As you’re reading this on 7/11/2014, I’m probably digging a test unit somewhere outside Glacier National Park. I’m actually on assignment this year and will be out of cell/internet range during the day. I’ll be working on an awesome possibly Archaic site along the Going-to-the-Sun Road, so look me up […]
My wife, kids and I just spent an amazing week in Seattle. It made us remember what we loved about that place: diversity, atmosphere, rapid growth, abounding opportunities, good food, great friends, and, above all, character. Seattle is definitely a trend-setting city. It’s a place where people of all walks-of-life […]
I’m still flying back from #SAA2014. Still sitting in first-class. Still hearing Lourde’s “Royals” playing in my head. Free Heineken? Why yes. I’ll have two. As I mentioned in my earlier post, Part I, I heard some gloomy information about the extreme competition in the cultural resource management archaeology industry. […]
This week, the HISTARCH listserv and the rest of the blogosphere celebrated the crushing defeat of NatGeo’s poorly planned series Nazi War Diggers. As I wrote before, the show was basically a glorification of battlefield archaeological site looting with the added bonus of human remains desecration. It was an all-around […]
March, 2014 is the last month of #blogarch Part Deux. In addition to hosting an excellent discussion in the last few months about blogging, archaeology and points between, Doug Rocks-MacQueen posited a killer final question to end the series: Where do you plan on going with blogging or where would […]
National Geographic Channel, what the hell are you thinking? Today I received an alarming message on the HistArch listserv. It seems like the corporate television channel bearing the National Geographic brand has created another riveting archaeological site looting show for its mouth-breathing audience. This time, they even desecrate human remains […]
Do we cultural resource management archaeologists do the same things? Are historic preservationists just following the Secretary of the Interior’s Guidelines for the Treatment of Historic Properties? After decades of historic preservation and cultural resource management guidelines, are we all just going through the motions—just checking the boxes for our […]
Amenity (n) (1) something that makes life easier or pleasant; (2) the attractiveness and value of real estate or of a residential structure; (3) a feature conducive to such attractiveness and value; (4) something that conduces to comfort, convenience, or enjoyment A long time ago, back in the mid-1900s, historic […]
My last few posts have been getting some serious discussion amongst the archaeologists I know and from hundreds of archaeos I don’t know. Most of the feedback I’ve been getting has been either positive or at least benign. But I’ve also heard that my posts have pissed off a few […]
The response to my blog post earlier this week about field techs teaching PhDs how to do archaeology was amazing. Most of the comments I received were either self-reflexive acknowledgements by PhDs revealing that they really didn’t know how to do cultural resource management or commercial archaeology after they finished […]
