“Fitting in” – Being a White, Female Archaeologist in the Middle East

…a (controversial?) dissertation chunk…

Entreaties to “fit in” aside, the excavation team was constantly harassed by the locals on the street, particularly the women on the team; no amount of discreet dressing or walking in pairs stopped rocks from being thrown or come ons from local youth. Being up on the opposite tell was a relief from living in the small, rural town; only a few goatherds and our trusted workmen accompanied us while we were on site. Still, the relationship we had with our workmen was complex—most of them did not speak English and most of the archaeological team did not speak Arabic. The workmen were primarily older men who had lived and worked in the area for most of their lives, while the archaeology team was young and foreign; as a younger woman directing older men within a landscape that was more home to them, I negotiated the difficulties in customs and language as best as I could.

It is a truism in the Middle East that white women are to be treated as men by Muslims, though in truth we inhabit a third gender, an ambiguous pastiche of impressions gleaned from foreign media, personal experience, true curiosity and a profitability assessment. While we could negotiate this ambiguity on an individual basis, or in small groups, our status as outsiders made us extremely vulnerable to harassment and insulting encounters outside of the confines of the accommodations and the tell. Many female archaeologists are loathe to discuss this aspect of working in the Middle East (or, indeed, in other contexts–sexism is not an exclusive trait); we are expected to “fit in” and not complain so that we will be viewed as equal to male archaeologists. Complaining about ill treatment would jeopardize our standing as equals to male archaeologists. Not “fitting in” bears a stigma, if you are harassed then it is seen as a failure as an anthropologist to successfully negotiate your surroundings, and this has a serious chilling effect for women working on archaeological projects.

In 2011, journalist Lara Logan was attacked while covering the Egyptian revolution in Tahrir square, but she spoke out regarding her sexual assault, and in doing so both highlighted the embodied violence that both western and local women are threatened with on a daily basis. Working in much of the Middle East is a tacit acceptance of treatment that would not be acceptable in the United States, submitting to this treatment in hopes to “fit in” and remain silent and professional is part and parcel of this arrangement. Working in the Middle East is a constant negotiation of gendered terms, re-positioning our identities as professionals and respectable women in a context that has absolutely determined that we are neither of the above.

Contextualized Digital Archaeology – Dissertation Chapter

Crowdsourcing criticism? Okay, so probably not. I have been working in the field in Qatar (today I removed a surface and two postholes! The glamour of it all is overwhelming!) while trying to write my dissertation, with mixed results. I have a couple of chapters that are pretty ready, but I thought I’d start posting them  online for comment. Merry Christmas (?)

The chapter that I’m posting first is my methodology chapter, which is also decidedly political. This is pretty scary folks. Be nice.

WARNING – SUPER ROUGH DRAFT! NO BIBLIOGRAPHY! NO PICTURES! READ AT YOUR PERIL!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_YC3D2i7Drrk55UQ_CD6GUqtBTEQ1neAW0JHg6p1kfQ/edit

In-between Times

The semester ended without much fanfare for me–I only had one class and there wasn’t a specific final project for it, just a series of close readings of important texts in Materiality and Actor-Network Theory.  It was one of the best classes I’ve taken, as it had a fairly light load of reading, but the things we did read were well-selected and important within the field.  If I ever teach, and if I have much control over my course content, I’d love to lead a similar class.  It’s also pushed me in a slightly different direction with my dissertation, one that will be more productive.

In the meantime I’ve done a few minor projects, taught myself some new tricks with photoshop and adobe illustrator, geared up for a photography/archaeology stint this summer, and done a lot of reading for an article that I’m writing.  Nothing much bloggable, obviously, but it’s been nice to be able to have a little space to get myself ready for a summer of research.

I’ll be in Jordan for much of the summer, as previously mentioned, working on the site of Dhiban in my dual role as excavator and digital documentarian.  Later this week I’ll have a link to the project blog, a collaboration with some Knox college undergrads.  After the excavations there end, I’ll be attending the World Archaeological Congress inter-congress in Ramallah, then going back to Turkey to finish up a few things at good ol’ Catalhoyuk.  By that time it will be late August, and I’ll be back in Berkeley to help teach Archaeology and the Media and attend to some undergraduate researchers continuing work on Okapi Island in Second Life.  Expect to see more about the Bahrain Bioarchaeology Project, a couple of conference papers…and I’m thinking about taking Arabic. Y’know, because I won’t be busy enough.

So, for the next few days I’ll be tying off ends, cutting, changing a few colors, keeping many the same, and then restarting the steady weaving–hoping for a good pattern, or at least something that won’t come apart once off the loom.

New Problems, New Projects

This summer I will be joining Benjamin Porter’s team at the site of Dhiban in Jordan, excavating and doing some of that lovely digital documentation that comprises my dissertation.  This is a pretty big change, as I’ve been digging at Catalhoyuk for the last three years, but it’s a very welcome change.  Catalhoyuk is such a large project, and has so much extant scholarship that it’s a little hard to get your ideas in edgewise there.  I will miss the people and the lovely archaeology and it isn’t like it will be completely gone–I still need to write up my various projects from the site and go through with this semester’s Second Life project.  And I might stop by this summer on my way to Jordan.  We’ll see.

I’m struggling a little bit with my dissertation, but this is a semi-perpetual state for graduate study.  It probably wouldn’t be much of a dissertation without frustration and set-backs.  But I’m looking forward to digging in Dhiban, even if the work day starts at 4:30 in the morning (!) and there is no drinking allowed during the week (!!).

In other news, I started a tumblr blog called Middle Savagery (lite).  It’s just a collection of miscellaneous media scraps that I come across during the day.  I’m not very good at keeping more than one blog (indeed this one stumbles a bit sometimes) so we’ll see what happens with it.  Tumblr is nice because it’s a more informal way of sharing than fully structured blog posts and doesn’t pester your friends as much as updating on Facebook all of the time.  Anyway, here it is:

http://middlesavagery.tumblr.com/

Superstitious

I’m not a “spiritual” person and I don’t believe in ghosts or horoscopes (though finding out that my advisor is a metal dragon–mechagodzilla–in the Chinese system was pretty hilarious), but I really can’t resist a good fortune cookie.

I passed my orals!

The one piece of advice that I never got, but that I will now try to give to as many other graduate students as possible is: be happy, confident and excited about your work.  Passion and enthusiasm will be reflected back to you, just as fear and self-doubt will help them destroy you.

Well, that, and study your ass off.

Now I just have this little ol’ thing called a dissertation to write.  No sweat, right?  heh.

Benjamin, McLuhan, Foys

As we experience the new electronic and organic age with ever stronger indications of its main outlines, the preceding mechanical age becomes quite intelligible.  Now that the assembly line recedes before the new patterns of information, synchronized by electric tape, the miracles of mass-production assume entire intelligibility….What will be the new configurations of mechanisms and of literacy as these older forms of perception and judgment are interpenetrated by the new electric age?

- Marshall McLuhan, excerpted by Martin K. Foys.

Martin K. Foys’ work on medieval tapestries as “hypertextiles” is an enormous influence on the way I have been conceptualizing new media and archaeological interpretation.  Many people have used new media to communicate archaeological interpretations, but not as many have used new media theory to interpret archaeological materials.  I see it as a co-constructive process–to create new media objects to aid in interpretation is to create a narrative of archaeological interpretation, which changes the way that we see the material record.

Can you tell that I’ve been writing my dissertation prospectus? I keep telescoping between great excitement and great dread, all in the small space of my chair in front of the computer.

Io Saturnalia!

I wish I could be celebrating today in true Roman style, but I’ve still got too much work to do.  I’ll have to do it up right next year by having a party.  Friday, the day after the semester ends, I’ll be headed off to Colorado for an appropriately snowy Christmas, then back to Texas until January 8th.  I hope to get down to Mexico, but we’ll see.

Next semester is going to be rough–classes every day, Head GSI for Intro to Archaeology, finishing up my field statements and my dissertation prospectus, and scraping together a bit of cash for my final season at Catalhoyuk.  I actually wouldn’t mind going to a different dig next summer, but the set-up for developing a new media methodology for excavation (done during excavation by excavators) is pretty good there, and it’d be another big step toward finishing my dissertation.

Now, off to the library.

Emplaced vs. Virtual Interpretation

Oof, gotta take a break from negotiating the “visual turn” in text. Sometimes I wish I could just make a film to show at my orals this spring. Anyway, I was chatting with a friend about the recent virtual worlds conference in San Francisco about the world of Second Life and other recreated experiences and both of us expressed some scepticism about the utility of the concept. Admittedly, I am more interested in emplaced interpretation–giving people the tools to better understand the place that they currently inhabit, rather than a virtualized interpretation of a different place, but there is a lot of overlap between the two concepts in new media.

To illustrate, Vassar (a college I actually almost went to, had I not nearly failed out of high school out of boredom and distaste) has brought the Sistine Chapel to Second Life:

It’s apparently a proof of concept by Steve Taylor for experiencing art and architecture virtually. Neat idea, especially in that you can fly, and aren’t hurried through by crowds and guards. And, apparently, you can sit next to some guy with black wings. I’m curious to see if there is any interpretation, like text boxes explaining the art or the building material.

Lower tech, and closer to home (physically not virtually, I guess!) is the recent Helena Keeffe project which involves drawings of actual San Francisco Muni drivers, along with their stories AND their interpretations of their own routes. While I am interested in the Second Life project, these art installations are exciting and inspirational. First, for the non-Bay Area readers, riding the Muni (bus/train system in SF) can be a full-contact sport, and I’ve always thought the drivers must have near-heroic capacities for putting up with craziness and general mayhem.

Second, Helena Keeffe puts a face on these drivers and brings their interpretations of the route they see every day to the thousands of people who ride public transportation every day, not just to a select few who go to a gallery (in real life or online). I love that there are maps, annotated by the driver, along with drawings of different incidents which stand out in their minds.

As an archaeologist, I’d love to harness this interaction with place. As I was riding home from the Pamuk lecture with Burcu and a couple I had just met, Pamuk’s commentary on buildings came up, and the woman (I’m criminally horrible with names) mentioned that she’s now looking at the buildings in a different light, wondering about their histories, wondering who lives/lived there. Yes.

Back to work!