I have been very bad at making regular blog posts this spring. It's been pretty busy: on top of dealing with trying to somehow teach field school online due to the COVID-19 shutdown, we've been attempting to educate our kids at home, keep my wife's business afloat, and find time for me to finish up the excavations at 38FA608 by myself.  And then we decided to move. So now we're doing that, too.

I have accepted a position as a Research Archaeologist at the Illinois State Archaeological Survey starting in September. I'll write more about that after we get settled in Champaign-Urbana.

Deciding to leave South Carolina was neither simple nor easy. We've been here since the summer of 2015 and my wife and I have made significant personal and professional connections that we will miss. We love the kids' school, and it is a tough call to uproot them from everything that's familiar. 

There are a lot of things about this place that I enjoy and will miss. I have several good colleagues at SCIAA and have really enjoyed working with students in the classroom and at field school. The archaeology here is fantastic and has been very good to me, as have those that have helped me with that archaeology along the way. The winter weather is great. The diversity of bird, insect, and reptile life is beautiful, as are the various cultural and natural landscapes of the state. I will miss being able to take day trips to the beach. I will miss the Columbia art scene which helped me turn a pastime into an emotionally satisfying and economically rewarding pursuit. I will miss all the good people that I've met, talked with, and worked with here: there are a lot.

But there are also a lot of things that I won't be sad to leave behind. First among them is the ridiculous political culture of this state: often corrupt, often mean, and in my opinion a great disservice to many of the citizens of South Carolina. The legacy of white supremacy upon which this state was founded continues to weigh the state down: look up state rankings for education, domestic violence, violence against women, etc. South Carolina's position is directly related to its history and culture, and many of its citizens in positions of power don't seem to be in any big hurry to work toward improvement.  It appears to me, in fact, that the opposite is true. The conservative elements here would like to further roll back protections for those in our society that are already vulnerable: people of color, the poor, the LGBTQ community, etc.. That's a shame, and it's a real turn off to those of us that value diversity, equity, and inclusion.

I won't go into a long explanation of the various personal and professional factors that weighed into our decision. I will just say that this move includes opportunities that were never available to us here and will result in a situation that is better for our family in the long run. Packing up and moving sucks, but it's for the best. I look forward to writing about archaeology and other issues from my new location and with the perspective I have gained from living in the south for five years.

As the nation's response to COVID-19 began to unfold in earnest a month ago, I anticipated that we'd go through a "shut down" period of some kind in an effort to get the spread of the virus under control. I thought maybe I'd be able to use the extra time at home to get caught up blogging, do some writing, and produce some of the student videos from my Forbidden Archaeology class last fall. Surely, I thought, the experts in our government will be able to formulate and operationalize a response to this situation that will allow us as a country to navigate it fairly well and get through it quickly.

Boy was I wrong about that. 

As a scientist, it has been amazing (and not in a good way) to watch the various levels of government field the patchwork of responses that has gotten us to where we are today. Watching what was unfolding in Italy was like having a crystal ball, and yet those at the top levels of our government chose to . . . what? Fill in the blank yourself.

Things could have been much different. If we had used our headstart and data from other countries to get a legitimate testing program up and running . . . If we had used that time to ramp up production of the PPE and medical equipment that it was obvious we would need . . .  If we had figured out how to use technology to track the spread . . . If we had done those things and had the leadership and the guts to go on complete lockdown early, we could have shut this down and gotten the situation under control before there were hundreds of thousands of cases and tens of thousands of deaths. We would have been out of the woods much sooner, with much less economic pain. But instead, we are where we are. It's not that no-one saw this train coming. It's that we didn't have the leadership and collective intelligence to figure out how to step out of the way. 

You know when you yell at the idiot in the horror movie not to open the door to the basement? That's every scientist in this country a month ago.

I am thankful that I still have my job and that my family is in relatively good shape. No-one is sick, we're not going to go hungry, and we can pay our bills. My wife and I are doing the best we can to keep our two kids in some kind of routine that involves school work and exercise. I'm getting done what I need to as far as my job. We're all working to help keep my wife's business afloat in the face of all the government bungling of the "rescue" plan that's supposed to help her pay her bills while she's forced to close. No-one is sleeping well and the house is wreck. It could be much worse, but it's no picnic.

With the sudden stoppage of the field school, getting the work there to some kind of conclusion has fallen completely on me. Field archaeology is usually a team sport. So far, I've spent three days at the site on my own working on Unit 14. Next I'll tackle finishing the levels in the block. And then I'll be left to backfill. I'm not sure when I'll be able to pull all the equipment out (that's the least of my concerns right now). I've been making videos of my solo work at 38FA608 both as public outreach and to use as tools as I continue to try to teach my students something about field archaeology without actually being together with them in the field. You can find all of the 2020 videos here. Here is the latest, where I go through the steps of excavating a probable feature:

I feel bad that my students' field experience has been so abruptly abbreviated. I know that this situation has shaken some of them, as they have had to adjust to the online learning model just as rapidly as their professors have. I've tried to create assignments for them that will teach them something about how and why we do things the way we do them, but there really is no substitute for actually doing fieldwork in the field. It's a real bummer. I hope that those that wish to will be allowed to take the course over again next spring. That's presuming, of course, that our government can find its footing and get this situation under control by then.

During our spring break, I worked with Stacey Young and other SCIAA personnel to excavate several units in the "basement" portion of 38FA608. That work was funded by an internal grant program. The goal was to explore the deeply-buried deposits at the site, hoping to positively identify an Early Archaic component. We got the fieldwork wrapped up just as things started to hit the fan. I'll make a video of the work and write more about it when I get the chance.

As an "essential employee," I do have access to my lab on campus. That means I can come and go as required to get materials that I need to do my job at home. I've gotten my computer modeling stuff going on my laptop, and have been chipping away at some demographic modelling work that I was originally going to do for the physical anthropology meeting that was cancelled. I have several papers in progress that I can work on if/when I have the time. I have taken to washing artifacts in my backyard as my kids play in the inflatable pool. I take walks in the morning to try and get some exercise before most of the rest of the world is up.

At the beginning of all this, I thought I'd be able to settle into a moderately productive routine at some point and be able to start getting ahead rather than just treading water. I'm an optimist, and I think that maybe that's still possible. It certainly hasn't happened yet, however. If I can get to the end of the day with the family and the house somewhat functional and feeling like I haven't fallen so far behind that I'll never be able to catch up, that's a win. A little bit of bad TV and/or drawing a picture at the end of the day are what passes for recreation.

I'll keep you posted as I finish up work at 38FA608. I'm hoping to find a way to provide a live feed on backfill day, which should be epic. I could really use some company out there, even if it's to jeer while I sweat my ass off. Stay tuned!

It's been a pretty busy spring. I've been working on papers, keeping things going in my lab, and teaching the field school. I just got back from a visit to Texas A & M, where I gave two presentations dealing with my work on Paleoindian and Early Archaic demography, complex systems theory, etc. It was a good visit and I'll write more about it if I get a chance.

Last week was Day 7 of the Broad River Archaeological field school. If you haven't been following along, you can catch up with the videos here. We have been battling a wet spring in several different ways, but overall it's going well. We're making good progress on the excavation and things are going pretty smoothly considering the various challenges we've faced this semester. Things will likely continue to get more complicated as we get farther down in the units and into more complex deposits.

We've also got a good luck charm this year. It may look creepy, but it says "good luck charm" right there on it, so . . .

Over the last few months I have completed a draft of an interim report of the 2015-2018 work I've been directing at 38FA608. As explained in the report, it is mainly a descriptive effort that provides basic details about the various stages of the work we've undertaken, the excavation methods employed, the units excavated, and the materials recovered so far. The report discusses the initial discovery and documentation of the site, the 2017 and 2018 seasons of field school, and the backhoe trenches that were excavated as part of the Big Broad Trenching Project.

If you've followed what's been going on at the site through my blog and the videos, you'll find much of what's in the report to be familiar. There are things you haven't seen, also: descriptions of each feature, for example, images of all the projectile points recovered so far, and some images of the prehistoric pottery. I also report the four radiocarbon dates that have been obtained so far and the single OSL date.

What you won't find in this report is analysis. The report is written, rather, to present and organize information about the excavation work at the site so that analysis of the materials and deposits can be undertaken. Those analyses are what's next.

This is a draft report, meaning that the information in it is subject to change. I have been through the contents several times, but there are certainly still errors and omissions. I will make supporting documents (including raw data) available in the "Documents" section of the Broad River Archaeological Field School website as I have time. 

I'm happy to report that the 2020 season of the Broad River Archaeological Field School has begun. We spent our first day in the field last Friday and will return to work on site 38FA608 most Fridays this semester. This will be the third season of field school at the site, and it is the biggest group so far: I have ten undergraduates, a graduate student, two staff that I hired, and several folks from the Heritage Trust Program at the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources that will participate as their schedules allow.

We spent the first couple of hours of the field school in the classroom introducing ourselves, going over the syllabus, rounding up forms, and talking about expectations, etc. I gave a presentation on what we've done at the site so far. Then we loaded up the screens and some other equipment and got everyone out to the site by about 10:45.

My main goals for the first day were to: (1) relocate the block and remove a good portion of the backfill from it; and (2) assess and deal with some slumping of the unexcavated/unprotected portion of wall that that occurred since the last field school in 2018. 

By the end of the work day on Friday we had reached the floor of Unit 6 in the block. I estimate it will take us at least two more hours to remove the remainder of the backfill from the block.​

The slumping that had occurred at the wall included Feature 5, which was unfortunate. I had documented the exposed portion of Feature 5 in my profile of the original machine cut surface, but we had not yet been able to excavate units to straighten that section of the wall so that it could be better protected. In profile, Feature 5 appeared to be a shallow pit lined with fire-cracked rock (FCR) similar to the nearby Feature 4 (which remains partly unexcavated). Given its stratigraphic location, it almost certainly dated to the Late Archaic period.

We're in the process of removing the slumped sediment and screening it. We've recovered a lot of large pieces of FCR that would have originally been in Feature 5 as well as a Savannah River point. The slumped sediments also contained a complicated stamped rim sherd that would have come from above the level of the feature.
​

This year, as in previous years, each week several students will write blog posts about their work. Those posts can be found here.  I will be producing weekly videos as well. I'll post those videos here.  Here's the first one:

I'm happy to announce that my archaeological field school is on the books again for the Spring 2020 semester. Assuming everything goes according to plan, I'll be taking students to excavate at 38FA608 each Friday next semester, beginning in mid January and running through April. I plan to once again produce weekly videos and have the students write blog posts.

I have several goals for the 2020 season. First, I plan to continue straightening "the wall" by excavating a Unit in the vicinity of Unit 13 (excavated in 2018). Unit 13 gave us our first real look at the Savannah River component of the site, producing several points in situ and a complex of deposits that included a shallow pit feature and several possible posts. At this point we know the stratigraphic location of the Savannah River component, at least in the "wall" portion of the site.  I'm hoping that an additional unit will help boost our sample of Late Archaic diagnostics as well as recover more detailed information about the components pre- and post-dating the Savannah River component. 

Second, I will continue work in the block. With removal last season of the two discrete features exposed in the floors of Units 4 and 6, we're set to continue pushing downward. One of the features was radiocarbon dated to Savannah River times, and we have a Savannah River point from the screen. While it's possible that the Mack and Savannah River components are somewhat mixed, the dated feature suggests we may already be below the Late/Terminal Archaic Mack component. It's possible that we'll hit a relatively heavy Savannah River component to match was discovered in the wall unit. It's also possible that the Savannah River component in the block is relatively light, and perhaps already mostly or partially removed. Lower than the Savannah River component, the next component that we know exists at the site is Middle Archaic in age (Guilford). It will be interesting to see what comes next in the block.

Three of the block units (Units 3, 5, and 12) are still above the Mack component. Work will continue in one or more of those units.

Thirdly, we will be searching for the Early Holocene component at the site. Two Early Archaic projectile points have been recovered from the site vicinity: one from the dirt road and one from the disturbed area immediately adjacent to where we have been excavating. Given that we know Middle Archaic materials are deeply buried at 38FA608, the presence of Early Archaic diagnostics suggests that buried Early Archaic deposits exist there also. We may have first encountered these with the excavation of Unit 11 after the close of the 2018 season. I applied for and received an internal grant from USC to fund a professional excavation in the "basement" area of the site to search for Early Holocene and/or Late Pleistocene deposits. That excavation will be concurrent with the field school.

I would like to once again thank those that contributed to the GoFundMe campaign I organized to support the 2019 season of the field school. As I have already discussed, that field school didn't happen. With the blessing of the donors, I retained the money donated for the 2019 effort. I have used a portion of the money to support the creation of 3D models of the lithic tools we've recovered from the site so far (many of the models are available on this page of the Broad River Archaeological Field School website), but the large majority will be used to support this field school. I plan to use the money to hire two people as staff and purchase the requisite expendable supplies.

Stay tuned!

As promised, Jim Vieira visited Columbia earlier this week to participate in my Forbidden Archaeology (ANTH 227) class. I gave him the floor on Monday to talk to the class about whatever he wanted to. The students were required to write a short (2-3 page) summary/critique of his presentation and prepare several written questions for Wednesday's class. I tried to mostly stay out of the way.

Overall, I think the whole thing went pretty well. Vieira's presentation gave them plenty to chew on, including things we had discussed in class (Atlantis claims, the nature of science, the Younger Dryas Impact hypothesis, the nature of myths, the cross-cultural comparison of iconography) and things we hadn't (androgynous fish gods, quantum theory, ayahuasa, Linus the cat), and they asked some good questions. I videotaped the whole thing if you're interested. There's only one camera and Vieira is the only one with a microphone, but you can still get a pretty good idea of how it went down.

The main goal of this course is for the students to come out of it with some skills evaluating claims about the human past: how do you determine if an explanation is credible or not? how do you evaluate evidence that's offered or bring new evidence to bear? can you derive expectations from a claim that you can compare to what you can observe in the world? what assumptions are embedded in a claim and are those assumptions reasonable? given two different explanations, can you determine which one is more credible? how?  These questions all have to do with the nature of archaeology as, ultimately, a material science.

As I tell my students and anyone else who will listen, the key to being in the scientific loop is having/finding/using some mechanism to evaluate whether your ideas make sense or not. As long as you're doing science, it ultimately doesn't matter where an idea originates: an idea that comes to you in a dream may be right or wrong -- the trick is knowing how to figure out which it is. In most cases, the stories we tell about the human past are linked to things that happened in the material world and therefore are accessible through archaeology. Whatever the real story is, it ultimately has to be consistent with all the material evidence that's available. Misinterpreting evidence, ignoring evidence contrary to your story, and using fake evidence are all tickets to getting the story wrong.

It is my experience that many on the "alternative" side are so invested in the stories that they're selling that they are unwilling to change their stories as new evidence is produced, old interpretations are shown to be incorrect, and some "evidence" is shown to be fraudulent. Generally, those are not people that are wiling to have a conversation about evidence. 

​Jim Vieira is not one of those people. He and I land in different places on any number of subjects, but we have yet to find a topic that we can't discuss. Outside of class, he and I spent a lot of time talking about a wide range of subjects connected to the ancient past. The conversations were always easy and almost always entertaining, and Jim and I both think that there would be outside interest in listening to that kind of communication between a professional archaeologist and someone coming from the "alternative" side of things. I proposed that we do an occasional YouTube program something along the lines of "The Mystery Hour with Andy and Jim." Hopefully we can make that happen in some form.

And here are some photos from our hike in Congaree National Park: a water moccasin along the trail and Jim using his supernatural fish god powers to levitate an acorn. I will not share with you the esoteric life coaching I received during this three hour adventure. You're welcome.

I'm happy to announce that Jim Vieira will be doing his second tour of duty as a guest in my Forbidden Archaeology class. He'll be with us for two class periods in mid-October. During the first class period he'll give his presentation; during the second the students will ask him questions. In between class periods he and I will discuss double rows of teeth, the secrets of the vast academic conspiracy of which I am an important part, and great moments in the history of stone masonry. I'll also make him walk through my art exhibit downtown.

It has been a busy few weeks. As usual, I have more topics than time. At this point, I'm going to just accept that my blog sometimes functions as an open access journal. Here is the bullet point version of what I've been up to. We'll do art first, then archaeology.

The Jasper Artist of the Year Is . . . Not Me

As I wrote in December, I was one of three finalists nominated for Jasper Artist of the Year (in the visual arts category). The awards ceremony was last Friday. I did not win the award: that honor went to Trahern Cook. I met some new people, drank some wine, and had a good time (the picture above was taken there). Congratulations to all the winners!

New Pieces Over the Holidays

In addition to "Desire," I completed several other smallish pieces over the holiday break. 

I'm still working to finish up editing the student videos from my Forbidden Archaeology class last semester. I finished one on Atlantis last week and one on pyramids today. You can find them on my YouTube channel, along with videos about my archaeological fieldwork and my art.

New Grant For Collections Work

I'm happy to announce that I have received grant monies from the Archaeological Research Trust to continue inventorying and preliminary analysis of chipped stone projectile points from the Larry Strong Collection. You may remember me writing about working with the Early Archaic materials a while ago. I'm still working with those (more on that later), but now I'm going to move on in time and process the Middle and Late Archaic stuff. Part of the rationale is that I'll be dealing with those time periods in the materials we've been excavated at the field school.

South Carolina Archaeology Class: We're Making a Movie

I'm teaching South Carolina Archaeology (ANTH 321) this semester. The class is bigger than in years past. That's good from an enrollment standpoint, but a challenge from a teaching standpoint. In the spirit of experimentation, I decided to build in a class video project. We'll be making a video attempting to showcase the archaeology of this state. I've divided the students up into groups and given them topics (mostly organized chronologically) that they're responsible for. They're going to research their topics and develop proposals about what issues, artifacts, sites, and people should be included the video. Then we'll take it from there.

Go Deep!

Today I submitted  a grant proposal for systematic exploratory work on the deep deposits at 38FA608 (the field school site). We know now several things about the sediments below the Middle Archaic zones: (1) they're deep; (2) they're Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene in age; and (3) they contain artifacts. I don't believe I've mentioned it publicly, but I submitted a sample for OSL data from the deepest stratum we've documented so far (about 5m below the original surface) and it returned a result around the Last Glacial Maximum.  Also, we've found an Early Archaic Kirk point in a disturbed part of the site. What all that means is that the landform did indeed exist at the end of the last Ice Age and (minimally) Early Archaic peoples were using it. In other words, there's a really good potential for some very high integrity buried archaeology there. Fingers crossed. 

Other News

In other news . . . our 2003 4Runner finally suffered a terminal injury. And I'm tearing out our rotted deck. And I've started working a rabbit sculpture that's big enough to sit on. It will have a tractor seat. And a gear shift. And a dashboard.

And now you are up to date.

Flavia Lovatelli and I have several things in common: (1) we both live in Columbia; (2) we both do art using discarded junk; and (3) we're both finalists for the Jasper Artist of the Year award. We also both ran "summer selfie" contests last that were largely ignored by the public. The result is that we won each other's contests, which means we're making each other art.

We decided that we'd make each other the "same" thing. Flavia picked the subject: crows. I picked the title "Desire." I don't know when they'll be done, but I do know we've both started. I settled on an idea and started putting pieces together earlier in the week. I know that Flavia's got a least a couple of coats of paint down. That's about all I can say at this point. Maybe we can exchange the pieces at the awards ceremony.

In other news: the domestication of the dog continues unabated. Have a nice weekend!