RCD Writings - Update

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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.