“With archaeology we stake our claim to the future by finding our past”

I’m taking Ruth’s Archaeology and Film seminar this semester and our first assignment was:

A themed mini-project in one medium. Due 9 February. The common theme among all the projects will be: “With archaeology we stake our claim to the future by finding our past”. You can choose any medium that we are discussing in this course: photograph, photographic collage, video clip, montage of videoclips, line drawing, audio clip, podcast, videocast etc.. You should elaborate your medium by a textual caption in which you say why you chose this medium and why you think it expresses the theme.

For my first medium, I chose photography.  When I first posted about the decomissioned street cars in Oakland I hadn’t noticed this yet–it’s the key route symbol for Grand Avenue painted on the fence in my back yard.  Someone before me had made the same connection to the place they live, and memorialized it in a semi-private place–the wooden fence that surrounds the yard behind my apartments.  The yard was partially why I rented the place; it’s a nice little oasis from the somewhat bleak concrete and asphalt landscape outside my front door.

I chose to take a photograph of the back fence during the rainy pre-dawn hours and with a flash, so that it would look as obscured as when I first discovered it, an artifact, a relic, a sign pointing not necessarily to the old key route system, but to a deeper knowledge of Oakland.  I tweaked the settings in Lightroom so that the red paint was the only color and the rest was desaturated by the dark.

Knowing what my apartment, my street, my city looked like in the not-so-distant past is an important part of being an archaeologist to me.  It isn’t a profession as much as it is a mode of being, experiencing, seeing–a deep curiosity about the surrounding landscape.  This, in my opinion, is the most important thing that archaeologists can share with the future.

So, anyway, I’m leading the discussion about photography today in class and we are reading:

Sara Perry’s Fractured Media

Yannis Hamilakis et al – Postcards from the Edge of Time, Archaeology, Photography, Archaeo-Ethnography

Ashish Chadha’s Visions of discipline: Sir Mortimer Wheeler and the archaeological method in India

Michael Shanks’s Photography and Archaeology

A Mild Retraction – BBC’s 100 Objects

Over the weekend I was listening to more of the BBC’s History of the World in 100 Objects and I feel that I have to take back some of my enthusiasm for the series.  The broad generalizations that the host makes about the artifacts and the conclusions drawn about modern and ancient humans are vapid and irresponsible in many cases.

The show is very much a propaganda piece for the British Museum–”oh, history is universal, human experience is universal”–not terribly surprising from a museum that is trying to hold onto their colonial spoils.

Besides all of that, the show can be deeply uninteresting and misses a lot of opportunities to talk about the context of the object–the materials involved, the excavation/accessioning process, etc.

I’ll listen to a few more before unsubscribing from the podcast altogether; I’m at 9 out of 100 objects, so a 10% sample may not be representative.

Anyone else have a listen and form an opinion?

William Kentridge’s “Monument”

William Kentridge’s Monument is a captivating short animated film about the unveiling of a statue dedicated to the South African work force.  This monument comes to life, and continues to suffer under the elite white regime.  This celebration and memorialization of past injustices fails in its goal to silence or normalize these injustices, as the statue breaks the cinematic third wall and its breathing fills our ears.

Archaeology Podcasts

Since I’ve moved I’ve never bothered to get internet at home, nor do I have a television or for that matter, a home phone.  This has helped tremendously with dissertation reading and writing, but has cut down significantly on my time to answer student emails, blog, build things on Second Life, etc.  So it should probably go as I enter my twilight years of graduate school and get ready to start applying for jobs.  I’ve compensated for my lack of home internet access in several ways, including downloading podcasts at school so I have something to listen to while I cook dinner and do the dishes. (Full disclosure: I also have a first generation iphone, so I’m not entirely offline, but am unlikely to respond to emails or browse while using it.)

The state of podcasting has changed since I last paid any attention to it several years ago.  There are now several archaeology-related podcasts, and two in particular that I quite like.

The Naked Archaeologist – I must admit to having a bit of bias for liking this podcast as it features my friend Thomas Birch as the “backyard archaeologist.” His interview with Adolf Fridriksson about predictive modeling of the location of viking graves is excellent listening.

BBC’s A History of the World in 100 Objects - As I was mentioning to a friend earlier, I don’t really like the BBC’s websites, as they frequently make my web browser crash.  Good thing I usually grab podcasts through iTunes, though I have some problems with that particular piece of software as well.  Anyway, this podcast is a wonderful series that features a particular object, then links that object to its context within the world.  Sometimes it can be a little overreaching, such as the latest podcast featuring Ken Den’s Sandal Label as an example of a model of power in ancient Egypt that “resonates uncannily throughout the world today.”

Hmmm….

Okay, so I might still be a little stuck on shoes.

Photoshop for Archaeological Publication – Seeds

Part of our excavation strategy at Tall Dhiban is to “float” a sample of dirt that we excavate. So up on the site we collect about 30L of dirt out of the context we are currently digging up and send it to the lab house, where Alan (and company) diligently processes it through a flotation tank.  The flotation tank separates out what we call the light fraction and the heavy fraction–basically particulate matter that either floats or sinks, and tries to get rid of all of the dirt around it.  Then he sorts the heavy fraction (usually lots of rocks and small pot sherds) and looks at the light fraction under a microscope.  Then he identifies the different seeds and such (this is where I get a bit hazy–I’m not a paleobotanist, though I know the mechanics of it) and is able to talk about the paleoclimate, what people might have been eating, seasonality, that sort of thing.  He then takes microscopic photos of the more interesting bits and uses these photographs for publication.  I was asked to “clean up” these photographs for publication.

So all of this is a large introduction to a fairly basic blog post.  I have edited artifact photographs for publication before, but I upgraded from photoshop CS3 to CS4 this Fall and my settings were all wonky and I forgot some of the basics.  I’m blogging about it so that I can show folks what I do to clean up these photos and to get feedback on better ways.  Back when I posted about photo scales, Jason popped up and was able to give me much better scales that I use all the time.

So, anyway, here is one of the photos I started with:

Perfectly acceptable and lots of publications might use it as-is.  I quite like it as it shows the curve of the microscope and emphasizes the shape of the seed with the shadows.  But some of that detail isn’t as pertinent in black and white publication, so let’s simplify it.

I usually begin by making another duplicate layer in photoshop so that I have a back-up, something I can use for reference later on. Then I create two new transparent layers — one for the background that I “fill” with white, and another that I’ll use to paste the seed onto after I cut it out from the photo.

I tried a couple of different ways to erase the background–people have different preferences in this respect.  I usually just rely on the pen tool to trace around the object, moving the points closer in to the object or further away.  People have success with the masking tools in photoshop as well, but I don’t feel like I can control the paintbrush quite as well as the pen tool.

Once you extract the image with the pen tool, you can paste it on one of the transparent layers.  Then I like to hide the original background images so that I can see how well I did.  This seed was a bit hard because the aperture made the edges fuzzy and hard to disambiguate from the shadows.

But, you say, what about the scale?! Yes, archaeological photographs have scales in them so that you know that this seed is not the size of a bowling ball.

I like to make digital scales, and they’re pretty easy–either have some ready made and scale them into the photo, or quick-make them.  Either way it’s about the same about of time, unless you do something fancy.  I usually just make them from the reference image out of a couple of filled rectangle boxes and the font tool.

So the digital scale is just a transparent layer on top of the original image and I can move it around however I like.  I was thinking about omitting the “1″ in front of the millimeter as it seems obvious.

I also left in most of the screen on this shot so you can see all the different layers.  I usually merge the scale layers together so I can move it around more easily.

The final step is filling one of the background layers with white, then making the original photographs invisible, saving a photoshop copy (with layers) if I want to mess with it later, then collapsing the layers into a tif file.  This can be cropped (if need be) and send to the publisher:

The background erase on this one is a little wonky, but it gets the job done. I also didn’t adjust the light levels or anything on the seed itself because I wasn’t sure what would be the most helpful to the other paleobots looking at this thing. Some people like to add drop shadows, but I didn’t bother. It occurs to me that I have no training in microscope photography of any kind, how disturbing! I’ll have to remedy that.

Anyway, after you do a few dozen of artifact photo fix-ups (it’s even worse when you have to put multiple artifacts into one figure that have been taken at different scales and with different backgrounds) you begin to understand the value of taking a good shot with a good scale and nice light.  I recently saw a photo of an artifact on a blue towel–the horror.

Anyway, I’d be happy to hear any tips from people who have more experience in the matter and are willing to share!

My apologies if this was partially inarticulate–I just lectured on Ethnography, Hitchcock & film and Berger/Sontag/Barthes for three hours and I’m feeling a bit wiped out!

The Hunt – Archaeological Machinima

I’ve posted about machinima and archaeology before, and posted a short effort that I made last Spring. This time we have a slightly longer effort that is part of the result of a class that Ruth and I were teaching called “Serious Games and Virtual Worlds for Archaeology and Imagining the Past.” The class ended up being very different than what we imagined it being, but we learned a lot and have been publishing the results in various venues.  The first is this cut of a couple of scenes we filmed last semester.

The scenes were scripted by the students, using what they had learned about Catalhoyuk from The Leopard’s Tale and a few other research articles.  They built and scripted some of the items, changed their avatars, and acted out the parts in Second Life.  It was an ambitious effort and difficult in all respects, but the students were up to the challenge.  Ruth “shot” the video and we both edited it together into this short film for the Computer Applications in Archaeology conference in April.  We hope to integrate it into a slightly longer film for the SAAs as well.

Frankly, I think it’s pretty hilarious and there are a lot of mistakes in it, but it’s in good fun and the students learned a lot while making it.  Oh, and Ruth is the green person.  She doesn’t like to change her skin color.

Shoes

When I talk to people about recreating clothes and architecture in Second Life, I often use the example of shoes to illustrate a point.  I liked to draw when I was younger, but hands and feet were always a bit problematic for me.  This was often fixed by a illustrating a stray tuft of grass, or a strategically positioned object.  I got really expert at drawing people with their hands in their pockets.  But in Second Life, you can’t really do that.  You have to commit to an interpretation. I like this aspect of recreating in Second Life because you have to decide on your interpretation and back it up with as much as you can glean from the archaeological record.  I can also be a bit of a functionalist, so I think of things like people climbing ladders, hopping over gaps between houses, and sitting on scratchy woven mats when trying to imagine what people wore in the past.  So, are the people living in your archaeological imagination wearing shoes?

There are some nice examples of preserved shoes in various contexts–the pointy medieval shoes found in bogs and waterlogged sites in England, the nice woven reed shoes found in caves in the Southwest, and in the Mediterranean and the Middle East, people were often kind enough to depict shoes in their art and artifacts.  Erik Trinkaus studies early shoes based on bone structure, and Kris has a nice article about him and other archaeological shoes on About.com.

In her autobiography Dolly Parton (my admiration of her knows no bounds) tells a story about growing up in Tennessee–her mother would send all of the kids out to scour the yard after the last of the snow melted away to pick up all of the things that might have fallen and gotten lost during the wintertime.  They picked up all the sharp bits of metal and debris and only then were they allowed to take off their shoes and go barefoot for the summer.  Not exactly ethnographic analogy, but I always think of it when I see deposits of chipped obsidian that were swept off a surface and into a midden.

More to the point, shoes have been on my mind as we have had an incredible deluge here in the Bay Area, the likes of which we have not seen since my first year here in 2005/2006, and nobody seemed ready for it. All of the homeless folks around my neighborhood are walking around without shoes on.  I have become accustomed to seeing homeless people constantly, as one does in the Bay Area, but this rain has brought them into high relief once again.  Walking around the streets of downtown Oakland in the cold rain without shoes.

Time for class.

Monday Miscellany

Organizing my citations (and my thoughts!) for my dissertation has been consuming most of my time, but I wanted to give a brief Tumblr-like set of links to things that have come my way lately.

John has a great post about Caddo Mounds State Historic Site, aka the George C Davis site, which was the second field project that I worked on! I must have blogged about it back in my nascent blogging days–I will have been blogging archaeology for eight years this summer, though most of those early posts are lost to the ages.  I can’t say that I’m altogether displeased about this.

Finally, I wanted to wait to post this until all the grading was done, but I’m pretty proud of the students in the Archaeology and the Media class this past Fall.  A group of the students made this video, The Stolen Key, after I told them about the old key route streetcars that used to service the East Bay.

One of the other students in class was hired by Youtube right after graduation. Who says that we don’t teach useful skills?

Finally, Sara Perry (who has an excellent new post about the Visual Ethics of Archaeology over at her blog) pointed out that the IVSA cites an email I wrote to the mailing list last June about the ethics of digital documentation in their new code of Research Ethics and Guidelines…the funny thing is, nobody responded to my email on the mailing list! It’s a little odd to get a journal article response to a mailing list query.

Poll: Film Photography in Archaeology?

I’m trying to get a better handle on just how pervasive digital photography is in archaeology.  I know that this is going to be a horribly skewed sample, but I’d still like to hear from as many people as possible.

Please forward a link to this blog post or directly to the poll:

http://answers.polldaddy.com/poll/2499817/

Thank you!

Archaeology on Etsy

For the uninitiated, Etsy is a website that hosts listings from people who sell their own creations.  I’ve bought a few things from various sellers, mostly for Christmas gifts.  I am not much of a craftsperson myself, beyond making mudbrick or taking classes in blowing glass–generally inspired by archaeological research (with a touch of pure dilettantery).  Etsy has grown in leaps and bounds, probably caused by the upswing in DIY/Maker attitudes and the economic reality of recent years.  Last September Regretsy popped up in response to some of the more horrific crimes against crafting, much to the collective delight and mortification of the internet in general, and my friends in particular. I still have hardly ever laughed as hard as I did when I first saw the Rasta Centurion macrame mask or the Handcrafted Placenta. Naturally, I wanted to check out some of the archaeology offerings.  It also helps that I am currently heavily medicated to fight off a raging flu.  Anyway, while I’m not even a tenth as funny as the lady over at Regretsy, I thought I might share a few of my favorites.  The images are linked to the Etsy sales pages if you are tempted by any of these fine offerings.

The Archaeology Trowel Necklace, Egyptology Edition

Here’s a helpful shot of it in action, along with a suggestive dog motif:

And for the archaeologists who have retired from the field, a way to recycle your trowel:

Unique Mosaic Candle Holder by ClowerCottage

Ever wonder what to do with all the uncatalogued pot sherds you (hopefully don’t) have hanging around your house?

"Blue Shard Blossom Stained Glass Flower"

Some archaeology “inspired” arts and crafts:

1 sheet of handmade paper with primitive caveman hand print - $2 each

Anubis, here to welcome you into the underworld...or the tub.

All that said, there is also some pretty kickass stuff on etsy.  Try whipping one of these babies out next time you are in the field:

Blacksmith Forged Hand Trowels

Hand forged out of railroad spikes! Now that’s tough. But if you’re looking for something a bit more delicate:

Hand Trowel Sterling Silver Charm

I’d like to think that I’m not nerdy enough to wear this…but I’d be sorely tempted, I have to admit. If you’re after something to wear for your bouts of experimental archaeology, you could do worse than this complete set:

Halstatt Period Jewelry Set

Caern Crafts has some serious skill and attention to detail. They also have some torques and brooches worth checking out.

Finally, there’s just something so adorable about a dollhouse sized amphora:

1 inch scale amphora

I’d love to see what other people can manage in the hallowed halls of Etsy.  Send me a link to anything good!