Semesters End - Poster Session

In my class, ANTH 453/553 Archaeological Field Research Design, students prepared posters as a final project. These posters were done individually and as small groups of 2. The subject of the posters, of course, was the geophyisica/remote sensing archaeological field work done at Zzyzx during the semester.

Overall, I was happy with the work the students did. Generating a product out of the field work was much harder, I think, than what most of the students had anticipated. Much of the difficulty comes from the many different kinds of software packages needed to turn raw geophysical data into a final product. These included GPR-SLICE (the premier program for processing radar data for archaeology), MagMap 2000 (the free but powerful program for importing and processing magnetometry/resistivity data from Geometrics), NAV38B, the relatively crappy DOS based conductivity processing program from Geonics, ArcGIS, Golden Software's Surfer, PTGui (the best photomosaicing program I've found yet - absolutely key for generating mosaics from blimp photographs), Neosys Transform, Trimble GPS Pathfinder Office (for data transfer, conversion and post processed differential correction), ACD Systems Canvas, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, and probably one or more other utilities I forgot to mention.

None of these packages are difficult in and of themselves, but there is a lot to futz around with. At any rate, I think the posters came out fine in the end and the results are interesting and useful.

You can download the posters here:

- Project Overview (SBR-0363c SBR-5417)

- SBR-0363c Burial Study (Mag, GPR, Resistivity, Conductivity)

- SBR-5417 Conductivity and Resistivity

- SBR-5417 GPR and Magnetometry

Carl Sagan - Pale Blue Dot

[From YouTube - Carl Sagan - Pale Blue Dot]

The ultimate relativist point of view - all we have ever known exists on a mote of dust suspended on a sunbeam... take that postmodern relativists!

Science Videos

I just ran across SciTalks (www.scitalks.com) - a directory of science related videos that are available from on the web. These include such inspiring classics as Richard Feynman's "On the Pleasure of Finding Things Out."  Great stuff.

On another note, I've been converting over more of the RCD videos over to WMV so I can post them on the web.  I have the remainder of 497 and all of 575. What I can't seem to find is 498. Ill have to dig those up. 

Brooke Hundtoft

I am pleased to report that CSULB archaeology student undergraduate, Brooke Hundtoft has received a prestigious Provost Undergraduate Research award to do work on Easter Island "mata'a" shape variability. Congratulations!

Issue 2 of the Journal of Evolutionary and Historical Sciences (JEHS) is out!

Although the journal continues to evolve in terms of its look, format and process, we got a second issue out today of the Journal of Evolutionary and Historical Sciences (JEHS). This issue consists of posters that were presented at the Society for American Archaeology meeting in Austin, Texas -- something I hope we can continue to do on a regular basis and expand upon. Since most posters are real products, it seems a shame to have them vanish into oblivion or be morphed into a traditional paper (perhaps years later). This venue provides an ideal way of having these published - in color - and allows posters to be shared with a wide community. Enjoy! www.evolutionarysciences.org

CLA Poster Showcase 2007

Jimmy Daniels has kindly posted his photos from this years CLA Student Research Poster Showcase. You can view them at http://www.flickr.com/photos/8765457@N06/

Below: Veronica Harper, Jessica Jaynes and Azzura Di Marcella in front of their winning poster.

Memorial Day 2007

It has been a fairly lazy Memorial Day weekend for me. Surfing in the morning has provided the start of the day, while futzing around the house has dominated the afternoon. It actually feels great to do a whole lot of nothing. I did get the new http://www.rapanuifieldschool.org blog worked aout and the www.easterislandresearch.org blog completed. I've also toyed with creating a communal blog for the faculty of the College of Liberal Arts (huxley.cla.csulb.edu/cla). I guess Ill have to see if any of the faculty are interested in discussing their research, students, etc. Who knows. In addition, I've done a bit of work with Drupal (www.drupal.org) to see if ejournal (www.drupal.org/project/ejournal) might be a better, more flexible solution than OJS. I started this setup (huxley.cla.csulb.edu/ejournal) but I still have to get the ejournal layer installed. Now, it is back to grading - method and theory II (456/556). Hopefully I can get that done today so that I can finish up 451/551 tomorrow and wednesday.