In the week before SEAC, I had the students in my South Carolina Archaeology class sorting sherds in my lab. As the first part of a group/individual ceramic project, they were getting some experience identifying vessel portion, kind of temper, surface treatment, and decoration in sherds from a surface collection from Allendale County, South Carolina (the Larry Strong collection -- the same one I used to get some data for this Kirk paper). For the second part of the project, I'm going to supply them with the combined data and ask them to: (A) match the groups to named ceramic wares using information on excellent sites such as this one; (B) create a graphic depiction of change through time in temper, surface treatment, and the frequency of decoration; and (C) address in writing several questions linking the pottery to patterns of social/technological change. 

I'm posting some quick images of most of the rim sherds (and some decorated non-rims) here so they will be able to look at them without coming back to the lab repeatedly while they're working on their projects. I know that some of you will know what these types are -- please don't deprive my students of the joy of discovery!

​Also - hi students!

Today is my last morning in Tulsa at SEAC 2017. I spent all day yesterday in the "Paleoindian and Early Archaic Southeast" symposium: 18 papers that included state-by-state updates of what we know and the data we have and treatments of topics such as megafauna in the Southeast, plant use by early foragers in the region, wet site archaeology in Florida, lithic technologies, etc. It was a marathon. 

My presentation with David Anderson was last in the lineup. I was tasked with an effort at a "big picture" demography paper. It was a lot to talk about in a short time (20 minutes) -- a difficult balancing act to discuss the dense data from such a large area and be able to explain how I tried to integrate it all into a geographical/chronological model that can be evaluated on a region-by-region basis. Anyway . . . the detail will be there in the publications that result from the endeavor.

I uploaded a pdf of my presentation here. Some of the details will change as we work through the process of refining the analysis and dividing the content into multiple papers. But you should be able to get a decent idea of what we were going for. 

I'm currently in Tulsa, OK, at the 2017 Southeastern Archaeological Conference. I took a break this afternoon from papers and talking to hole up in my hotel room and put the finishing touches on the presentation I'll be giving tomorrow. I'm honored to be senior author on a paper with David Anderson (University of Tennessee). Our paper will be last tomorrow in a marathon symposium organized by Shane Miller (Mississippi State University), Ashley Smallwood (University of West Georgia), and Jesse Tune (Fort Lewis College).

I'm really looking forward to the session, which will present summaries, updates, and syntheses of work from across the Southeast. It's intended to be a 20-year update to the work that culminated in the landmark Paleoindian and Early Archaic Southeast volume that was published in 1996. Congratulations are due to the organizers who conceived of the symposium and pulled it off.

I briefly discussed our paper back in September. Significant work has happened since then, and I'm pretty happy with the result. The point of doing a "big" paper like this, in my view, is to attempt to identify and describe patterns that require explanation. We used information from three large datasets -- PIDBA, DINAA, and an always "in progress" compilation of radiocarbon dates -- to investigate patterns of population stability/fluctuation during the Paleoindian period in the Eastern Woodlands.

As of now (rushing through this blog post so I can go out to dinner) I like the result: a six period chronological/geographical model identifying the time/space parameters of population stabilities and fluctuations. As I listen tomorrow to region-by-region updates on what we know about the Paleoindian period in the Southeast, I will almost certainly learn of many things that are wrong. But I will be listening to the results of others' work with a model in mind. That's useful. As the famous quote goes: "all models are wrong, but some are useful." To me, a useful model is a machine for thinking that makes predictions about the world that can be evaluated. So I'm looking forward to seeing what I got wrong. I wish I had a big piece of paper I could spread out on a table so I could take notes time period by time period, region by region.

After this updated photograph of Woody Guthrie, I'll post images of a few key slides from the presentation. I'll put the whole thing on my Academia page tomorrow after the dust settles. [Update 11/13/2017: the presentation is available here.]

This article about me and my artwork came out a couple of days ago in the online version of Columbia Living Magazine. The author -- Rachel Haynie -- visited me several times while I was working on "Beauty and Grace" and also accompanied me on the scrap junket I wrote about here. It has been a pleasure to get to know Rachel, and I think the article turned out well. Enjoy!

I'm happy to announce that my recent paper on the minimum viable population (MVP) size of hunter-gatherer populations is now officially published and available for download from the Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation (JASSS).  JASSS is open access, meaning anyone can access any paper at any time. It's the way to go, and I wish all journals could figure out how to play nicely with the public.

The issue of how many hunter-gatherers it takes to form a population that can sustain itself over a long period of time is relevant to understanding several issues, including: (1) how hunter-gatherer societies colonized empty landscapes; (2) how/why hunter-gatherer societies take on the forms that they do in different environments; (3) how/why/when those societies change in response to factors such as population growth.

The classic papers on the lower size limits of hunter-gatherer populations were published by Martin Wobst in the 1970's. Like him, I employ model-based approach to address the issue of how big a human population has to be to not be threatened by random fluctuations in mortality, fertility, and the ratio of males to females. Very small populations are more sensitive to those random fluctuations because each person makes up a greater percentage of the population. 

My analysis suggested that, under a range of conditions represented in the model, human populations with more than about 150 people were fairly safe over long periods of time.  That's a smaller lower size limit, I think, than a lot of people conceive of.

Here is the abstract:

"A non-spatial agent-based model is used to explore how marriage behaviors and fertility affect the minimum population size required for hunter-gatherer systems to be demographically viable. The model incorporates representations of person- and household-level constraints and behaviors affecting marriage, reproduction, and mortality. Results suggest that, under a variety of circumstances, a stable population size of about 150 persons is demographically viable in the sense that it is largely immune from extinction through normal stochastic perturbations in mortality, fertility, and sex ratio. Less restrictive marriage rules enhance the viability of small populations by making it possible to capitalize on a greater proportion of the finite female reproductive span and compensate for random fluctuations in the balance of males and females."
  

If you're interested in hunter-gatherer theory stuff, have a look and see what you think. This is probably the first paper of several I'll be writing on the topic.

I'm finally done with "Beauty and Grace." It has taken me about eight months of intermittent weekend work, from when the idea first ossified in my head during that Against Me! concert last March until I submitted it as my entry for ArtFields 2018 this evening. I finished "Grace" in time to put her into the second part of my Afterburner show at Tapp's in June, and I have mentioned the combined piece in passing a few times and posted a few photos on the Zero Point Mechanic page on Facebook. But other than I haven't talked about it too much.

That's because I was too busy struggling with it to spend energy talking about it. The beaten and bloodied boxer sitting on the stool between rounds doesn't want to chit chat.

Someone will probably accuse me of making up some art weirdo nonsense for saying this, but trust me when I tell you that sometimes you really don't know what a piece is about as you're making it. You think you know, but you don't. You're looking and seeing and doing, but meaning is percolating on some other level.

I always knew this piece was about the tension/opposition/inter-connectedness of transformation ("Grace") and acceptance ("Beauty"). It was only during another musical experience -- the Foo Fighters concert in Columbia last October -- that I understood the feeling I was going for. It's been a long week and it's beyond me right now to try to articulate it. That experience of hearing (and seeing, and feeling) live the music that connects together so many parts, people, places of my adult life was like pulling on a loose thread and seeing that what looks like a tangled mess is actually a beautifully complex, inter-connected structure. I understood then what  “Beauty” and “Grace” represent to me and how they connect, relate, and depend on one another for balance. I can't explain it. But it's art, so I don't really have to.

I'll write more about making this piece at some point. For now, here are some more images from my "four king sheets and a bunch of safety pins" hillbilly photo studio in my driveway: