Evolution Beach

Pocket Magnetometer?: A Holiday Break Experiment

2011-12-27T21:55:00.001-08:00

I've often wondered whether the magnetometer built into the iPhone is sensitive enough to be used as a remote sensing device. At CSULB we use a Geometric 858 cesium vapor magnetometer to map subsurface deposits. This ca. $25K instrument provides very fast and high precision measurements of the earth's magnetic field. Collecting 10 readings a second, the 858 is capable of measuring differences as small as 0.008 nanoteslas (gammas). While this precision is fantastic, often the variability we are interested in (e.g., hearths, organic deposits, etc) varies substantially more than that from the background magnetic field. When mapping a large area, it isn't uncommon to see lots of noisy measurements at 1-10s of nanoteslas with features of interest showing variation in the 100s of nanoteslas. Of course, one's ability to measure differences in subsurface magnetics depends largely on the degree of variability of the background. The noisier the background (i.e., larger the highs and lows), the bigger the signal must be from the feature of interest. Using a gradiometer (i.e., two sensors and subtracting the difference) greatly aids in filtering out noise -- more on that in a bit.

The iPhone's magnetometer is reported to be sensitive to changes as small as 0.1 microteslas. That is 100 nanoteslas (gammas). This means that the differences detected have to be pretty large, but also that it is not too far off from where we want to be. It can report values as fast as once per 0.01 seconds.

To check out how the iPhone might work, I wrote a quick app that polls the magnetometer. For simplicity, I also had it poll the GPS for locational information. I say simplicity since this has a number of consequences. One the one hand one gets X and Y locations for each magnetic value. One the other hand, the rate of update is slowed to one reading per second - which seems to be about the limit of the iPhone for producing locational values. I'll have to check on this though. Using the iPhone GPS also introduces locational error since the phone is a pretty basic GPS w/ 2-5 meter error (at least). The app creates a text file with the three values -- X, Y, and mag. Oh, and for the mag value, I calculated the overall magnitude of the field at each position. This is because the built in magnetometer actually returns values in 3 dimensions (x,y,z) which is cool, but means that small shifts in the orientation of the iPhone will be detected. To calculate the overall magnitude, I simply stored the sqr(x^2 + y^2 + z^2).

A more elaborate app would probably include a couple of features -- first, it would have one define transects in some systematic way and then have a way of marking the beginning and ending of the transects in the file. Second there would be some way of placing markers in the file for indicating intervals. These two bits of data would be useful for stretching the values for each transect in an fashion that would best represent the survey. This might even not use GPS at all (though one would then have to layout and map a grid, and then georeference that later). One might also make use of 2 iPhones to create a gradiometer -- or even take an Arduino Uno ($50) and 2 magnetometer sensors (maybe something like this or http://microcontrollershop.com/product_info.php?products_id=4565 -- $15/each) to construct a mini-gradiometer(space the sensors about 1 meter apart with one close to the ground and one at waist level). For kicks, maybe add a gps -- http://microcontrollershop.com/product_info.php?products_id=2768 ($60) at the same time and some kind of analog input for adding markers ) Add this for data logging:http://microcontrollershop.com/product_info.php?products_id=4526 ($25.00). One could make a pretty slick little measurement device and data logger for doing mag/gradiometer surveys for under $200. Add in additional mag sensors to create an "array" and one can get pretty serious.

But there is still a concern -- is the basic magnetometer sensitive enough to changes subsurface changes in composition? With my quick iPhone app, I did a quick survey in the park across from my house. This was a number of transects (up and down) that were done perpendicular to the curb of the circular park. I uploaded the data into Surfer to and then added the file into QGIS so I could have the output georeferenced over a satellite image. Below is what I ended up with. In the image dark colors are low magnetic values, white colors are higher values.

Pros:

-- It was certainly fast and cheap. The quick app worked with minimal pain.

-- The data definitely characterizes the curb edge of the park.

-- There may be other subsurface structures as apparent from the data.

Cons:

-- The one-second update rate for the location is a bit slow for getting mag points. A dedicated gps card (as described above) would be a huge advantage as these cards can usually produce location at 5-20Hz. With the mag producing values at 0.01 seconds, you would have far more dense data to produce a map.

-- I'm not sure why the other structures are apparent in the data. These are possibly due to subsurface pipes and whatnot. The lack of even data points across the survey area, however, is probably most likely to blame. I didn't mark out my transects ahead of time (which is always a good idea) so I know I didn't walk in straight parallel lines. An interface on the app might provide "steering" to keep on on a transect - that would help. Also, having markers would enable one to ensure the data are distributed correctly across each transect (provided motion was constant). Combining both the gps data (direction, speed, location) with some kind of marker system for end/middle/beginning of lines would probably provide a low-cost but reasonably reliable solution.

GPS Precision

It would be great to be able to post-process the GPS data to correct them for atmospheric error and reduce the uncertainty. There have been some successes in doing post processing of consumer grade gps units. Most notably, garmin gps units can be coaxed into producing pseudo-range and carrier phase data (see:http://www.fig.net/pub/cairo/papers/ts_03/ts03_02_schwieger_glaser.pdf http://gpsinformation.info/harris/gpspostprocessing.html http://www.gps-forums.net/impressive-resolution-garmin-etrex-gps-using-gringo-t35448.html). The 12-Channel Lassen IQ receiver (http://www.sparkfun.com/products/163) ($50.00) might be just the thing as it produces RTCM output in addition to standard protocols. Some thing to look into, for certain. Additional discussion of the Lassen IQ is here: http://forum.sparkfun.com/viewtopic.php?t=809. Actually, that should be possible according to the reference manual. http://www.sparkfun.com/datasheets/GPS/Lassen%20iQ_Reference%20Manual.pdf. The TSIP protocol can be set to output raw measurements and raw pseudo ranges (though the default is off). See page 112 for the TSIP protocol. This could mean a really cheap post-processing capable GPS! Sweet.

This project - Kinematic -- has done much of the research -- but seems to be dead. http://web.archive.org/web/20090202200458/http://www.precision-gps.org/ It suggests that the Lassen is capable of producing 20-50cm precision since it lacks carrier wave information. Hell, that would be awesome.

Response to Paul Bahn in Nature

2011-11-02T13:43:00.001-07:00

We just published a small comment back to Paul Bahn in Nature today. It is short (given the Correspondence format) but at least points out some of the major problems with Paul Bahn's "review" of our work. You can read an online version of the comment here:

http://csulb.academia.edu/CarlLipo/Papers/1110216/Statues_Walking_Easter_Islands_Complex_History#

Hotu Iti: The Next Steps

2011-11-01T13:53:00.001-07:00

We are headed back to Kualoa Ranch on the north shore of Hawai'i this week for another round of moai walking. This event is sponsored by National Geographic and NipponTV and will (possibly) produce footage for the already-filmed Nat Geo documentary as well as a new one for NipponTV. The NipponTV version will have its own host - as I understand it - a Japanese movie star or some other notable figure.

The stakes have been raised for this round of experiments. Now that we know the basics of walking the moai we are challenged to walk it further, walk it uphill and downhill and to demonstrate how it can be maneuvered in tight quarters. I think we can accomplish that but given the fact we have to learn everything as we do it (there is no off-camera prep time) it could be hairy. Moving it 100 meters should be a no brainer as our experiments showed that this is really very simple -- its just a matter of time - very little in the way of brute strength.

I'd also like to see how few people we need to move the statue. I suppose the way to do that is start with our existing number and then eliminate individuals systematically until we can't get it to move any more. This should give us a better idea of the investment constraints when moving the statue (the lower end that is, since more people can always be added on). There are upper limits to the contribution adding "more people" have on the movement process -- at some point no additional individuals will make a measurable difference.

I am also going to pay more attention to the steps the statue takes -- how high are they, how far forward does it rock when it takes a step, etc. It'd be good to see if the curvature of the front edge predicts the size of the step taken (I suspect it does given the physics involved). That way we can then model statues of different sizes and shapes in terms of the characteristics of their walks. Perhaps there are different kinds of steps done by different statues perhaps intended by their carvers. That could be an interesting stylistic aspect of statue walking to explore.

It's going to be a busy weekend - and rainy it seems.

Diamond attempts to defend myths of Easter Island: Lipo and Hunt respond

2011-10-07T14:02:00.001-07:00

Author Mark Lynas (The God Species: How the planet can survive the age of humans, Six Degrees, High Tide) recently posted a discussion of The Statues That Walked on his blog (www.marklynas.org) -- The myth of Easter Island’s ecocide. In his essay, Lynas agrees with the basis of our research and concludes:

Like all of us, modern Easter Islanders are inter-dependent with the rest of the world. Perhaps the more recent studies of their history will help challenge the Hobbesian and pessimistic view that human nature necessarily tends towards destruction and violence. Resilience and sustainability are just as likely outcomes, even over the longer term. This, I think, is the true lesson of Easter Island.

His essay states, as we do in TSTW, that ecocide - at least on Easter Island - is a myth and that the evidence contradicts claims made by Jared Diamond (and others). Interestingly, Jared Diamond (Collapse, Guns, Germs and Steel) chose this forum as a platform to argue against our research and conclusions. Diamond's letter to Mark's posting is posted in full here. Below is our response to Diamond's comments. We have cross posted this here and on Mark Lynas' blog. Enjoy!

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Diamond attempts to defend myths of Easter Island: Lipo and Hunt respond

We are hardly surprised that Jared Diamond would write that we are “transparently wrong” about Easter Island. He has a vested interest in defending his “ecocide” storyline published back in 1995 in Discover Magazine and again in his bestselling book Collapse. We acknowledge that Diamond has much at stake here. But so do the Easter Islanders. So too does the field of archeology. And so too does the truth.

Diamond’s thesis about what happened on Easter Island is not new, building as it did on presumptions originally offered by the first Europeans to set foot on the island in the early 18th century. Sadly, this thesis was not challenged because it so conveniently confirmed 18th century prejudice about superior (European) and inferior (everyone not European) societies. Thor Heyerdahl expanded the story and added a further racist twist about lighter-skinned people who accomplished much, and darker-skinned people who incited rebellion, warfare, and ruin. Diamond simply continues the tradition by reworking the tale to remove the racist elements, relying instead upon an environmental twist put forth by popular writer Paul Bahn and palynologist John Flenley.

An important role of scholarship is to examine long-held myths and see if they hold up under modern scientific tests. The original Easter Island thesis, in any of its iterations, including Diamond’s, does not. Let us point out that we didn’t go to Easter Island to tear down Diamond’s thesis. We went there to support it by filling in the missing archeological data. It was only when we convinced ourselves that any iteration of that original story, including Diamond’s, had no archeological evidence to support it and much to contradict it that we began to see where the research was leading us.

It is also important to note that Diamond is not an archaeologist and has not done archaeological or palaeoecological research in Polynesia. We have been doing research and primary archaeological field work on Easter since 2000. One of us (TH) has worked in Pacific Island archaeology for nearly 40 years and taught at University of Hawaii for 23 years. On Easter Island we have done more field work and covered a greater breadth of archaeology than anyone else in the past two decades. Our work has been peer-reviewed and published in science’s most selective and prestigious journals. We outline in detail the evidence from our work and that of scores of colleagues working on the island in our book The Statues that Walked. Diamond would have readers believe that the majority of archeologists who have studied Easter Island support his thesis. It is simply not true. The new evidence that we and other serious scholars have provided over the past decade not only contradicts the old story that Diamond has so heavily invested in, but has led to a new consensus among the majority of scholars around our work.

Now, let us deal with the four or five major points of contention.

Deforestation

Everyone agrees that Easter Island was almost completely deforested by the time Europeans first visited in 1722. The key issue is causation. In the absence of evidence to refute the facts we lay out, Diamond chooses either to ignore or misrepresent what we do argue. We never argued that rats were the sole cause of deforestation. As the evidence shows and as we argued in our book, deforestation was a cumulative process that took centuries. It resulted from rat predation of seeds and from people using fire to clear vegetation for agriculture.

To defend his position that rats played no significant role in deforestation, Diamond cites a study by Mieth and Bork. Setting aside the fact that even if only a fraction of palm nuts were destroyed by rats, the cumulative effect would have been significant, let’s examine this study on its merits.

We were well aware of the work of Mieth and Bork as we did our work. But we were also aware of the fact (which Diamond fails to point out) that Mieth and Bork based their claim on nut fragments, not whole nuts. Before we rejected this study, we took the time to experiment ourselves with 25 modern rat-gnawed palm nuts from mainland Chile that we broke into fragments of the sizes resembling those reported by Mieth and Bork. This sample of 100% whole rat-gnawed nuts--when broken and then counted by their fragments--became a much, much smaller percentage. This shows the problem using Mieth and Bork whose estimate of 10% rat gnawed fragments implies that most nuts (if they were counted whole) were actually gnawed by rats.

Indeed, there is an extensive scientific literature on the impact of rats in island ecosystems that Diamond is either unaware of or simply doesn’t want readers to know about, such as one example from Lord Howe Island, where ecologists point out that without massive programs of rat eradication, the native palms on the island will go extinct. And rats have been on Lord Howe only since 1918, when a steamship ran aground! Diamond himself, in his own writing, has referred to rats as “agents of extermination” (Diamond 1985).

Bottom line: Diamond needs to explain how, in the absence of predators and with an almost unlimited supply of food, the rat population would have remained small and had no impact on native plants and animals.

Next, Diamond makes the argument that even if rats could do this type of damage, the particular type of trees on Easter Island was not vulnerable to rats. The facts are as follows: Of the 17 major woody species identified from charcoal found in ancient cooking fires, 14 are documented to have seen major rat impacts elsewhere, or to be edible and highly vulnerable. Furthermore, because the Jubaea palms were slow growing and did not fruit until about 70 years of age, they were particularly vulnerable. Some fraction of new palms would grow, but not enough to replace an entire forest over time. Older trees would die, many were lost to fire, and in the end it was a losing battle; not enough young seedlings made it to reproductive age.

As for Diamond’s notion that palms were not diminished by rats, but taken down the islanders for rollers to move statues or to carve into canoes, enabling deep-sea fishing, anyone who has seen a palm tree cross-section with its thin, brittle bark and soft fibrous interior would quickly recognize these would not be suitable. Nor frankly would they have been capable of supporting the weight of multi-ton statues as rollers.

As for his allegation that palms were an important part of the islanders’ subsistence, there is overwhelming evidence that the islanders didn’t think so. As we document in The Statues That Walked on research conducted by Joan Wozniak (2003), Chris Stevenson (Stevenson et al 2002, 2006; Ladefoged et al. 2005, 2010) and Hans-Rudolf Bork (Bork et al. 2004) lithic mulch gardens, along with stone-walled gardens known locally as manavai, provided the basis for the islander’s subsistence soon after the island was settled. Palms provided no direct, long-term benefit so their loss had few if any consequences.

Chronology—When exactly was the island colonized?

One of our most important findings resulted from excavation and radiocarbon dating to establish the date of settlement as 300-800 years later than Diamond’s thesis requires. Diamond insists on missing evidence to argue for a longer chronology. His argument asks us to accept on faith the notion that “the evidence must be there, we just can’t find it.” That wouldn’t stand up in court, and it certainly doesn’t stand up in science. Until such time as serious scientists prove otherwise, there are no reliable radiocarbon dates that support settlement of Easter Island before 1200 A.D. (Hunt and Lipo 2006). To argue otherwise ignores more than 2,000 radiocarbon dates from multiple archipelagos that provide overwhelming evidence that all of the eastern Pacific Islands were settled only over the past thousand years (Rieth et al 2011;Wilmshurst et al 2011), with Easter settled around 1200 A.D. Even the most skeptical archaeologists working in the Pacific are now quibbling about chronological differences of only 50 to 100 years, not several centuries as Diamond imagines.

Statue Transport---Did the states move horizontally or vertically?

Diamond’s thesis hangs on the need for logs to “roll” the statues from the quarries to their final destinations. In support of his thesis, he asks the reader to “imagine it yourself.” Surely, he implies, it would be crazy to move a multi-ton statue in a standing position. And if all you are solely relying upon is your own imagination, it may sound like a scary proposition. But that’s not reason enough to declare some past event as impossible.

But readers need to keep in mind that Diamond’s collapse thesis relies heavily on how the statues were moved. To sustain his thesis regarding the eventual “collapse” of the ancient society, he needs statue movement to be the “engine” that caused the loss of trees. Decouple the loss of trees from moving statues and the “collapse” story looses steam. Thus, we are not surprised that Diamond holds so tenaciously to old beliefs and discredited claims.

But one has to wonder if Diamond has read The Statues that Walked. In the book we discuss how fallen statue positions, kinds of breakage, statue shapes with a forward center of mass, as well as statue modifications made between quarry and placement on platforms can only be explained by vertical movement. As archaeologist and colleague on the island Sergio Rapu (who has studied statues his whole life and has a M.A. degree in archaeology) taught us, the statues were “engineered to move.” Oral traditions have long insisted that they “walked.” And while some have shown that it is possible to move a statue horizontally on a contraption of logs, (as Diamond posits they were moved) such a method completely ignores the direct and unambiguous evidence provided by the statues themselves.

But there is much better news awaiting readers who might want “to imagine it” themselves. In recent experiments funded by National Geographic and fully filmed, we “walked” a multi-ton replica of an actual statue (one found along an ancient transport road). Moving a statue in a standing position is not only possible; it’s relatively easy and can be done with a small group of people using only ropes. Our experiment will be highlighted in a forthcoming NOVA-National Geographic television special to be broadcast on PBS in the spring of 2012. Then the rest of the world will see what we have seen—the statues of Easter Island walking upright! Stay tuned!

Collapse only after European Contact

Again Diamond makes an appeal to authority in lieu of reference to evidence. He mistakenly says we relied on only one source (Peiser, who does not even appear in our book’s bibliography—again, did he read our book?) who, he points out, has not done any work on the island. Let us also note once again that Diamond has not conducted any field work on the island. Nor to our knowledge has one of Diamond’s proclaimed “leading experts,” Paul Bahn, done any field studies on the island.

As we show in The Statues that Walked, rather than repeat assumptions and claims made in the past, we sought direct evidence with no preconceived ideas we needed to defend. In that frame of mind, what the evidence kept pointing to is that many of the “facts” offered up by so-called “experts” were simply claims repeated over and over and nothing more. The island was certainly transformed over the course of human history (including the dramatic impact of more than 100 years of sheep ranching once the Chileans took control of the island.). But what is Diamond’s evidence that prehistoric loss of the forest led to cultural and demographic collapse? There is none other than the assumption that losing trees is bad for people living on this island. Is there evidence of soil erosion? Yes, but it shows re-deposited soils were successfully cultivated. In addition, radiocarbon dating and modern observations show that the most dramatic soil erosion occurred in post-contact and modern times (i.e., largely the results of sheep ranching). Would the loss of trees have resulted in a critical shortfall of food and/or necessary materials? The answer is a resounding “no.” Could the palm tree have provided a vital food source for people in the form of nuts? Yes, however, the introduction of tree-dwelling rats meant that these pests would have consumed most of the nuts first.

Diamond repeats a number of traditional notions about the island’s history. In particular, he cites “evidence of widespread warfare” based on “oral accounts and preserved weapons and skeletal injuries.” Let’s examine this so-called evidence. First, oral traditions were collected in the 20th century, almost 200 years after European contact. Alfred Metraux, an anthropologist who studied the islanders’ oral traditions, concluded that they were most likely of very recent origin (Metraux 1940). Katherine Routledge, who worked on the island in the early 20th century, also describes how unreliable and contradictory she found the oral traditions. Our work does not draw upon oral traditions, given their uneven and unknown reliability. Some traditions may well be consistent with what actually happened in the past. In other cases they may not. It is impossible to evaluate them on their own merits and independent lines of evidence are necessary (e.g., statues “walking” had to be evaluated in terms of evidence beyond just oral traditions).

Diamond’s “preserved weapons,” the mata’a, are agricultural tools that he has chosen to describe as “weapons.” Their design alone, a rounded to irregular shape, should have been enough to make him question their purpose. But if he had read the microscopic studies reporting edge damage on thousands of these artifacts, he would have seen that the damage they show is consistent with their role in cutting and scrapping plant material (e.g., Church and Ellis 1994). Indeed, our field studies show that they are found in the greatest concentrations in the lithic mulch gardening areas, right where one would expect to find them. And the island has no fortifications, such as those we see on other Polynesian islands where warfare was frequent.

Diamond points to evidence of violence in human skeletal remains. However, the published data reveal there are only two cases in which violence appears to have resulted in death, and one of these was an individual who suffered a bullet wound to the head. The skeletal evidence shows injuries and as we explain in The Statues that Walked, the ancient islanders engaged in some conflicts with one another. But as we outline in our book, statues were a focus of competitive signaling that staved off lethal violence.

Finally, Diamond ignores field research reporting dated domestic habitation sites (see Hunt and Lipo 2009 for discussion). When the habitations are plotted in fifty-year intervals, the number of those occupied clearly shows that the first and only sustained decline, as a relative measure of the population, began only in the first interval following European contact. Before contact the data show a population that is growing and stabilizing, as reflected in their habitations across the landscape. There is no evidence of population decline, let alone “collapse” until after European contact. Indeed, there is direct, abundant evidence that population numbers grew, stabilized, and then fell only after European contact beginning in 1722.

The Lesson of Easter Island

Rather than address the evidence, Diamond attempts to deride our work by claiming that the people on the dust jacket are not experts in the field. Diamond is certainly no expert in the field of Easter Island archaeology, regardless of his popularity. The individuals who commented on our book are experts in the areas of human and environmental change, including extensive research in the Pacific Islands. These well-qualified, highly respected individuals know how science works and are directly engaged in research on ecology, evolution, and environmental change. Lacking quotes by “experts” who we have necessarily challenged in our research (perhaps such as Diamond?) is certainly no reason for suspicion. The truth of the matter rests in the hands of the reader and the factual evidence outlined in The Statues that Walked.

There are those such as popular writer Paul Bahn and and palynologist John Flenley who continue to push the old doomsday, “ecocide” scenario. But recent work has shown the central significance of lithic mulch (e.g., Bork et al. 2004; Stevenson et al. 2005; Ladefoged et al. 2010; Wozniak 1999, 2003), the lack of evidence for a 1680 AD “Collapse” event (e.g., Mulrooney et al. 2009, Lipo and Hunt 2009), that mata’a are not developed weapons (Church and Rigney 1994; Church and Ellis 1995), the lack of structural integrity of palms to serve as rollers or use as canoes (e.g., Bork and Meith 2003), the lack of evidence for cannibalism (e.g., McLaughlin 2005), the shorter chronology for colonization not just for Easter, but for the entire eastern Pacific (e.g., Kennett et al. 2006; Reith et al. 2011; Wilmshurst et al. 2008, 2011), the devastating effects that rats have on island environments (e.g., Athens 2009), details about the impact that Europeans had on historic populations (e.g., Fischer 2005), direct evidence about statue transport based on analysis of moai roads (e.g., Lipo and Hunt 2005; Love 2001), the inherently nutrient poor state of soil on Rapa Nui (e.g., Ladefoged 2005) and more. These findings point to the growing body of evidence that falsifies the basic claims made in favor of “ecocide.” And based on this evidence, the majority of archaeologists working on Easter and elsewhere in Polynesia now reject the notion that the island suffered a pre-European collapse.

Our work in The Statues that Walked brings a wide range of current research into focus and combines more than a decade of our own field and related Easter Island research to form a coherent picture that is the basis of a new scientific consensus. Easter Island was a story of remarkable success. And as young Native Islanders have told us, knowledge of their ancestors’ success, not failure, matters greatly to them. The “collapse” story for Easter Island is a convenient and popular parable used for shocking the public about the dangers of over-exuberance and environmental disregard. However, as we describe in our book, the island’s collapse came only with the germs, guns, and enslavement brought by the outside world. Given what is at stake in terms of lessons to be learned about long-term survival on an isolated and resource poor location, the truth matters. Indeed, we have much to learn from Easter Island.

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1999 Prehistoric horticultural practices on Easter Island: lithic mulched gardens and field systems. Rapa Nui Journal 13(3): 95-99.

Wozniak, Joan A.

2003 Exploring Landscapes on Easter Island (Rapa Nui) with Geoarchaeological Studies: Settlement, Subsistence, and environmental changes. Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Oregon, Eugene.

Jared Diamond attempts to defend the myths of Easter Island—

Carl Lipo and Terry Hunt Respond

An important role of scholarship is to examine long-held myths and see if they hold up under modern scientific tests. The original Easter Island thesis, in any of its iterations, including Diamond’s, does not. Let us point out that we didn’t go to Easter Island to tear down Diamond’s thesis. We went there to support it by filling in the missing archeological data. It was only when we convinced ourselves that any iteration of that original story, including Diamond’s, had no archeological evidence to support it and much to contract it that we began to see where the research was leading us.

Now, let us deal with the four or five major points of contention.

Deforestation

Indeed, there is an extensive scientific literature on the impact of rats in island ecosystems that Diamond is either unaware of or simply doesn’t want readers to know about, such as those from Lord Howe Island, where ecologists point out that without massive programs of rat eradication, the native palms on the island will go extinct. And rats have been on Lord Howe only since 1918, when a steamship ran aground! Diamond himself, in his own writing, has referred to rats as “agents of extermination” (Diamond 1985).

Next, Diamond makes the argument that even if rats could do this type of damage, the particular type of trees on Easter Island were not vulnerable to rats. The facts are as follows: Of the 17 major woody species identified from charcoal found in ancient cooking fires, 14 are documented to have seen major rat impacts elsewhere, or to be edible and highly vulnerable. Furthermore, because the Jubaea palms were slow growing and did not fruit until about 70 years of age, they were particularly vulnerable. Some fraction of new palms would grow, but not enough to replace an entire forest over time. Older trees would die, many were lost to fire, and in the end it was a losing battle; not enough young seedlings made it to reproductive age.

As for his allegation that palms were an important part of the islanders’ subsistence, there is overwhelming evidence that the islanders didn’t think so. As we document in The Statues That Walked on research conducted by Joan Wozniak (2003), Chris Stevenson (Stevenson et al 2002, 2006; Ladefoged et al. 2005, 2010) and Hans-Rudolf (Bork et al. 2004) lithic mulch gardens, along with stone-walled gardens known locally as manavai, provided the basis for the islander’s subsistence soon after the island was settled. Palms provided no direct, long-term benefit so their loss had few if any consequences.

Chronology—When exactly was the island colonized?

One of our most important findings was excavation and radiocarbon dating to establish the date of settlement as 300-800 years later than Diamond’s thesis requires. Diamond insists on missing evidence to argue for a longer chronology. His argument asks us to accept on faith the notion that “the evidence must be there, we just can’t find it.” That wouldn’t stand up in court, and it certainly doesn’t stand up in science. Until such time as serious scientists prove otherwise, there are no reliable radiocarbon dates that support settlement of Easter Island before 1200 A.D. (Hunt and Lipo 2006). To argue otherwise ignores more than 2,000 radiocarbon dates from multiple archipelagos that provide overwhelming evidence that all of the eastern Pacific Islands were settled only over the past thousand years (Rieth et al 2011;Wilmshurst et al 2011), with Easter settled around 1200 A.D. Even the most skeptical archaeologists working in the Pacific are now quibbling about chronological differences of only 50 to 100 years, not several centuries as Diamond imagines.

Statue Transport---Did the states move horizontally or vertically?

Collapse only after European Contact

As we show in The Statues that Walked, rather than repeat assumptions and claims made in the past, we sought direct evidence with no preconceived ideas we needed to defend. In that frame of mine, what the evidence kept pointing to is that many of the “facts” offered up by so-called “experts” were simply claims repeated over and over and nothing more. The island was certainly transformed over the course of human history (including the dramatic impact of more than 100 years of sheep ranching once the Chileans took control of the island.). But what is Diamond’s evidence that prehistoric loss of the forest led to cultural and demographic collapse? There is none other than the assumption that losing trees is bad for people living on this island. Is there evidence of soil erosion? Yes, but it shows re-deposited soils were successfully cultivated. In addition, radiocarbon dating and modern observations show that the most dramatic soil erosion occurred in post-contact and modern times (i.e., largely the results of sheep ranching). Would the loss of trees have resulted in a critical shortfall of food and/or necessary materials? The answer is a resounding “no.” Could the palm tree have provided a vital food source for people in the form of nuts? Yes, however, the introduction of tree-dwelling rats meant that these pests would have consumed most of the nuts first.

The Lesson of Easter Island

There are those such as popular writer Paul Bahn and and palynologist John Flenley who continue to push the old doomsday, “ecocide” scenario. But recent work has shown the central significance of lithic mulch (e.g., Bork et al. 2004; Stevenson et al. 2005; Ladefoged et al. 2010; Wozniak 1999, 2003), the lack of evidence for an 1680 AD “Collapse” event (e.g., Mulrooney et al. 2009, Lipo and Hunt 2009), that mata’a are not developed weapons (Church and Rigney 1994; Church and Ellis 1995), the lack of structural integrity of palms to serve as rollers or use as canoes (e.g., Bork and Meith 2003), the lack of evidence for cannibalism (e.g., McLaughlin 2005), the shorter chronology for colonization not just for Easter, but for the entire eastern Pacific (e.g., Kennett et al. 2006; Reith et al. 2011; Wilmshurst et al. 2008, 2011), the devastating effects that rats have on island environments (e.g., Athens 2009), details about the impact that Europeans had on historic populations (e.g., Fischer 2005), direct evidence about statue transport based on analysis of moai roads (e.g., Lipo and Hunt 2005; Love 2001), the inherently nutrient poor state of soil on Rapa Nui (e.g., Ladefoged 2005) and more. These new findings point to the growing body of evidence that falsifies the basic claims made in favor of “ecocide.” And based on this evidence, the majority of archaeologists working on Easter and elsewhere in Polynesia now reject the notion that the island suffered a pre-European collapse.

References

Athens, Stephen

2009 Rattus exulans and the catastrophic disappearance of Hawai'i's native lowland forest. Biological Invasions 11: 1489-1501.

Auld T.D., Hutton I., Ooi M.K.J., Denham A.J.

2010 Disruption of recruitment in two endemic palms on Lord Howe Island by invasive rats. Biological Invasions 12: 3351-3361

Bork, Hans-Rudolf, Andreas Mieth, and Bernd Tschochner

2004 Nothing but stones? A review of the extent and technical efforts of prehistoric stone mulching on Rapa Nui. Rapa Nui Journal 18(1): 10-14.

Butler, K. R., C. R. Prior, and J. R. Flenley

2004 Anomalous radiocarbon dates from Easter Island. Radiocarbon 46(1): 395-405.

Campbell, D. J., Atkinson, I. A. E.

2002 Depression of tree recruitment by the Pacific rat (Rattus exulans Peale) on New Zealand’s northern offshore islands. Biological Conservation 107:19-35.

Church, Flora, and Grace Ellis

1996 A use-wear analysis of obsidian tools from an Ana Kionga. Rapa Nui Journal 10(4): 81-88.

Church, F., and J. Rigney

1994 A microwear analysis of tools from site 10-241, Easter Island--An inland processing site. Rapa Nui Journal 8(4): 101-105.

Diamond, J.

1985 Rats as agents of extermination. Nature 318: 602-603.

Drake, D.R. and T. L. Hunt

2009 Invasive rodents on islands: integrating historical and contemporary ecology. Biological Invasions 11: 1483-1487.

Fischer, Steven R.

2005 Island at the End of the World: The turbulent history of Easter Island. London: Reaktion Books.

Hunt, T. L., and C. P. Lipo

2006 Late colonization of Easter Island. Science 311(5767): 1603-1606.

Hunt, T.L. and C.P. Lipo

2009 Revisiting Rapa Nui (Easter Island) “Ecocide.” Pacific Science 63: 601-616.

Kennett, Douglas, et al.

2006 Prehistoric human impacts on Rapa, French Polynesia. Natural History 80 (October 2004): 340-354.

Ladefoged, T. N., C. M. Stevenson, S. Haoa, M. Mulrooney, C. Puleston, P. M. Vitousek and O.A. Chadwick

2010 Soil nutrient analysis and Rapa Nui gardening. Archaeology in Oceania 45:80-85.

Lipo, Carl. P., and Terry L. Hunt

2005 Mapping prehistoric statue roads on Easter Island. Antiquity 79:158-168.

Lipo, C. P. and T. L. Hunt

2009 AD 1680 and Easter Island Prehistory. Asian Perspectives. 48(2): 309-317.

McLaughlin, S.

2005 Cannibalism and Easter Island: Evaluation, Discussion of Probabilities, and Survey of the Literature on the Subject. Rapa Nui Journal 19(1): 30-50.

Métraux, Alfred

1940 Ethnology of Easter Island. Honolulu: Bulletin, 160, Bernice P. Bishop Museum.

Mulrooney, M. A., T. N. Ladefoged, C. M. Stevenson, and S. Haoa,

2009 The Myth of AD 1680: New Evidence from Hanga Ho‘onu, Rapa Nui (Easter Island). Rapa Nui Journal 23(2): 94-105

Owsley, Douglas W., George W. Gill, and Stephen D. Ousley

1994 Biological effects of European contact on Easter Island. In In the Wake of Contact: Biological Responses to Conquest. C.S. Larsen and G.R. Milner, eds., pp. 161-177. New York: Wiley-Liss.

Reith, Timothy M., Terry L. Hunt, Carl P. Lipo, Janet M. Wilmshurst

2011 The Thirteenth Century Polynesian Colonization of Hawai‘i Island Journal of Archaeological Science 38(10): 2740-2749

Steadman, David W., Patricia Vargas Casanova, and Claudio Cristino Ferrando

1994 Stratigraphy, Chronology, and Cultural Context of an Early Faunal Assemblage from Easter Island. Asian Perspectives 33(1): 79-96.

Stevenson, Christopher M., Thegn Ladefoged, and Sonia Haoa

2002 Productive Strategies in an Uncertain Environment: Prehistoric Agriculture on Easter Island. Rapa Nui Journal 16(1): 17-22.

Stevenson, C. M., S. Haoa, T. N. Ladefoged, M. A. Mulrooney, P. M. Vitousek, O. A. Chadwick, and C. Puleston

2010 Evaluating Rapa Nui Prehistoric Terrestrial Resource Degradation. Rapa Nui Journal 24(2): 15-16.

Wilmshurst, J.M., T.L. Hunt, C.P. Lipo, and A. Anderson

2011 High precision radiocarbon dating shows recent and rapid initial human colonization of East Polynesia. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 108 (5):1815-1820.

www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1015876108

Wilmshurst, J.M., A.J. Anderson, T.F.G. Higham, and TH Worthy.

Wozniak, Joan A.

1999 Prehistoric horticultural practices on Easter Island: lithic mulched gardens and field systems. Rapa Nui Journal 13(3): 95-99.

Wozniak, Joan A.

2003 Exploring Landscapes on Easter Island (Rapa Nui) with Geoarchaeological Studies: Settlement, Subsistence, and environmental changes. Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Oregon, Eugene.

Hoto Iti 3: 7:19PM

2011-06-23T23:02:00.001-07:00

It's now 7PM and the day is finished. What a day it was... The rain kind of blew our plans for the original location we had scouted on Sunday. Instead, we ended up moving down the valley. This area was flat but regularly invaded by buses and ATV tours for tourists viewing the sets of Lost and other movies. We found a flat stretch that was off the main road. The Kualoa Ranch folks were kind enough to bring up a backhoe/grader to flatten this stretch by removing the small humps of grass in the center. This part of the valley was a bit drier relative to the upper end due to the lack of an orographic effect. We had a small army of volunteers for the "pulling" jobs and we all huddled underneath a small shelter while small squall blew through. It wasn't long, however, before the crane and then the statue arrived. The statue showed up on a flatbed truck bearing a monster wooden crate. Huge.

The crane lowered the crate to the ground and the freight moving folks opened up. Holy friggin'-cow. This is a huge statue. Both Terry and I felt sick to our stomachs at the idea of moving this massive monolith. What had we gotten ourselves into? 10,000 lbs?

It was only a bit latter when the statue was lifted up and set on the ground that we realized that we had a serious problem -- the statue would not stand on its own. Blargh! The angle of the base is correct and the statue is a direct copy of the digital model I sent. However, I had to wonder whether or not I had made a mistake somewhere. This was, of course, an eroded statue laying on the road.. and there had clearly been post-falling modifications made to it (cupules on the top of the head, for example). Perhaps there was material lost on the bottom edge that was critical to the movement -- but now lost? We can't stick anything back on! Or perhaps we scaled something incorrectly. Or we had it all wrong to begin with. I have to say, my head started to spin with possibilities... all dark and gloomy.

We took a break for lunch and thought about the problem. There are a couple of scenarios that we could imagine. First, it is entirely possible that statues that had fallen were somehow modified to make it impossible for anyone else to move them and therefore "cheat" the signal that the statues represent. After all, if you had moved a statue 4 miles and it fell just before you had it on the ahu, you wouldnt want someone to jack your statue and make away with all the effort you put into getting the statue that far... This kind of modification would help ensure the "signal" is honest --- a statue that made it to the ahu would be guaranteed to be transported from the quarry (or be substantially smaller if somehow the material were "reused").

Evaluating this idea requires looking in detail at all the road moai -- if they have some kind of modification that is consistent with prohibiting further transport, then this might be the case.

The only problem, though, is that the modifications that would have been necessary to make this statue lean at a crazy steep angle (20 degrees) did not appear to be some kind of hack-job. Instead the front edge (the part that presents the point at which the center of mass is behind (letting the statue stand) or in front of (causing the statue to fall) is uniformly curved and well shaped. So if someone removed material, they did so with an eye to preserving the shape of the base).

The second idea - and one I think might be ultimately the case -- is that the statue were made purposely leaning forward beyond the point of vertical stability. This might seem surprising but from the point of view movement it makes sense that the statue remain in a constant "unstable" state with rope restraints used to hold it back from tipping. This way, the folks allowing the statue to move forward would simply allow forward movement and not have to "catch" the statue as it transitioned from its stable upright position to a forward falling one. If the angle of the ropes were correctly positioned it wouldnt take an excessive amount of force to keep the statue tipped back. In fact, the flat nature of the back edge of the base is consistent with this idea -- the flat edge is perfectly shaped to provide a leverage point for the statue to be tilted backwards. Given that we consistently see this shape, and that the shape is more pronounced on bigger statues (and since they could have made the back base shape in any way they wanted) the back edge goes along with this idea.

We also noted that the difference between standing and falling forward is small - just a single 2x4" piece of lumber is adequate to hold the statue upright - the difference between vertical stability and falling forward is just a matter of inches. so perhaps... perhaps, the statues in transport were made to be unstable and that stability -- putting it upright for standing was done with a couple of flat stones wedged under the front. In fact, we find such stones along the roads -- poro stones that are flat that could serve this function. And the presence of such stones underneath statues (as noted by Heyerdahl during his excavations at the quarry in the 1980s) helps support this notion.

We rigged a rope around the statue's head so that we had an attachment point along the plane of the eyes -- this gave us the maximum leverage to restrain the statue. The crane operator released the tension on the straps and we had 12 folks pulling back to hold the statue. It worked. We played a bit with the angles and the pulling to see if we could get the statue to rock and tilt side to side -- this also was successful. So we might be okay. In fact, thinking about it I had to remind myself that the prehistoric Rapanui moved this exact statue (or rather a 2x version of this statue) about 3 miles from the quarry before fell. Sure, it might have fallen, but the shape was adequate to get it that far. So in many ways, we need to remember that the shape the statue has is a product of prehistoric Rapanui engineering -- the shape is not from our imagination but theirs -- and they were able to move them. Our problem is simply figuring out how this might be done given the form of the statues as we see them.

It is certainly easy to forget this point when you are looking at giant 10,000 lb (well, 9,600 lbs according to the crane operator) cement statue towering over one's head. It is easy to doubt that the shape is "correct" -- but there is really no reason to think that it isn't. Trust in the ancestors.

Tomorrow we will do some rope configuration -- likely we will move the ropes to attach along the upper chest area. This wide point will provide us leverage to rotate the statue as we tilt it. We might need more than 2 ropes but that will be our starting point. We can start from there.

It is now.. of course... beverage o'clock. At times like this, I find a bit of Bombay and Tonic to be quite efficacious.

Hotu Iti 2: 10AM

2011-06-23T22:14:00.001-07:00

The weather is pretty rainy. Its now 10AM and and everyone is struggling to get things set up. Mata'u is desperately trying to construct an umu -- digging a hole and finding rocks. Of course, the rain is filling the hole and it is unlikely to hold a fire hot enough to cook chicken. Raw chicken, blargh. As Mike Pfeffer once said "the short-lived life of the chicken sashimi chef..."

Hoto Iti

2011-06-23T22:13:00.001-07:00

We arrived. It's a rainy, misty day. The clouds are low and sweep past the rugged volcanic cliffs that make up the valley walls. Someone left the gate open last night so the area we are supposed to use has a herd of moo-ing cows. Our rope "pullers" from UH, the local Navy base and elsewhere are showing up sporadically The crew has set up a tent for the group of pullers - craft services and what not. The rain, though, is coming down sideways so the tent is barely a shelter. A typical scene of chaos, really.

The schedule for today is supposed to go something like this:

8:00am Arrive at Kualoa Ranch (Crew, Terry, Carl)

9:00am EMT, Volunteers arrive

10:00am SHOOT: Test walking with Pullers, Carl, Terry

11:00am Hotu Iti arrives at site

Crane arrives at site

Blessers arrive, SHUTTLE to site

11:30am Unloading of Hotu Iti

SHOOT: Unload and Blessing Ceremony at site

1:00pm LUNCH

2:30pm SHOOT: Test walking with Hotu Iti

3:30pm SHOOT: Re-group for Hero walk

4:00pm SHOOT: Hero walk

6:00pm END DAY 1

Wheels up for hotel… (Possible Sunset B-roll)

The first part of the day is dedicated to getting the folks who are going to be pulling the ropes to move the statue up to speed about about how we believe the statues were moved. We also need them to be able to work as teams. So we will get them doing some tug-of-war exercises that will lead to some practice events. First, we will get them to simply work as independent teams - tugging against each other in typical tug-of-war fashion. Then we will have them work on pulling and coordinating their efforts -- getting the center of the rope to move in different directions. Once those tasks seem easy, we have a large 10' log that we will stand upright. The ropes will be tied to the log and we will have the teams attempt to lean the logs in different directions (left, right, forward,back) to simulate the coordination required to tilt the statue. This should give them some idea of what is required to work as a united whole and as separate groups. Or at least, that is the hope.

The statue - Hotu Iti - is scheduled to arrive @ 11AM. I havent seen it yet -- While I have footage of the mold being carved back at Janicki in Sedro Wooley, I have yet to see the finished concrete product. As I understand it, the statue was placed in a crate that was then put in a container. The container was put aboard a cargo ship and sailed to Honolulu where it has been sitting since arriving last week. Today a truck will bring it to the film location along with a crane to extricate Hoto Iti from the container/box. It must be a fairly large crane as the statue weighs nearly 12,000 lbs. That is about the weight of 4 average sedan type cars. Blargh. Fortunately we have an EMIT on site.

There are some blessings to take place - Rapa Nui and Hawaiian. Sergio/Mata'u is going to construct an umu to do a traditional ceremony that precedes most Rapanui events. I saw him digging the hole down by the road stretch we hope to move the statue along. Physics aside, we need, I suppose, all the good fortune we can get - so bring on the blessings.

We are planning two kinds of "walks" today. First, we will work with the statue while it is still attached to the crane. I'm not sure exactly how we will attach the rope but somehow we will make sure that the statue can move yet not fall over. This will allow us to let evaluate how far we can tilt the statue before it hits it's tipping point. While I have models to show us what we believe will be the point, these are based on assumptions of homogeneity of the material. I'd like to actual view the tipping points for the statue so that we can visually assess the angles that are required for moving. Without doing so, I suspect we will be overly conservative and not let the statue tip far enough. Given the mass of Hoto Iti, it would be easy to be scared of it falling.

If we can get that worked out we will do some "walking" tests with the crane rope attached. Once we get the "hang" of it, we will then remove the crane rope and do what Mata'u calls the "Hero walk." I guess we will be heroes if we can make that happen -- compressing generations of Rapanui experimentation into a few short hours. Whoohooo!

The Plan for Hoto Iti: The statue that walks

2011-06-23T09:19:00.001-07:00

Today is the big day. The statue will walk (or it won't). We head out to Kualoa Ranch momentarily.

Hoto Iti: The Statue That Walks

2011-06-20T08:53:00.001-07:00

I left Long Beach on Saturday for Honolulu and the site of our Hoto Iti moving attempt. This next phase of the NOVA filming will, hopefully, demonstrate how an actual moai can be moved in a standing position using its own distribution of mass and shape to facilitate its "walking." Earlier this spring I created a 3D model of a "road" moai (i.e., one that was abandoned after falling during transport) that was then used by Janicki Industries in Sedro Wooley, Washington to fabricate a mold that was then used to create a 5-ton 10-foot tall cement replica. This was then shipped to Honolulu on a container ship and now rests at the port of Honolulu.

Committee Films (the production company) has arranged to have Hoto Iti brought to Kualoa Ranch. Kualoa Ranch is an enormous chunk of Oahu located out the northeast side of the island. It's a stunning valley with massive cliffs and the classic "Polynesian-style" spire top mountains associated with young volcanic landscapes. The ranch is about 4,000 acres and was historically used for sugar cane cultivation (and prehistorically there were fishponds, terraces and pond-fields up in the upper part of the valley). The ranch seems to be largely used for filming these days -- Jurassic Park, 50 first dates, Godzilla, Mighty Joe Young, Windtalkers, Pearl Harbor, Lost, Stargate Atlantis and, of course, Hawaii 5-O (and more) were all filmed there. So it seems oddly familiar.

We all (the Committee Film folks - Maria, Andy, Ben, Bo, Matu'a, Meghan and Terry, Marc and Hotu the dog) met at the Ranch on Sunday afternoon to "scout" out the location. Earlier this spring Terry and Alex Morrison had measured some of the slope features of the road that stretches along the valley floor to find a suitable stretch that might work for our statue movement attempt. We need some place that has slopes that are no steeper than 3 degrees going uphill and 6 degrees going downhill. These slope constraints are based on measurements of actual moai roads on Rapa Nui -- the south coast road stretch has such parameters.

We found what looks like a suitable place in the upper part of the valley, below the location of what we think is the "Stargate Atlantis" set. Its a fairly flat stretch that has enough space on the sides of the road for the team of rope pullers to work. It also appears to be accessible for the giant truck and crane that will carry Hotu Iti to the location. There are some undulations in the road and of course the notion of moving a giant 5 ton statue across this surface will be complex.

I have to admit that the movement attempt fills me with more than a little bit of anxiety. Will it fall over and break into 10 pieces? will it just sit there as we pull on the ropes? Can we figure out generations of learned information in just a few short days? I guess we will see!

Arrival!

2011-05-29T07:36:00.001-07:00

Friday afternoon and after ca 36 hours of flying and waiting we are back on Rapa Nui. I've got my old room ... 22, purportedly where Heyerdahl slept back in 1986. No ghosts though. The weather is superb...warm with light breezes, soft air. I can hear the rollers down in the harbor and see the cargo ship in the bay. Right now I'm sitting outside my room. Terry and marc have gone off to find wine...

Location:Chile

NOVA II

2011-05-26T15:04:00.001-07:00

It is the third day of shooting for the NOVA documentary that is being shot by Committee Films about The Statues that Walked. So far so good. Fortuitously, the several cop

ies of the book arrived! We got 3 advance copies that we are going to take to Rapa Nui (arriving Friday). I am very happy for that as we can give a copy to Sergio, Francisco and others who have worked with us -- as well as donate a copy to the museum. The last two days were spent filming in the LA area -- first at CSULB (in our archaeology lab) and then over in Culver City where Max Beach works. Max Beach has been leading the animation efforts for demonstrating how the statues work. His office (IDA design) kindly supported this work and our intrusive filming. I spent a lot of time the first day providing "head shot" interview material. Ben Awes (the Director) had a long list of great questions that I was asked to answer. I have no idea how I did: I cobbled responses together as best I could. We will see...

Right now we are in Miami waiting for the flight to Santiago, Chile. It's an overnight flight so somewhat brutal. i hope to sleep through much of it. Once we get to Santiago, its a simple 5 hour flight to Rapa Nui!

NOVA

2011-05-09T12:45:00.001-07:00

The start date for the filming of the NOVA special on "The Statues That Walked" is approaching. The film crew will be heading to Long Beach during the week of commencement and filming some background footage at IIRMES on the Cal State University Long Beach Campus. We will then film over at IDA - the design firm that is helping us create the 3D animation for the statue movement and the data necessary to create Hoto Iti -- the 10 foot tall 5-ton statue recreation (right). We will ultimately attempt to move this statue in the way we propose in the book over 100 meter stretch and up a 3 degree slope - ropes, volunteers and the physics of statue walking.

Location:Orizaba Ave,Long Beach,United States

Full Professor

2011-05-09T12:33:00.001-07:00

I am happy to report that the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and the Department of Anthropology RTP committee has recommended me for promotion to full Professor. Though there were some vile shenanigans at the level of the college committee (and one Department member who was on this committee) but the Dean and Department have strongly supported my promotion. The final, final word, of course, comes from the Provost who makes the actual decision (this won't be done until June 15).

So with any luck I will soon be wearing, on a daily basis, elaborate robes such as those that Cambridge professors sported in the early 19th century.

CSULB at SAA 2011

2011-03-23T15:05:00.001-07:00

Despite the continuing politics of power here at The Beach, we have a fairly decent showing at this year's SAA meetings in terms of papers and posters. CSULB students are shown bold text.

Carl Lipo, Hector Neff and Jacob Kovalchik—The Promise and Practicalities of

Rehydroxylation Dating for Prehistoric Ceramic

Anne Breister and Carl Lipo—Technological Changes in Brownware from Owens

and Death Valleys

Judy Bernal, Gregory Holk, Carl Lipo and Hector Neff—An Experimental Study of

Mineralogical Changes and Hydrogen Isotope Fractionation in Ceramic

Pyrotechnology

Carla Pereira—Transmission Patterns among Late Prehistoric Potters of

Mississippi River Valley Ceramic

Paul Burger—Landscape Models for Early Human Occupation in Offshore

Contexts of Southern California

Scott Bigney, Janine Gasco and Hector Neff—Characterization of Obsidian from

Five Late Postclassic sites in the Soconusco Region of Chiapas, Mexico

Scott Van Keuren, Mark Agostini and Hector Neff—Ceramic Pigments and

Communities of Practice in Fourteenth-century Arizona

Federico Paredes, Margarita Cossich and Hector Neff—Drinking Chilate By The

Tomb? A Public Funeral Covered With Ilopango (Tbj) Ash In Western El

Salvado

Hector Neff and Barbara Voorhies—Elemental analysis of the Tlacuachero floors

Dean Arnold, Bruce Bohor, Hector Neff, Gary Feinman and Ryan Williams—

Indigenous Knowledge and the Sources of Palygorskite used in Maya Blue

Fumie Iizuka, Hector Neff and Richard Cooke—Deducing Human Mobility by

Studying the Circulation of Panama’s Earliest Pottery (Monagrillo) (ca. 4,800-

3,200 B.P.

Alex Morrison, Chris Lee, Carl Lipo and Terry Hunt—[Multi-stage Remote Sensing

Applications for Mapping Archaeological Features and Landscape Characteristics:

A Case Study from Rapa Nui, Chile]

Sachiko Sakai—Applications of Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) Dating

in the Study of Change in Clay Source of Olivine-tempered Ceramics in the

Arizona Strip and Adjacent Areas in the American Southwest

Page proofs arrive...

2011-03-04T08:38:00.001-08:00

The page proofs for The Statues That Walked have arrived. At a first glance, the book looks great. We have about a week to turn it around. After this, it goes off for printing and binding! Let the countdown begin.

RCD Photos

2011-02-15T14:24:00.001-08:00

I have also started to collect photos of RCD. You can find them here: http://www.lipolab.org/misc/Entries/2011/2/15_RCD_Photos.html If you have any to contribute, please let me know and I will post them.

RCD Writings - Update

2011-02-15T14:00:00.001-08:00

Thanks to Kevin Nolan (graduate student at Ohio State University) and Monica Tromp (graduate student at Idaho State University), Ive updated the list of RCD publications and have added some that were previously missing. Of particular obscurity is an undergraduate paper RCD wrote on Fort Ancient while at the University of Kentucky in 1961.

The papers and publications can be found here: http://www.lipolab.org/rcd.html

The Statues That Walked

2011-02-14T18:49:00.000-08:00

Just got the jacket cover material for "The Statues That Walked"

The monumental statues of Easter Island, both so magisterial and so forlorn, gazing out in their imposing rows over the island’s barren landscape, have been the source of great mystery ever since the island was first discovered by Europeans on Easter Sunday, 1722. How could the ancient people who inhabited this tiny speck of land, the most remote in the vast expanse of the Pacific islands, have built such monumental works? No such astonishing numbers of massive statues are found anywhere else in the Pacific. How could the islanders possibly have moved so many multi-ton monoliths from the quarry inland where they were carved to their posts along the coastline? And most intriguing, and vexing, of all, if the island once boasted a culture developed and sophisticated enough to have produced such marvelous edifices, what happened to that culture? Why was the island the Europeans discovered a sparsely populated wasteland?

The prevailing accounts of the history of the island tell a story of self-inflicted devastation; a glaring case of eco-suicide. The island was dominated by a powerful chiefdom that promulgated a cult of statue-making, exercising a ruthless hold on the island’s people and rapaciously destroying the environment, cutting down a lush palm forest that once blanketed the island in order to construct contraptions for moving more and more statues that grew larger and larger. As the population swelled in order to sustain the statue cult, growing well beyond the island’s agricultural capacity, a vicious cycle of warfare broke out between opposing groups, and the culture ultimately suffered a dramatic collapse.

When Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo began carrying out archeological studies on the island in 2003, they fully expected to find evidence supporting this account. But instead, revelation after revelation uncovered a very different truth. In this lively and fascinating account of their definitive solution to the mystery of what really happened on the island, they introduce the striking series of archeological discoveries they made, and the path-breaking findings of others about the history of the Pacific islands, which led them to compelling new answers to the most perplexing questions. Far from irresponsible environmental destroyers, they show, the Easter Islanders were remarkably inventive environmental stewards, devising ingenious methods to enhance the island’s agricultural capacity. They did not devastate the palm forest, and the culture did not descend into brutal violence. Perhaps most surprising of all, the making and moving of their enormous statutes did not require a bloated population or tax their precious resources; their statue-building was actually integral to their ability to achieve a delicate balance of sustainability. The Easter Islanders, it turns out, offer us an impressive record of masterful environmental management rich with lessons for confronting the daunting environmental challenges of our own time.

Shattering the conventional wisdom, Hunt and Lipo’s iron-clad case for a radically different understanding of the story of this most mysterious place is scientific discovery at its very best.

RCD 2002 CSULB Lecture

2011-01-28T11:53:00.001-08:00

In the fall of 2002, we were fortunate enough to get RCD to board a plane from the swamps of Mississippi and to travel to Long Beach for a lecture. This was the first year I taught at CSULB and the future was bright. Dan Larson made this all possible. The lecture RCD gave was probably not at all what most of the attendants thought it was going to be - and many nodded off. But if you want to hear about RCD academic history at the UW and the rise of a great program (and the challenges) with a condensed version of 497 and 498 thrown in, you are in for a treat.

The file is currently in .m4v format which makes for long downloads before playing (it's 1gig). Im converting it to .mov so that it can be streamed. If you want to access the lecture now, please see:

http://mendel.cla.csulb.edu/rcd/csulb-2002/

Colonization of the Eastern Pacific

2011-01-19T10:22:00.001-08:00

John Terrell has written a kind commentary of our PNAS paper in the latest issue of PNAS. You can read it here:

http://mendel.cla.csulb.edu/files/PNAS-2011-Terrell-1018804108.pdf

An open letter to the AAA Executive Board

2011-01-10T09:25:00.001-08:00

To: Virginia Dominguez

Cc: Leith Mullings, Deb Martin, Nan Rothschild, George Armelagos, Florence Babb, Laura Graham, Ana Aparicio, Alisse Waterston, Jason Miller, Hugh Gusterson, Susan Gillespie, Lee Baker, Jean Schensul, Vilma Santiago-Irizarry, Gabriela Vargas-Cetina, Ida Susser, Ed Liebow, Kate Clancy, Daniel Lende

January 10, 2010

Dear President Dominguez, President-Elect Mullings, and the AAA Executive Board,

We are a group of anthropologists who maintain an online presence, through social media tools like blogs, Twitter, and Facebook. The focus and tone of our presence varies, from outreach to research, from teaching to career development, from the personal to the political. However, we are united in our passion for our discipline. We join with those who have applauded the wording of the “What is Anthropology?” statement which clearly outlines the interdisciplinary nature of anthropology and its methods, both scientific and humanistic. This statement achieves the inclusivity that the removal of “science” from the Long Range Plan threw into question.

However, we also want to express our concern over AAA’s public characterization that it was only the mainstream media and other outside coverage that engaged in active discussions of the actions of the Executive Board (EB), or that this media coverage didn't in some ways reflect real tensions and reactions within the anthropological community. As a group, we played key roles in the online discussion regarding the AAA EB recent omission of the word “science” from the Long Range Plan (LRP), as well as subsequent responses by the EB. By parameterizing the public discussion as only taking place in the media and among "outsider" bloggers attempting to construct an “us versus them” binary, the impression is given that there has been no internal dissent or dialogue.

In reality, there has been a vibrant conversation taking place on our blogs, on Facebook, on Twitter, and on other forms of social media, expressing myriad views regarding not only the LRP wording, the actions of the EB, and the role of science in anthropology, but also deeper questions of anthropological identity. Indeed, it was through blogs and Twitter feeds like ours that the media and outside bloggers first realized the depth of concern and confusion the EB’s actions elicited within the anthropological community. This concern and critique were more complicated, and frankly more interesting, than the dichotomous rift promulgated by the New York Times and other outlets, but it was real and it was taking place among anthropologists. We know the EB is aware of the vibrant online community of anthropologists that has been deeply engaged in this issue. We hope the EB will publicly recognize how anthropologists online helped advance debate over the controversy, playing a central role in creating a publicly available discussion that engaged the Executive Board, anthropologists of different persuasions, and the larger media.

Online communities represent a powerful tool for dissecting tensions and misunderstandings as well as for constructing a broad forum for interdisciplinary collaboration and identity-building. We believe this controversy could have been largely mitigated by more effective discussion of the Long Range Plan in public forums online, and more timely release of all documents related to the controversy. With respect to the association’s long-term planning, we also believe the EB will be well-served by developing a more explicit and robust approach to anthropology online, including issues around open-access scholarship, public dissemination of ideas, teaching, interdisciplinary collaboration, and connection with and support for anthropologists who work online. Our own experience during this controversy shows the potential and importance of online engagement. Many of us were operating in isolation before the news of the changes to the LRP allowed us to find each other, to coordinate postings and conversations both on- and off-line. We have been grateful for the online anthropology community that has come together because of our opinions on the AAA LRP. Some have described this conversation as a renaissance for the discipline, and others have committed to learning more about each other’s subfields because of the tension that we finally had to acknowledge, all because of the AAA’s removal of the word “science.” We encourage the EB to consider how to support anthropologists working online, and to encourage further online collaboration and dissemination among AAA members. This will strengthen the discipline, and also permit more timely discussion and engagement among AAA members as the AAA acts on its Long Range Plan.

We view our online role as anthropologists as contributing a valuable service to the discipline we love. We are hopeful that this episode in our shared history will prove to catalyze important and inclusive dialogue regarding who we are as anthropologists as well as the channels we use to communicate with one another. We encourage the EB and the AAA membership as a whole to participate in this online community, to hear and join with the voices that are coming from within our discipline. This is an opportunity to move past marginalization and work together toward rebuilding a truly interdisciplinary anthropology based on mutual respect.

Sincerely,

Julienne Rutherford, Assistant Professor, University of Illinois at Chicago

Blog http://aapabandit.blogspot.com, Twitter @JNRutherford

Kate Clancy, Assistant Professor, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Blog http://professorkateclancy.blogspot.com, Twitter @KateClancy

Daniel Lende, Associate Professor, University of South Florida

Blog http://blogs.plos.org/neuroanthropology, Twitter @daniel_lende

Ryan Anderson, PhD candidate, University of Kentucky

Blog http://ethnografix.blogspot.com

Krystal D’Costa, Digital Analyst, New York City

Blog http://www.anthropologyinpractice.com, Twitter @anthinpractice

Francis Deblauwe, Program Developer, Alexandria Archive Institute

Blog http://www.alexandriaarchive.org/blog

Blog http://ux.opencontext.org/blog

Carlina de la Cova, Assistant Professor, University of North Carolina at Greensboro

Twitter @Bonesholmes

Eric Michael Johnson, PhD candidate, University of British Columbia

Blog http://primatediariesinexile.blogspot.com, Twitter @ericmjohnson

James Holland Jones, Associate Professor, Stanford University

Blog http://monkeysuncle.stanford.edu, Twitter @juemos

Rosemary A. Joyce, Professor, University of California, Berkeley

Blog http://ancientbodies.wordpress.com, Twitter @rajoyceUCB

Eric Kansa, Project Lead, Open Context

Blog http://www.alexandriaarchive.org/blog

http://opencontext.org

Erin Koch, Assistant Professor, University of Kentucky

Blog http://www.somatosphere.net

Kristi Lewton, Lecturer, Harvard University

Twitter @kristilewton

Carl Lipo, Associate Professor, California State University, Long Beach

Blog http://www.evobeach.com

Megan McCullen, Visiting Instructor, Alma College

Blog http://ethnohistorian.wordpress.com, Twitter@GLEthnohistory

Carole McGranahan, Associate Professor, University of Colorado

Twitter @CMcGranahan

Colleen Morgan, PhD candidate, University of California, Berkeley

Blog http://middlesavagery.wordpress.com

Eugene Raikhel, Assistant Professor, Unversity of Chicago

Blog http://www.somatosphere.net

Douglas Reeser, PhD candidate, University of South Florida

Blog http://recycledminds.blogspot.com

Michael E. Smith, Professor, Arizona State University

Blog http://publishingarchaeology.blogspot.com

Matt Tuttle, Journalist, Norfolk Anthropology Examiner

Twitter @Anthroprobably

Kyle W. West, Research Coordinator, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center

Blog http://kylewwest.blogspot.com, Twitter @kyle_west

The Statues That Walked: Book Cover

2011-01-07T15:43:00.001-08:00

We finally got the book cover... exciting! We learned that this will be the production schedule:

1/13/11: copyedited manuscript in to production, sent out to authors for query

1/27/11: copyedit due back from authors to production

2/22/11: proof pages in to production, sent out to authors

3/8/11: proof pages due back from authors to production

5/18/11: bound book date

6/21/11: on sale date

RCD writings

2011-01-05T16:05:00.001-08:00

I've started a shared collection of RCD paper: http://www.lipolab.org/rcd.html If you have pdfs to share or references to add, please let me know.

Colonization of the Eastern Pacific

2010-12-28T12:32:00.001-08:00

New Zealand's Sunday Star Times has a good graphic that shows the new model of colonization of Eastern Polynesia. You can read the rest of the story here: http://www.stuff.co.nz/sunday-star-times/news/latest-news/4498668/Pacific-colonisation-one-big-pulse

High-precision radiocarbon dating shows recent and rapid initial human colonization of East Polynesia

2010-12-28T10:51:00.001-08:00

Our (Janet Wilmhurst, Terry Hunt, and Atholl Anderson) paper on an analysis of 14C dates for eastern Polynesia has been published in PNAS. It's an Open Access publication so you download it at: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/12/22/1015876108.full.pdf. We've had a bit of new coverage for it:

http://www.stuff.co.nz/sunday-star-times/news/latest-news/4498668/Pacific-colonisation-one-big-pulse
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/world/65209/pacific-colonisation-more-recent-than-thought

http://www.everythinglongbeach.com/discovery-eastern-polynesia-colonization/

festivus, christamus, and other holidays

2010-12-26T03:29:00.000-08:00

EvolutionBeach is on the east coast this holiday season, taking respite from the department madness. Snow is promised for today and I hope it dumps. Bring it on old man winter and let the flakes pile up in drifts that dwarf the house. Fill the air with biting cold and bluster!

I hope you all are having a wonderful holiday of whatever sort you prefer.

Such good timing...

2010-12-22T08:37:00.001-08:00

The AAA has such amazing timing -- When a historic bill funding more science and science education gets passed, what is the AAA doing? Busy removing all reference to science from its mission statement. Blargh.

http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101222/full/news.2010.693.html

Dreams of a U.S. renaissance in basic research were kept alive today when the U.S. House of Representatives passed the America COMPETES Act, a key funding bill for the physical sciences. The milestone came as a huge relief to supporters of the bill, which only last week seemed likely to die with the current Congress at the end of this year. But after a dramatic rally of support in the US Senate on Friday, the bill found itself back in the House, where it was briskly shepherded through to a final vote this afternoon. The bill now goes to President Barack Obama to be signed into law.

COMPETES is a reauthorization of a three-year 2007 act that followed recommendations in Rising Above the Gathering Storm, a 2005 report from the U.S. National Academies. The report supported increased funding for science education and placed certain science-funding agencies, including the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, on a path to double their funding over ten years, relative to a 2007 baseline.

The bill's passage is a major victory for Congressman Bart Gordon (Democrat, Tennessee), who spearheaded the legislation in 2007 and again this year. Gordon is retiring from the House after three years as chairman of the House Committee on Science and Technology, and says that he sees COMPETES as part of his legacy. "There is nothing I'm more proud of than the America COMPETES bill," Gordon told the House during the floor debate. "I cannot think of anything I would rather be doing in what is likely my final act on the House floor in 26 years of service than sending this bill to the president's desk."

Sums it up...

2010-12-20T20:05:00.000-08:00

As is usually the case, xkcd sums up the science issue.

Words, Culture, and Change

2010-12-16T18:03:00.001-08:00

Hector Neff just sent me the link to the Culturomics website. This project (with paper in Science) uses digitized books (from Google Books) representing some 4% of all books ever printed to track word usage over time. Amazing. A whole host of folks were involved -- including Pinker, Nowak and Jean-Baptiste Michel.

We constructed a corpus of digitized texts containing about 4% of all books ever printed. Analysis of this corpus enables us to investigate cultural trends quantitatively. We survey the vast terrain of "culturomics", focusing on linguistic and cultural phenomena that were reflected in the English language between 1800 and 2000. We show how this approach can provide insights about fields as diverse as lexicography, the evolution of grammar, collective memory, the adoption of technology, the pursuit of fame, censorship, and historical epidemiology. "Culturomics" extends the boundaries of rigorous quantitative inquiry to a wide array of new phenomena spanning the social sciences and the humanities.

You can play with the data (and download it!) at http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/. Check out, for example, "bell bottoms".

or compare "bowler hat, fedora and baseball cap"

This is a fantastic look at how cultural terms vary over time with all kinds of implications for studying rates of changes, functional contexts, etc. Very cool! Not too many anthropologists on that co-author list!

RC Dunnell

2010-12-15T09:08:00.001-08:00

A couple of more recent photos of RCD doing what he enjoyed: talking about archaeology and looking at archaeology. In this case, discussing plummet variability and a mound up on the bluff near Natchez.. Photos from Natchez, 2010 with Tim Hunt. Thanks to Dan Shepherd

More on the Anthropology Mission Statement Debacle...

2010-12-14T14:17:00.001-08:00

Razib Khan writes on his Discover Magazine blog about the AAA anti-science movement.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2010/12/the-unbearable-whiteness-of-science/

How would you feel as a chemist if professional meetings were dominated by alchemists? If you were a neurologist specializing in traumatic brain injuries who had to go to conferences where they mostly talked about Qi? I’ve personally listened to enough cultural anthropologists who seem to be channeling aliens for whom Michel Foucalt is God as they issue forth a river of impenetrable jargon that I have sympathy for the frustration.

RIP Robert C. Dunnell

2010-12-13T19:07:00.001-08:00

More later, but just wanted to share the sad news that Robert Chester Dunnell died today. Very sad.

Science and Anthropology

2010-12-12T11:42:00.001-08:00

Science is what makes the world safe for cultural anthropology. Really. It is only because we can sort out ideas that have empirical performance versus those that are opinions, beliefs, culture, linguistic stylings, fancy, flair, speculations, musings, diatribes, claims and proclamations that we provides something for cultural anthropologists to study. The sorting maybe messy and fraught with human confusion, but it works over the long run. Lacking performance values, these ideas must be free to vary as well as the people who have them. Science sorts out ideas, for example, that claim disease is caused by 'vapors' versus those ideas in which disease is caused by infectious agents. It also demonstrates that same-sex parenting produces children no worse off than multiple sex parents or that gay soldiers are no worse off doing their job than heterosexuals. Science makes it possible to tell misanthropes to shut the hell up.

Ruth Benedict has said "the purpose of anthropology is to make the world safe for human differences." Not quite. Science does this by allowing us to evaluate claims that human differences are somehow "wrong." Anthropologists get the safer world as a freebee.

And the AAA wants to get rid of science as part of its mission?

Anthropology in the NY Times

2010-12-10T11:39:00.001-08:00

Nicholas Wade reported on the AAA mission statement change in yesterday's NY Times. Interestingly Daniel Linde comments in a PLoS Blog on what Wade reports and largely argues that everyone is making mountains out of mole hills. He states that the mission statement was supposed to be just "internal" and not a public affair. He argues that changing the mission statement just means that we are "moving forward" and that it is just recognizing the previous role of colonialsm. Its a puzzling argument. Why does removing science from a mission statement simply "a field moving forward?" He seems to have fallen into the trap of equating our colonialist ancestors (and their science mission) with science itself. That's just bad logic and sloppy thinking.

To end his blog he quotes, Catherine Lutz who is "most definitely a critical anthropologist" (suggesting that they are the "real" anthropologist and thus the authority on what is and isnt anthropology). She states that "Most departments of anthropology happily work together each day with a diversity of members, some of whom take more humanistic approaches and some of whom take more scientific ones. All of them aspire to rigor and rarely disparage either their colleagues in biochemistry or their colleagues in French literature for not understanding the worlds that they choose to study…"

It's unclear, of course, from where her data for "most departments" comes. At best, I would argue that Departments live under a kind of detante. At worst, the situation consists of a majority rule of one form or another with a disgruntled minority. I suspect true respect is fairly rare given the competition for resources and the vastly different products that come from a "humanities" based anthropology versus any form that seeks a science based discipline. The most happy departments Ive seen have simply opted to pick one area for their focus rather than try to squeeze in such disparate goals.

AAA, Science and the politics of lame

2010-12-05T08:26:00.001-08:00

Alice Dreger follows up her previous discussions on the dropping of science from the AAA mission and nabs some good quotes from Mark Collard. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/fetishes-i-dont-get/201012/the-remains-the-aaa

Meanwhile, the AAA continues to be confused. When questioned about this move the AAA spokesperson (Damon Dozier) stated that:

The removal of any mention of science from the plan's mission statement applies only to the long-range plan -- and not to the organization itself or its larger direction

And that despite the simple closed-minded assertion that resulted in this fiasco,

That's how our process works, and I think it's a very open process.

I've seen these kinds of shenanigan's before. Decisions are made a head of time and others are invited in to "comment" after the fact. Then the commentors are claimed to be subversive and a minority based on that the majority is unaware or doesn't care. It is a great way to demoralize smaller groups with diverse interests and solidify a fascist style administration. Classic thuggery.

Dear AAA Executive Committee...

2010-12-04T16:45:00.001-08:00

An open letter from Dr. David Cheetham, one our CSULB lecturers in archaeology and an IIRMES researcher. Dr. Cheetham recently completed his PhD at Arizona State University.

Dear AAA Executive Committee,

I am a relatively young scholar, having recently finished my Ph.D. at Arizona State University. I am also a long-standing member of the AAA---or at least I was until today (I will not be renewing my membership). The current flap with respect to your collective (I assume) move to extirpate science from the mandate of the AAA is an alarming indictment of the profession as it currently stands. My only hope is that some faction within the executive body will speak out against this pending amendment and, if unsuccessful in preventing its activation, will resign in protest and build support from without.

Under the false premise of betterment and backwards (empirically baseless) activism, you are sowing the seeds of the discipline's demise. Perhaps you should take a close look at what the shunning of the scientific paradigm and move to "postmodernism" has done to anthropology in France; it has made it irrelevant and therefore dispensable. If we as anthropologists follow your proposed mandate and never assume an objective stance (as science strives to do), by default we incorporate a "plurality of voices," or "multivocality," or whatever (insert alternate fad/buzz-word here) on all matters cultural. If the cultural world is not knowable from a scientific standpoint, then what purpose does the discipline serve? What has happened to the discipline of anthropology that the very essence of science is completely cast aside for non-empirical perspectives? Of course there should always be room for different paradigms---as there is in any healthy, contributing discipline---but to remove what is arguably the most fundamental of them is, in my opinion, tantamount to a rejection of all. Knowledge is built through the interplay of paradigms and ideas that spring from them, not through avoidance of paradigms that activist elements find objectionable for reasons they cannot properly articulate. That a collective, representative group of anthropologists would even consider such a move is mind-boggling---It saddens me, although it comes as no surprise. I may have chose the wrong profession, but as long as I am in it, I will continue to be guided by what you consider objectionable.

sincerely,

David Cheetham, Ph.D.

Anthropology Vs. Science

2010-12-04T12:37:00.001-08:00

For any of you who would rather see an animated recreation of the dialogue between anthropology, the AAA and science, you can now view it here:

http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/7936213/

AAA responds with a lame plea...

2010-12-04T11:59:00.001-08:00

Apparently, we are supposed to believe that removing science was done to be "more inclusive." Orwellian double speak for "we don't give a crap."

http://www.aaanet.org/about/Governance/Long_range_plan.cfm

From the officers of the AAA to our membership:

Our AAA long-range plan needed updating in order to address the changing composition of the profession and the needs of the AAA membership. At its November 20 meeting in New Orleans, the Executive Board specified, concretized, and enlarged its operational roadmap for investing the Association’s resources towards a sustainable future. Section leadership was consulted prior to the New Orleans Annual Meeting, and the Executive Board acted. Then immediately after the highly attended 2010 AAA Meetings in New Orleans, some criticisms of the plan were circulated electronically that had not been sent our way prior to the Meetings. Among them were thoughtful responses from several quarters, many queries about hearsay, and some suggestions for improvement or change. These responses, however, were amped up by blog headline editors earlier this week: “Anthropology Without Science,” and “No Science Please. We’re Anthropologists.” We believe that the source of the problem speaks to the power of symbols: we replaced the term “science” in the preface of this planning document by a more specific (and inclusive) list of research domains, while explicitly acknowledging that the Association’s central focus is to promote the production, circulation, and application of anthropological research findings. Each one of us (the four officers of the AAA) may add or comment on the issues separately, but collectively we care about letting the entire association see the document at hand. We know that comments will continue to come our way and we welcome them from our clearly engaged membership.

Virginia R. Dominguez, President
Leith Mullings, President-Elect
Debra L. Martin, Secretary

RCD: Lifetime Achievement Award

2010-12-02T10:37:00.001-08:00

If only as a gesture towards thumbing the nose at anti-science anthropology establishment you might consider helping us nominate Robert Dunnell for the Society for American Archaeology Lifetime Achievement Award. Diana Greenlee has put the announcement out that Bill Dancey and Janet Rafferty are compiling nomination letters in support of RCD.

I hope you will consider writing a letter of support. Here are the key points:

The support letters have to be submitted as signed pdfs, either using an electronic signature or by scanning a signed document.
Letters should be on letterhead.
Please email your letter to Janet at rafferty@anthro.msstate.edu, or send a hard copy via snail mail to Janet Rafferty, P.O. Box AR, Mississippi State, MS 39762. She will convert any non-pdfs and/or scan any hard copy letters
f possible, we'd like the letters by 23 December so that everything can be submitted before the holidays..
Please contact Janet or me with any questions

The Descent of Anthropology...

2010-12-01T07:44:00.001-08:00

Discussion about the AAA's decision to remove "science" from its mission statement continues. Julienne Rutherford (a physical anthropologist working at the interesting convergence of the School of Dentistry and the Departments of Oral Biology and Anthropology at the University of Illinois at Chicago) has posted some useful comments about this action. You can find her writing here:

Michael Smith has also commented on the AAA's mission change:

"Anthropology is not a science" - American Anthropological Association

Open Source GIS

2010-11-30T10:50:00.001-08:00

If you haven't tried it lately, I recommend you give GRASS a whirl. While earlier versions were a mess of imploding modules and inscrutable dialogs, Version 6.4 has many binaries for the major platforms and lots of deep functionality. Check it out at: http://grass.fbk.eu/Mac OS X binaries are available at: http://www.kyngchaos.com/software/grass (just needs GDAL, Freetype and cairo frameworks to install -- links on the KingChaos site).

You also should check out the newest version of Quantum GIS (QGIS). The latest release (1.6.0) is "Copiapó" is getting to be pretty solid. http://www.qgis.org/

While you are at it, download the newest version of Google Earth (6.0) which now boasts 3D trees. Im not sure why we need 3D trees but what the heck. Actually, the better integration of historical imagery makes this a very useful release.

Fluff-heads and Anthropology

2010-11-29T09:16:00.001-08:00

Alice Dreger made quite a bit of news last year by exposing the American Anthropological Association Executive Committee witch hunt against Napolean Chagnon. This year, while attending the AAA meetings (to go to the Evolutionary Anthropology Society section meetings), she got wind of the "ditch science" move the Executive Committee is now undertaking. Not one to back away from saying it like it is, Dreger describes the issue as this one:

In the messages flying back and forth, I was reminded why anthropologists refer to the annual conference as "the meetings," plural: it's because they go and meet with their own actual disciplinary types, in separate groups, so that the real scientists don't have to deal too much with the fluff-head cultural anthropological types who think science is just another way of knowing.

Not all cultural anthropologists are fluff-heads, of course. You can usually tell the ones who are fluff-heads by their constant need to look like superheroes for oppressed peoples, and you can tell the non-fluff-heads by their attention to data. But the non-fluff-head cultural anthropologists are feeling utterly beleaguered in this environment that actively denigrates science and consistently promotes activism over data collection and scientific theorizing.

You can read more about Dreger's take on the debacle in her blog on Psychology Today: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/fetishes-i-dont-get/201011/no-science-please-were-anthropologists

Culture Evolves and Anthropology Does Not.

2010-11-29T09:06:00.001-08:00

While the primary association for Anthropology continues to fall into a puzzlingly empty abyss, biologists expand their authority over the core concept that once defined Anthropology: culture. The recent Culture Evolves meeting in London highlights the degree to which anthropology has handed over its raison d'être. An article in the New Scientist describes the goings-on at Culture Evolves. (Note: see Mark Collard's extensive quotes...). Is the last good anthropological treatise on culture going to be Cornealis Osgood 1951?

From: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20827871.500-culture-club-all-species-welcome.html?full=true&print=true

From lay-a-bed meerkats to fish traditions, all sorts of animal behaviour comes from learning as well as genes. So what makes humans different?

CULTURE: the word conjures images of nights at the opera, airy art galleries and classical architecture. Whether you consider culture and all its trappings to be elitist and intimidating or enriching and the pinnacle of civilisation, there is one point on which most people agree - culture is distinctly human. So it was quite surreal to find myself, last June, in the foyer of the Queen Elizabeth concert hall in London, in a group of 700 people, discussing the cultural lives of orang-utans, meerkats and fish.

The meeting, called Culture Evolves, was held to help celebrate the 350th anniversary of the Royal Society of London. It was an indication of just how far the scientific study of culture has come in recent years. It is little more than a decade since a landmark paper in Nature identified dozens of cultural activities in chimps, catapulting culture out of the exclusively human domain. Since then, culture in non-humans has become a hot topic, with evidence piling up that it can be found right down through the animal kingdom, even as far as insects.

All of which presents an enigma. If culture is so prevalent in the animal kingdom, why are we the only creature with traditions as complex or diverse as the cha-cha or the Japanese Noh drama? This question was debated at the meeting, with interesting answers emerging, some of which even hint at where human culture will go from here. "[The research] looks set to transform our understanding of ourselves," says meeting co-organiser Andrew Whiten of the University of St Andrews, UK.

A word about definitions before genteel readers start choking on their afternoon tea: nobody is proposing that animals have anything close to what you might call "high culture". If you want to understand what biologists mean when they refer to animal culture, forget Rimbaud, classical concerts and art appreciation: think instead about all the things humans do that go under the umbrella of cultural diversity - traditions such as languages, cuisines, fashion, ritual and games. An animal species in which distinct groups display such socially learned traditions may be said to possess culture - although some biologists still prefer not to use the C word.

The idea that culture is not exclusively human has been hotly contested for at least half a century, with proponents citing classic examples, like one troop of Japanese macaques who developed a tendency to wash their sweet potatoes in the sea before eating them. Others, however, doubted whether such traditions could be equated with culture. Things came to a head in 1999 when Whiten teamed up with a group of luminaries in the world of primatology to catalogue chimp local traditions (Nature, vol 399, p 682).

Chimp customs

Trawling through reports from over 150 years of observation of chimpanzees from seven different sites, the researchers identified 65 categories of behaviour, 42 of which varied between populations. A few of these differences could be explained by ecological factors - in four sites where there was a high risk of being attacked by predators, for example, the chimps did not build sleeping nests on the ground as they did in other places. When such instances were removed, that still left 39 areas in which different communities had distinct behaviours. These ranged from the construction and use of specific tools for termite fishing or cracking recalcitrant nuts, to idiosyncratic courtship routines and particular styles of grooming - some groups do it with one arm clasped overhead, for example. Ruling out the possibility that these behaviours were either genetically predetermined or learned by individuals through trial and error, the team concluded that they must be passed on from one animal to another via social learning, and therefore constituted cultural traditions.

The combination of so much evidence, big-name authors and publication in Nature finally persuaded many animal behaviourists to embrace the idea that culture is not exclusively human. Before long, many more creatures had gained admission into the culture club. In 2001, Hal Whitehead from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, and Luke Rendell from the University of St Andrews, UK, published a paper in which they identified a variety of cultural traits in whales and dolphins, including specific songs, migratory traditions and foraging techniques (Behavioral and Brain Sciences, vol 24, p 309).

Then in 2003, Carel van Schaik at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, and colleagues, catalogued 24 cultural traditions in orang-utans. These ranged from the practice of making "dolls" from bundles of leaves to blowing raspberries at each other before bedtime (Science, vol 299, p 102). The same year Susan Perry of the University of California, Los Angeles, revealed culture in capuchin monkeys in Costa Rica, which have some truly bizarre traditions, like poking each other in the eye and sniffing one another's hands (Current Anthropology, vol 44, p 241).

Orang-utan cultural traditions range from the practice of making 'dolls' from bundles of leaves to blowing raspberries at each other at bedtime

It is clear to see why social learning would be beneficial to these species. An animal that can copy behaviour already acquired by a compatriot can pick up new skills more quickly. This is particularly advantageous in fast-changing environments, where behaviours that are hard-wired into the genes would soon become redundant. But what about more "cognitively challenged" animals - would they have the brainpower to cash-in on social learning?

It has long been known that some birds learn their songs from one another, but many researchers were sceptical that they would use social learning beyond this one specific trait. There is now convincing evidence that they do. For example, Tore Slagsvold of the University of Oslo, Norway, described at the Culture Evolves meeting how he transferred the eggs of blue tits to the nests of great tits, and vice versa. He found that the fostered chicks acquired foraging behaviours characteristic of their adoptive parents. Since both species inhabit essentially the same natural environment, this indicates that the way in which they exploit it is largely determined by culture rather than a genetic predisposition (Proceedings of the Royal Society, B, vol 274, p 19).

That's not all. Fish also learn techniques from their peers to navigate many of life's problems, from deciding what to eat and where to find food, to recognising and avoiding predators. Moving even further down the animal kingdom, there is even some evidence of social learning in insects including crickets and bees, leading some to claim that they, too, may have their own cultural traditions (Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, vol 61, p 1789).

Within just 11 years of Whiten and colleagues' seminal Nature paper, it has now become clear that the fundamental building block of culture - social learning - is widespread in the animal kingdom. A conundrum remains, however. If a fish with a brain the size of a petit pois is sophisticated enough for social learning, how come millions of years of evolution have only produced one species with traditions as diverse as the tango, brutalism and dim-sum?

One possible explanation, explored at the meeting, springs from the growing realisation that learning by copying is not the unalloyed good it was once thought to be. Although social learning is an efficient way of picking up information, if used indiscriminately it can be arbitrary or even harmful. An inability to abandon learned traditions could mean that animals get locked into using an inefficient strategy when environmental conditions change. Worse still, local traditions may even emerge that confer no benefits and simply put you at a disadvantage, which seems to have happened among some Kalahari meerkats.

Life is tough for these animals, and pups rely heavily on social learning to work out what is edible and how to avoid being eaten themselves, but the tendency to copy also extends to another habit with no apparent benefits. Alex Thornton at the University of Cambridge has discovered that some groups consistently get up later than others, even though this lay-a-bed tradition gives less time for foraging (Proceedings of the Royal Society B, vol 277, p 3623).

Judging when and who to copy should therefore be vital. Is this where humans steal a march over other animals? Unlike many other species, we do not merely copy our parents, but instead consider everyone around us as potential role models. This should give us more opportunities to acquire useful traditions, provided that we can work out who is most likely to possess good information.

It turns out that we are particularly skilled at making this distinction. Adults are known to choose the most successful, prestigious and knowledgeable individuals to copy. Even children are highly selective of who to trust, rather than blindly copying the people they know best, as had previously been believed. "By age 5, kids prefer information from reliable informants to familiar ones," saysPaul Harris of Harvard University, who presented work on the topic at the Culture Evolves meeting.

All of this is very sensible and clever, but there's a problem: "Every single one of these effects have previously been observed in fish," says Kevin Laland at the University of St Andrews, who studies social learning in guppies. We might like to think that we are more discriminating than a fish, but perhaps what really sets us apart from other species is not who we learn from, but how we learn.

"In animals, social learning occurs through observation," says Gergely Csibra of the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. We, however, have a more active system of instruction that includes both teachers and learners. He has dubbed this "natural pedagogy" and believes it evolved in the human line in response to technological advances. Around 2.6 million years ago, our ancestors began making tools. As tools increased in complexity the technology became more "opaque", says Csibra. This meant that learners could not simply copy by observing, so knowledge came to be passed on by explicit demonstration, either using non-verbal techniques or the evolved trait of language. As a result, he asserts, only humans are psychologically adapted to assume the roles of both teacher and pupil (New Scientist, vol 2545, p 42).

Further evidence that the complexity of human technology pushed us to become better social learners comes from another distinctly human quirk: over-imitation. Unlike chimps and other social learners, young children copy every single step performed by a demonstrator, even ones that are clearly irrelevant. Various experiments by Derek Lyons at the University of California, Irvine, have ruled out the possibilities that kids over-imitate because they think it is expected of them, or from a desire to be like the adult demonstrator, or simply because they want to. "Over-imitation is involuntary," he says. He concludes that when children are taught a new procedure they automatically encode all the actions as causally meaningful (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol 104, p 19751). This may sometimes lead to the reproduction of irrelevant actions, but in a world where cultural artefacts are often complex, on balance it is a useful adaptation.

All of which suggests a kind of positive feedback loop, in which the complexities of early technology pushed us to evolve better methods of social learning. These improved learning abilities then accelerated cultural transmission, ultimately pushing us towards greater and greater cultural complexity.

Runaway evolution

As powerful a driver of cultural development as technology may have been, there is inevitably a great deal more to it than that. Francesco d'Errico at the University of Bordeaux, France, andChris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London recently turned to the archaeological record to track cultural change in prehistory. They found that cultural developments such as innovations in the way stone tools are created happened in leaps and bounds, rather than in a more gradual, steady trend. That may be because our psychology also includes a strong conservative streak.

Harris finds, for example, that children will preferentially imitate people who conform to social norms. This trait makes it difficult for new traditions to get off the ground, and outside forces may therefore be required to tip the balance in favour of innovation, d'Errico and Stringer conclude. From their study, three broad factors seem to be key: changes in climate, population growth and high levels of cultural exchange. Agriculture, for instance, is thought to have emerged 10,000 years ago partly as a result of increasing population pressure in the eastern Mediterranean.

If these factors shaped cultural evolution in the past, can we make any predictions about the future? With increasing opportunities for cultural exchange via the internet and globalisation, perhaps we should expect to see runaway cultural evolution? "There are countervailing forces," says Mark Collard from Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada, who spoke at the Culture Evolves meeting about what causes cultural complexity. On the one hand, he points out that the internet and globalisation allow social information to be shared by large numbers of people across the world who could never have connected before. That could lead to a breakdown in cultural barriers as different traditions merge together and begin to lose some of their individuality. Look at any social networking site, however, and you'll see that people still form distinct cliques - more so than ever, in fact, since it's now much easier for individuals to hook up with others who share their passions, no matter how far-out these may be. "The internet allows groupishness," says Collard.

Throughout human evolution, people have used traditions and cultural practices to distinguish themselves from other camps. "Humans have a long history of erecting barriers," says another conference delegate, evolutionary biologist Mark Pagel of the University of Reading, UK. Cliques on the internet are no different, each propagating their own distinct trends and fashions. Our tendency for groupishness may be a somewhat unappealing trait in many circumstances, but it may just be the saving grace that allows our amazing cultural diversity to flourish in the future.

Kate Douglas is a features editor for New Scientist

Whither Anthropology as a Science?

2010-11-26T22:04:00.001-08:00

There must have been some buzz this past week at the AAA meetings in New Orleans. Peter Peregrine sent an email out to members, past and present, of the Society for Anthropological Sciences (SAS) (for which Peregrine is President). Quite rightly, he was massively alarmed about a motion the Executive Committee of the AAA has taken in revision of the Association's mission statement. In essence, the committee has expunged all references to Anthropology as a science as part of their "Long Range Plan." He has called for a response to the AAA in the form of a resolution for the SAS. I assume there will be other responses as well. Here is what is being proposed:

Mission Statement in the new LRP (additions underlined; deletions in strikethrough)

Section 1. The purposes of the Association shall be to advance ~~anthropology as the science that studies~~ public understanding of humankind in all its aspects, ~~through~~ This includes, but is not limited to, archeological, biological, ~~ethnological,~~ social, cultural, economic, political, historical, medical, visual, and linguistic anthropological research; The Association also commits itself ~~and~~ to further the professional interests of ~~American~~ anthropologists, including the dissemination of anthropological knowledge, expertise, and interpretation. ~~and its use to solve human problems~~.

Section 2. To advance ~~the science of anthropology~~ the public understanding of humankind, the Association shall: ~~Foster and support the development of special anthropological societies organized on a regional or functional basis;~~ Publish and promote the publication of anthropological monographs and journals; Encourage anthropological teaching, research, and practice; ~~act to coordinate activities of members of the Association with those of other organizations concerned with anthropology,~~ and maintain effective liaison with related ~~sciences~~ knowledge disciplines and their organizations.

Section 3. To further the professional interests of anthropologists, the Association shall, in addition to those activities described under Section 2: Take action on behalf of the entire profession and integrate the professional activities of anthropologists in the special aspects of the science; and promote the widespread recognition and constant improvement of professional standards in anthropology.

When I first read this, I thought "well, that is at least being honest." In many ways, Anthropology has survived in some of its least flattering forms due to the impression that many people that "doing Anthropology" is somehow necessarily "scientific." One might think, for example, "why are these people 'specialists' and getting paid to do this?" if science didn't have something to do with it. Here, science is confused with "systematic" but the gist is basically the same (i.e., assuming something systematic produces some regular and recognizable product). Of course, so much of what anthropology does do really isn't science, not even in its most empiricist and "systematic" form. Looking over the set of papers presented at the AAAs, one sees largely an ad hoc assortment of viewpoints, beliefs, assertions, claims, stories, tales, re-envisionings, interpretations, polemics, rallies, hubris, hue, and so on. Little of it is even empiricist in its crass form and even less is "systematic" in any recognizable way.

But on second thought, the idea that the people who believe that anthropology cannot or should not be a science can entirely co-opt the entire discipline is pretty outrageous. This kind of gerrymandering of the mission basically makes it necessary for those who believe that there are ways of generating theory-laden falsifiable accounts of the world in terms of culture (and other basic anthropological concepts) must work under a different banner than anthropology. But why should this be - we (science focused individuals) are anthropologists in the best sense of the discipline and its tradition. The anti-science theme is something early anthropologists fought against -- and is a relative late comer to the party.

And to make things worse, this new "mission" for anthropology seems only to further its the association's self-perpetuation interests without providing any particular reason for existing in the first place. The mission statement is insular, self-fulfilling and largely pointless. Deleting the goal of "solve human problems"? Uh, isn't this defining the mission of the AAA as simply promoting anthropology to simply replicate itself in whatever random form it happens to take? While ideas are all conceptually equal, some have more use than others when goals such as "solve human problems" are explicit. So removing this clause simply means that everyone doing anything is all okay. While this might not seem like such a big deal (i.e., who cares?), the reality is that resources are always finite and decisions have to be made. Plus, the "everything goes" kind of mentality seems to breed idiotic, political minded, self-congratulatory, post-hoc rationalized initiatives like the AAA Executive Committee's earlier witch hunt after Napoleon Chagnon.

Personally, I decided long ago to never send another dollar towards the AAA -- the journal sucks, the meetings consist of endless parade of dour, self-serious blathering and the association is a platform for mindless PC agenda and attacks on the folks struggling to make anthropology have a purpose. This change in the mission largely serves to confirm my earlier feelings about the AAA. Still, I cannot help but feel even more abandoned and disrespected by many of my academic colleagues.

Want to tell the AAA Executive Committee what you think about this? Email them by clicking here....

Other discussions on this issue:

http://chronicle.com/blogs/innovations/anthropology-association-rejecting-science/27936

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/fetishes-i-dont-get/201011/no-science-please-were-anthropologists

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/11/30/anthroscience

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2010/12/03/putting-science-back-in-anthropology/

Evolutionary and Interpretive Archaeologies: A Dialogue

2010-11-18T12:27:00.001-08:00

While I am not sure what the dialogue is going to consist of, colleague Ethan Cochrane and co-editor Andrew Gardner are on the brink of publishing a new edited volume entitled " Evolutionary and Interpretive Archaeologies: A Dialogue" (December 1, 2010, Left Coast Press). From what I remember, this book started as a colloquium series while Ethan was teaching at UCL. Given the radically (and explicit) different epistemologies (falsification vs. plausibility as a means of evaluation), I am not sure what the common ground for this dialogue will be (i.e., is it just claiming that plausibility is "good enough"?). If the book serves to demonstrate the critical differences between these kinds of explanatory products, it will be of use. I look forward to reading it.

The Statues That Walked now on Amazon (Pre-order)!

2010-11-16T10:39:00.001-08:00

While we are still doing edits on the manuscript, our Rapa Nui/Easter Island book has now become available on Amazon for pre-orders. Pre-order your copy here! Order now and we will throw in a free set of steak knives or a personalized signed note!

Structure From Motion

2010-11-12T19:30:00.001-08:00

Part of our interest in acquiring a UAV is to expand our ability for quickly generating high resolution topographic data. Traditionally, this process is time-consuming and (as a result) expensive. I've spent a number of summers collecting elevation data over archaeological deposits (Easter Island, Panakton, Greece, Harappa..) and even after weeks of tedious point collection (and thousands of points measured across the ground), the resulting topographic map is less-than-desirable. The problem is one of data density -- 1000 points can be collected pretty quickly (esp. with a modern total station) but over any sized area the density of the points is pretty low per unit area. Take a 100x100 meter area -- it would take 10000 points to have a point every meter. 1000 points is only a 10% sample of that. Now one can be "smart" and sample more densely in areas with greater changes in topography but then some of the algorithms for building the iso-contours will produce odd "artifacts" -- many assume even coverage of points. Even with 10000 points, you end up with a fairly crude representation of the surface - which might work at the scale of the entire deposit, but is too crude for examining any specific area. To make matters worse, in order to increase resolution by say 2x (i.e., to get 50 centimeter resolution), you have to quadruple the sample size.

New developments in laser scanning and LiDAR provide a great means for changing the data generation to cost relationship. However, the technology is pretty new and not entirely cheap. Ultimately, LiDAR provides a great solution for mapping landscape scale features (e.g., entire states) and produces information about the bare ground (so can provide topographic data under tree canopies -- often where we know the least about the archaeological record [e.g., bayous]). But for a project specific survey LiDAR can be overly expensive or simply impossible (since getting plane to some places with the right set up for laser scanning is not always possible -- e.g., Easter Island). Here, land-based laser scanners are handy but these cost about $100,000 to start and typically require trained operators. Renting them can be as much as $20K a month.

From a cost perspective, generating topographic information using "structure from motion" based techniques is quite appealing. This approach makes use of basic imagery collected from inexpensive cameras. Surfaces are calculated based on shared points in photos, determining the position of the camera from images and calculating where the points that are shared must be in space in order that they were captured by the camera. It is an ingenious technique - using some cool math. Noah Snavely, a PhD student (now an assistant professor at Cornell) at the University of Washington developed some of the basic software for doing this (originally part of a "photo tourism" project in which photos taken by tourists of locations can be combined to build a 3-D model of the scene - without knowing before hand where the cameras were placed and under a variety of lighting and other conditions). This project has morphed into Photosynth, the free Microsoft project that automates this project and is Silverlight based.

From a topographic perspective, the "structure from motion" approach is pretty slick - using just a bunch of photos made on cheap digital cameras, one can produce detailed representations of surfaces. Actually, the product is a 3D point cloud that has excellent relative accuracy. Increasing resolution simply means more photos - and whole swaths of areas can be covered with just a click of the shutter. Getting absolute position requires georectification - a separate process (which I can detail elsewhere). Commercial products, though, can take geotagged photos and create a georeferenced point cloud. We have a license for Microsoft's Geosynth - a professional version of Photosynth that can take HD video and geotags to produce high density georeferenced point clouds.

One of the problems with Geosynth, however, is that it doesn't produce some basic products such as a simple (georeferenced) photomosaic. Instead, there focus is on creating "synths" -- a cool product but entirely unintegrated with other kinds of spatial tools (e.g., GIS). Last week, we saw a demo of another software package that produces mosaics using the same kinds of algorithms as Geosynth -- 2d3's TacitView. 2d3 is a small software company located in Irvine. TacitView (and TopoMap, their 3D product). The software is slick and well-done - a great interface and the products are well-suited for integrating into GIS software. We are going to do a demo of this software soon to see how it compares to Geosynth.

UAV

2010-11-11T16:56:00.001-08:00

We finally made the plunge and send out a PO for a UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle). Of course, we are not talking about a GlobalHawk or a Predator drone (but man, those would be cool -- do field mapping on the other side of the planet from a desktop... drool). We are looking to get a (1) robust (2) self piloting (3) portable (4) minimally dangerous to others (5) robust (6) really robust (7) affordable platform for generating high resolution imagery of land surfaces that can be turned into georectified orthophotos (ideally with multi-spectral capability) and high resolution topographic information. The UAV we want has GPS guidance, returns to launch location, and will allow systematic coverage of a landscape. This rules out most helicopter solutions that specialize in "overhead" type coverage. While there are *many* fixed-wing based UAVs out there for potential sale, most of them tend to be military oriented and thus too expensive or unattainable (i.e., why bother with a university when uncle sam will buy a billion dollars worth of your product).

We initially had made a deal with DraganFly to buy their Tango platform. In fact, we went so far as to do a PO for their fixed wing system. However, we found out a number of details (1) DraganFly isn't really making Tango type platforms, at least for the near future as they are focusing almost entirely on the helicopter type units (2) when they list "gps guidance" in their specs what they really mean is that they have a "solution" for gps guidance provided by another company that requires an entirely separate license and other negotiation. In other words, they simply can't deliver a fixed wing system. Bogus.

We ended up going with Gatewing, a Belgian startup company that has created a UAV system ideally suited to our purposes: generating systematic imagery to be used in creating orthophotos and terrain maps. Their system is the "X100" and meets all of our requirements -- and will ship on December 13th! Whoohooo. At any rate, this platform should gives an excellent means for generating topographic maps of study areas and for producing detail photographic imagery. We look forward to working with Gatewing and exploring this UAV's capability.

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B

2010-11-01T14:28:00.001-07:00

Ethan just let me know that the special issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B -- edited by James Steele, Peter Jordan and Ethan Cochrane is now available online.

Cultural and linguistic diversity: evolutionary approaches

Recent work has shown that language and other human cultural practices can be considered as evolutionary systems operating on the Darwinian principle of 'descent with modification'. An emerging field of interdisciplinary science builds on phylogenetic and other methods adopted from biology, and adapts them to explain the transmission histories of suites of cultural traits (whether languages, social structures, or artefacts). This theme issue asks what social processes lead to coupled and decoupled transmission of different cultural traits or suites of traits, and how their transmission histories can be estimated retrospectively using quantitative methods. Understanding the factors affecting descent histories is central to explaining how cultural diversity arises and how it is maintained. These questions are of interest and relevance not just to social science and evolutionary theory, but also to planners working on topics such as endangered language maintenance.

RHX Status Update

2010-10-28T20:47:00.001-07:00

We've got the basis for the RHX environmental chamber -- temperature and humidity controller as well as a Mettler XP56 balance. The XP56 has a 50 gram capacity and weighs to 1 microgram. We've insulated the acrylic environmental box to help with the temperature control. A cheaper version of the box could probably be made of sealed styrofoam with a little window -- but we had access to an already constructed glove box. Temperature is controlled to 0.1 degrees C using 3 thermoelectric peltier coolers. For the humidifier we use a commercial cigar humidor.

On another front, we finally got a solid date for a Plumbate sherd -- 1153 BP.

A bit of a diversion

2010-10-05T10:43:00.001-07:00

Over the past several months, Mark Collard has posted a number of YouTube videos on topics related to science, evolution and general irreverence. They are all humorous and great diversions from otherwise bleary days. I thought I'd aggregate them plus some others for your watching/listening pleasure.

The Sound of Science (Wendy Dirks)
The Pope (Tim Minchin)
Storm (Tim Minchin)
Science is Real (TMBG)
Put it to the test (TMBG)
Cells (TMBG)
Mammal (TMBG)

Posing Questions for a Scientific Archaeology

2010-09-29T21:38:00.001-07:00

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away (well, it was Seattle) there were a group of students in an archaeology graduate program (at the University of Washington) who shared a particular kind of training offered by a curmudgeonly but deeply logical professor (Robert C. Dunnell). These students all spent significant amounts of time preparing proposals for conducting their doctoral research. The challenge they faced was dictated by their advisors: conduct archaeological research that will generate falsifiable answers to questions about the archaeological record. This task is harder than it seems since the first task, asking appropriate questions, has been a quagmire for archaeologists since the origins of the discipline. Yet, to finish their PhDs in this particular program, these students naively took on this challenge and spent years (in many cases) developing their proposals.

In the end, most of the students finished their PhDs by conducting the research that was proposed. The resulting tomes can be found in the UMI repository and in some cases as published volumes. One of the important contribution of their work, however, isn't entirely in the end product. In the end, the results of the research are all determined by the questions being asked and the proposals generated dictating the research design. These documents rarely see the light of day in a publication sense yet are the fundamental basis upon which data are generated and conclusions drawn. Indeed, not all of the students completed their research (largely due to the difficulties involved in actually making the required measurements) but even so, the proposals for the work stand alone as significant accomplishments. In science, asking the right questions is the 99% of the problem.

With Terry Hunt (University of Hawai'i) and Sarah Sterling (Portland State University), I put together an edited volume of these proposal. This book was published back in 2001 by Bergin and Garvey. You can still buy it new off of Amazon.com (http://www.amazon.com/Posing-Questions-Scientific-Archaeology-Millennium/dp/0897897536) for an absurd amount of money ($119) or you can get it used for as little as $10.00. You can even preview the book at books.google.com

The table of contents of Posing Questions.:

Preface

Chapter 1: Posing Questions for a Scientific Archaeology - Terry L. Hunt, Carl P. Lipo and Sarah L. Sterling

Chapter 2: Groundstone Wedge Tool Form and Function: Experimental Analyses in Northern South American “Axes” - Kimberly D. Kornbacher

Chapter 3: The Engineering and Evolution of Hawaiian Fishooks - Michael T. Pfeffer

Chapter 4: Projectile Point Variation in Evolutionary Perspective: An Example from the Central Mississippi River Valley - Kris H. Wilhelmsen

Chapter 5: Social Complexity in Ancient Egypt: Functional Differentiation Reflected in the Distribution of Standardized Ceramics - Sarah L. Sterling

Chapter 6: Community Structures in Late Mississippian Populations of the Central Mississippi Valley - Carl P. Lipo

Chapter 7: Dietary Variation and Village Settlement in the Ohio Valley, A.D. 400 - 1650 - Diana M. Greenlee

Chapter 8: Resource Intensification and Late Holocene Human Impacts on Pacific Coast Bird Populations: Evidence from the Emeryville Shellmound Avifauna - Jack Broughton

Chapter 9: Evolutionary Bet-Hedging and the Hopewell Cultural Climax - Mark E. Madsen

Index

Contributors

Given that Terry Hunt, Sarah Sterling and I hold the copyright, I'm going to link a PDF of this volume. I am releasing this under a Creatives Commons Licence. You can download the book here (about 17 megs).

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License

So I got a crappy grade in your class and I want to go to graduate school, what should I do?

2010-06-12T16:47:00.000-07:00

A student wrote to me about a grade they got in my Foundations of Anthropology class (ANTH 401). This student was not happy that they received a 'C' as a grade with a 79% average since they have desires to go to graduate school. At first I was going to not reply at all since there really isn't much I can do about grades unless I've made a mistake somewhere (which was not the case here). In the end I replied with some advice. In case this will help other students, I repeat it here.

I understand your frustration with the grade - you were close - but I had to do a cut off somewhere that was consistent with everyone else. Thus, you just barely didn't make the next grade. There isn't really anything I can do to change that unless I made a math error somewhere.

If you are interested in going on to grad school, your grades are not the only thing that is going to make a difference. More important than grades are going to be (1) letters of reference (2) projects/papers/presentations that you have done (3) GREs (for most schools). Individual grades can be 'explained' in statements of purpose. The other material, however, makes a huge difference to committees reviewing materials. So here is what I suggest:

(1) start working with a faculty member who is in the area you would like to focus on for graduate school. This will help get you a good letter of recommendation. Take the initiative here -- volunteer to do some aspect of a research project that the faculty member is working. Do this work in your spare time to get the experience and background you need to be a good grad school candidate. What area are you hoping to focus on? I can direct you in the right direction - to the right person...

(2) Find out if you can turn that project into a paper or poster for a national meeting (or regional). I can help you identify a conference that would work well for that - there are many different conferences.

(3) Begin preparing for GREs now - even you are taking them in the fall. The more familiar you are with the kind of questions that the GRE consists of, the better you will do. Take a tutoring class on the GREs if necessary -- sometimes it helps to have some structure to that kind of studying since it is easy to blow off on your own.

Book

2010-06-12T16:20:00.001-07:00

We got an update on our book publishing schedule -- looks like March/April 2011 is the timeframe.

Rehydroxylation Dating (RHX): The Experiments Begin...

2010-05-28T17:58:00.001-07:00

While there are still things to do -- such as transporting massively heavy granite balance table to the lab (via a door blocked by construction and a forklift and somehow squeezing into the doorways of the Microbiology building) -- the RHX Dating lab is coming together and we are beginning to conduct our experiments. This week we had a TA Instruments VTI-SA vapor sorption analyzer and a Q50 thermogravimetric analyzer (TGA) installed into the IIRMES lab. The installations went smoothly though we lacked the giant balance table and had to use a bench top that is a bit less than optimal.

The Q50 is a nice little TGA. Completely controlled via Windows (man, I do not miss the SCO Unix OS and software that ran on the Perkin Elmer TGA we had back at the U.W.) with a nice 1gm maximum sample size and a furnace that covers 0-1000 degrees C. My primary impetus for purchasing the TGA is for determining firing temperatures on prehistoric ceramics to see how this factor may impact rehydroxylation processes. From my initial test of a Mississippian sherd from Arkansas (Rose Mound), the unit will be ideal -- I got a clear signal at ca. 610 degree C that showed a massive loss of weight that is the result of additional firing of the clay beyond the original firing temperature. I'll be running more tests, of course. And I need to do some work on the various exceptions of clay composition and firing effects.

The vapor sorption analyzer is a 1950s looking machine but has a solid Windows based interface for doing all of the actual work. Basically it consists of an ultra balance with two sample holders that are suspended in a finely controlled temperature and humidity environment. For our purposes, much of the ability (to change temp and humidity in a dynamic way) of the VTI-SA are overkill since our use basically consists of making mass measures in a constant temperature and humidity -- but the precision of this instrument will give us an ability to explore some of the boundaries of the overall method. We are now working on our measurement protocols so we can start running sherds -- Ill probably go in tomorrow to start a run. Can't wait...

Moai Roads

2010-05-27T06:54:00.001-07:00

A recent news blurb in Science described work by Sue Hamilton and Colin Richards of the University of Manchester that apparent refutes the ideal that the "roads" observed on Rapa Nui are actually related to the statue transport. Their claims are based on (as I understand it -- since there is no actual published article yet, just a press release from their recent season) some geophysical measures made at locations where fallen statues are located along the road. From what I have gleaned, these measurements show evidence of "platforms" that are buried at the position of the bases of statues. The claim made by Hamilton and Richards is that these platforms are evidence that the statues are not evidence of failure during transport, but toppled moai that once lined a processional route that led to the quarry. These routes, they argue, are consistent with a bunch of Polynesian lore in which volcanos are special places.

There are a number of problems with their claims:

(1) They haven't published anything: the Science blurb is based on a press release that they did. Given that these releases are written by PR folks at the university, it is unclear how what they say is related to what archaeological evidence they have, if any. The PR folks are going to make whatever they did into the most sensational story ever -- that's there job. In fact, given that their findings were releases as a press release, I'm fairly shocked that Science even bothered to cover the story -- nothing that they said has been subject to any degree of peer evaluation.

(2) The argument about Polynesian mythology is just made up storytelling. There are lots of Polynesian myths, all of which could be crafted in ways to account for statues arranged in the way they are. Are these positioned to lead people to the ocean? Are they ancestors that over look fields? Are they territorial markers (as argued by Brett Shepardson)? Lots of things are possible and what Hamilton and Richards claim is a heap of mumbo jumbo. This is the worst kind of post-processualism -- empiricist claims interpreted through ad hoc interpretations. Science should be chastised for highlighting this story. In a previous story (in the fall), Hamilton and Richards released a press release about how they found the "pukao" quarry. This press release was equally filled with mumbo jumbo and demonstrated a shocking lack of awareness of the literature.

(3) Statues had to be moved in some way since we know they originated from the quarry at Rano Raraku. This isn't storytelling: we know that they were made at the quarry and we know they were moved. Were they moved down paths other than the ones that they are found?

(4) The statues that are raised on platforms uniformly have eyes carved in them. None of the quarry or "in transit" statues have this feature.

(5) Whatever "platforms" the moai sat on that are found on the roads, these are not ahu - substantial structures built to be the bases for statues. So these "platforms" are just some rocks on which the statue sat - perhaps for stablization during movement?

(6) We don't know where Hamilton and Richards did their geophysical work (i.e., which statues). If the statues are near the quarry, there are other reasons to expect some kind of stablized base having to do with finishing the backs of the statues after sliding them down the slopes of the quarry.

(7) Richards and Hamilton seem to be stuck on the notion that the statues were transported via rollers - and that the "u shape" (noted by Charlie Love previously in excavations) falsifies this transport method (also noted by Charlie Love).

I could go on - but of course lacking an actual publication about the work I'd be speculating what they did and what they found.

The Moai Army Prepares for Attack

2010-05-04T17:00:00.001-07:00

Visualization of Today

2010-03-22T09:48:00.001-07:00

787 billion dollars to track. Graphs to make. If anyone can do it, Edward Tufte can: he's the data visualization superhero. Read about him taking on the ARRA stimulus package.

Archaeology at CSULB

2010-03-21T22:58:00.001-07:00

Proceedings are on-going for the admission of archaeology graduate students at CSULB for the fall 2010. Stay tuned.

Graphical perception – learn the fundamentals first | FlowingData

2010-03-21T09:34:00.001-07:00

Came across this discussion of Cleveland and McGill's work on Flowing Data regarding visualization of data. Things to keep in mind.

When it comes to visualization, especially on the Web, you have to be open-minded, and you should be willing to try new things. There’s no advancing otherwise. However, before you dive into the advanced stuff - like just about everything in your life - you have to learn the fundamentals before you know when you can break the rules.

[From Graphical perception – learn the fundamentals first | FlowingData]

What you do need to know before you enter a graduate program in archaeology.

2010-03-20T14:06:00.001-07:00

Previously, I argued that traditional field skills are not anything to worry about before entering a graduate school: you can always learn how to dig a hole. Now, you might ask, what skills should I have? Here's the list, based on what I've seen graduate students struggle with during their first years. Having these skills under control will greatly ease your first years and give you time to focus on learning actual archaeology rather than basic mechanics. You might also check out my previous post on my advice for graduate students.
(1) Be able to write. The better you are at writing, the easier your graduate school experience will be, especially in the first few years. In all of your classes you will be asked to write: essays, papers, laboratory write ups, analyses, reviews, etc. Writing is a key part of graduate school. In fact, its basically the product of archaeology. At our core, we are writers who happen to rummage around in dirt, speak conceptually about rocks and other kinds of inanimate things. The better you are at writing, the better an archaeologist you will be. Before you start graduate school, do some writing. Start a blog and keep it current. Turn a paper you wrote as an undergraduate into something for publication - whether that is a newsletter, local publication, regional venue or greater. Take a class in writing at your local community college. Read Strunk and White's Elements of Style. Then read it again. Then read On Writing Well, by William Zinsser. Then practice some more. Make your writing logically sound. Clear. Sharp. Readable.
(2) Learn how to use Microsoft Excel or any equivalent spreadsheet program (whether that be OpenOffice, Gnumeric, Numbers or some other variant). Given that contemporary students are often touted as being terrifically "computer savvy" with all of that YouFace, FaceTube and Twitface stuff, I am incredibly appalled that many entering archaeology students have never used a spreadsheet. I've seen students, for example, enter numbers into a spreadsheet as instructed and then do calculations on a calculator (e.g., summing the values) and then entering the results back into the spreadsheet. Really. Given that much of what we do in archaeology in addition to writing is counting things, have advanced knowledge of Excel will go along way to making your assignments be about the problems posed and not the mechanics of dealing with numbers. Trust me on this one. Learn how to use a spreadsheet, create headers, use autofilter, use functions, create formulas, create graphs, do basic statistics, etc. Equally important: learn how to edit the graphs and tables produced by Excel to make them acceptable. Don't rely on the defaults. Learn to identify "chartjunk" and maximize the information to ink ratios for your graphics.

(3) Know the basics of statistics. If you count, describe or measure things, you need to understand statistics simply because all of the actions are meaningful only if one understands the contribution of error. Don't hide behind some claim of "phobia" about numbers: if this is really the case, choose another career. Really. If you really are unable to understand the concept of a standard deviation, do society a favor and pick a more suitable career like crematorium manager or whatever. And while you will learn more about statistics in graduate school, if you don't know anything about the basics you will be wasting everyone else's time as you get up to speed. Take an extension class. Read a book on statistics and do the exercises. Practice. Count things, calculate error. Just learn statistics.

(4) Learn some kind of programming language. Some might argue with me about the fundamental nature of this skill, but I definitely believe that every archaeologist should learn at least on kind of programming language: Perl, Basic, Visual Basic, Python, C, C++, C#, shell scripting, Java, Javascript. It really does not matter which language one chooses, but the skills acquired through learning how to take a problem and break it down into simple steps that can be coded will provide a generous payoff for anyone tackling the routine problems facing archaeology students (and professionals alike). Programming is more of a logic problem than anything else and learning how to conceive of problems that can be tackled via a program is a good demonstration that you can figure out how to solve problems in general. And having the skills to program means you are not going to waste your life doing tedious things that you (a) not do well and (b) you shouldn't be doing by hand in the first place. For example, given a large number of files (say 10,000) rename them according to some scheme. If your only solution is to do this take one by one and by hand, you are in trouble. Take a class. Read a book. Do online exercises. Learn some kind of programming. And do it before you are in graduate school.
(5) Learn something about GIS. In graduate school, you will definitely have opportunities to learn something about spatial systems. However, you should gain a background in the basics of geographic systems before you start graduate school. GIS is really just a different kind of computer application - like Word or Excel - that allows you to manipulate concepts in space. No archaeologist worth her/his salt should lack an understanding of GIS. And that means you. The more you know about GIS - like using Word or Excel, the easier it will be to focus on archaeological analyses that deal with space rather than the mechanics of the various program that you are going to use to study space. Learn ESRI's ArcGIS or the open source Quantum GIS or one of many other geographic information systems.
Well, that is a start that should keep you busy for the summer prior to starting a graduate program in archaeology. As I recall other critical skills, I'll update this list. If you have any ideas, please let me know.

What you don't need to know before you enter a graduate program in archaeology.

2010-03-18T15:44:00.001-07:00

When I talk to students about their preparation for graduate school in archaeology, I've noticed that most worry one set of skills that are largely irrelevant for actual success in either a Masters or PhD program: those associated with a "field school." Yes, participating in the long-standing tradition of an unpaid apprenticeship in the field is still considered a "rite of passage" for archaeologists. However, what one learns in such an experience provides only marginal return when it comes to actual success in graduate school or even as a professional. All one can really expect to gain from a field school is knowledge that:

(1) You like (or do not) other archaeologists. Many field settings are remote and force individuals to cooperate and share daily living in a way that leads to somewhat intense experiences. Of course, such an experience could be accomplished doing just about anything (camping, ice slogging, sailing a dingy across the Pacific with 12 of your closest friends, etc.). What makes archaeological field school unique is that it forces you to hang out with other archaeologists. Since those who choose this sort of focus for their lives are an odd breed, it doesn't hurt to find out if you can stand 7x24 discussions with others who share the same bent view of the world as you do.

(2) An appreciation for the fact that archaeological field work is tedious, mind-numbing and occasionally just boring. It just is. Yes, one will have a lot of fun futzing around in the dirt but most of the "fun" comes camaraderie or reflections after the fact (usually over cold beverages in the light of the moon). But the work itself - well, for the most part, trained monkeys can do it. If you can see through the drudgery and still like archaeology, you might have a chance becoming an archaeologist.

(3) Some archaic knowledge about rote and tradition and little else. Most field schools tend to focus on simply repetitive activities that have long stood for archaeology -- "digging." Digging holes in the ground to retrieve artifacts is a time-honored tradition. However, the view that "digging" is a central skill in doing archaeological research is massively overblown and erroneous. Digging is destructive - archaeologists are the greatest threat to the archaeological record. The origins of such destructive field strategies comes from 1930s interests in stratigraphy for culture history construction as well as putting maximum numbers of individuals to work per the WPA and other Depression-era work programs. The 1x1 meter square, in fact, is a descendant of the 5x5 foot square that was chosen to be large enough to stick a person and a shovel in. The size of the unit has little to do with sampling: it is too big for small artifacts and too small for large artifacts (such as aggregate scale). The array of technology that permits one to study the record w/o excavation (and subsequent destruction) increases daily. Don't drink the excavation Kool-Aid... Even in Mycenean archaeology the practice is pointless, destructive and provides little in the way of knowledge about the record that cant be obtained in other ways. (This means you, Keep-the-table-empty Dude).

One caveat to this point: in CRM in the US there is a strong bias towards digging 1x1 meter holes as a means of bilking developers and lining the pockets of CRM company owners. Digging holes is expensive because of the labor involved and the subsequent activities required to deal with the stuff uncovered. This doesn't mean that much is learned by doing this -- even the best reports of 1x1 meter "test" pits simply state that "some stuff was found" since the samples uncovered have no known relation to each other -- but it does mean that someone is getting rich. Current estimates place the cost of a single 1x1 meter unit at more than $10,000. That's good coin. So my caveat has to do with the fact as a student archaeologist you probably should get your piece of the pie in order to make a living until you can be in charge and change this rip-off. So by all means, learn to dig a 1x1m -- just do it in the cheapest and most expedient way you can that gives you the street-cred to take a CRM position at your local archaeology firm.

Next up: What you do need to know before you start archaeological graduate school.

Zombies Vs. Professors

2010-03-17T18:41:00.001-07:00

Archaeology vs Anthropology

2010-03-16T00:27:00.001-07:00

(Google auto-complete suggestions. Thanks to Web Seer)

Moai Model

2010-03-02T16:31:00.001-08:00

Just a quick followup to my post about 3D printed moai. I received the moai kindly printed by Mark A. Ganter. The actual item is about 8" tall and is a perfect replica of the computer model I created with Photosynth. The texture of it is a bit grainy which is a function of the powder used to generate the object. It is infused with wax to make it more robust. All in all feels like the volcanic tuff used to create the real moai. What is most important, however, is the fact that the details are correct, in particular, the center of mass. All other models made for transport 'experiments' have been based on some basic measurements and a bit of artistic interpolation. This model, on the other hand, is a reliable approximation of the real deal. Thus, when we evaluate ideas about moving the statues, we can get a real "feel" for how an actual moai might respond. Other than Pavel Pavel, the Czech engineer who moved an actual moai and Heyerdahl who dragged one across the beach at Anakena, no other experiment has made use of an accurate model. In general, then, other conclusions have been drawn simply on the basis of weight and size of a big statue-like object. Here, we can really see the limits of motion that reflect those likely present in real moai.

Playing with the model is fascinating. The center of gravity, as measured on the real moai, really is slightly forward which gives the statue a general forward lean. The front edge of the statue is rounded like the real ones and slightly flattened on the sides. Together this means that when you tip the statue slightly to the side (and a small bit forward) it "rocks" along the front edge and takes a step forward. Tipping to the other side reverses the motion and causes another "step." These things really can walk. And it takes just a small bit of energy to do so and is very stable - the shape of the front edge is such that the forward lean turns into a twist. It also means that there is no friction as the surface is not sliding on the ground -- rather the statue rocks along the edge. Absolutely amazing.

Diamond on Diamond

2010-02-27T18:17:00.001-08:00

This week in Nature, Jared Diamond published a review of Questioning Collapse a volume of chapters published by various authors regarding the problems in Diamond's own "Collapse" book. With my colleague, Terry Hunt, I have a chapter in the book that details the numerous empirical problems with Diamond's account of Easter Island. Diamond's review is rather sour of the book as it refutes has major thesis -- that some societies collapse and others don't.

Overall, the book is a mixed bag. In our chapter, we chose to focus the details of the events that comprise the archaeology of Rapa Nui. We can plainly show that there simply is no evidence of a pre-European major population loss. (n.b. Our comprehensive and compelling account is part of a book that is in the hands of editors right now). Other chapters tended to address some particular details that Diamond got wrong or making claims that societies change not collapse. The latter part is on the money but most of the chapters approach the issue in an empirical way rather than addressing the concepts embedded in the statement "Why do some societies collapse?" In this regard, some of the chapters end up sounding a bit like weepy leftist academic slogans. Some of the comments in Amazon reviews hit on this point.

Ultimately, however, the problem with Collapse is that by using common sense terms such as "society" and "collapse" you automatically fall into having to defend whether or not there was a "collapse" in which ever "society" you study. Societies are taken as real empirical things. Collapse is assumed to be something that happens to them. But what is a society? Can you point to one? Can you draw a line around it? What is collapse? Point to a "collapse" Do you just "know it when you see it?" If you start with those assumptions you are playing Diamond's game -- and have already bought into the set of cryptic terms he asserts. But it doesn't have to be that way. Darwinian evolution showed that by not assuming species as a real thing we can explain why the appear and change. Historical ecology shows that ecosystems are historical accidents and that by not assuming them as real we can see that they change continuously The power of the same approach is possible for an understanding of "societies" -- but we cannot start by assuming the units we are trying to explain in the first place. It is this fundamental anti-evolutionary, anti-science approach taken by Diamond that is appalling and ultimately going to be his undoing. His willful ignorance, disinterest in getting the details correct and lack of anthropological training -- combined with his swollen headed academic accolades makes him an incredibly sloppy and essentialist researcher. Sadly, people take his "expertise" as a given when in fact he is spinning a yard just as commonsensical as Abraham Simpson-- maybe less so. .

However, the MAJOR problem with his review is that it makes no mention that the book he is reviewing is a critique of HIS book, Collapse. Of course he hates it! It largely serves to undermine his particular platform by pointing out the numerous problems in his own work. The editor of Nature is largely to blame for this -- it unscrupulous and dishonest. Based on this event should we believe *ANY* of Nature's book reviews? Are they all "inside jobs" designed to maximize sales for some book either by attacking competitors or playing up a favored author? Some coverage of this lapse of honesty and the conflict of interest created by Nature has been generated via a report by Molika Ashford of StinkyJournalism.com.

Credit: Jim Hunt

Statistics

2010-02-03T18:11:00.001-08:00

Today I attended an Undergraduate Committee meeting for the Department in which it was proposed that a statistics requirement (100-level, intro stats) be removed from the undergraduate degree in anthropology. The argument made is that some students just don't need training in statistics for their goals in anthropology. I argued to the contrary but was over ruled. What do you think?

""Finding the occasional straw of truth awash in a great ocean of confusion and bamboozle requires vigilance, dedication, and courage. But if we don’t practice these tough habits of thought, we cannot hope to solve the truly serious problems that face us — and we risk becoming a nation of suckers, a world of suckers, up for grabs by the next charlatan who saunters along."

- Sagan, Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, p. 38"

A Brief History of Anthropology

2010-01-27T17:53:00.001-08:00

n my ANTH 401 class, I gave a one-hour lecture on "A Brief History of Anthropology." This focused mostly on North America. Here's the timeline I used.

3D Models of Moai

2010-01-27T00:02:00.001-08:00

I received an email today from a faculty member at the University of Washington in Mechanical Engineering -- Mark A. Ganter. Ganter works on rapid prototyping technology as part of the Open3DP project. This is a spectacularly cool technology that enables designers/engineers/artists to design and create three dimensional models directly from computer imaging. According to his web site:

Our process involves 3D printing of an object, depowdering, sintering, and finishing. In some application an infiltration step is performed with colloidal silica after sintering to decrease porosity and increase strength. Several available dry clay bodies were adapted for use in an existing commercial 3D printer. We are testing these new materials to provide engineering data (presented as graphs) on sintering temperature verses shrinkage, flexural strength, and porosity for the various clay bodies demonstrated in 3D printing. Our resulting material is a porous ceramic sponge-like body.

Ganter used 3D point cloud data that I generated from a series of photosynth projects to create a 3D replica of a moai (the "japan" moai that stands near the entrance to Tongariki). There are a number of cool dimensions to this project --- (1) given the Creative Commons license that I've given for the data and images, it has all the makings of a scene in Cory Doctorow's "Maker" book [that I immensely enjoyed] (2) it provides the first actual physical model of a moai that can be used in experiments. Previous models of moai created for transport experiments were largely based on eyeball estimates of shape/form. Consequently, there has been no reason to accept claims about transport being conducted one way or the other, especially given the inherent uncertainty of the center of mass and basal shape. This is the real deal. Notice, for example, how much the head dominates the overall figure as well as the way the head cranes in a forward direction.

Ganter is sending me one of the models he has produced - Can't wait to see it!

Live from Philidelphia, it's the AAA witchhunt and self-flagalation show!

2009-12-22T16:42:00.001-08:00

As I mentioned earlier, Alice Dreger at Northwestern University recently presented a paper at the American Anthropological Association meetings in Philedelphia on the ghastly behavior of the AAA organization in their "investigation" of Napoleon Chagnon. In her blog, she has provided an account of the session and some of the reactions she received after the talk. Quite in line with the general idiocy and blameless attitude of the AAA organization, she was called "demonic" and unscholarly by Tierney defender Terence Turner at Cornell.

You can find her full account here:

My “Demonic” Debut at theAmerican Anthropological Association

We (anthropologists) should all be embarassed. Many of us should be worried.

2009-12-11T22:10:00.001-08:00

This report just came out yesterday in Science.

Chagnon Critics Overstepped Bounds, Historian Says. Science (2009) vol. 326 (5959) pp. 1466

This article describes shocking (yet not particularly surprising) account by historian Alice Dumurat Dreger (Northwestern U.) of the sleazy 2000 Patrick Tierney attack on Napoleon Chagnon and the corrupt way in which the AAA handled the accusations that were levied against Chagnon. Apparently, the AAA's commission as "task force" to look into claims posed by Tierney. As it turns out, the task forced cleared Chagnon, yet went on to state that the allegations had "merit" and had been damaging to the Yanamamö. The shocking part is that the AAA task force was quite aware that the claims were bogus in the first place yet chose to drag Chagnon through the "task force investigation" simply to make political statement to Latin American countries. This is the very definition of a witch hunt, done with the sickening dour earnestness that makes AAA meetings so horrific to attend. Shameful.

As Dreger pointed out in her paper presented at the recent AAA meetings, "I can't imagine how any scholar feels safe" as a member. Exactly: who is next? The witch hunt was sanctified by the AAA because many anthropologists simply have had a longstanding a beef with what Chagnon argued. Sloppy, reprehensible research done by many of the other ass-clowns in the AAA remains "acceptable" simply because it is "PC" enough. Woe be unto those who dare challenge the sacred cows of Anthropology.

Where are the investigations for research done that is never published? Or not published in Open Access formats to provide a product back to the people who handed over their intellectual property for nothing but a signature on a Human Subjects form? Or investigations into those that argue that "their people" don't need to read academic results? Or those who extract intellectual knowledge from their subjects, yet convert that into a "personal journey" of no utility to anyone anywhere.

Sad to be an Anthropologist today....

A Practical Guide to Geostastical Mapping

2009-12-10T17:57:00.001-08:00

Just saw this and thought I'd pass it on:

Tomislav Hengl has just released has new book, A Practical Guide to Geostatistical Mapping over at http://spatial-analyst.net/book/. The book is available for free browsing online and as a free PDF download, or you can order a printed copy. The book is made up of lecture material for a PHD course teaching spatial analysis using open source software. All the datasets used in the book are available at the homepage as well." Download the PDF here Interestingly, you can improve the book interactively by using an iPaper application that is part of the www.scribd.com browser. Cool idea.

From the webpage:

Geostatistical mapping can be defined as analytical production of maps by using field observations, auxiliary information and a computer program that generates predictions. The purpose of this guide is to assist you in producing quality maps by using fully-operational open source software packages: R+gstat/geoR and SAGA GIS. Materials presented in this book have been used for the five-day advanced training course "GEOSTAT: spatio-temporal data analysis with R+SAGA+Google Earth" that is periodically organized by the author and collaborators. This is an open access publication!

Research grants awarded to anthropology professors

2009-12-02T09:45:00.000-08:00

http://www.daily49er.com/news/research-grants-awarded-to-anthropology-professors-1.2108532

CSULB is also considering eliminating 16 anthropology courses.

By Trishian Bucheli

Staff Writer

Print this article

Published: Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Although Hector Neff and Carl Lipo, two Cal State Long Beach anthropology professors, were recently awarded grants to further their research, a large number of anthropology classes are on the chopping block.

Neff, the principal investigator for the Institute for Integrated Research in Materials, Environments and Society at CSULB was awarded $295,226 from the National Science Foundation. Lipo will soon be awarded $310,000. Both grants will be in effect until 2012.

“Getting two grants in a row — it is pretty incredible,” Neff said.

Both professors had to write proposals to NSF and compete against other institutions and schools, such as Stanford University and California Institution of Technology.

“We are doing what we are supposed to be doing; we are bringing the funding and providing research possibilities to students,” Neff said.

IIRMES will be using some of the money to purchase new research equipment such as a laser fluorination system, which will be used to do research on rocks and bricks in order to get the mineral information.

“It will also provide enough money to pay for the expertise to keep the lab running,” said Gregory Holk, a geology associate professor at CSULB and IIRMES co-principal investigator.

Courses proposed to be dropped

453/553: Archaeological Field Research Design
472/572: Archaeology of the Desert West
481/581: Faunal Analysis
485/585: Physical Science Techniques in Archaeology
464/564: Quantitative Methods in Anthropological Research
488/588: Advanced Methods in Near Surface Remote Sensing
551: Artifact Analysis
571: Prehistory of Eastern North America
573: Archaeology of California
587: Cultural Resource Management

The IIRMES lab is used in collaboration by biology, anthropology and geology departments at CSULB.

“Grants allow support — anything that benefits the lab benefits the whole,” said Hayley Zemel, a biology graduate student.

Holk said the instrumentation about the research and lab work is utilized for archaeology findings. According to Holk, there is about $5.5 million in instruments at IIRMES. With the use of a scanning electron microscope, the research facility is able to view small images by using high magnification.

Holk is focusing on light isotope work at IIRMES. The research makes it possible to study the diets of ancient civilizations.

Holk said that by removing the plaque build-up from discovered skeletons, they can look at what the people ate. Each food has a different isotope level of carbon and by studying it, they are able to tell what the ancients ate, such as if it was grain or corn.

The lab has one of two time-of-flight mass spectrometers, which is sought by many researchers. The machine can tell the concentration of an element from archaeological findings such as pottery, Holk said.

“It is important to know the chemical composition of the pottery; it is their form of fingerprints,” Holk said.

However, many undergraduate and graduate students from the anthropology department at CSULB will not be able to work at the research facility.

“Last year, 16 classes were eliminated from the anthropology curriculum,” Neff said. “These classes were the ones that would educate and prepare students in order to work in the lab and prepare them to utilize the equipment, and for future employment.”

The classes were taken off the schedule but may still be offered in future semesters. The College of Liberal Arts and Academic Senate, however, may later decide to eliminate the courses entirely, according to Lipo.

“We are being restricted on the students we can teach,” Lipo said.

Neff said the instructors are told they cannot teach students certain subjects, which they need to learn for future employment.

“The main issues are people’s perception of the sciences. How do we co-habitat — there are many branches of study in the archaeology department,” Lipo said.

There are a lot of difficulties because the work Lipo and Neff are doing are based in science, while those in the liberal arts have a different perspective, Holk said.

Holk said this is the best place for master’s students to go, and that the department has as many instruments as well-funded research labs.

Many master’s students from CSULB are losing out on this opportunity, he said.

Neff mentioned that he has had to get students from other universities to work at IIRMES, such as Cal States Dominguez Hills and Fullerton.

“When the committee decided to eliminate the 16 classes they did not even know what they were eliminating — they only had class numbers in front of them,” Neff said.

Every January, Neff usually takes a group of graduate students to Guatemala to do field research. This coming January, he will not be able to go on the trip.

Neff said, “There are not enough students who know how to use the equipment properly, I need at least some students who know what they are doing.”

Happy Thanksgiving...

2009-11-26T16:13:00.001-08:00

Here's to everyone out there and to hoping you are all able to enjoy a happy thanksgiving! Cheers!

Finite Element Analysis - Force and Stress on Artifacts

2009-11-24T14:38:00.001-08:00

I came across this free 2-D FEA package - ForcePAD that is being distributed by Lund University. It allows you to examine the effect of force and constraints on shapes in various configurations. From the website:

ForcePAD is an intuitive tool for visualising the behavior of structures subjected to loading and boundary conditions. The design of the user interface aims to be as intuitive as a standard image processing software. Users should be able to design structures, apply loads and define boundary conditions without knowledge of the underlying finite element model. ForcePAD is also designed to give an intuitive image of stresses and deformations in the material.

Some of the documentation (i.e., screenshots) are in Swedish and the instructions are fairly barebone. But one can quickly do studies of a variety of shapes and configurations such as this "fishhook" that I sketched up in about 2 minutes. Cool stuff.

Evolution and Bananas (of all sorts)

2009-11-24T14:01:00.001-08:00

This past week, the much hyped distribution of 50,000 copies of the Origin of Species handout at university campuses finally took place. This was an effort that was funded by the Creation Science Institute (man, everyone gets an institute) and choreographed by the towering intellects known as Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort. Kirk, of course, was the boy-idiot star of the painfully horrific television show "Growing Pains." His new role as Creationist spokesperson perhaps is explicable as some damage done as a child actor. The other member of the duo is the nutball New Zealand minister and evangalist Ray Comfort. Ray is infamous for his rather hilarious argument that the shape of the banana -- since it fits so nicely in a human hand and has such convenient peeling properties is "proof" of a Creator who could have only had us in mind when he conjured up the fruit out of the nothingness. You can see all the hilarious glory here. Of course, the modern banana's shape and characteristics are embarassingly the result of human breeding programs of a once wild and pod-like banana. The Creator is Us! Gack. Nannanananana... Leader!

Anyways, I saw a number of copies of the book laying around campus this past week. It is a cheapass printing with a 50 page intro by Ray Comfort. Its a funny waste of money, actually, given the difficulty getting students to actually read anything more than a single page of text. Few, if any, will likely delve into the book and it likely end up in recycling bins and garbage like those books that the Hare Krishna's hand out. Or maybe they will end up in required reading list of our ANTH 120: Intro to Cultural Anthropology, or the ANTH 501 graduate seminar.

While neither Ray nor Kirk came to CSULB to personally deliver the books, you can view a telling display of befundery by the boy-idiot Cameron while he was at UCLA to spread his nutty word.

Laboratory Safety

2009-11-16T10:17:00.001-08:00

I take laboratory safety quite seriously. With chemicals like HF and HCl being used in a low light environment that borders on no light, you really can't be too careful. So I ask all my students to watch this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZ-1lfammjk&feature=player_embedded

And you should too.

Rats! (and German Ecologists)

2009-11-14T13:48:00.001-08:00

Today's USA Today covers a new paper that is just being published in the Journal of Archaeological Science by ecologists Andreas Mieth and Hans-Rudolph Bork from the Institute for Ecosystem Research in Kiel, Germany. This paper "Humans, climate or introduced rats – which is to blame for the woodland destruction on prehistoric Rapa Nui (Easter Island)?" challenges Terry Hunt and my argument that (1) Easter Island was colonized in AD 1200 and (2) that rats played a role in transforming the ecology of the island.

Their argument sets up our previous work as a "straw man." They claim that we argued that rats *only* caused these trees to go extinct. This is, of course, absurd - trees were primarily destroyed by burning, not rats. Rats, however, must have had some impact on the environment simply because (1) they were there, having been introduced when people arrived (2) rat populations must have been large, based on the lack of natural predators and the plethora of food provided by the Jubaea chilensis palm (i.e., nuts). All we are saying is that this aspect needs to be considered when putting together the overall explanation.

The real point of contention is what prevented regeneration of the forest, not what cut it down. The fact that there was no forest regeneration is fairly clear from archaeological evidence (made by a variety of folks). While we see prehistoric sedimentation, we don't see palm root molds other than those made in the pre-human occupation surfaces. Mieth and Bork, following the standard "catastrophe" story believe that the lack of regeneration is due to erosion and ecological collapse. I would argue that rats would have made it difficult, if not impossible for the trees to regrow - and that humans would have had little incentive to regrow these slow growing trees (Jubea palm live up to 500 years) especially since any new trees would harbor more rats. Much of the differences in these stances has to do with what one assumes the productivity of the wooded environment was like -- they assume that the productivity was high (because it was forested). I think the evidence speaks otherwise.

I've been working hard on this part of the story for the book - it forms the focus of a chapter we call "Resilience." Where this covers the conditions that prehistoric populations faced when they arrived on the island, the materials/technology/plants/animals they had with them, and the details of the history resulting from this combination. It's coming together...

Below is what I do not think is the case. It just didn't happen. More on this later...

++= ?

Some strong words about "Leadership"

2009-11-14T12:23:00.001-08:00

Blogger "Dr. Crazy" over at Reassigned Time has posted some strong and insightful words about what it means to be a leader in an academic setting. Dr. Crazy is an assistant professor at a midwest university who speaks rather bluntly, though anonymously, about his experience in the academy. In this entry, DC comments on the lack of leadership among administrators - and could easily be speaking about CSULB.

If faculty governance and faculty contribution to a university community is going to work properly, it won't just do so by magic. Because here's the thing: groups of people can only come together to work effectively if they have structure, guidance, and information. There needs to be a person who takes responsibility for creating structure, for guiding decision-making processes, and for disseminating information in a way that is responsible, transparent, and coherent.

In other words, we need administrators. Faculty can't do their jobs unless they have effective administrators to create an environment in which that can happen. Left to their own devices, to piece together information by happenstance and to have discussions and to make decisions without a clear structure, clear goals, and clear guidelines, faculty will most of the time fail. That's right. I said that. Faculty can't just run the university by committee.

Now, faculty members are smart folks. They can do a lot of things well. They can achieve a great deal for a university - above and beyond their individual teaching and research - with strong leadership. With charismatic and strong leadership, they may even be able to achieve this great deal and feel proud of it and like what they're achieving.

But also, faculty members are smart folks. They know when they're being given the run-around. They know when the rhetoric doesn't match the substance. They know when the hundreds of hours they've put into something to make it great have meant nothing, and when that something is being gutted. And once they know these things, they are going to stop being so interested in cheer-leading, in taking one for the team, in doing their jobs well. This is not because faculty members are selfish or scattered or lacking in commitment. It's because they are smart folks, and they know that to be smart means not investing one's time in something that has clearly become totally fucked. They know that being smart means not letting themselves get fucked.

Strong leadership means:

Knowing how to run a meeting. If you're sitting at the head of a table, and if you're putting yourself in a position of authority over a group, you also hold responsibility for keeping the group on track. You hold responsibility for focusing the discussion, and for explaining why the discussion is being focused in the way that you choose. You hold responsibility for stopping people from talking over one another, and you hold responsibility for managing the personalities and interests around the table in order to keep the conversation civil and productive. (This is not unlike managing a classroom well, incidentally.) If a meeting is going on for 2 hours and there's no end in sight and people start leaving before it's over? You don't know how to run a meeting.

Answering questions honestly, even when the honest answer may not be to everyone's liking. Spin is not strong leadership, particularly when you're expecting a group of people to do the motherfucking dirty work for you.

Taking ownership over your role in a particular process. If the travesty that is driving the process is your idea, at the very least you can admit that it was all your idea and explain why. Speaking in the passive voice "it was decided..." "people have agreed..." "it is the case that..." is disingenuous at best. Dude, if you're behind the steering wheel, admit it. Be responsible for it. Take the punches that you fucking deserve for it. You can't keep your hands clean and be a strong leader.

Understanding that you don't get to decide things in a vacuum only to force faculty to come together under false pretenses to ratify your decisions.

Asking for input before decisions are made, not after. (I suppose that's the same thing as the last bullet, only stated differently.)

Realizing that getting people to buy into a process isn't a matter of making decrees or coercing people through scare-tactics (ahem, did we learn NOTHING from the Bush presidency?), but rather about persuading them that their investment in the process actually means something and that it will have tangible, and hopefully positive, results.

Making friends with people who have big mouths and getting them to use their big mouths to support you rather than to fight you. And if you try to persuade them and they aren't buying it? Maybe you need to listen to their objections and really take them to heart. And maybe even try to address them directly, rather than just responding with fucking sound bites.

Inspiring trust in those whom one expects to do the heavy lifting.

You know why tenure matters? Above and beyond academic freedom in scholarship and in the classroom? It matters because when we don't have strong administrative leadership, and I suspect this happens at all institutions in a variety of contexts at one time or another, somebody needs to be able to speak up, loudly and clearly, on behalf of students, on behalf of faculty, and on behalf of the future of the institution. Tenure has made little difference to me in terms of my scholarship or my teaching. I have never felt in jeopardy in those areas, and I think my institution values my autonomy in those areas. Where tenure has meant the most to me is that I don't have to hold back at all when it comes to fighting bullshit that will hurt my university, my colleagues, or my students. Now, my loud and contentious voice may not make any difference. But at the very least I do have the power to say my piece without fear of losing my job. And since I'm being put in a position where I'm being expected to "participate in" (read: authorize) things that entirely contravene our mission and our values, then I need that power and I need to use it.

But you know what I want? I want a leader. I want a person who will make it unnecessary for me to feel enraged and to go into battle mode. This is not to say that I want a leader who agrees with me in all things or who serves my interests above all others. No, that wouldn't be a good, strong leader. I want a leadership that has a vision, that articulates it clearly, and that doesn't try to pass things through under the radar. I want to be able to be a team player, even if I don't entirely agree, because I trust the ones leading me. I want to feel secure in my leadership's intentions, and I want to be reassured that I don't need to raise hell if I disagree with something because even if I express an objection quietly and civilly that it will be taken into account. I want to be confident in my leadership, knowing that it is making decisions with students, the faculty, and the institution as its first and most important priority. I want leadership that does not betray me, that does not use my hard work to advance a policy or program change only, in the implementation phase of that change after it has been approved, to strip that change of any value or meaning. I don't want to feel as if my leadership is taking advantage of my initiative, abilities, charisma, and intelligence. I want to feel as if my leadership values those qualities in me, respects them, and uses them to initiate positive change.

Look, I believe in compromise. I believe that it's impossible to make all people happy all of the time, and I believe that it's not my leadership's job to make me happy. But I also believe that if you expect people to serve, if you request their service, that you should value that service when it is given. And you should honor the spirit of the final product that those people produce.

I've had two experiences with leadership this week. One of those experiences was exemplary, in terms of demonstrating exactly the qualities that a strong leader has. The other, not so much. Tragically, the lack of leadership that I experienced this week is going to affect every single student at my university, and just about every single colleague of mine within my college.

I am angry, I am demoralized, and I am in no way going to shut the fuck up about the latter of the two experiences. Maybe my angry outcry will make no difference. Probably it won't. But I want it made very clear that I do not endorse what is happening, especially since when everybody was busy trying to get the thing support in the first place, I was the motherfucking spokesmodel.

Lesson learned. [From Leadership]

CSULB MA Graduate Program in Archaeology - Admissions for Fall 2010

2009-11-05T17:14:00.001-08:00

Although the Department of Anthropology is not going out of its way to advertise this, we are officially accepting applications for students who want to get an MA in Anthropology and focus in Archaeology. Yes, you heard it right: we are looking for students and are excited to accept a new group of MA students for Fall 2010.

We are particularly looking for students who are fairly committed to taking a science-based approach to the archaeological record. While there is lots to learn (and brain reorganization required), the result provides students with strong analytic and critical tools necessary to be competitive in archaeology and other related disciplines.

At CSULB, it our goal to provide archaeology students with:

strong theoretical training;
access and hands-on training on state of the art instrumentation;
field work opportunities;
exposure to an innovative and highly interdisciplinary environment that combines theory and the use of analytical techniques to solve problems central to the understanding of the physical, life and social sciences;
internships and graduate assistantships;
funds for student research projects;
One-on-one mentorship for graduate work and post-MA careers.

Campus and department applications can be found here: http://www.csulb.edu/colleges/cla/departments/anthropology/ Be certain to email me (clipo@csulb.edu) or Hector Neff (hneff@csulb.edu) if you are interested in the program or are planning to apply. We would be happy to provide you more information and to answer any questions you might have.

Mapping Anthropology Departments and Citation Analyses

2009-10-29T19:31:00.000-07:00

As a lark, last spring I created an interactive map of all of the anthropology departments in the world. This map makes use of Google Maps and their API. You can view the AnthroMap here: http://mendel.cla.csulb.edu/anthromap/ The main page looks something like this.

There are two kinds of departments shown: Departments with PhD programs (Red) and those with just M.A. Programs (blue). Click on an icon will show you the Department URL, the University URL, and a list of faculty who teach in that Department (accurate up to June 2009). When possible it lists the email addresses of each of the faculty.

You can also do a citation analysis for the departments. On the pop up window, you can click on "Citation Analyses." This runs a query through Google Scholar for each of the faculty and sums up the number of citations for each published article for which the individual was an author. The data are displayed in bar chart form to allow comparisons. The window also has a list of each of the faculty that links to the articles and the raw citation data.

Note that you might get a baffling HTTP Error 503. As far as I can tell, there are some limits placed on the application as to how often it can query Google Scholar. I suppose I could make this a 'canned search' running every day, but it would take more coding and I'm lazy. If you get this error and know how to fix it, let me know. If not, wait a while and try again. Someday I'll figure it out.

For an example, here is a graph of the citations for the Department of Anthropology at the University of Hawai'i, Manoa.

If you are looking for references to CSULB's department (and you know who you are... Nancy) you can try this link or possibly this one. Draw your own conclusions about impact to the discipline, productivity and contributions to the University.

Questioning Collapse

2009-10-26T13:57:00.001-07:00

The marketing folks at Cambridge have set up a web site for the Questioning Collapse edited volume. The website is basically a blog (built on wordpress) that allows students/reviewers to interact and pose questions -- as well as provide information about the authors and their research. It's a good way to promote a book, I think, since some of the aspects of reading the book are going to generate questions and challenges. Exactly how individuals will find out about the web site is a little more mysterious (thus, my link here.). I wonder if books have facebook pages. Although there isn't much in the way of content at the site now, it should grow pretty quickly.

Questioning Collapse Web Site

Escaping the Dark Labyrinth

2009-10-20T10:34:00.001-07:00

Philosophy is written in this grand book the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and to read the alphabet of which it is composed. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles and other geometric figures without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it; without these, one wonders about in a dark labyrinth.

- Galileo 1623.

Cats and Witches

2009-10-13T10:47:00.000-07:00

Evolution and the Levels of Selection: Samir Okasha

2009-10-09T14:41:00.001-07:00

For anyone interested in the "levels of selection" dimension of evolutionary theory, you should definitely acquire Samir Okasha's book -- Evolution and the Levels of Selection-- 2006, Oxford University Press. Okahsa covers the topic from a philosophic point of view and in a way that gets to the heart of the matter. For me, his coverage of MLS1 and MLS2 models is particularly useful as is the discussion of the Price Equation.

If science were a band, it would be TMBG.

2009-10-09T11:20:00.001-07:00

They Might Be Giants has released their new album Here Comes Science. I guess this one also comes with a DVD which must have videos and the like. With songs like "Science is Real" to "Meet the Elements" to "Cells" this is a must have for any well-stocked laboratory. A number of these songs are also available on YouTube:

Meet the Elements

I am a Paleontologist

Science is Real

The Sun is a Mass of Incandescent Gas or Why does the Sun shine?

Put it to the test.

Electric Car

Roy G. Biv

Computer Aided Design

The Ballad of Davy Crockett (in Outer Space)

On Writing

2009-10-07T12:43:00.001-07:00

TheDepartment of Anthropology at Durham University has put together a series of short pieces on the process and task of writing. These pieces were submitted in response to invitations put out by Durham University to a wide range of faculty working in the social sciences. As they state on their web page:

2009 IIRMES Annual Report

2009-10-07T12:36:00.001-07:00

IIRMES is an interdisciplinary institute on CSULB that combines researchers from anthropology, biology, geography, geology, chemistry, physics - and probably a couple of other disciplines. It is housed in a facility in Microbiology and consists of laboratories with shared instrumentation. Our archaeometry and luminescence dating facilities are located within IIRMES. On a yearly basis, we are required to issue an annual report that covers the activities of IIRMES for the benefit of faculty, students, staff and administration. For those of you interested in the following enduring mysteries(**):

(1) what is purpose of life?(2) what is IIRMES and why does it do?(3) can an IIRMES make me more successful and persuasive?(4) if IIRMES were an animal, what animal would it be?(5) what goes on in that mysterious building on the east edge of campus?(6) what have archaeology students been up to?(7) what do archaeology faculty do in their labs?
you might check out the 2009 IIRMES Annual Report that is now online at:
IIRMES2009AnnualReport.pdf <http://www.iirmes.org/Home/publications/IIRMES2009AnnualReport.pdf?attredirects=0>
**Results may vary. Answers to above stated questions are not guaranteed or even necessarily possible. See your doctor before applying IIRMES to any part of your body. Never drive under the influence of IIRMES. Individuals who are allergic to science are asked to seek professional help. Keep arms and legs inside the moving car at all time. Never point a laser straight at your eye. Avoid sunlight if a vampire. Keep out of sight of zombies.

Thor Heyerdahl on Moai Moving

2009-10-03T14:03:00.001-07:00

"This is was not the way it was done, " said the islanders.

Leonardo was the name of one of those who argued that the stones had walked in an upright position. It sounded so meaningless that I would long since have forgotten the episode had I not written it down in my own book on the expedition at the time.

"But, Leonardo," I said, "how could they walk when they had only heads and bodies and no legs?"

Enhancing archaeological training with iTunes U.

2009-10-02T11:11:00.001-07:00

As many know, the Forces of Evil (tm) have been tirelessly working to prohibit us from teaching students the skills necessary to be functional and successful archaeologists. Buoyed by a sense of righteous power derived from absolutist versions of relativism (where relativism is enforced by law) coupled with vast indifference to outcomes, our collevileagues (tm) continue to figure out ways to keep education as bland and pointless as possible. Fortunately, students now have the Internet from which to draw knowledge to complement whatever bits of training we can slip past the department's curricular guardians. In particular, iTunes U features a wide host of opportunities for learning in nearly all conceivable disciplines. Many of these turn out to be ideally suited for the ambitious archaeology student. So for anyone interested, you might consider enhancing your training in archaeology by taking some free online classes. Below are just some of the classes that are available at iTunes U that will provide you some training in archaeology and related disciplines that will make you smarter, stronger, and better looking (okay... probably only the first).

Introduction to GeoScience: Oxford University

Soil Studies: Open University

Soil and Weathering: Colorado School of Mines

Archaeology: Open University

World Archaeology: Open University

UCLA Series on Evolution, Culture and Human Behavior

If you know any other good iTunes U lectures, let me know!