to highlight their connection to real things - like poetic thoughts - in the world: after all, few of us will ever encounter a hollow log large enough to walk through. 

Because these landscapes are an amplification of reality controlled by designers and town officials the masquerade can be dropped when necessary in order to reference the undeniably real historicity of the town itself. Here a sculpture inspired by Alexander Calder and Joan Miro, perhaps, attests to the 200 year history of Tosa. The sculpture is a reminder that we're here in the municipal present despite the efforts to convince children that they're in the unfinished project of the pre-tamed wilderness, a project abandoned and left for them to finish, like the oversize canoe.

Quietly in the background, the Menomonee River trickles by camouflaged by wild flowers, untrimmed weeks, and scrubby shrubs. This prairie reality enhances the deeply buried knowledge that all this furniture and its whimsy is make-believe. The wild creek bank reminds us that there really is a wild reality out there to be discovered as our plaything or place to discover or both.

Yet further in the distance polished chain stores anchor the reality that this suburban area, like most, is founded upon convenient access to basic necessities. Pick'n Save will sell raw and prepared goods,

Applebee's will provide hot starches, fats, and alcohol to cut the grease; and ATI Physical Therapy will help you put yourself back together after taking in the amenities of Tosa's suburban hyperreality.

American Indian Representations of Totemism Today at Indian Summer Festival 2016

Indian Summer Festival, reportedly the largest such festival for Indian People, took place from September 9th to 11th at the Henry W. Maier Festival Park on Milwaukee's downtown lakefront. Indian Summer Festival presents a somewhat different view of American Indian life and culture compared to what I saw at the Shalom Wildlife Zoo. I was particularly gratified to see an explanation of Great Lakes Indian tribal organization that presented the structure, meaning, and history of Great Lakes Indian totemism. As an anthropologist, totemism is an important symbolic cultural system that is foundational to our field. It continually re-emerges as a pillar of anthropological insight because it links the domains of symbolic, social,animal, and material worlds. Indeed, it would seem that under American Indian clan organization, there is limited separation between the animal, material, and human worlds. They are interrelated in a symbolic social system. They were represented in a grassy knoll with installations by 'living cultures of the Great Lakes.'

At the Shalom Wildlife Zoo totemism was represented as a personal avatar. A sign near the beginning of the zoo trail explained that Indians chose a totem animal that they felt close to; then it explained that if visitors had an animal that they felt close to as a child, then that is the visitor's "true totem." The placard finishes by referencing the phenomenon in which dogs and their owners tend to look alike.

There is some reasonable truth in some of this explanation. Emile Durkheim established social anthropology with his study of totemism in the late 19th century. He explained that people do indeed have individual totems that may be animals.

But totemism as presented at Indian Summer Festival 2016 emphasizes the social and collective levels of totemism, which is also the focus of anthropological studies of totemism.

At Indian Summer Festival totemism is presented as a structure for organizing tribal society. The totemic animals symbolize the divisions within this system. More than one's name - let alone a personal totem - the presentation at Indian Summer Festival shows that the most important aspect of one's identity was once one's clan within the totemic system. "What clan are you from" one would ask, not 'what's your name?'

This explanation of the clan/totemic system explains that the totemic system and its clans define both the meaning and location of 'community' for Ho-Chunk, Oneida, and other Great Lakes Indians groups, but also the overarching structure into which these community elements fit. Totemism, then, provides a multi-level social order as well as a symbolic map for keeping that system straight in one's mind. Moreover, according to the display at Indian Summer Festival, social functions and values are connected with different clan totems.

 

This explanation of Great Lakes totemism and clan organization also accords with Carol Mason's account of Ho-Chunk (aka Winnebago) totemism. But what seems most illuminating here is the presentation of a historical representation of Great Lakes clan organization. In this image (below) we see multiple clans represented by their totem with lines connecting them through their eyes and hearts. Notice that all lines go into the crane and leave through the crane's eye as a single strand. The Cran Clan was tasked with leadership and external communication (see above). This image, then, is a pictorial representation of Chippewa (Ojibwe) tribal structure and authority. Here we might interpret this image to say that the leader of the Cran Clan - probably Oshcabawis of "Monomoneau, WI" - is the legitimate spokesperson of the Chippewa clans. We might also interpret the twin badger-like creatures as depictions of the moity system Mason attributes to Great Lakes tribes. The small badger-like creature may be an additional division - an anomaly to a perfect moiety system.

At the Indian Summer Festival Milwaukee's Indian Peoples both presented and explored the past and present of Great Lakes area tribes. Indeed, as I suggested in my Shalom Wildlife Zoo post, Indian People are plenty able to speak for themselves; and they do, for our collective benefit.